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Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

ifixit.org

111–120 of 166 posts

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#111
post #82
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doing this should bother you because they are destroying our planet for personal gain.

This is really misinformed. Apple has a VP position for environment which is staffed by former head of the EPA Lisa Jackson. At the last keynote event she got a prime time on stage to talk about Apple’s major initiative to make their devices last longer. IOS 12 is running on the 5S, which is a 6 year old phones, and not only that but a major focus for this version was to improve performance on older devices. I use a…

I used my Nexus 5 for 5 years with updates, then put LineageOS on it for another year. Then it broke because of a faulty home button switch. However, I could have purchased a replacement mainboard to still keep it running.

More generally, I'm not sure 1.5 years vs 6 years is the correct order of magnitude when talking about environmental impact. Call me back when I can use a phone for 20 years.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#112
post #83
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we need more laws around manufacturing things to make them possible to repair and the prohibition of stopping 3rd party repair. Hell the EU should pass something along these lines. It's pretty much necessary at this point.

Eh, I'd rather have the option to choose than have the government force it down everyone's throats. Believe it or not, most people never repair their devices for the entire time the own them.

Most people will also don't care about the environment. "We should not force the market to do something because the market doesn't do it itself" is a circular argument.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#113
post #2

Apple is really undoubtedly the king of making their products impossible to repair. This doesn't bother me much since I have long abandoned apple. What bothers me is that everyone follows their bad example. Not only is a modern phone impossible to open, everything is glued in. Even laptops are like this. I have even seen other manufacturers stop using underfill in their phones, just like apple. Probably to make broke…

I don't know about phones, but there are laptops which are relatively easy to disassemble and have replaceable parts. I, personally, would buy only those laptops if I would need one.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#114
post #8
post #3

I mean this seems very reasonable from Apple's perspective. They're trying to avoid their brand being tarnished by bad repair shops with questionable repair skills cutting corners with cheap and unsupported parts. Given how large the resale market is for Apple products I would even say that this is an extremely positive policy because as long as the machine boots you can be pretty darn sure your MacBook is just like…

In your first paragraph, if you swap Apple for John Deere, do you still believe what you wrote? The general consensus around right to repair that was discussed during the John Deere incident favored users. But now that Apple is (planning on) doing the same thing, it's reasonable?

This is a tricky subject, imo, because even if Apple is just being money grubbing, there is a positive outlook on this. Finding reliable 3rd party parts for Apple products, even without Apple's meddling, is like cartwheeling through a mine field. My first post-university job was a lot of end user hardware support, and finding reliable parts that worked as advertised (for all brands) was a nightmare. Even previously reliable sites would switch inventory and suddenly get cheap knockoffs, which fit and looked like the real thing, but did absolutely nothing.

With iPhones in particular, this is horrible -- replacing a battery is a terrible experience just from a purchasing point of view. The actual process itself is not bad (and well documented by sites like ifixit), but you don't know about the issues until you have the part in hand and it sucks.

This is a mess for Apple since in a lot of places, third party shops do not care about the parts they order. They put in a replacement part as asked, and now the machine works even worse. As an individual, I'm willing to put out money to a company like ifixit to ensure I've got a working part and I have someone to point to when it doesn't work. For a lot of mom and pop shops that have margins to worry about, suddenly the part actually working isn't that big of a deal.

I don't want Apple to have this much power, to be clear. The right answer is instead to open up the official supply chain to third party resellers and drop the anti-competitive price fixing. But I do get their image concerns with regards to the third party ecosystem -- it's not Apple locking out third parties, it's third parties just making terrible products.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is very good for manufacturers (their bottom line) to make what consumers demand. If no one is making the products you'd want them to make, it's probably because no one is buying them, after all.

Lock-in is a real thing.

What lock-in?

Contacts/calendar/email can easily be synced to a new device and all the big utility apps are on both phone OSs.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#117
post #3

I mean this seems very reasonable from Apple's perspective. They're trying to avoid their brand being tarnished by bad repair shops with questionable repair skills cutting corners with cheap and unsupported parts. Given how large the resale market is for Apple products I would even say that this is an extremely positive policy because as long as the machine boots you can be pretty darn sure your MacBook is just like…

> I mean this seems very reasonable from Apple's perspective. They're trying to avoid their brand being tarnished by bad repair shops with questionable repair skills cutting corners with cheap and unsupported parts

Okay, but instead they're tarnishing their brand by being hostile to consumers. I'd say that segment is quite a bit larger than any segment that experiences a shoddy repair job.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#118
post #2

Apple is really undoubtedly the king of making their products impossible to repair. This doesn't bother me much since I have long abandoned apple. What bothers me is that everyone follows their bad example. Not only is a modern phone impossible to open, everything is glued in. Even laptops are like this. I have even seen other manufacturers stop using underfill in their phones, just like apple. Probably to make broke…

Like a dope, I dropped my iPhone Xs a week after I bought it and the back glass shattered. Everything is glued together on the back, so they had to replace the entire phone.

With AppleCare+, that's $99 plus tax. Without, it's $549 plus tax—half the cost of the phone.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#119
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and no: - Yes in the sense that the glass needs to be glued (or rather taped as a double-sided tape is used) to create a waterproof seal as the small size of these devices does not allow for a more traditional clamp fit using a rubber gasket. - No because it does not have to be the main body of the device to which the glass is glued/taped. I use the Motorola Defy+ [1], an 8 year old water/dust/shockproof Android…

> the glass is glued to a frame which in turn is attached to the phone using screws I think it would be tragic if the iPhone looked like those Motorola devices. That thing looks hideous. This is strictly against Apple's design philosophy, and for good reason.

Wow. This is everything that's wrong with modern electronics and consumerism.

Re: Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet

#120
post #114
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your first paragraph, if you swap Apple for John Deere, do you still believe what you wrote? The general consensus around right to repair that was discussed during the John Deere incident favored users. But now that Apple is (planning on) doing the same thing, it's reasonable?

This is a tricky subject, imo, because even if Apple is just being money grubbing, there is a positive outlook on this. Finding reliable 3rd party parts for Apple products, even without Apple's meddling, is like cartwheeling through a mine field. My first post-university job was a lot of end user hardware support, and finding reliable parts that worked as advertised (for all brands) was a nightmare. Even previously r…

So Apple directly responsible for the state of the after-market of Apple replacement parts, but you'd rather just blame everybody else instead?
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