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Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

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Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#511

Post by ddingus »

jeffbee wrote: post #381
kllrnohj wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right-to-repair in no way prevents or hampers Apple's ability to offer that service. If people want the current state, they can continue to pay for it. Right to repair offers strictly more options and choice, it doesn't remove anything

It removes the ability of the manufacturer to make a phone that is the size and weight people prefer and has the features they want. Billions of people want a waterproof phone and I doubt you could even fill a bus with people who really give a damn whether or not the battery is replaceable in the field.

You can fill that bus any time, any day.

In the US, roughly half the population works for less money than it costs them to exist and show up for work! How they view the world is very different than the roughly quarter of the population doing well enough to see these discussions lack relevance to them and how they live and work.

There are shared responsibilities. Nothing gets designed, used and fixed in a vacuum. Ignoring how we fix things insures our design and manufacturing work raises the cost and difficulty of repair and repurpose.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#512

Post by ddingus »

spookthesunset wrote: post #403
kllrnohj wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Requiring Apple to sell or allow 3rd party replacement parts as well as providing repair documentation does not in any way prevent them from making the phone they currently are. You're confusing (perhaps intentionally) right to repair with the EU's proposal to mandate easily swappable batteries. They are not the same thing.

You can sell the parts and manual, sure. But making it easy for a layman with non specialized tools? That is a tall order against cost, weight and waterproofing.

The goal is to make sure things are possible

When they are, there will be plenty of people capable of making it easy. There always are.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#513

Post by ddingus »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #389
jeffbee wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It removes the ability of the manufacturer to make a phone that is the size and weight people prefer and has the features they want. Billions of people want a waterproof phone and I doubt you could even fill a bus with people who really give a damn whether or not the battery is replaceable in the field.

For buyers of new devices that may be true. Yet I've sold plenty of phones I had bought second hand (after years of my own use), and those with user swappable batteries are far more likely to be reused without great expense. More so if they also have an SDcard slot to minimize wear on the soldered storage. As phone features plateau we should strive to make them last longer and avoid unnecessarily consuming tons of ne…

Ars technical has a story running on the topic of "lost" limited natural resources.

It speaks right to how landfill mining is likely to be a thing in a less distant future than many of us are likely to expect.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/new-study-estimates-...

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#514

Post by ddingus »

Nullabillity wrote: post #464
jeffbee wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's a great service, too. You pay $50 and wait a few minutes. You get a new, genuine OEM battery with a warranty that extends the life of your phone indefinitely. The right-to-repair people have just lost contact with reality. This is the way people want it to work. It is a great product experience.

Remember when you could just buy a battery off the shelf, pop out the old battery, and pop in the new one? Without waiting for service or finding a brand store that's at best hours away? And without having to worry about whether the manufacturer has deemed your phone too legacy to allow you to replace the battery anymore?

Not to mention a battery swap means having basically immediate power replenishment on demand.

I work around this with battery cases. Everytime I do that when there are onlookers, at least one of them want to know all about it.

Demand for this is pretty high, given my experiences doing an equivalent thing where people see it happen.

And there is also the important matter of making sure the device is off and not doing something a user might not want to have done.

Sure, an ad-hoc Faraday Cage is not that much trouble, but many do not understand how or even it being possible.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#515

Post by mynameisvlad »

lisper wrote: post #473
mynameisvlad wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at the same time, a diver is trained to look for leaks as part of their pre-divw checklist, and oring replacements are fairly common. On my last liveaboard, the crew replaced probably good 1-2 dozen tank orings over the course of a week. One of my LP hose orings had frayed as well and needed to be replaced. It might be the standard, but it's not exactly the best experience either.

The o-rings that require regular attention are the ones that handle high-pressure air. Run-of-the-mill waterproofing o-rings, like the ones used to seal dive watches and dive computers, are fire-and-forget. And yes, dive watches and dive computer have beefier housings than iPhones, but iPhones don't need to be waterproof to 150m. (I am a certified scuba diver.)

Dive computers with replaceable batteries 100% have user-serviceable o-rings that need lubing and eventual replacement. My Shearwater came with both grease and 2 replacement o-rings.

HP hoses and o-rings also can and do fail, and, once again, divers are trained to look for signs like the rubber bubbling. There is also not really a difference between the o-rings used in HP and LP hoses and equipment outside the size, and I gave examples of LP hoses failing.

These all require regular maintenance and replacement, and, once again, divers are trained and should be checking their equipment regularly.

But that's all beside the point, which is that your claim is that "[o-rings] are extraordinarily reliable". Except they are not, they require replacing all the time. They may be industry standard, but they are fall from infallible.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#516

Post by pas »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #147
Nextgrid wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Apple intentionally insists that this is the only way to do a repair to scare people away from it - and the media seems to be lapping it up pretty well and spreading it - I wish the article called out their BS right away. If I had a full-time repair operation going, I'd probably get those tools too. But for a single repair, I can open one with a hair dryer and 20 bucks of iFixit tools faster than…

> The problem is that Apple intentionally insists that this is the only way to do a repair to scare people away from it As they should. If Apple had instead shipped batteries with instructions for pure DIY repair, we’d be reading an article about “I tried to replace my iPhone battery but I destroyed my iPhone in the process” And if Apple redesigned the iPhone to be bigger so it could have a separate battery compartme…

> If Apple had instead shipped batteries with instructions for pure DIY repair, we’d be reading ...

Hypothetical. Also they could simply provide the option.

They already don't take any responsibility anyway.

If someone wants to get it done with a high chance of success they already take it to an Apple store, or ship it to Apple.

> This whole article and the rage around it is beyond silly.

Yes and no. The article is mostly just tongue in cheek, trying to capitalize on the cheap shock value of the 79 pounds of tools... but the point it implicitly makes is that "right to repair" is not about tools, it's about repairability, design, serviceability, etc. (Which I think is a bit dumb, because most people don't want this, they want cheap phones every few years. What would be much much much better is to price in the externalities of that. Which would give a fighting chance to a vendor that competes on low externality by serviceability.)

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#517

Post by pas »

leokennis wrote: post #484
gambiting wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with you. I think the author is right - requiring people to put a $1200 deposit down to rent some tools and sending them 40kg of stuff just to replace the battery is insane and clearly done to discourage repairs, the fact that you have to call their specialists to validate the battery at the end is just a cherry on top of this rotten cake - it's just done to stave off legislators ruling that app…

If you read the article, the 40kg of equipment are clearly needed to do the repair. So now you’re demanding Apple ships you a light bundle of small tools that do the same as that 40kg of tools or otherwise it’s just a “token effort”? Or you want Apple to design a phone that you could safely repair using only a few small tools? That’s fine too. In that case I’ll just sit here waiting for all the bitching from HN about…

> bitching from HN about their new repairable iPhone that is prone to water damage, has shit battery life and creaks when you hold it.

it's not like we did not have those already :D

bendgate! antennagate! (you're holding it wrong!) and so on.

it seems what repairability is about is using standard parts (screws, batteries), allowing people to buy parts, and allowing people to use the thing in a less than perfect way (eg. with an aftermarket standard part)

of course it's not just Apple that doesn't want this. nobody who is in the business of selling their own hardware wants this, because it would decrease their sales.

and as other comments pointed out right to repair is not repairability.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#518

Post by simondotau »

ethbr0 wrote: post #301
simondotau wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A watch mechanism is (typically) circular, ideal for devices that need to be opened and closed frequently. And the mechanism is a much smaller percentage of a watch's overall volume; much more of its volume is enclosure material.

I can't find the rating for the 1926 Rolex Oyster (if there was one), but the Submariner in 1953 was 100m. ... I daresay we're not talking about that level of waterproofing, so circularity of sealing gaskets and case structural integrity shouldn't be as critical. Although if Apple made an iPhone Deepsea, I have no doubt they'd have buyers at any price point, a vanishingly small percentage of whom would actually subme…

Circularity allows for threads which can give significant, robust and uniform clamping pressure, without need for any adhesives.

But really the distinguishing factor is the ratio between case volume and mechanism volume. If phones had a similar ratio to watches, you could just bolt them shut with a dozen screws.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#519

Post by fartcannon »

nunez wrote: post #497
fartcannon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood this kind of compliance. The hordes that buy their disposable garbage aren't going to care, they've shown repeatedly that they're insensitive to, sometimes even aggressive towards their own autonomy. So why do this? Just to _waste_ more? It's so petulant.

it is less that i am against my own autonomy and more that i value my time aggressively and don't want to spend it repairing shit i don't want to repair i know i _can_ repair my own stuff. i've worked soldering irons and have a heat gun and could go into it again if i need to. i just don't want to make the time. i don't want to spend hours repairing my iDevices. been there, done that. i'm not fucking with impenetrabl…

OK, you can still do that. No changes for you. Someone else who wants to repair their own gets openly mocked by Apples 'compliance'.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#520

Post by fartcannon »

Spivak wrote: post #125
srvmshr wrote: post #13

If made to fulfill the word of the law without actually having to follow it in spirit, this would be my modus operandi too. By designing $1200 deposit, $49 rental & two Pelican suitcases of tools and manuals, while keeping the battery replacement price same at $69 (what you'd normally pay in total at Store), they have entirely disincentivized self-repair without actually breaking any law. Masterstroke /s

I don’t know what Apple could have done better here. For $50 they shipped , both ways, all the expensive equipment Apple themselves use to repair their devices. For how adamant Apple has been about the price of genuine parts for so long I’m starting to think that they actually sell replacement batteries at cost and eat the labor. Because having used 3rd party batteries they’re about half the cost but they degrade is…

They already bought it. What they want is autonomy with the product they purchased. They want Apple to support their rights and for Apple to not be babies about it.
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