Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#61

Post by tjoff » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

Veliladon wrote: post #33

millzlane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes it easier for my technicians when customers lie by omission when they have had their device repaired someplace else and they bring it back to us for repair. It's not until we get into the repair and find out someone has stripped screws that can't be removed without extraction tools and replaced LSI's. It's also nice for consumers who get their devices stolen strictly for parts. Preventing someone from basi…

The other thing is that Apple is trying to make things harder for people with large amounts of resources (think nation states) to exfiltrate data by using pwned components. Like when you take it into a repair shop, how do you know that the replacement part isn't compromised? If I was replacing the front facing FaceID complex I sure as hell would want verifiable Apple gear and it to be paired to the phone. Why would I…

If you give your phone to an adversary with large amounts of resources it is game over.

If you have to worry about that I most certainly would hope that you wouldn't leave your phone to a repair-shop.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#62

Post by Joeri » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #40

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #23

I’m not sure I care much about repairability. For me, makers should have the freedom to design products as they wish. I don’t think that phones and laptops would be as light and portable as iPhones and Macs are if Apple was inhibited by the Right to Repair movement from arranging internal components in such a jampacked way. I also think that makers should have the freedom to design computers whose software tightly in…

Apple has proven with this iPhone (as have other manufacturers) that these goals don't need to be mutually exclusive. You can have wild products designed in all manner of ways (with satellite connectivity!!!), they just need to be user-servicable. That's not an unreasonable request for a company with 200 billion dollars sitting in their R&D coffers. Right-to-repair regulation isn't about stifling innovation, it's abo…

Design is a balancing of constraints, some of which are constraints of the product of the design, and some of which are constraints of the process. Repairability is a constraint, and when that constraint becomes stricter something else has to give. Maybe this is more expensive to manufacture (and given the massive price hike in europe it wouldn’t surprise me), maybe this design took up a lot of designer hours, which held up other products. Whatever the trade-off is, it must be real.

My point is: improved repairability always comes at the expense of something else.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#63

Post by anonymouse008 » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

Apple Care + is going to become an insane profit center and an absolute no brainer when purchasing a new Apple device.

This puts Apple’s recent “no limit to accidental repairs” policy update in perspective. When I saw that I said, “well I guess this is how they are going to use their cash reserves, because no way will this be net profitable”

To boot, I always wondered why it was so cheap - $200 for AC+ then $29 per screen or back replacement. When considering the employee time and equipment, that’s absolutely a loss.

As someone that just wants good things in the world, this makes my heart flutter. It’s wonderfully aligned with customers and does good for the bottom line.

Sorry to all my fellow repair brethren still slogging it out there. Accuse me of being a fanboy - but this is amazing.

[Edit]: This may potentially eat into the phone case market as well. The feel of a bare iPhone is that much better and you can put the cost of the case toward AC+.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#64

Post by grumpycamel » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #3

It's good to see Apple behaving and recognising the momentum the Rights to Repair movement has got globally in the last few years (especially in the large market of EU, and now picking up in Asia). But I think iFixit has been too generous in giving the iPhone 14 a repairability score of 7 out of 10 when Apple still places additional unwanted hurdles and control through software: > We are hearing reports that Apple is…

If Apple allows super easy salvage of another device for parts, I wonder if phones will start to be stolen again. Easy salvage might create an unacceptably wide-spread life-safety risk to ALL smartphone owners.

Tradeoffs, unintended consequences.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#65

Post by MBCook » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

pigtailgirl wrote: post #51

-- guessing - three things - 1) better margins on repair kits than hiring folks to replace screens all day - 2) difficult to assess if a screen/part is apple genuine or not at the store when dealing with trade-in/warranty returns - 3) apple genuinely cares about their environmental impact --

#3 seems true, but remember all this bites Apple as well. The redesign also makes it cheaper/easier for them to repair things. So even if this is 100% selfish it would still be good overall.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#66

Post by ckosidows » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

baskire wrote: post #44

smoldesu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has proven with this iPhone (as have other manufacturers) that these goals don't need to be mutually exclusive. You can have wild products designed in all manner of ways (with satellite connectivity!!!), they just need to be user-servicable. That's not an unreasonable request for a company with 200 billion dollars sitting in their R&D coffers. Right-to-repair regulation isn't about stifling innovation, it's abo…

An organization only has so much mental capacity to focus on challenges. Having a required repair-ability goal would hinder the pace of innovation. It might be worth the hit, but naive to think such an accomplishment is without innovation cost.

Isn't innovation frequently a result of limitations?

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#67

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #40

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #23

I’m not sure I care much about repairability. For me, makers should have the freedom to design products as they wish. I don’t think that phones and laptops would be as light and portable as iPhones and Macs are if Apple was inhibited by the Right to Repair movement from arranging internal components in such a jampacked way. I also think that makers should have the freedom to design computers whose software tightly in…

Apple has proven with this iPhone (as have other manufacturers) that these goals don't need to be mutually exclusive. You can have wild products designed in all manner of ways (with satellite connectivity!!!), they just need to be user-servicable. That's not an unreasonable request for a company with 200 billion dollars sitting in their R&D coffers. Right-to-repair regulation isn't about stifling innovation, it's abo…

So if our goal is to prolong the lifecycle of consumer electronics, then repairability isn’t a necessary metric.

If regulators instead went after service pricing abuse, that would force companies like Apple to drive down their repair prices—which might force them to design their hardware in a more modular manner, but not necessarily, so that if it becomes negligibly cheap to manufacture and replace the entire part of a less modular architecture, then they still have the freedom to design electronics in a less modular architecture. Repairability, considering the arbitrariness of the level of modularity that it stops, really does seem like a constraint on innovation.

User-serviceability is another unnecessary requirement, in my opinion, and in this regard, regulators can go after service availability. Electronics manufacturers who insist on tight integration of their products should make their repair services highly available, which seems like a fair trade-off.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#68

Post by boucher » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

baskire wrote: post #44

smoldesu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has proven with this iPhone (as have other manufacturers) that these goals don't need to be mutually exclusive. You can have wild products designed in all manner of ways (with satellite connectivity!!!), they just need to be user-servicable. That's not an unreasonable request for a company with 200 billion dollars sitting in their R&D coffers. Right-to-repair regulation isn't about stifling innovation, it's abo…

An organization only has so much mental capacity to focus on challenges. Having a required repair-ability goal would hinder the pace of innovation. It might be worth the hit, but naive to think such an accomplishment is without innovation cost.

Seems to me like Apple was more innovative when they had fewer employees and fewer resources, so perhaps we should break up the company in order to increase innovation.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#69

Post by dmitrygr » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #54

dmitrygr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your plan has serious a flaw. Imagine this timeline: 1. steal iphone A 2. split it into parts 3. install parts into iPhone B 4. parts not yet marked stolen, they work, check passes 5. Iphone A marked stolen ...

I did actually think of that but decided it would be a net good. People would learn to buy from trusted sources (which would probably work in Apple's favour) and also it would out the thieves in a rather unfortunate way for them, so they'd probably get the reputation they deserve rather quickly.

You miss the point. I do not care what "the people" learn. I care that my car window is not smashed if some low-life sees an iPhone inside, cause it is known that it holds no value if stolen.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#70

Post by MBCook » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

gcau wrote: post #6

Only the base model, and it's gone from bad to less bad? I can forgive that designing a phone to be easily repairable can be very hard, just as long as you don't purposely make it harder to repair, or unnecessarily expensive.

They’re still doing the pros so they may have improved as well.