361–370 of 590 posts
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It wouldn't be so distressing if they weren't already valued beyond a trillion dollars.
You don't become a trillion dollar company selling products people don't love.
Apple started offering home repair kits for iPhone this year, but they’re super difficult to use: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/technology/personaltech/a... There’s speculation that offering the kits is an attempt to head off right-to-repair legislation. But seeing this redesign, I wonder to what degree the repair program is incentivizing repairability within apple’s corporate structure. Now that “profit/loss pe…
I suspect that the driving force behind Apple’s new desire to be repairable is legislative. IMO: Not profit of the “self-service” repairs, nor the improvement to the bottom line when they refurbish their own devices. Not some future goal of selling people the parts and/or tools. Not the goal of being ecologically sustainable (though IMO they do very well at this). I think they are working very hard to steer the Right…
I disagree. It's all about customer LTV.
Apple is increasingly seeing a larger percentage of their revenue come from services e.g. Music, TV+ and iPhone-centric devices e.g. Apple Watch.
Keeping users in the ecosystem is incredibly important to Apple so much that they are happy to have users use older phones for longer. Just as long as they don't switch to Google or Samsung.
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> but they’re super difficult to use I can't read the link as it's paywalled: but my understanding of the Apple tools is that they're hilariously over-engineered; not that they're hard to use.
They just seem engineered to a different market, their own repair techs. Bulky doesn’t matter, expensive doesn’t matter. Being absolutely completely foolproof when used by non-expert techs with a few weeks training and having as little risk of damaging the device at possible does matter.
I would hope and expect that third party repair techs (and to a slightly lesser extent ordinary people) would be repairing devices with the same level of quality as Apple's techs.
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How is this legal? Holds ought to be capped at the maximum payable for a transaction. Sounds like you've never rented a moving truck. Or a power tool. Or tried to rent a car with a debit card.
Last time I rented a van, the hold was AU$500 (around US$300). Seems pretty crazy to put a $1200 hold on some phone repair gear.
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Easily, Apple and Google collude to maintain dominance in the mobile OS markets and leverage that duopoly to dominate other markets like mobile app distribution and mobile app payments. Google's app payments policy is now nearly identical to Apple's, you must use their payment platform to distribute apps on their app store. Just like Apple's policy to prevent competition in the mobile app payments market prevents app…
>Apple and Google collude Citation needed.
Really happy to see this write up. I’m probably in the tank, but I genuinely believe that Apple strives to do right by its customers, and to be a good company. it’s not a nonprofit, and I don’t expect them to act like one. Sometimes I feel like people enjoy piling on because they are the big dog. Again, please don’t mistake this comment for a blindness to some of its operations. But it’s nice to see them get credit f…
I'd rather say they simply know that being evil is not a good look. It's still driven by profit, they just have a more holistic view on that.
Really happy to see this write up. I’m probably in the tank, but I genuinely believe that Apple strives to do right by its customers, and to be a good company. it’s not a nonprofit, and I don’t expect them to act like one. Sometimes I feel like people enjoy piling on because they are the big dog. Again, please don’t mistake this comment for a blindness to some of its operations. But it’s nice to see them get credit f…
> Apple strives to do right by its customers, and to be a good company Meanwhile, millions of people accidentally turn on iCloud without understanding the consequences, due to Apple’s UI decisions. Apple need to do way more than this to show that they really strive to be good.
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> what good is it to have a repair manual when you cannot buy genuine parts? You can absolutely buy genuine parts for recent iPhones: https://selfservicerepair.com/order (that website looks random, but it's actually Apple's official self repair supplier) Yes, the System Configuration step is still required to pair many of those parts. This has been discussed ad nauseum. Perspectives vary between it being a necessary…
The last time I tried it I had to put in the SN of the device I wanted to repair in advance to get the part. Maybe they fixed it from then, have not checked. If you cannot get parts in stock (meaning in advance), you might as well send it to the Apple and not bother with repair shop at all. I also think this is the main reason for making it like that. Display, battery and vibration motor has absolutely no security im…
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> Independent shops should be able to buy broken phones from individuals and part them out for repairs without jumping through Apple's hoops. I assume in this scenario that all independent shops are trustworthy entities that won't use stolen, reclaimed, or third-party parts in order to save money, without informing the customer?
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Tracking stolen phones and busting chop shops is probably something that should be handled by law enforcement.
> We are hearing reports that Apple is continuing their hostile path of pairing parts to the phone, requiring activation of the back glass after installation. On the other hand, this makes stealing an iPhone more and more pointless, as more and more parts cannot be parted out and sold. After activation lock was added, thieves started parting out screens and batteries to sell them and get at least some value out of an…