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Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

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Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#441
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certain that at least 90% of iPhone buyers have no idea Apple does this. I suspect a lot of them would be pissed if they learned.

I suspect if you gave most users the choice between theft proof and aftermarket part swapping, they would pick theft proof. Considering you can buy parts from Apple or take the phone in to a store to have it fixed at a very fair price.

Theft resistant would be more accurate, as it's certainly not theft proof. An iphone screen can be trivially reprogrammed to bypass that serial number check with a ~$90 device on ebay.

> Considering you can buy parts from Apple or take the phone in to a store to have it fixed at a very fair price.

What is a "fair" price? After market screens can be found online for incredibly cheap. I replaced my XS Max display myself in 10 minutes using a kit I bought for ~$50 on Amazon with free 2 day shipping.

Sure, I don't have "true tone" anymore, and the display is an inferior LCD rather than an IPS, but I don't care. It looks great, works great, and it beats paying Apple $329.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#442

On our product (air quality monitor[1]) we made the concious decision to design it for long life and repairability by e.g.: - using no glue or snaps - all components on one PCB, no thin cables that can break - standard philips/torx screws - four screws to open the enclosure, four screws to take out the pcb - expensive sensor modules on pin sockets for easy reaplacement - only using components that are certified for l…

How much are they, and where can I buy one? I don't typically follow through on "contact for pricing".

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense would it be vastly more invasive than right to repair?

The most obvious option to me seems to be price controls, which historically have been a very blunt instrument and as far as I know, most economists recommend against them.

Err… it doesn’t have to be price controls? It could be as simple as an investigation to their pricing strategy and seeing whether the markup is obscene or not. Of course what is obscene is relative, but that’s why you investigate, so that you can see abuse on a case-to-case basis.

Also, how is this level of regulatory inspection invasive? The architectural tight integration almost guarantees that the device manufacturer has a monopoly on servicing their products—it’s just that the monopoly is being allowed because it’s the kind that allows for innovation. The regulatory crackdown would be fair and justifiable.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#444
post #290
post #202

> Forget satellite SOS and the larger camera, the headline is this: Apple has completely redesigned the internals of the iPhone 14 to make it easier to repair. I find this line hilarious because it's an example of law of the instrument[0]. iFixit and other activist repair shops treat these devices as if their(the iPhones) purpose is getting a repair and all this talk over they years about iPhone repairability was fro…

> I never in my life purchased a brand new device with intention or plan to repair it The last two laptops I bought, repairability was a very high priority. The T440s I had before my current HP Envy x360 I actually bought because I got burned with a cheap Acer, where I couldn't find any replacement touchpads. A less repairable laptop wouldn't have lasted me even two years, since I broke the display around that time.…

Yeah repair guide for enterprise laptop indicates that enterprises cares about reparability

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#445

On our product (air quality monitor[1]) we made the concious decision to design it for long life and repairability by e.g.: - using no glue or snaps - all components on one PCB, no thin cables that can break - standard philips/torx screws - four screws to open the enclosure, four screws to take out the pcb - expensive sensor modules on pin sockets for easy reaplacement - only using components that are certified for l…

That's cool and all, but what you've built is not a phone and doesn't need to be IP67-rated for water resistance at 1 meter depth.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I really wonder what people's expectations are here. "First step by putting a hair dryer to the front face of the phone and turning it up to max. We don't really know what temperature that will be, but hopefully it's enough to loosen the adhesive. Now improvise a tool for lifting the screen off, hopefully you won't cut the ribbon cables underneath while doing that - maybe a guitar pick? Ok then, when reassemblin…

The actual critics are mostly mad at the way Apple prevents them from using legal donor boards to make less-wasteful repairs. Apple heard this, and their response is an 80-lb rent-able flight-case of random equipment. Admittedly, it made for some great free PR on YouTube. As for addressing the concerns of the right-to-repair community... they would have been better off just uploading board schematics for the M1 Air a…

Many, many years ago I had an apple laptop that I took into a shop to get cleaned up and the fans replaced (it had gotten gunky and one of the fans would stop periodically).

Upon getting the laptop back, I got memory errors occasionally. When those memory errors became more common than coincidence could ascribe, my brother (more mechanically inclined than I) opened it up to check on the fan (maybe it was getting too hot again?) only to find that the memory had been replaced with 3rd party memory (this was the first time the laptop had been taken anywhere to get fixed).

Think back to the decade and more ago and all the fly by night phone and laptop repair places that existed.

I would be surprised if mine was a unique story.

And so, here's the question - how do you prevent a disreputable repair shop from swapping parts? If I hadn't had my brother open it up and look to see if the fans were gunking up again or loose wire or something, would I be blaming Apple for the memory errors on my laptop?

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I really wonder what people's expectations are here. "First step by putting a hair dryer to the front face of the phone and turning it up to max. We don't really know what temperature that will be, but hopefully it's enough to loosen the adhesive. Now improvise a tool for lifting the screen off, hopefully you won't cut the ribbon cables underneath while doing that - maybe a guitar pick? Ok then, when reassemblin…

The actual critics are mostly mad at the way Apple prevents them from using legal donor boards to make less-wasteful repairs. Apple heard this, and their response is an 80-lb rent-able flight-case of random equipment. Admittedly, it made for some great free PR on YouTube. As for addressing the concerns of the right-to-repair community... they would have been better off just uploading board schematics for the M1 Air a…

There are legitimate issues with enabling pieces-and-parts repairs.

The first is that shoddy repairs or repairs with substandard parts screws the consumer and it does so with Apple's name on it. When someone buys a "New! (refurbished)" device from their favorite online marketplace and it comes with garbage components that break, it is a headache both for Apple when the customer comes to complain, and it's a PR headache for them when people think their phones are crap due to something completely out of their control.

The second is that there are significant security compromises that are facilitated by swapping parts from a stolen or secondhand phone.

The third is that phone theft is a serious issue, and the only way to solve it is to make stolen phones useless. Activation lock helped a good bit, but there was still a significant market for stolen phones to sell as parts. Phone theft was a huge issue in the early 2010s, but has seen significant declines due to this.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#448
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect if you gave most users the choice between theft proof and aftermarket part swapping, they would pick theft proof. Considering you can buy parts from Apple or take the phone in to a store to have it fixed at a very fair price.

Theft resistant would be more accurate, as it's certainly not theft proof. An iphone screen can be trivially reprogrammed to bypass that serial number check with a ~$90 device on ebay. > Considering you can buy parts from Apple or take the phone in to a store to have it fixed at a very fair price. What is a "fair" price? After market screens can be found online for incredibly cheap. I replaced my XS Max display mysel…

Really this just means that the implementation needs more work, not that the idea is wrong. With more secure hardware, you realistically could make stolen parts useless. Combined with the ability to track a turned off phone with the Find My network, theft keeps getting harder while the potential payout does not get any higher.

The main problem with after market parts is there is often not informed choice. These parts very frequently advertise themselves official or equivalent to official. With fake specs, fake labels, and fake brands. And then these phones get resold on to others who have no way of knowing that the reason their experience is compromised is due to fake parts.

Ideally Apple would present some kind of UI to the user which allows them to unregister the parts of their phone and allow them to be used in another phone for genuine swaps of owned devices. And allowing the installation of non genuine parts with some on boot message explaining exactly which parts are not genuine. So on sale the new owner knows what they are getting.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after all, you can never protect against someone making an entirely new device that just happens to look like an iPhone. The specific threat being protected against (leaving aside the increased safety of iPhone users by making the stolen parts market untenable) is your phone, that you recognize and use as your phone and which contains your confidential material and credentials, having internal components swapped ou…

It is indeed a protection against evil maid attacks as well as the industrialised version of shipment interception. It's probably also some form of PR and brand protection, and part of platform security as a whole. I doubt that any commercial company would find the side-effect of less end-user tampering a true downside; if the device says "I have been tampered with", that's a very clear signal that someone coming in…

I am reminded of Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors - https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177... ( 2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631 67 comments)
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