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We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

ifixit.com

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Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#101

Post by toast0 »

M4v3R wrote: post #69
adesanmi wrote: post #57

When people stop robbing phones for them to end up in Shenzen and stripped for parts, this will stop. This is a deterrent to make stealing iPhones less convenient and I’m all for it. People already have to try to phish people’s iCloud details after stealing their devices to resell, costing them time and money and making it more annoying to try and steal. I do think people who want to repair their phone should have ac…

I’ve heard that take many times, but is there any actual data to back this claim? I mean think about it - your average thief is not the kind of person that will know what part setialization is or how to tell iPhone models apart to know which ones to steal. They steal your purse, bag or just anything and sight and only then deal with the loot, discarding what’s useless. I would be very surprised if serializing the bat…

Making the parts useless won't immediately stop theft, sure. It's the same with making catalytic converters hard/impossible to fence. People still steal them, because they're working off an older state of the world. But once you've stolen enough stuff that you couldn't market, you figure out not to steal that anymore. (Although if you're stealing bags, harvesting cash and throwing the bags in the river, phones in the bags are still gone)

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#102

Post by pulisse »

hedora wrote: post #39
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

There is also another issue why Apple is restricting "part harvesting": theft. iCloud locks or Samsung's KNOX lock entered the field because the manufacturers were pretty pissed that customers using their devices in public became a target for "enterprising" robbers who'd factory-wipe the devices and flip them to a pawn shop or second-hand store in a matter of half an hour. When people are afraid to use your products…

It seems pretty easy to implement the "unpair" functionality you ask for. If "Find My iPhone" (the anti-theft subsystem) is disabled, then the serial numbers for all the parts could be sent to an Apple database, and/or the components could have a "ready to be re-used" bit set that caused them to factory reset themselves if the phone they're plugged into changes (so any state on the re-used thing wouldn't somehow leak…

> It seems pretty easy to implement the "unpair" functionality you ask for.

Implementing any functionality over two billion devices is non-trivial, especially when it requires aspects of transactional behavior (as this would).

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#103

Post by w0m »

picture wrote: post #35
misnome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were, they would also allow you to say “yes this replacement is desired.” How does that not completely bypass any of the reasons for wanting to do this? And it is “anti-consumerist” to make my property a less desirable target for theft?

> How does that not completely bypass any of the reasons for wanting to do this? Do it from your iCloud account. Presumably thieves will not hold you at gun point to log in to iCloud and allow pairing of your phone's components to a ready recipient iPhone

This. If Apple was honest, they'd have an 'unlock from account' security, not an 'accept new to account' pairing.

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#104

Post by adesanmi »

bakugo wrote: post #82

The average Apple fanboy's ability to rationalize every single anti-consumer decision made by Apple is impressive. Literally all Apple has to do is say "it's for your own safety!" and they will defend it to the death.

I don’t understand how this is Anti Consumer in any way? I have an iPhone and a FairPhone. One’s niche is that it’s repairable, and the other is that it’s not. A consumer who wants a repairable would buy something like a FairPhone (modular parts!!!) and someone like my mum can get her all-in-one “nice” experience.

They’re allowed to have an opinion, and with engineering there are tradeoffs. They tradeoff design with repairability and have the opinion that it is a good tradeoff. They want to test that opinion with the market and it resonated. What’s wrong with this?

I genuinely am confused as to the anti-consumer moniker when the consumer has never had more choice?

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#105

Post by MostlyStable »

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

There is also another issue why Apple is restricting "part harvesting": theft. iCloud locks or Samsung's KNOX lock entered the field because the manufacturers were pretty pissed that customers using their devices in public became a target for "enterprising" robbers who'd factory-wipe the devices and flip them to a pawn shop or second-hand store in a matter of half an hour. When people are afraid to use your products…

What is the relative rates of occurrence of phone theft vs. phones breaking in a way that requires repair? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that far far far more people have a phone that needs to be repaired than have a phone that gets stolen.

So making repair worse to make theft "better" seems like a bad tradeoff to me. And that's even presuming that this stated goal actually works. I would expect that a very non-trivial amount of phone theft happens without knowing the model. Assuming that's the case, having 1 manufacturer make selling parts non-viable doesn't really help that much.

So A) even if it was 100% effective that seems like a bad tradeoff to me and B) I'm skeptical of how much difference this actually makes in theft rates.

I know that I personally, if choosing between a phone that I knew for a fact would 100% never be stolen, but also couldn't be repaired, vs. a phone that could easily be repaired but was subject to theft, I would choose the repairable phone every time. It's an anecdote, but I've never had a phone stolen and literally every single phone I've ever had has needed repair at one point or another.

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#106

Post by red_trumpet »

sneeze-slayer wrote: post #61
tumult wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How is someone who snatched your phone out of your hand and ran away going to know your password and authentication information needed to authorize a parts replacement?

I think the point is that an unsuspecting buyer of, e.g. a screen replacement, could end up going to a shady repair shop that uses stolen parts, sees the message once, clicks "OK", and moves on. The reasoning being that this scenario would cause some demand for black market parts. The suggestion from OP whereby the seller of a used phone logs in and "unpairs" the parts could avoid this, unless a robber forces you to…

> unless a robber forces you to do it under duress.

Isn't that possible with the full iPhone atm?

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#107

Post by shortcake27 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #53
notanormalnerd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why iFixit doesn't even touch on that point. I live in Barcelona and phones are being pickpocketed every day here. Not being able to wipe or unlock or else is a mayor deterrent for the pickpockets, because noone will take the phone off of them, so it's not worth it. Phones are still being stolen but imagine if they could sell to a global market of repair shops. You couldn't go to any tourist location wit…

> I get the iFixit point as well but if I have a 1500€ phone, I don't want to think about it being stolen, when I am on vacation, because someone needs some parts (oh the human trafficing/organ harvesting similarity...) Do you think thieves are that descending? I know someone whos iPhone 14 was stolen in London. If this helped protect against theft, then why did they steal the phone anyway?

I’m highly dubious of anyone claiming this reduces crime.

Things being easy to steal and sell aren’t the _cause_ of crime, they’re a symptom. If someone has felt the need to resort to a life of crime for whatever reason, how is lowering their “salary” (so to speak) going to reduce crime? Surely they now need to steal more phones to make up the difference? I guess you could argue they might commit a different crime instead?

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#108

Post by daggersandscars »

hedora wrote: post #74
ho_schi wrote: post #50

That is one of the many reasons why use ThinkPads. * Maintenance Manual with explosion diagrams and step-by-step guides * Short guide videos for important parts (terse and helpful, very good hidden on Lenovos Website) * OEM-Parts from Lenovo itself or dealers Side story. I ordered a X13 Gen 3 (because the new reverse notch is “meh”) AMD (because Intel is “meh”) but the HiDPI was not selectable. So I ordered it withou…

I get how this is helpful for hobby hardware, but the last time I had a problem with a Lenovo, I sent it to the on-site authorized repair depot (my employer had a special gold plated contract with them), who couldn't replace it because it needed a replacement display cable they didn't stock. They diagnosed it, and sent it to Lenovo, who said it would take 30 days to replace the cable. I bought a cheap desktop in the…

Anecdata: if you need a Lenovo repaired and you’re covered for onsite service, have them come to you.

I had a similar experience with sending an X1 Carbon to Lenovo’s repair center: “No problem found”.

When I called to complain, I was told they recommended on site service over sending machines in. The repair tech was prompt, pleasant, and skilled. The machine was fixed in 30 minutes.

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#109

Post by quenix »

M4v3R wrote: post #69
adesanmi wrote: post #57

When people stop robbing phones for them to end up in Shenzen and stripped for parts, this will stop. This is a deterrent to make stealing iPhones less convenient and I’m all for it. People already have to try to phish people’s iCloud details after stealing their devices to resell, costing them time and money and making it more annoying to try and steal. I do think people who want to repair their phone should have ac…

I’ve heard that take many times, but is there any actual data to back this claim? I mean think about it - your average thief is not the kind of person that will know what part setialization is or how to tell iPhone models apart to know which ones to steal. They steal your purse, bag or just anything and sight and only then deal with the loot, discarding what’s useless. I would be very surprised if serializing the bat…

> I mean think about it - your average thief is not the kind of person that will know what part setialization is

It doesn't matter. The market will dictate behaviour. As soon as the value of iPhone parts drops at the end of the chain (Shenzhen et. al) this will propagate all the way up to the street criminals.

Perhaps they will not discriminate by iPhone submodel (will not matter after a while of the serialisation policy), but they will (and do) discriminate by brand.

Much smartphone theft includes robbers grabbing the phone out of unsuspecting victims' hands, forcing them to surrender it at gunpoint, or pickpocketing it.

Re: We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

#110

Post by m463 »

jchw wrote: post #15
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

There is also another issue why Apple is restricting "part harvesting": theft. iCloud locks or Samsung's KNOX lock entered the field because the manufacturers were pretty pissed that customers using their devices in public became a target for "enterprising" robbers who'd factory-wipe the devices and flip them to a pawn shop or second-hand store in a matter of half an hour. When people are afraid to use your products…

I do not accept this as a reasonable answer. I've lived in not even very good areas, with very lax physical security (often not locking my car) and have never had this issue, ever. Nobody has ever stolen my phone. Not in downtown Detroit, not in not-downtown-Detroit, not in SF, not in Chicago. If crime really is this bad, it's not an Apple or Samsung problem. It's a societal problem that extremely badly needs to be a…

Your sample size is pretty small. That said, the self-selecting population of people whose phones were parted out in the bug report have the exact opposite experience.
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