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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

#131

Post by TylerE »

kstrauser wrote: post #42
jchw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Counter anecdote: My coworker in SF had his phone stolen by someone who grabbed it from his hand and leapt through a closing BART door, so that my friend had to watch the thief walk off as the train pulled away from the platform. Most people haven't had their phone stolen. That doesn't mean phones aren't stolen.

Replace SF with DC and that’s what happened to me circa 2013 or so.

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

#132

Post by acover »

MostlyStable wrote: post #105
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 n…

Being robbed at gunpoint is much worse than having to buy a new phone.

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

#133

Post by hedora »

mrweasel wrote: post #62
hedora wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That does sound like a pretty good solution, if it can be done for a broken phone. The major issue I see is that refurbish companies are already complaining about "bricked" MacBooks, because nobody actually cared enough to ensure that those laptops where reset before being sold. I don't see the same industry being capable of guiding users through resetting permissions for spare parts. A better solutions is to take th…

According to iFixit, they've solved the "this is physically hard to repair" problem. Also, Apple aggressively recycles components, and is making bold claims about carbon neutrality of manufacturing this release cycle. On top of that, the cost of repairs is dramatically lower for the new models (again, according to the iFixit article).

So, I think those issues are mostly fixed, or at least best-in-class.

The problem of "I bought your laptop, but you didn't disable anti-theft" is questionable. Here's how to sell a macbook so that it can be used by the purchaser and so that your data is wiped:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212749

It takes 4 clicks (and probably a password entry), and it's easy for the purchaser to confirm it was done before forking over cash (assuming they turn on the machine to confirm it can POST). If the seller forgets to do this, they can initiate the wipe + unlock remotely via iCloud.

Apple parts are pretty cheap already, so that's not the issue either.

As far as I can tell, all the complaints boil down to people wanting to fix phones without Apple's authorization. Its a valid complaint, but it only really impacts independent repair shops at this point.

I'd also like to see better support for third-party replacement parts (like with PC's), but I don't think there is any realistic market demand for that, and it is not what people are asking for.

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

#134

Post by specialist »

tqi wrote: post #5

AIUI, these restrictions are primarily intended to curb the market for stolen iphones? I think Apple has taken it too far here, but I also think it is disingenuous to have this discourse without at least mentioning the other considerations. There is no "right" answer, only tradeoffs...

These restrictions also reduce pwnage. Zero trust has to be end-to-end, software and hardware.

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

#135

Post by flanked-evergl »

zaroth wrote: post #88
flanked-evergl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Of course thieves are discerning. They are running a profitable criminal enterprise. They are in it for big money and are extremely sophisticated and not going to risk stealing worthless junk. An example of one theft is not evidence that the policy doesn’t reduce theft, or that the purpose of the policy isn’t to reduce theft.

> Of course thieves are discerning. They are running a profitable criminal enterprise.

I can promise you the person who stole this iPhone doesn't run a profitable criminal enterprise. But I am also not disputing that someone along the theft value chain, someone will likely be discerning. However, your claim seems to conflate a criminal enterprise and the theft value chain with an individual thief.

Also, I find the notion that it is very risky to steal something in London hard to believe, but if you have some data to back that up I would be happy to change my mind.

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

#136

Post by MostlyStable »

acover wrote: post #132
MostlyStable wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Being robbed at gunpoint is much worse than having to buy a new phone.

People were robbed at gunpoint before cell phones and will continue to be robbed at gunpoint even if every single manufacturer adopts this policy. This is not some magic bullet that stops crime. There is another commenter in this very thread describing being mugged at gunpoint and his mugger forcing him to go through the Apple unpairing process in order to make the phone completely flippable as a whole device.

Not to mention that it is not infinitely worse. There is some relative amount of needing repair to being robbed at which it becomes a bad tradeoff. Where that point is is probably different for different people. But that line exists somewhere for everyone.

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

#137

Post by crazygringo »

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…

> (If anyone at Apple is reading this: ffs, allow the legitimate owner of a device to "unpair" all components in their phone in iCloud so that legitimate second-hand shops can strip a broken device at least for its parts)

If you've lived in certain places, you'd know this isn't a solution at all.

Thieves will start holding people at gunpoint forcing you to unpair it all while they wait.

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

#138

Post by r0m4n0 »

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…

Well I think you hit the nail on the head. They aren’t working on the most important aspect of the puzzle (your last point), not because they aren’t reading HN comments, but because that would have a very negative effect on their bottom line.

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

#140

Post by brundolf »

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 if they locked the parts individually, but not until an iCloud lock happened?
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