We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by exabrial » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

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'm sorry, but I think this is Bullshit. Litreally _exactly_ how many people were robbed and please point us to a source?

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

#142

Post by kemayo » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #131

kstrauser wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had someone grab mine from my hand in a coffee shop and sprint out the door last year.

(I got it back via chasing after them and a minor physical altercation. This was definitely an unwise choice on my part, because the thief was then in the news a few days later for murder.)

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

#143

Post by crazygringo » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

I'd say the polar opposite, as long as you're excluding screen and battery replacement which aren't what's being talked about here.

I don't know anybody who's ever had a non-screen/battery component replaced. On the other hand, I know tons of times someone's phone has been stolen.

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

#144

Post by nemothekid » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

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?

>If this helped protect against theft, then why did they steal the phone anyway?

They are plenty of stories on Reddit and TikTok where the stolen phone ends up in China, and then the owner is phished into disabling iCloud so that the phone could be wiped. If not the sold is phone for parts. To me the very fact that you need an entire phishing ring to make stealing iPhones profitable means that there is some cost that deters thieves from targeting iPhones.

Barring phishing, the next best thing is to scrap it for parts. I can see Apple's reasoning here - if most of your growth is going to come from poorer nations it makes sense you don't your customer base worry about carrying a year's salary in their pocket.

I'm also unconvinced it's a "money grab" on Apple's part. Locking down repairs will not come anywhere close to replacing the lost revenue from the consumer's slowing upgrade cycle.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/10zg2o7/how_a_typica...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/yoataa/ever_since_m...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/rwlznf/warning_stol...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/rwlznf/warning_stol...

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

#145

Post by mmastrac » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #137

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.

Are thieves currently forcing people at gunpoint to iCloud-unpair/unlock their devices right now?

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

#146

Post by audunw » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

LightHugger wrote: post #98

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…

This is complete nonsense, if apple cared about phones being stolen for parts, they would just start selling the damn parts so people could repair their phones. Right now the reason parts are so valulable is because there's no other way to get them! Apple's unrepairability policy FUELS theft not the other way around.

> they would just start selling the damn parts so people could repair their phones.

They do. Have you been living under a rock?

https://www.selfservicerepair.com/en-US/home

And there’s no way for Apples policy to fuel theft when the stolen phone and parts from that phone can’t be used for anything. You might have had a point a few years ago when they neither sold parts nor did the pairing stuff.

I think they’re moving in the right direction. But like many here have pointed out they should allow you to unpair parts in a phone you own.

There are comments here from people who have been robbed at gunpoint and forced to unlock their phone and disconnect it from iCloud. I think Apple could solve it by making it a 24 hour process that can be reversed. But that just illustrates that it’s actually a hard problem to solve properly.

I don’t care at all about 3rd party parts. I’ve been burned too many times. It’s not environmentally friendly if you buy a brand new shitty part that you end up discarding along with the phone a few months later because the part was bad. Just force Apple to sell good quality genuine parts at a low price. The sum of the parts should equal the price of the phone. Yes that will be unprofitable for Apple, but governments can force it through regulation in the name of sustainability

If they stop selling parts then they should be forced to disable parts pairing for that model… then relying on 3rd party market as a fallback is an fallback

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

#147

Post by tumdum_ » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #119

tumdum_ wrote: post #81

I remember this thread (from the person working of Asahi Linux) that explains why Apple does this: https://icosahedron.website/@marcan@treehouse.systems/110803...

It doesn't "explain" it, he doesn't work for Apple nor know their true intentions. It's entirely his conjecture from the POV of a reverse-engineer. In any case, his conclusion certainly doesn't align with a "less access is better" mentality: > Advocate for Apple to provide access to their calibration re-provisioning processes instead [...] Them not providing those tools sucks and is anti-repair. By that rationale, Ma…

I'm not sure what is his take on iFixit decision, but he does provide some good explanations why some things are the way they are. I don't expect that Apple will officially provide better info, so that is probably the best we have. At least I haven't seen anyone with intimate knowledge of apple hw and sw provide a better or contradicting information.

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

#148

Post by kemayo » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

LightHugger wrote: post #98

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…

This is complete nonsense, if apple cared about phones being stolen for parts, they would just start selling the damn parts so people could repair their phones. Right now the reason parts are so valulable is because there's no other way to get them! Apple's unrepairability policy FUELS theft not the other way around.

> This is complete nonsense, if apple cared about phones being stolen for parts, they would just start selling the damn parts so people could repair their phones.

They did that. https://selfservicerepair.com/en-US/home

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

#149

Post by Spivak » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

ejstronge wrote: post #60

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) I was robbed at gunpoint (but not in a 'problematic' part of town) and the thief outlined all the steps he needed me to take to remove my phone from Find My and from iCloud. I think a lot of these m…

I mean the perfect solution (from a theft perspective) would just be only allowing Apple to remove the phone from your iCloud account at a physical location when presented with ID. Annoying for people selling their phone, sure. But that plus the hardware paring would make it functionally worthless to anyone but you.

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

#150

Post by circuit10 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #116

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change "replacement" to "removal" and it should work as intended. I haven't authorized my stolen phone's parts to be removed so they can't be installed in any other phone.

But if the phone doesn't turn on you can't authorize the removal. And if it turns on but a factory reset is enough to let you authorize the removal, you're back to square 1. Either way it's not feasible.

It's a better solution than always rejecting it, at least