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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

#221

Post by RajT88 »

ilyt wrote: post #168
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…

If they are being stolen it doesn't work. If the whole part won't be used it will be stripped to components and resold to the same repair shops anyway. Yeah the profit margins will be smaller per phone but they will just steal more. Apple doesn't want phones fixed because Apple wants to sell more phones, plain and simple. There is no other incentive.

> Yeah the profit margins will be smaller per phone but they will just steal more.

The risk of getting caught scales with that increased volume. The extra friction of parting out a phone for less money compared to selling the whole phone beggars belief that "stealing more" is the most common response.

"iPhone theft getting less profitable raises the rate of theft" just doesn't make sense.

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

#222

Post by jabroni_salad »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #157
nemothekid wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

How do the thieves get the contact details of the person whose phone they stole to fish them? And why did they steal the iPhone I mentioned without having the contact details of the person?

In the last link, the user explains in the comments that when they marked the device as stolen, they could choose some text to display on the screen and they chose to include a phone number that they had access to.

Plenty of people hope for a good samaritan interaction and will do something like that.

also idk if they ever changed it, but a long time ago I found a phone that was locked and no identifying information shown. I asked siri to call 'my' mother and she arranged a pickup.

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by flanked-evergl »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #222
flanked-evergl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the thieves get the contact details of the person whose phone they stole to fish them? And why did they steal the iPhone I mentioned without having the contact details of the person?

In the last link, the user explains in the comments that when they marked the device as stolen, they could choose some text to display on the screen and they chose to include a phone number that they had access to. Plenty of people hope for a good samaritan interaction and will do something like that. also idk if they ever changed it, but a long time ago I found a phone that was locked and no identifying information…

If thieves have to rely on people seeing thieves as good Samaritans and trusting thieves with their contact details after they were robbed by them, we definitely have entered a realm of absurdity. But while this hypothetical realm is devoid of all reason and logic, theft still remains.

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

#225

Post by skeaker »

specialist wrote: post #134
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.

If an actor with that sort of capability has physical access to your device for long enough to replace a part in it with a custom one, you are pwned pretty much no matter what you do at that point. They could just as well stick in a keylogger for touch inputs and know all your passwords.

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

#226

Post by RajT88 »

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…

> It's a societal problem that extremely badly needs to be addressed seriously and not just worked around with convenient anti-consumer garbage.

The societal problem is that people got used to paying over a grand for a thing that fits in their pocket.

> Nobody has ever stolen my phone.

Put yourself in the position of the thieves. You would want an easy target; one that if push came to shove that they wouldn't be able to injure or detain you. How big are you, physically?

My wife had her iPhone stolen in the north side of Chicago maybe 15 years ago - in a good area no less. Some big guy followed her to her apartment asking to make a phonecall for some made up emergency. She's 5'2" and was like 90 pounds at the time. She did the math on how it was likely to go and just handed it over, as it was late at night and she was alone. Predictably, he ran off. (As an aside, I think it's hard for men to understand exactly how vulnerable women feel in general - as ne'erdowells see them as easy targets compared to even men of similar size)

The same thief may have thought twice if it was me - because I'm a man rather closer to 6' and 200lbs. He may win that fight and get the phone, but not without me getting some licks in - an unattractive proposition, since a broken orbital or finger cuts into those profits.

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

#227

Post by nemothekid »

circuit10 wrote: post #165
nemothekid wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

You can tell the theft thing is an excuse from Apple because they don't do things like allowing you to unlock parts you own, or even buy genuine new parts that definitely stolen without silly restrictions like needing to put in a serial number first and then contact Apple to pair it (this is probably done to make it almost useless for repair shops because they want to push their even more restrictive "independent" re…

>tell the theft thing is an excuse from Apple because they don't do things like allowing you to unlock parts you own

This would only make sense if Apple had an existing system for customers to unlock their own parts and then disabled it. The system you are talking about doesn't exist, and the idea that they built X but didn't include X+1 because of "greed reasons" isn't entirely credibly.

While you could argue that maybe someone brought the idea up and it was shot down by some devilish exec, it's equally likely to me that

(1) no one at apple thought of the idea

(2) since the product would be customer facing it is some apple design hell along with the iPad calculator

(3) no one cared enough to spend the political points to push for the product

(4) the problem just isn't prevalent enough to justify the cost.

There are plenty of reasons why Apple could be building this to reduce theft while also not building some other auxiliary system.

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

#229

Post by flanked-evergl »

musictubes wrote: post #215
shortcake27 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

https://www.imore.com/iphone-theft-drops-40-san-francisco-25... Activation lock made a huge difference. The next step to talking profits out of stolen iPhones is to make harvesting parts difficult. I absolutely give Apple the benefit of the doubt when it comes to I this. Back in the bad old days iPhone theft was incredibly common and that has come down a lot over the years.

> The next step to talking profits out of stolen iPhones is to make harvesting parts difficult.

I would 100% buy this if you showed me data that indicates that part harvesting is behind most of the remaining theft of iPhones, which it very well may be, but if we have the data we would not have to guess.

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

#230

Post by Kirby64 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #208
Kirby64 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the technical challenge is related to managing the following things (all simultaneously): * Apple wants to make sure components in an authentic phone are not capable of being stolen and resold (this is a problem today, even with the pairing, although it is less valuable due to pairing) * Apple wants to make sure that if you change components, that the replacement component is authentic * Apple wants to make sure…

If you send a permanent unlock code for parts being re-used in a repair, then that fully accomplishes 2 and 3 and almost entirely accomplishes 1. With no need to know anything about the host device. And brand new parts could lock themselves to the first device they're put into. It wouldn't be ideal for repair but it would be much better.

My point is that Apple currently does not appear to have tight control over the serial numbering or whatever on the external components (display, etc) in a truly secure way. If you let anyone re-pair devices, then that opens the floodgates to 3rd party vendors being able to make devices that appear as 'authentic' components, which does not accomplish #2.

As it stands today, you can already use any random components, you'll just get a pop-up telling you it can't be authenticated.

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