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Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#101

Post by thibaut_barrere »

ericmay wrote: post #80
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is the 2020 model (but unsure, I don't have the phone with me). For Android: I have actually asked the repair shop a few minutes ago, and the answer ranges between 50€ and 400€ depending on the actual model, because the Android market is much more diverse (EDIT: for Android phones released around the same period).

So if you add the iPhone SE you have in there as just another smartphone it's on the lower end to middle of the range?

The vendor feedback is that the iPhone SE would be on the high-end, in terms of durability & quality, of what they sell comparatively as Android phones. To paraphrase him, iPhones are high-end or very high-end, and comparing prices for repair is not necessary bad for iPhone users.

But with a more low-end Android phone, you can get cheaper repairs.

I still hope that a bit more options for parts will lead to lower prices, because I prefer to keep devices as long as possible.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#103

Post by vel0city »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #94
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, maybe the big solar flare comes and you can't call Apple for a few months or years. Offline repair needs to be possible. If that happens, the cell towers are probably down, and your primary goal is to avoid starvation; not repair a phone that outside of taking photos is now basically useless. Also, where are you even charging your phone after such an event? How are you repairing that method and preventing…

My thermostat occasionally reboots in some kind of recovery mode where it asks me to use the iOS app to configure it. So the use case would be reconfiguring it so I can call for heat in a blizzard. (I know which wire needs 24v to cut the thermostat out of the equation and talk directly to the furnace, but I'm sure there are cases where such a workaround isn't available.) There are some replacement parts lying around,…

I'd tear that thermostat off the wall and get a different one today if it behaved that way.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#104

Post by JohnFen »

derefr wrote: post #96
smoldesu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. Well, that's part of the problem. Right-to-repair bills that don't address serialized components or hardware DRM won't make it better. Apple is backing this bill because it aligns with their definition of "repair" and further reinforces the idea that the first party is the only one allowed to authorize maintenance. This is less a…

Serialized components / hardware DRM exist to disincentivize the pickpocket-to-grey-market-refurbished pipeline. They’re the reason that Android devices get stolen in great numbers but iOS devices don’t — iOS devices in “lost mode” have no resale value, including scrap resale value. That’s the entire point of lost mode — and that disincentivization only works as long as the components from that lost-mode phone are co…

> Serialized components / hardware DRM exist to disincentivize the pickpocket-to-grey-market-refurbished pipeline

I understand that reasoning for it (although I think that's not the only reason Apple does this).

But personally, that sort of thing is one of the reasons why I wouldn't buy an iPhone. The cost of that kind of "theft protection" is, for me, too high. I prefer not having any theft protection at all over a scheme that removes my ability to repair or modify my devices.

Hardware DRM (at least as it exists) makes really meaningful right-to-repair technically impossible.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#105

Post by kdmccormick »

randomdata wrote: post #97
kdmccormick wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree, I meant "profit" not "self-interest".

Is there any difference at the end of the day? Profit is sought so that one has control over their self-interest. In the example, someone wanted to see a business tradition carry on even after they were no longer involved in the business. To achieve that, they accepted a lower offer for the business to sell it to someone who also wants to carry on the tradition. But that is exactly the same, as far as the money goes,…

> In the example, someone wanted to see a tradition carry on even after they were no longer involved. To achieve that, they accepted a lower offer for the business to sell it to someone who also wants to carry on the tradition. But that is exactly the same, far as the money goes..

It's not exactly the same. People have emotional attachments to things, like restaurants. This hypothetical owner may have made the sale they did because it made them happy to think about someone running their restaurant well after they die.

That is to say, we both took "carrying on the tradition" to mean different things, because it's inherently a squishy and emotional goal, not one you can apply a cold econimic calculus to. "If I sell to Bob for $1MM then I achieve 200 tradition points, but if I sell to BigCorp for $1.2MM then I can use that money to achieve 300 tradition points" is not necessarily how this would be thought about.

> That said, there is a bit of disconnect here as the original comment was talking about businesses, while this has turned to talking about the benefactors of the business. They are not completely analogous.

True, and perhaps that's near the crux of my argument. Private company owners who are involed in their businesses' operation are more likely to make bad-for-profit but good-for-other-reasons decisions, whereas distant public shareholders are likely to chase profit as the end-all-be-all.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#106

Post by smoldesu »

derefr wrote: post #100
smoldesu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can come up with a version of Right to Repair that eliminates this practice but which doesn’t give gangs of thieves a 10000% higher interest in stealing my phone at a concert to send it to Shenzhen, I’d be all for it. Uh... you could just let the user authorize repairs. If your iPhone's root-of-trust is registered with your iCloud account, then users could authorize themselves to make repairs by just putting…

Huh? What user? I think you misunderstand the pipeline. When they steal my phone, they’re not refurbishing my phone to resell it. They’re scrapping my phone — taking all the expensive components out of my phone: the screen, the touch sensor, etc — and selling them to repair shops to be used as parts to repair other people’s phones. People who, obviously, authorize those repairs. But I don’t! (If you know what an ille…

> Huh? What user?

You. You are the user.

So, imagine the hardware DRM exactly the way it is now, but with my modifications. The super bad-guys in Shenzhen dismantle my iPhone and try to turn it into a new phone. Oh no! The DRM on the other person's phone says that their parts are paired to my iPhone. Since I never manually un-paired those parts with my iCloud account (or Hardware root-of-trust), they cannot perform the evil deed of scrapping my iPhone for parts. They are thwarted by the exact same system, in the exact same way, except hardware owners hold the keys instead of Apple.

> The exact point of “hardware DRM” is that it allows me to retroactively revoke my consent for the parts of my phone

Minus retroactive control, that's the point of my implementation. The same DRM system that you are describing can be designed so the user can authorize repairs and de-couple parts without Apple's blessing. The only difference is that it would proactively lock all parts to your iPhone and only uncouple them when the user authorizes it. In that way, it's almost more secure than Apple exclusively holding the keys.

> the true point of Apple’s “authorized repair” program, was to penalize any repair shop who knowingly purchased parts from a “phone chop-shop” by disallowing them from ever again purchasing genuine parts

Fun fact! Secondhand chop-shop components and genuine Apple-issued replacements are not the only two options. You can buy a lot of Apple components from TI and Foxconn if you browse their piecemeal catalog. On top of that, there are many people who sell hardware as "for parts" to be used as donor hardware by third parties. It almost feels like Apple created this system to punish anyone who competes with their first-party offerings...

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#107

Post by JohnFen »

galangalalgol wrote: post #69
simion314 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple really can’t win. Oppose RtR. Gets criticized. Complies with RtR. Also gets criticized. LOL Wrong, they can just do i - publish schematics for everyone (not only approved partners) - publish diagnostic software for everyone - sell repair tools and spare parts to everyone - allow legit users to use their broken devices parts for spare parts by providing ways for the owner to transfer ownership or renounce owner…

One legal thing mobile equipment manufacturers point at to support closed designs, is that the FCC requires that no "simple" software change can make an approved device violate its approved operating parameters. Many wifi and 4g/5g radios could be turned into very general purposes software defined radios if they were completely open about the software. Primarily because they want to be able to comply with standard ch…

> Many wifi and 4g/5g radios could be turned into very general purposes software defined radios if they were completely open about the software.

Which is why those things are usually independent subsystems. You can be completely open about everything else and still keep tight control over those things.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#108

Post by randomdata »

kdmccormick wrote: post #105
randomdata wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any difference at the end of the day? Profit is sought so that one has control over their self-interest. In the example, someone wanted to see a business tradition carry on even after they were no longer involved in the business. To achieve that, they accepted a lower offer for the business to sell it to someone who also wants to carry on the tradition. But that is exactly the same, as far as the money goes,…

> In the example, someone wanted to see a tradition carry on even after they were no longer involved. To achieve that, they accepted a lower offer for the business to sell it to someone who also wants to carry on the tradition. But that is exactly the same, far as the money goes.. It's not exactly the same. People have emotional attachments to things, like restaurants. This hypothetical owner may have made the sale t…

> It's not exactly the same.

I don't see the difference.

Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that the highest bidder offers $1,000,000. The party who sees the tradition vision tops out at $750,000.

You can accept the $750,000 offer and see the tradition carry on. Or you can accept $1,000,000 and spend $250,000 of it in some other way to see the tradition carry on. Theoretically the outcome is the same either way. In both cases the business sought a gross return of $1,000,000. In both cases your realized net return is $750,000. In both cases you are spending $250,000 to see your dream of the tradition carrying on playing out.

If you don't care about the tradition then you can just take the $1,000,000 and go on a vacation, or buy a car, or whatever it is that you actually want to do with the money. But in this case the tradition is what the person is said to actually want above all else, and thus that is where the money is being spent. That is, after all, why businesses seek profit – so that the benefactors can spend it on what is aligned with their self-interest, and the example here is no exception.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#109

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

vel0city wrote: post #103
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thermostat occasionally reboots in some kind of recovery mode where it asks me to use the iOS app to configure it. So the use case would be reconfiguring it so I can call for heat in a blizzard. (I know which wire needs 24v to cut the thermostat out of the equation and talk directly to the furnace, but I'm sure there are cases where such a workaround isn't available.) There are some replacement parts lying around,…

I'd tear that thermostat off the wall and get a different one today if it behaved that way.

Yeah I'm pretty upset about it, but I think the problem isn't the thermostat, it's the "smart hub" which is necessary to drive the furnace at anything besides 0% or 100%.

...or something. I'm uncertain about these conclusions because this isn't really the kind of engineering I'm into. But I no longer trust the people who installed it, or the people who designed it, so I'm kind of on my own (it was kind of a pricy system, I can't afford to just replace it).

But however bad the situation is, it's made worse by vendors trying to prevent users from tinkering. At least Lennox is ineffective at keeping me out of their dealer facing controls. The awful thing about Apple is that they're good at it.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#110

Post by derefr »

smoldesu wrote: post #106
derefr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What user? I think you misunderstand the pipeline. When they steal my phone, they’re not refurbishing my phone to resell it. They’re scrapping my phone — taking all the expensive components out of my phone: the screen, the touch sensor, etc — and selling them to repair shops to be used as parts to repair other people’s phones. People who, obviously, authorize those repairs. But I don’t! (If you know what an ille…

> Huh? What user? You. You are the user. So, imagine the hardware DRM exactly the way it is now, but with my modifications. The super bad-guys in Shenzhen dismantle my iPhone and try to turn it into a new phone. Oh no! The DRM on the other person's phone says that their parts are paired to my iPhone. Since I never manually un-paired those parts with my iCloud account (or Hardware root-of-trust), they cannot perform t…

Without retroactive control, there’s basically zero chance of any phone being recyclable.

A phone being able to be used for parts should be a default-allow condition; otherwise e.g. any phone owned by someone who dies — which is a large percentage of phones that get genuinely recycled these days! — will consider its parts non-reusable.

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