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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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

tacocataco wrote: post #41
nar001 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's self repair program lets you link the parts to your device with a phone call, so that's moot

I wonder how long it takes to reach the representative. So so soooo many companies hide behind excruciating customer service hell holes to get out of being responsible for fixing mistakes. "You can right to repair, you just have to wait 3 hours on the phone on the world's least stable customer service line." I shouldn't have to drag my balls through apple's pile of glass to use the product I purchased. This is nearly…

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by delfinom »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #79
PedroBatista wrote: post #38

Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any. This is just another step in a long string of similar announcements and "actions" from Apple to gather ammo against lawsuits and new bills, delay or buy any good will they can get regarding this matter. It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple ca…

Maybe they were just waiting for federally-enacted regulation so they could compete on a level playing field when it comes to repairability and parts production? Many companies _want_ to do the right thing but there’s no business benefit to them doing it so they wait until the regulatory conditions are correct, and might even support them. I can also see the same company fighting against state-level regulation becaus…

Many companies have started to provide parts for repairs even before this though.

Google, Samsung, and Microsoft have been officially partnered with iFixIt for a few years now. Heck, even Microsoft has been redesigning their laptops to use magnets instead of glue, specifically for reparability.

Not to mention this is a problem more unique to the portable electronics industry.

Anyway, the regulation that is forcing change is coming in the EU. These companies don't want to design multiple variants of the same product. So change is coming regardless.

Removable batteries in phones is going to be sweet too.

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

#133

Post by linuxftw »

dangus wrote: post #59
linuxftw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They should be forced to release schematics, software, and firmware if they can't handle the repairs themselves. This will allow someone to repair it without assistance from the manufacturer.

So they can invest in developing a new product, release all the software, schematics, and firmware, and have a factory in China produce a perfect knock-off in a split second? Why develop anything new when copying someone else’s work is so much more lucrative? IMO the core of right to repair should be more focused on preventing anti-competitive artificial barriers to repair, not forcing companies to give away their se…

If it's a 'one-off' product, why should they care if someone copies it?

And unless your product is covered under a patent (and even if it is), China's going to knock it off anyway.

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

#134

Post by smoldesu »

derefr wrote: post #129
smoldesu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A default-allow scenario is dangerous, and won't help you if your thief-in-question chucks your iPhone into a Faraday bag. If you want secure hardware DRM, I'd argue it's all-or-nothing. You can't count on the benevolence of every thief or the reaction speed of every iPhone owner. The only secure hardware DRM is the one that works when it's offline, out of power or even when the user is unaware it was stolen. Anythin…

> and won't help you if your thief-in-question chucks your iPhone into a Faraday bag No, it does (and works well!) because the parts don't need to know that they're stolen. That's not how lost mode works†; the parts themselves aren't refusing to cooperate with the new phone. Rather, it's the other phone that needs to know that your phone's parts have been stolen. It then refuses to cooperate with the parts , after th…

Touche. Does this refute my claim that Apple can reconcile their current DRM scheme with users that want to repair their hardware themselves, though?

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

#135

Post by kdmccormick »

randomdata wrote: post #126
kdmccormick wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument here boils down to "all decision making can be viewed in terms of expected net economic gain/loss", and while I don't disagree with you, it isn't a very salient or novel point. My whole argument is this: Public shareholders compel their businesses to treat market capitalization and/or dividends as the principal goals. Private owners, though, may have goals other than the business's value or profit, such…

> Whether those other goals can be thought of in terms of monetary value seems orthogonal. The original comment which set the context and of which we are talking to was specifically about the monetary accounting. It cannot possibly be orthogonal. Perhaps what you are trying to say, as has been hinted at before, is that said comment, while perhaps technically true in a vacuum, doesn't really mean anything in practice?…

This is what set the context:

> This is the way to think about all businesses. Even if they’ve been making your favourite products for years, never forget that they’re just here to make money.

> People who attach morals, norms, and emotions to businesses are falling into the marketing trap.

and my point is that not all small business are just here to make money, ie that morals and emotions may be relevant to them. I'm baffled as to why this is a controversial point.

If your point is saying that, to small business owners, money may be exachanged for immaterial things like tradition and satisfsction, then we are in agreement!. It meams that their purpose is not "just to make money", unlike publicly traded companies, whose market-enforced purpose is "just to make money".

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

#136

Post by mgdev »

Apple could afford to put out the best repair tools in the industry, doing two things:

1/ deposition competitors with inferior repairability v performance scores, ultimately leading to increased market share among the most discerning customers, who are also influencers for other non-expert buyers

2/ eventually create a thriving secondary market that reaches consumers who otherwise wouldn't consider buying Apple products, ultimately leading to increased market share among non-expert buyers and children (who grow up to be customers)

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

#137

Post by derefr »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #112
derefr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>They’re the reason that Android devices get stolen in great numbers but iOS devices don’t I think that's unlikely. Phones are disguised by cases. Most tech folks can't even tell them apart when they are sitting side by side on a desk in front of them. Not without the screen coming on, anyway. Let alone in someone's pocket or at a bar. If anything Androids might be stolen more often due to socioeconomic pressure. Can…

> I think that's unlikely.

You're right, in a literal sense; people pickpocket a phone before knowing what it is.

It's what happens right after the actual theft that makes a difference. These more-organized thieves know that these chop-shop buyers aren't (nearly as) interested in iPhones, often to the point that they aren't worth the cost of the added shipping weight. So when they manage to nab a phone, they do a quick examination, to figure out what kind of phone it is. If it's an iPhone, they drop it in a nearby trash can; or sometimes they try to con some local who doesn't know anything about phones (think: drug dealer who wants a second phone) into buying it on the street.

That's where you find the majority of "stolen iPhones": in the trash near where it was lost, or in the hands of some local who was dumb enough to buy it not realizing it will be marked "lost" in short order and become useless to them. Both of these are "recoverable" losses — which, from both the phone owner's and Apple's perspective, is a win!

Meanwhile, the Android devices go in a box, and the box goes on a boat.

> Regardless, phone location was a feature of Android long before iOS. I had it on Windows CE phones before the iPhone even existed. Laptops had LoJack before smart phones existed. Theft was not deterred.

Yeah, because as I said, this isn't — and never was — about refurbishing the device. It's about scrapping the device for parts. Location tracking does not prevent a device being scrapped for parts, because chop shops actually throw away the location-tracking bit — the "compute core" — and just keep all the other expensive parts.

Plenty of people with stolen phones see their phone mysteriously show up reporting itself to now be in Shenzhen. Then the location tracking turns off and never comes back, because the phone was chopped up and the compute-core bit thrown away.

It just doesn't happen nearly as often, per capita, to iPhone owners as it does to Android owners, because a large number of the iPhones are "rejected from the funnel."

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

#138

Post by randomdata »

kdmccormick wrote: post #135
randomdata wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether those other goals can be thought of in terms of monetary value seems orthogonal. The original comment which set the context and of which we are talking to was specifically about the monetary accounting. It cannot possibly be orthogonal. Perhaps what you are trying to say, as has been hinted at before, is that said comment, while perhaps technically true in a vacuum, doesn't really mean anything in practice?…

This is what set the context: > This is the way to think about all businesses. Even if they’ve been making your favourite products for years, never forget that they’re just here to make money. > People who attach morals, norms, and emotions to businesses are falling into the marketing trap. and my point is that not all small business are just here to make money, ie that morals and emotions may be relevant to them. I'…

> If your point is saying that, to small business owners, money may be exachanged for immaterial things like tradition and satisfsction, then we are in agreement!'

Owners of all businesses, no matter how large or small, use the value generated from the business to trade it for things like tradition and satisfaction that is to their personal taste, yes. There is nothing special about small businesses here.

In fact, it is likely that many small business owners also own large, publicly traded businesses at the same time. Are they magically different people, with different ideas on how to spend the money they have at their disposal, when money flows in from the large business rather than the small business? I expect you will find the answer is no. It would take someone extremely eccentric to colour their money such that "This money came from my small business, so I will only do good with it!" along with "This money came from my large business, so it is reserved only for evil! Muhuhahaha." In practice, money is money is money.

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

#139

Post by derefr »

smoldesu wrote: post #134
derefr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and won't help you if your thief-in-question chucks your iPhone into a Faraday bag No, it does (and works well!) because the parts don't need to know that they're stolen. That's not how lost mode works†; the parts themselves aren't refusing to cooperate with the new phone. Rather, it's the other phone that needs to know that your phone's parts have been stolen. It then refuses to cooperate with the parts , after th…

Touche. Does this refute my claim that Apple can reconcile their current DRM scheme with users that want to repair their hardware themselves, though?

I would say that, given the particular set of solutions Apple has used to stamp out this pickpocket-to-chop-shop pipeline, the way for "Apple [to] reconcile their current DRM scheme with users that want to repair their hardware themselves" looks exactly like what Apple have implemented:

A scheme where individuals can repair phones, but where every user who wants to order non-device-bound replacement parts must first be vetted to not themselves be a chop shop, or someone working with chop-shops; where non-device-bound replacement parts may only be shipped to such vetted individuals; and where such replacement parts must be end-to-end inventory managed (via e.g. phone activation time pairing of the replacement part with the phone) to ensure that parts are not being "leaked" out of this process via "overstock" or "shrinkage" into the grey-market pipeline. And where previously device-bound parts may become non-device-bound replacement parts, but only through the phone first being sent to Apple (or in theory some other "authorized recycler") to extract and de-pair the parts, so that those parts can't leak into the grey-market pipeline, either.

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

#140

Post by simion314 »

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…

Nobody asks Apple to open source the drivers or firmware.

I do not think that the "apple approved partners" have access to software that can at the same time diagnose a hardware issue and change the bandwidth or other parameters to illegal values.

I remember one other issue , maybe it was fixed, but if you were a partner with Apple and someone had a broken product that needed a new part you had to first send the broken part to Apple and then they would send a replacement , so a customer would have to wait for days. It is a system that encourages the user not to repair and just give more money to Apple.

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