Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

Corporations are optimization machines, they optimize for short-term profits, greed is no the correct term to use here.

There are two ways competitors are incentivized to copy Apple, the first one is because of Apple's mind-share and "fashionable" status, they might be convinced that by copying some of the features they will be able to ride on coattails of Apple's success to get some success of their own. Combined with the fact that purchasing decisions are not entirely rational and there's a lot of emotion involved, Apple and other large corporations are in a position to convince people to accept compromises that have larger effects (sacrifice repairability for slimness, sacrifice freedom for "security", sacrifice gas mileage for a bigger, more comfortable SUV, etc.). The second way is that Apple, by virtue of their mind-share and position as leader, can get away with changes that other companies would want to make but couldn't. If Apple hadn't removed the headphone jack from their iPhones, there's no way Samsung or Google would be able to get away with removing the headphone jack from their flagship phones, even if all three companies want to remove the headphone jack equally, but once Apple moves the overton window, the competitors can jump onboard with the change and implement it into their own product line. Apple has earned themselves enough of a reputation and enough of a fanatical userbase that they're able to get away with these changes because by-and-large their bad changes were balanced out by their good changes, the question is whether this reputation will last for the current Apple.

>Isn't the drop in repairability of electronics being pushed more by the shrinking of components than by the assumption of corporate greed?

Absolutely not. Shrinking components have made it possible to make more integrated ICs, but those were never user serviceable, but replacing a monolithic IC with a spare part, even with unfriendly packages like BGA, is not impossible to do for a decently equipped repair shop, and the cost of that equipment is going to likely be less than whatever car mechanics or small machine shops spend on their equipment.

For what it's worth, I don't think Apple or any other company are sitting in their board rooms wringing their hands and coming up with dastardly plans to fuck over the third-party repair shop. Third-party repair is simply not a priority for them, thus when the time comes to cut costs or to optimize the design for sleekness or profit, repairability goes out the window first. Contrast that with more professional equipment where servicing is an important consideration and you'll see design optimization producing different results.

Thank you for clarifying this.

It's not an excuse for Apples policy to fight "the right to repair" etc. but it's less worse than I thought.

Of course if you own new Apple products you are completely screwed when in need of repairs and no store is in sight.

That's why I still like to use the MBP from 2012 (the one with all the great ports that can be repaired still). They've done a really shitty job in the development of their devices and lost a lot of pro-users like me who won't buy the new series of devices anymore.

When they don't act on this they'll lose a fair amount of customers completely, once their cool old devices aren't usable anymore. It's their decision while governments are too afraid to do the right thing and force all companies to allow people to repair and use resources efficiently.

It should be mandatory in a world that counts it's remaining days because their ancestors just burned through the resources we have without thinking about consequences.

But we'll see if there are enough smart people who are powerful enough to fight this crap. Mother Earth won't care if we'll be here in some centuries and it will recover without us.

The basis of your argument is that repair is too complicated and requires extremely specific and specialized training. Repairing a phone isn't more complicated than repairing a car (I'd argue a car is harder to repair). So unless you think otherwise AND you think that it is so complicated that only Apple can teach it, then your argument doesn't hold. If people CAN learn the skill of repair (seriously, give me a good reason why they can't) then it doesn't make sense for Apple to require authorized repairs (assuming they value repair over replacement). That doesn't mean they can't have certified repair (just like cars do), but the issue here is of force. All this forcing does is create anti-competitiveness and harm the market as a whole (though it probably helps Apple. But that's what anti-competitive behavior generally does. Just doesn't benefit the consumer).

You are wrong. The message doesn't read anything like that. It says that the battery needs replacement and they explain it like this:

> "When a battery gets closer to the end of its lifespan, the amount of charge and the ability to provide power reduces. As a result, a battery may need to be charged more and more frequently and your iPhone might experience unexpected shutdowns."

This is dishonest. Because you put in a battery from a third party, you are making the user believe that it is near the end of its lifespan. I know the language says "may" but then most users are not language lawyers. Any layman is gonna read this as: Oh shit, my battery is almost completely degraded... I need to replace this.

A better thing to do would be to say "This battery is not a genuine battery installed by an authorized technician and may not perform as well"

a few problems with your argument: Apple technicians are often worse at repairing devices. Apple policies are often the root cause of this, as they prevent technicians from doing reasonable repair work in order to justify replacing entire parts which do not actually need replacing in order to repair the issue.

The the problem is folks inexperienced with repairing devices like yourself have been convinced by apple that "many (most likely the majority) ... will make mistakes".

That's like saying every 3rd party auto repair shop should be shut down in favor of dealer mechanic shops. When in reality, the corporate greed policy based on making money - not repair electronics or cars - are often the driving decision makers in repair work. That is to say, they actually do worse work at authorized shops. A lack of competition tends to do that.