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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

#31

Post by brookst »

morkalork wrote: post #22
steveBK123 wrote: post #13

Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers. When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation. It also fits in nicely with App…

It would be twist if instead of industries lobbying for loop holes in right to repair bills, they started lobbying for thorough to the point of being Byzantine ones to keep new entrants out of the market. I guess it will be a function of how worried they are about their moat.

Incumbents love regulation as a barrier to entry. Doesn’t have to be Byzantine, just that extra 5% tax that combines with scale economies to make new entrants unviable.

I’ve always thought RtR enthusiasts would be surprised when they finally caught the car. And here we are.

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

#32

Post by bogwog »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #25
steveBK123 wrote: post #13

Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers. When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation. It also fits in nicely with App…

Although what you say isn’t wrong … Apple really can’t win. Oppose RtR. Gets criticized. Complies with RtR. Also gets criticized. LOL

That's called skepticism because people (rightly) don't trust Apple.

Thats especially true when it comes to this, which is something they've been aggressively fighting against for years.

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

#33

Post by brookst »

barumrho wrote: post #24
steveBK123 wrote: post #13

Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers. When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation. It also fits in nicely with App…

I hope there is some clause that exempts small manufacturers from having to comply...

Wait, what? Why should Inas a consumer have fewer rights because I bought a product from a smaller company? Should small airlines have less stringent safety regulations?

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

#34

Post by ge96 »

nar001 wrote: post #19
ge96 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual components are coded to the device/can't hot swap identical parts and have it just work. Hugh Jeffreys demoed it with a laptop and phone

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

Yeah he shows that process and how even doing that. There's lingering effects like face ID not working anymore or two brand new displays not working the same.

iphone 15 https://youtu.be/dbRKQ0OjQeE?si=hb5lNXSwUYIxXyyj&t=323

mac https://youtu.be/r0Hwb5xvBn8?si=55apGCKsRoowUFL4&t=272

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

#35

Post by Someone »

transcriptase wrote: post #29

Wasn’t their initial offering for tool rentals basically malicious compliance? I vaguely recall stories of Apple sending out a shipping pallet of industrial tooling to replace a screen. The speculation at the time was that they were trying to be absurd and demonstrate why the average Joe shouldn’t be trying to do what their approved facilities can.

They offered you the option to rent professional tools, but also the option to only buy parts. They also allow everybody to download the repair manual for repairs using the professional tools.

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

#36

Post by lotsofpulp »

criley2 wrote: post #30
lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the amount of non repairable landfilled junk from going to a kids’ birthday party. Not only does the birthday kid get a ton of non repairable cheap toys they will only play with a couple times, but every kid that attends gets their own “party favor” bag filled with non repairable landfilled junk from Dollar Tree or Amazon. My household has tons of Apple devices, but I guarantee the amount that have end…

[flagged]

So many toys nowadays come with small batteries, lights, and circuits. I don’t know if lithium ion is worse than the batteries that come in cheap toys, but it is not clear that “billions” (nowhere near billions based on total AirPods sold from quick search) of wireless headphones in landfills is specifically worse than all the other consumption people do.

Also, the utility of AirPods (and other Apple devices) is huge. My wife and I have been using ours since mid 2020.

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

#37

Post by trashburger »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #25
steveBK123 wrote: post #13

Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers. When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation. It also fits in nicely with App…

Although what you say isn’t wrong … Apple really can’t win. Oppose RtR. Gets criticized. Complies with RtR. Also gets criticized. LOL

"Complies" is an overstatement. The independent repair program they released was so restrictive and missed so many key parts that it felt like intentional sabotage/poisoning of the well. "We helped independent repair shops but they can't even do basic stuff, see?" The self-repair program is a step in the right direction but it's also kind of disingenuous because it provides parts specifically to you, i.e. you can't just have an independent repairman order the parts for you. Which is still unhelpful if you're not adept at hardware repair/soldering.

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

#38

Post by PedroBatista »

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 can't be caught "of the wrong side of history" so they pretend to switch sides, or even paint themselves as on of the original supporters. I wonder how bad it gets until they use Steve Wozniak's name for this...

Either way, I'm 99% sure in practical terms this will amount to as much as the "Apple-certified repair" program or those repair kits sold for almost the price of a device.

I'm sorry to be so negative, but the company is the same, the people are the same, their track record has been the same. So.. what are the chances this is different?

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

#39

Post by sumtechguy »

criley2 wrote: post #8

[flagged]

It is ironic considering the Apple ][ was one of the most hacked on computers out there. Right along with the 994a, ZX and c64. Apple is one of the companies that utterly destroyed that pretty cool market segment. I lost one job because one of the first things Jobs did when he came back was stop selling parts/OS to 3rd party. Our entire market software segment was gone in under a month. It was not even directly related to those items. But we were pushing it hard to make the thing more affordable to buy. It is one of the reasons there is not much silicon in silicon valley anymore.
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