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We are retroactively dropping the iPhone’s repairability score

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

#331

Post by ribosometronome »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #329
falsenapkin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such an ignore button would allow theft to continue and would allow users to make poor security decisions. I agree that something needs to happen to enable easier or maybe more privacy focused 3rd party repairs but I also appreciate my device being less of a target.

Thieves who really want your iPhone will make you unlock it (or just point it to your face) and remove it from your iCloud account. Much better than using it for parts.

Does that happen? I've not heard of that. Regardless, that does iPhones are still immune to everything short of armed robbery. That your front door lock doesn't stop thieves from smashing the window to get in doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose.

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

#332

Post by ribosometronome »

MostlyStable wrote: post #127
hbn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm going to go out on a limb and say that far far far more people have a phone that needs to be repaired than have a phone that gets stolen. Perhaps because it's known to many thieves that iPhones are a useless thing to steal due to Apple's tight account-tied software locks?

Go back five years and I'd guess this is still true. I do not think Apple's policy has changed this.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-report-apple-iphone-activa...

This article predates some of the parts behavior but shows that similar efforts have deterred theft.

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

#333

Post by adesanmi »

jestarray wrote: post #328
adesanmi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed the reason Apple’s phones are stolen for parts are that, unlike a lot of Android counterparts that can be reset, Find My is so bulletproof that (without phishing) iPhones are essentially expensive paperweights in terms of reselling whole. So people started getting creative and selling the parts, so Apple started to serialise those too. Either way, I don’t think Apple set out to make the iPhone unrepairable…

Then "just because" is profit. You can't excuse inventing a new screw and passing it off as "security."

I think inventing a new screw would be a design thing? In a perfect world a screw that is easily replaced and allows them the design they want would be used.

However if that doesn’t exist, as an engineer, I am aware of the concept of tradeoffs and ever since that company has existed they’ve always biased towards design.

They would rather 1mm of thinness or an angle a specific shape and if that means that this normally standard screw won’t fit, then “oh well”. Like I said above, it’s an opinion. My FairPhone has the opposite opinion where everything in the design was made around repairability.

Both of them have different, diverse, opinions on what design is. Neither are right or wrong, per se. That’s why the market is so awesome, go to the stall that fits your need, don’t try to make all the stalls make the same thing.

The “security” feature is the serialisation of said screws, no? Even if they were standard and freely available, the serialisation would still cause this issue. Unless it’s somehow not possible to serialise a standard screw but I don’t know how that would differ from the process of doing it to custom screws.

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

#335

Post by bakugo »

adesanmi wrote: post #251
bakugo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and someone like my mum can get her all-in-one “nice” experience. This is a great example of what I had in mind. Apple has successfully convinced you that pairing every part of the phone to the motherboard such that it can never be replaced by anyone other than Apple (usually for a price greater than the phone itself) is somehow essential to the iPhone Experience™ and beneficial to the user.

Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up? You still haven’t explained how choosing to tradeoff design over repairability is anti-consumer when the consumer can buy a FairPhone right now (who, I can tell you, have a significantly worse experience and design than my iPhone, but I don’t care because I can tinker with it!) I think you just don’t like the company and are looking for silly reasons t…

> Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up?

Because in a few years the phone will be unusable because of the battery. Your mum probably doesn't care about how new and fast it is, it will likely still work fine for her, but she'll likely have to replace the whole phone because of the battery.

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

#336

Post by adesanmi »

bakugo wrote: post #335
adesanmi wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up? You still haven’t explained how choosing to tradeoff design over repairability is anti-consumer when the consumer can buy a FairPhone right now (who, I can tell you, have a significantly worse experience and design than my iPhone, but I don’t care because I can tinker with it!) I think you just don’t like the company and are looking for silly reasons t…

> Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up? Because in a few years the phone will be unusable because of the battery. Your mum probably doesn't care about how new and fast it is, it will likely still work fine for her, but she'll likely have to replace the whole phone because of the battery.

She does replace it every couple of years (well, I do anyway) and she loves that fact.

What confuses me about all this is the fact that anyone who wants an easily repairable phone has access to them on the market, as I’ve been saying, I support companies who make this stuff because I like tinkering with hardware.

I think Apple should continue to be a company that biases towards design - trading off repairability if it comes to that. That’s ok because if I don’t like it I can buy a different phone.

My mum just wants a phone with the feature she cares about, and when it gets slow or bad, she rings me up to upgrade.

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

#337

Post by npteljes »

whynotminot wrote: post #317
npteljes wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don’t like the product don’t buy the product. This has never worked, because in a single product, a myriad of concerns are bundled together. Just like how people are complex, and you can't simply avoid toxic people. Or you can't just uproot and go live in a better place. Individuals have much less liberty than the "free market" and "vote with your wallet" sentiments imply.

There are plenty of other products you can buy on the market that don’t lock down everything on a per part basis like Apple does. What are you even talking about.

Well, as long as you would like a pocket computer on which you can use the phone network to make calls, browse the internet, and use navigation, there really isn't many other products, just Android phones. So you choose between Apple and Google, essentially. Now, if someone has a single concern, like this per-part locking down thing, the decision is easy. But if someone has a larger set of concerns, the decision becomes which of them to give up.

Same with voting, really. If you look at the US, you have an imperial shit-ton of political issues, and a ridiculously small pool of just two parties to choose from. Even in countries where there are multiple parties, it's rare that people agree with everything they say and do. But with voting for any of them, they support them anyways.

And so, that's why the arguing about the liberties come into the picture. Because if you buy a product, you essentially support the product and the manufacturer. Maybe you want to support a single thing about them, like how well they protect their cloud, but with that, you also support all the other things they do as well. And you especially can't get away from things which are so pervasive that they are part of the zeitgeist, like the ever-present telemetry that comes with the always-on internet connections.

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

#338

Post by eptcyka »

sneeze-slayer wrote: post #61
tumult wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How is someone who snatched your phone out of your hand and ran away going to know your password and authentication information needed to authorize a parts replacement?

I think the point is that an unsuspecting buyer of, e.g. a screen replacement, could end up going to a shady repair shop that uses stolen parts, sees the message once, clicks "OK", and moves on. The reasoning being that this scenario would cause some demand for black market parts. The suggestion from OP whereby the seller of a used phone logs in and "unpairs" the parts could avoid this, unless a robber forces you to…

New owners wouldn't OK a stolen part, the part would have to unpaired from the Apple account (on device or online) from the previous owner first.

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

#339

Post by ejstronge »

danaris wrote: post #80
ejstronge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (If anyone at Apple is reading this: ffs, allow the legitimate owner of a device to "unpair" all components in their phone in iCloud so that legitimate second-hand shops can strip a broken device at least for its parts) I was robbed at gunpoint (but not in a 'problematic' part of town) and the thief outlined all the steps he needed me to take to remove my phone from Find My and from iCloud. I think a lot of these m…

There's a significant difference in risk in robbing someone at gunpoint vs just slipping their phone out of their pocket. It's awful that that happened to you, but it's important to realize that just because a specific security measure could not prevent what happened to you, that doesn't mean it's wholly ineffectual or not worth having.

> , but it's important to realize that just because a specific security measure could not prevent what happened to you, that doesn't mean it's wholly ineffectual or not worth having.

I think you are missing the point of the comment. The GP says that Apple should allow parts to be unpaired to allow re-use of components; this example suggests that there is utility to keeping the existing security system.

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

#340

Post by raxxorraxor »

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…

> it's a public safety issue.

Absolutely not. The cases for repairs vastly outnumber the cases for theft to a degree it isn't comparable in the slightest. This should be the basis for any honest discussion.

Not putting that in perspective cannot lead to sensible considerations.

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