One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

Post by Foxfox12 » Tue, May 25, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

pcdoodle wrote: post #523

Foxfox12 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only bad part is some of these parts are stolen from users. Because the main board on an iPhone is account locked, crime groups will strip the phone down for parts and sell these on eBay to people looking to fix their phones. This is why I think Apple should account lock all parts on the iPhone and tell the user this but if the original owner unlinks the phone, the parts will work again.

Crime groups stealing iPhones? What planet do you live on? Apple is the number one creator of e-waste in 2021.

Why else would we still have phone theft and how do these preowned parts end up on eBay? Less skilled people steal them and then list them on eBay as “account locked iPhone” Then more skilled people strip them for parts and will sell just the camera, battery, etc.

Post by relix » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

passivate wrote: post #555

relix wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone have the longest life of all the smartphones out there. Very old phones still get software updates. They even throttle CPU to make sure an expired battery doesn't necessarily mean a broken phone. If they really wanted you to rather buy a new phone, they'd stop providing software updates much sooner, and they'd just let the phone die as soon as the battery is broken.

Yes, I do appreciate the updates. But we're talking about repair here, so I'd like to discuss that. Repairs could be needed at any time during the lifetime of a phone. Its not just about being able to repair 10 year old phones. A 50 cent component needs to be replaced on the main-board of an Apple product. Lets say I have found a qualified repair shop willing to do the repair at a price that I agree with. Why does Ap…

If it's a publicly available component, then Apple would not be able to block the supply.

If it's not a publicly available component, then how do you know it costs 50 cents, if Apple is the only one manufacturing it and they're not selling it? It's not because Apple is paying 50 cent to the manufacturer, that this means the component doesn't involve Apple-specific IP, which they obviously do not pay for. Maybe Apple doesn't want to set up appropriately priced pipelines to sell these all five thousand of the parts that they order just so repair shops can purchase them at cost.

Hypothetical scenario: imagine the iPhone is 2 components, each costs $1 to produce at TSMC, but the IP to produce them is what makes the components so valuable, and this is owned by Apple. So Apple pays $2 to TSMC for both parts, assembles them, and then sells the iPhone for $1000.

Now a repair shop complains that they don't have access to these two $1 parts, but that's only logical. The value of the parts is much higher than what Apple is paying the manufacturer. And if Apple would provide these parts available at cost, someone could build their own iPhone for $2 instead and circumvent all their IP licensing.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks