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Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

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Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except where the error is still displayed even when you transfer in an apple original battery from another phone.

Legitimate parts that fail quality control testing in China have a way of "falling off the truck" onto the loading dock of the fulfillment center used by unscrupulous third party vendors instead of being destroyed.

Cool story. But when I get a replacement battery pulled from a brand new iphone with the 3rd party repairer providing warranty on their work, I still have no way to make that message go away other than to pay Apple's extortion fees.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#62
post #11

> By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them. I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story. It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still works , the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery inst…

>"You don't have a certified Apple battery" would be completely sufficient.

The whole point is more towards the fact that it actually means:

"We don't know (or don't care) if you have a certified Apple battery or a (crappy) third part one, all we know is that it has been changed by non-Apple-Authorized personnel, so we are giving you this warning message as a lesson"

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#63
post #11

> By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them. I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story. It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still works , the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery inst…

>Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced".

That's not what the message is. It's really weird that everyone keeps getting this wrong given there's a screenshot of it in the iFixit post.

https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2019/08/07170827/iphon...

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate parts that fail quality control testing in China have a way of "falling off the truck" onto the loading dock of the fulfillment center used by unscrupulous third party vendors instead of being destroyed.

Cool story. But when I get a replacement battery pulled from a brand new iphone with the 3rd party repairer providing warranty on their work, I still have no way to make that message go away other than to pay Apple's extortion fees.

Fun local fact: unless you order your battery at iFixit and DIY, it’s cheaper to go to the Apple Store to change an iPhone battery than any of the repair shops nearby.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#65
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool story. But when I get a replacement battery pulled from a brand new iphone with the 3rd party repairer providing warranty on their work, I still have no way to make that message go away other than to pay Apple's extortion fees.

Fun local fact: unless you order your battery at iFixit and DIY, it’s cheaper to go to the Apple Store to change an iPhone battery than any of the repair shops nearby.

[deleted]

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#66
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for third party repair, it isn't Apples fault if a third party repairs a phone incorrectly. What does this argument even mean? It's 100% not their fault if someone else gets it wrong, it's true. But modern phones are complicated devices -- if you get your battery replaced poorly, and a month later your phone dies because the case was resealed incorrectly which compromised the water resistance and something got d…

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…

For the record, it is not like car repair is made "easy" by the manufacturers, I have seen over the years quite a few cases where the "original" (issued by manufacturer only to official dealers) ODB2 connected software was needed to reset an alarm on the car computer.

It may be that the "third party" program missed at the time the particular feature (AFAIK it is all revolving about reverse engineering the "original" and that later releases had it.

And another "trend" in the car world is that of only selling as spare "non-serviceable assemblies", and regularly some smart guy manages to find out that the assembly is actually serviceable and that replacing (say) a small o-ring or gasket and/or with a couple solderings an used assembly can be reconditioned and work again for years at a fraction of the cost.

A good example is the "navigating wheel" on many BMW's, dealers will tell you that it is a €300-400 job to replace it, whilst 99% of the time is half an hour top including disassembling it, soldering a couple broken tin joints and re-assembling it.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#67

So Apple's take is probably: A bunch of people get mad when their iPhones stop working, start running slow, etc; research data shows that when they need a battery replaced, they're more likely to go to the local third party (non-authorized) repair shop and get it replaced. We have no idea how skilled or unskilled these repair shops are, even if they use genuine Apple batteries. Our best bet for maintaining the reputa…

We already went through all of this with cars and car mechanics. The only difference with electronics is that people have been convinced that their smartphone, laptop and electronics in general are somehow arcane magic. Nowadays, car manufacturers also seem keen to jump on this bandwagon, since it would also benefit their bottom line to keep third party mechanics from touching their cars. Fact is, if Apple can fix th…

> We already went through all of this with cars and car mechanics. The only difference with electronics is that people have been convinced that their smartphone, laptop and electronics in general are somehow arcane magic.

With cars there is a key difference: car service people usually are required to complete a multi-year long education with proper certifications (at least in Germany), and they get proper service manuals, genuine tools, spare parts and utilities from the manufacturers (as a result of the right to repair laws mentioned in the article), and third party replacement parts have to be certified as well (at least in Europe).

With phone repair shops, you have no guarantee that the person doing the repair is actually skilled, or that the repair parts are genuine/certified in any way. The right-to-repair laws have to be extended to force manufacturers to provide genuine spare parts, the sooner the better. Lithium battery fires are a real and scary threat.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#68
post #11

> By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them. I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story. It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still works , the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery inst…

>Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced". That's not what the message is. It's really weird that everyone keeps getting this wrong given there's a screenshot of it in the iFixit post. https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2019/08/07170827/iphon...

I don’t know who’s taking crazy pills, but the GP paraphrasing seems perfectly reasonable given your screenshot

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the level of psychological analysis that goes into products like this and others, I would not be surprised to learn they have selected the phrase most likely to cause distress to the owner making them want to take the product to an authorised repair centre. It seems some US manufacturers are trying to make their products a service of sorts, when you look at what other companys are doing. John Deere spring…

>Considering the level of psychological analysis that goes into products like this and others Don't need to do any analysis or anything. The mere fact that the message doesn't go away is enough to push a lot of people towards getting an authorized repair. If this truly was for consumer protection against bad batteries, they could have implemented a "Check my battery" button which returns the same message instead of h…

This kind of nit picking seems so petty, I don’t understand why people are getting boiled up about it. You can still get non official batteries, the phone still works.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the level of psychological analysis that goes into products like this and others, I would not be surprised to learn they have selected the phrase most likely to cause distress to the owner making them want to take the product to an authorised repair centre. It seems some US manufacturers are trying to make their products a service of sorts, when you look at what other companys are doing. John Deere spring…

>Considering the level of psychological analysis that goes into products like this and others Don't need to do any analysis or anything. The mere fact that the message doesn't go away is enough to push a lot of people towards getting an authorized repair. If this truly was for consumer protection against bad batteries, they could have implemented a "Check my battery" button which returns the same message instead of h…

Notifications that can't be dismissed or are recurring without a way to turn them off are one of the most annoying things about current operating systems, and Apple is one of the worst offenders.

On my Macbook, I currently get:

- A request to log in to Facetime every time I restart it (I've never used Facetime, and don't intend to, and have lost access to my AppleId)

- A daily recurring notification to update my OS, which again I can't do without my AppleId

- A notification that comes every ~10mins reminding me that I'm low on disk space (like I don't know it)

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