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Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

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71–80 of 166 posts

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#71

Post by microtonal »

ChickeNES wrote: post #21
abalone wrote: post #16

> Now, I’m not sure that Apple has thus far triggered that kill switch. But they can do so at any time. This is just scaremongering. Apple has not, in fact, triggered a "kill switch" or "locked" anyone out of using a 3rd party battery. All it does is display a message that it's not a genuine Apple part. Deep in the battery settings. That's it. Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to k…

> Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts. I think this is lost on the HN audience. There's a lot of people out there being scammed by counterfeit parts, recycled parts, shoddy repair jobs, and straight up cobbled together FrankenPhones. Not to mention the danger in using lithium batteries from unknown provenance.

...which is caused by making batteries irreplaceable to start with. If a phone's battery is user-repleacable, the user could buy it from Apple or any other reliable manufacturer. Now they have to go to either Apple or some third-party show who may use problematic batteries.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#72

Post by millstone »

kuzehanka wrote: post #59
kemayo wrote: 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…

No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair. That message destroys the consumer's trust in…

Apple burying a message in the battery subsection of settings is "extreme lengths" and "by far the most effective"? God help us if they discover how to log to console.app.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#73

Post by arsenico »

VvR-Ox wrote: post #34
abalone wrote: post #16

> Now, I’m not sure that Apple has thus far triggered that kill switch. But they can do so at any time. This is just scaremongering. Apple has not, in fact, triggered a "kill switch" or "locked" anyone out of using a 3rd party battery. All it does is display a message that it's not a genuine Apple part. Deep in the battery settings. That's it. Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to k…

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…

I'm just curious - what are your alternatives, when you actually need more processing power/GPU, than your 2012 MBP?

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#74

Post by acd10j »

Lots of people here to defend Apple in-spite of their outright anti-consumer stance against right to repair. In this case they could have shown a warning with option to permanently choose to remove/ignore, Instead of scary permanent "service" Message.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#75

Post by yoz-y »

kuzehanka wrote: post #59
kemayo wrote: 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…

No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair. That message destroys the consumer's trust in…

I am on the fence. On one side I would love if it were possible to repair your phone whenever wherever.

On the other hand, let me tell you a personal anecdote. After my wife’s iPhone got stolen we wanted to buy another one for cheaper. We chose to buy it from a big retailer in here. The phone was marked as renewed and under warranty. It cost a bit less as a refurb from Apple would.

When we got it it was immediately apparent that the screen was changed for a non first party one. The phone was thicker than original (a case would not fit) and the colors were shit.

No warnings were displayed on the phone. I have returned it immediately for refund.

Now, if somebody who does not know how an iPhone should look and behave it is quite possible that they would pay a lot of money for a subpar product and then tell about it to people around.

I think Apple should absolutely put in warning lights for any non genuine components or genuine components installed by non authorized repair shops.

But, the message here is off as it does not actually help to describe the problem.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#76

Post by craigsmansion »

mschuster91 wrote: post #67
temporaryvector wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 man…

Those key differences don't really hold up, and it's mainly dealerships that use "spare parts from the manufacturers", and they would like nothing better than customers being forced to use their services, but they can't.

The main body of car repair customers have a choice ranging from non-dealership shops to cousin Vinnie with the range of quality and cost that goes with it. It's up to the customer.

Batteries degrade and need replacement at some point. What Apple is trying to do here is fusing the tyres to the rims and claiming it's necessary and specialist work.

> Lithium battery fires are a real and scary threat.

As are cars crashes, but somehow having third party repair options hasn't had much of an impact on that.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#77

Post by 0ld »

kuzehanka wrote: post #59
kemayo wrote: 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…

No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair. That message destroys the consumer's trust in…

> Imagine you take your BMW to a non-BMW-authorised repair shop and they swap your battery to a perfectly good one for 1/5th the price. But now you have a permanent warning light on your dashboard that there's something wrong with your battery. This situation is actually impossible.

You wouldn't believe it, but that's almost exactly how it works with bmws since around 15 years. The unofficially replaced battery won't function properly until "registered /converted/(or even) programmed" [0] at the official bmw service. The difference is that the software to do that is pirated and thus available to the 3rd parties

[o] https://bimmerscan.com/bmw-battery-registration/

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#78

Post by auggierose »

hobofan wrote: post #70
temporaryvector wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

Seriously, running an Apple OS without an Apple ID doesn't make any sense.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#79

Post by systemtest »

kuzehanka wrote: post #59
kemayo wrote: 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…

No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair. That message destroys the consumer's trust in…

> a permanent warning light on your dashboard

A better metaphor would be a service warning when you go into the iDrive system, to the "CAR" submenu, scroll to the maintenance icon, go into the submenu and then ask the system to list all possible issues. Then it would show up.

Also a 1/5th of the price is not entirely fair. The difference between Apple and 3rd party shops is half at most. And even that is not a fair comparison, because the non-BMW-authorised repair station will use an OEM-equivalent battery from VARTA or BOSCH. Your iPhone repair shop will use a random battery imported from AliExpress with no know history of it being a safe battery.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#80

Post by sjwright »

viraptor wrote: post #49
sjwright wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple devices are rarely more than 10-20% more expensive than its like-for-like competitors. And it's not like they're entirely the same cheap OEM plastic crap with a different logo silkscreened on the front. Apple's investments in mobile CPU design. Apple's laptop chassis engineering. These aren't products that are ever going to compete in the budget space. Meanwhile if you think Samsung and Microsoft and Google and…

You're bringing up how much Apple already spend on custom engineering. I agree - and that's why they should be called out as one of the first. And if people think Apple praises their design more - same. Repairability should be connected to good design. Also, if I'm in the PC environment, I can get a different repairable PC. If I'm in Mac environment... ?

Google is the most popular smartphone platform. That's why they should be called out first.

Samsung makes the most number of handsets. That's why they should be called out first.

Apple likes their products to look pretty. That's why they should be called out first.

Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. That's why they should be called out first.

Xiaomi are evil Chinese copycats. That's why they should be called out first.

We could do this all day.

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