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Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

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Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#91

Post by esmi »

kuzehanka wrote: post #87
yoz-y wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The phone knows that the battery is a genuine Apple component, because the battery cryptographically identifies as one. What it's detecting is that a genuine Apple battery was installed in the phone, but not by Apple. It displays the warning to scare the user and make them mistrust the 3rd party repairer. The only way to make that warning go away is to use a secret-sauce Apple programming tool that they withhold from…

> The phone knows that the battery is a genuine Apple component, because the battery cryptographically identifies as one.

But that’s not the error. The error is the health is unknown.

To be a devil’s advocate: How do you know the health of this first party battery is good? For example, maybe it wasn’t stored properly.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#92

Post by gandalfian »

ChickeNES wrote: post #48
temporaryvector wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would you want to know if the home you were buying was wired by a licensed electrician No, not really. I'd want it inspected, of course, but that's about it. Same with buying used cars. If the house wiring or my used car fucks ups, I'm safe in the knowledge that I can just hire someone to fix it for a reasonable price, and I can be reasonably confident that they'll do a decent job because the knowledge and the parts…

I think you miss my point. The average person just wants their phone fixed, not to be able to fix it themselves. And they want to have confidence it was done right. Also, a fun fact: an iPhone XR replacement battery is $80USD from iFixit (the only vendor I'd trust) vs $69 for out-of-warranty replacement from Apple themselves, labor included.

Yes but almost no one needs an xr battery yet. They are still all new and under warranty. In two years when people actually need new batteries they will be much cheaper, as are the older iPhone batteries today.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#93

Post by yoz-y »

littlestymaar wrote: post #81
yoz-y wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Now, if somebody who does not know how an iPhone should look and behave If you don't know exactly how an iPhone should look and are not annoyed by the thickness difference, how is it a problem ? You paid less for a slightly less good product that's good enough for you, and if the product is not good enough for you (like in your case) you returned it and good a refund. That sounds pretty good for me!

No. I paid slightly less for a very inferior product (non compatible with cases due to thickness, colors off by a large margin).

In this case I knew that I got a bad product and returned it, but it makes me wonder how many times I got some shoddy fake instead of the genuine thing (e.g.: because of Amazon stocking shenanigans). My reaction to bad products is usually to distrust the seller and the manufacturer brand.

This is also why brands fight fakes, if you can get a visually extremely similar object that is sold as product made by B, but it falls apart after a few months then there is a big chance that you won't buy B anymore even though their products are actually good.

Also in my case the problems were visible. If the problem was with a badly repaired internal component, the phone would have died, I would have brought it to Apple and they would refuse to repair it under warranty because it was voided by some random technician. Had the repair been done badly by an authorized repair shop, they would take the cost of re-repair or exchange on themselves.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#94

Post by yoz-y »

esmi wrote: post #91
kuzehanka wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone knows that the battery is a genuine Apple component, because the battery cryptographically identifies as one. What it's detecting is that a genuine Apple battery was installed in the phone, but not by Apple. It displays the warning to scare the user and make them mistrust the 3rd party repairer. The only way to make that warning go away is to use a secret-sauce Apple programming tool that they withhold from…

> The phone knows that the battery is a genuine Apple component, because the battery cryptographically identifies as one. But that’s not the error. The error is the health is unknown. To be a devil’s advocate: How do you know the health of this first party battery is good? For example, maybe it wasn’t stored properly.

I think the message could have been clearer. But to add to your point, wasn't there a case when car repair shops would rewind odometers on cars/engines to make them seem newer that they actually were?

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#95

Post by gandalfian »

The irony is this is such a big issue because iphones are one of the few products they make that are both easily repairable and expensive enough to be worth repairing. Nimble fingers and the right screwdriver and it all comes apart and back together again unlike many rival sealed glued products.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#96

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

deergomoo wrote: post #90
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #33

Lots of Apple apologists in this thread. (1) They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices - to sell you more shit (2) They remove support for existing standards (e.g. headphone jacks) - to sell you more shit (3) They file lawsuits against third-party repair providers who do a demonstrably better job than first-party repairs - to sell you more shit…

> They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices They have one proprietary connector across all of their products that they sell, and that’s Lightning. Lightning is seven years old, was launched at a time when the alternative would be the god-awful microUSB connector, and all rumours point towards it being phased out completely for USB-C in the next…

Lightning, sure. How about firewire, and thunderbolt, and the 30-pin connectors for the iPod? Have you also forgotten their proprietary SSD connectors - SATA compatible but with a non-M.2 socket. Or ADC, a proprietary pinout for what's effectively a DVI cable? Or AAUI? Mini-VGA and Mini-DVI?

Apple has been doing this for longer than I've been alive. I'm happy that they're phasing it out in favor of USB-C - this is a positive step - but their past definitely helps damns them when fanboys come to their defense over right to repair.

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#97

Post by stock_toaster »

temporaryvector wrote: post #9
judge2020 wrote: post #3

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

From what I understand, phone batteries are far more energy dense (lithium ion) than car batteries (lead acid still?), and you carry them in your pocket. Maybe EV car batteries packs are more comparable?

Remember when samsung phones were catching fire all over just a couple years ago? Wasn't that due to some weird assembly/manufacturing issue where the batteries were being "pinched" due to tolerances?

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#98

Post by addicted »

millstone wrote: post #72
kuzehanka wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it burying when it’s probably the first thing someone would look at after a battery replacement.

Also, I bet none of the Apple defenders were phrasing the location of the battery health meter as “burying” it when Apple released it as a response to their own battery fiasco (which they liead about for months, if not years, until they were proven to have lied).

Re: Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup

#99

Post by addicted »

Despegar wrote: post #31
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…

It's not just reputation that Apple cares about. They also care about fraud. The Information had a good story about it last year [1]. At its peak, 60% of repair claims were fraudulent in China and Hong Kong. With trade-ins now, they want to make sure they get genuine Apple products back. [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-apples-war-on...

Heres a simple solution to fraud.

Apple sells official batteries to 3rd party retailers, with holograms, and maybe even an online lookup which tracks sales, etc. (you don’t need the latter but it’s an idea that would not be half as expensive as all the other “fraud prevention” measures Apple puts in which conveniently makes it far more difficult to repair Apple devices).

Seriously, the vast majority of fraud concerns would disappear if Apple sold official replacement parts.

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