Win-win-win for Apple with this move. New revenue stream of expensive parts. Those iphone repair shops scattered all over the country that are getting pissed at you - just made them your customers. Keeps people with broke phones in the ecosystem. Puts down calls for legislation about right to repair. Takes a shot at the third-party parts market. Preserves the ability to have the firmware reject 'non-genuine' parts.
Yeah, unfortunately you are spot on - this move is created to kill the growing criticism against its increasingly hard to repair devices, while also ensuring that they have a ready excuse to reject parts bought from third-party's and be forced to buy only costly parts from Apple. Except for the availability of exorbitantly priced "genuine" parts, nothing will really - they continue to design more and more hard to repair devices with more soldered parts, with no real ability to customise or upgrade the hardware or software from non-Apple sources.
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