Meh, people will not get tired of this it seems. What did the eternal repeating of this ever net you? A tentative promise that they will support the right to repair movement, one they are not obligated to fulfill, and of course it’s always in the future.
That’s the best you could hope for with such naive activism.
Anecdotal evidence: out of 20+ people with iPhones I know, only one ever had to send it for repairs. In our backwater Eastern Europe this still took only two days: he got a brand new one without having to pay a penny.
I get it, devices we buy must be repairable. Lately I bought a laptop and I’m looking forward to upgrading its RAM and SSD by myself. And I’ll enjoy decommissioning my old gaming PC in a year or so by disassembling it and selling it in parts. I too want repair ability in my tech, and I enjoy practicing it.
But apparently Apple will not budge. It’s astonishing how people are under the illusion that talking is going to sway one of the biggest company entities on the planet. And it makes for pretty boring news.
“You heard it here first folks, the planet is still spinning today“.
For those who don't care to watch the video or find the actual report: it seems that the greatest loss of points for Apple came from actively opposing right to repair legislation and from supporting trade groups that oppose it.
That's fine by me, but I thought that might be worth mentioning since the video title alone could give any number of impressions.
(I have never had any Apple devices but I was under the impression you could get them serviced and repaired; Apple just keeps a tight control of how and by whom. Since some other cheaper hardware seem to have little concern paid for repairability by anyone, the title alone seemed kind of clickbaity to me.)
This is such a bad article, I half suspect it's astroturfing and food intended for Apple apologists. It's focused on a single small part of the problem and unnecessarily misrepresented it.
As a reminder of the broader picture: Apple has a strong anti-repair stance, they have lobbied for this [1], have engaged in broad, deceptive strategies to remove 3rd party repair options, by confiscating legally refurbished hardware under the guise of "counterfeits" [2], attempting to confiscate grey market parts under the guise of "trademark violation" and threatening the 3rd party repair shops [3]. They profit from this continued attack by deceiving customers into expensive unnecessary part replacements, suggesting repair is not possible and generally coercing customers into buying new products instead [4].
The thing is even if people don't wanna repair themselves they might wanna change a battery. Or get something minor done cheaply by a 3rd party. But Apple goes so far out of the way to kill third party repair. They even put special screws in their machines to screw you.
Edit: The EU pushed right to repair, right? Now see what Apple did to screw France [1]. Their latest and greatest devices somehow have a repairability score of around 6.5/10. How is it possible?
The problem is that companies (especially Apple) are explicitly trying to make their devices harder to repair -- which is the reason for the whole Right-to-Repair movement[1]. If you want to see how much dodgy stuff repair shops have to go through to figure out how to fix Apple products, check out the channels of Louis Rossman[2] and Jessa Jones[3].
This anti-Apple commentary is getting boring. We don’t have all the information and we definitely can’t guess Apple’s motivations. They definitely aren’t focused exclusively on maximising profits: they already have all the money, and they make plenty of things that don’t start life as a cash cow (Apple TV, AirTags, even iPads for a while).
If you don’t like Apple’s approach, use one of the other brands instead. The problem is no other mainstream manufacturers can be trusted to provide a device as secure and private as Apple’s.
I am a strong supporter of the right to repair, and it informs my decisions, but in many cases, I am willing to pay a premium for known, trusted and secure platform with hardened components from a trusted and secure supply chain. That includes the labour of installing those parts. There are cheaper options around if that isn’t important to me.
Side rant about Apple. I never understood why Apple took such a hardline on offering repairs and charging so much for them. They are one of the most valuable companies on the planet and they have always squabbled over repairs.
They went through such great lengths with their sensors about detecting water damage to iPhones that prevented people from getting legitimate repairs done that had nothing to do with water damage.
Come on Apple, do good faith repairs. You can afford it. People already love Apple products. Repair your stuff without treating everyone like a criminal.
I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain.
Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired.
The video presenter seems surprised. Is anyone surprised by this? Apple makes most, if not all of their products as un-repairable as possible. Why would they make a different choice for this one?
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