Louis makes "Apple impossible to repair" videos since ever. It's not an iPhone 13 thing, give it a few year and you can claim that iPhone 17 impossible to repair, unlike the prehistoric iPhone 13.
He recently moved to a new larger shop in attempt to grew his Apple repair operations. Then had to move back to a smaller shop because as it turns out, it wasn't Apple who is ruining his repair business.
One of my favorite youtubers is a channel named STS telecom[1]. He uses various tools to repair logic boards on iPhones. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch him hunt down a shorted capacitor the size of the end of a toothpick. Then like magic the phone works perfectly.
What it also taught me is that even the the phones are becoming more complicated, they’re also still repairable. Apples move is laudable here, and important at reducing e-waste.
I don’t know. It might be better if Apple controls the repair process. The reason is that my iPhone 11 stores a great deal of information including my Apple Card. I don’t want any of that info getting out into the wild. In addition, the latest cellphones are very complex. The latest iPhone used a 3D circuit board! Who has knowledge and skill to work on that? Look I’m all for people trying to make a living repairing stuff but the cellphone might be an item that falls outside the mean.
I think it's dishonest to call Apple devices not repairable because Apple offers a lot of repair options. If you want to promote independent repair centers and non-Apple repairs just state that. Otherwise you're just an independent repair fanboy ;)
Most Apple devices are used for years, sold to or given to people requiring the latest since they are not worthless after a short time. I'm not sure what those people you talk about do with their year old iPhones.
Do you honestly think Apple does not want you to repair your own device? They would absolutely sh*t kittens to have you buy replacement parts from them!
The problem is that smartphones are super complex devices, able to withstand dust, rain, drops, and more. In order to do that, they have complex internals, which AMONG OTHER THINGS (like heat dissipation and RF I/O) are designed to support mentioned goals.
Current gen iPhones can be dropped onto concrete at arms-length and not suffer from a broken screen or back. Think about that for a moment. Could you build a smartphone that could do that, and have amazing battery life along with desktop performance?
Note that I'm absolutely not affiliated with Apple, or a shareholder.
I feel like some folks downplay the amount of engineering that goes into the iPhone, and to a somewhat lesser extent, ANY mobile device. For many of us, these things live in our pockets and our hands. They are expected to have many hours of screen time, play games, let us read books, etc. They aren't simple devices, especially the current gen iPhones Apple has been pushing out.
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.
Apple replaces devices and then takes the old devices, disassembles them, and checks each component for issues individually. They take each phone about and literally have buckets of these components that they test. Those that pass inspection get turned back into the remanufactured assembly line where older out of warranty phones go. It's not like they're just dumping these devices that they're replacing. It's just easier to replace an entire device and then have trained pros deal with testing and repairing the components than it does to have customers wait for someone at the Genius Bar, who probably couldn't do it anyways. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, most people aren't Louis Rossman. Most people don't know how to do those kinds of repairs.
And yes, part of the bills that are being considered for a lot of these Right to Repair laws include regulations that would require Apple to sell OEM parts to third-party repair centers and that they would have to provide service manuals to them, free of cost. Apple is ok with doing that as long as they get to certify the people who get the manual to their repair standards. They're not intentionally making the devices difficult to repair. Most of the complaints that people have about their reparability have to do with their small size or software locks that, in reality, are meant to protect people's data from unauthorized access. Error 53 that everyone loves to point out as an evil Apple move was actually a software lock to prevent someone from putting a false Touch ID sensor on the device that was collecting biometric data but still relaying the lock command to the phone. Apple's security chain in that regard worked exactly as intended. They didn't expect to ever see a legitimate use for a fake Touch ID sensor but it happened when people decided that losing Touch ID was worth getting their screen repaired cheaper.
Redesigning iPhone to be repairable means that Apple can have a higher tolerance for part failure. That in turn means that they can reduce quality controls and put cheaper parts into their phones. It probably pays for itself
This is exactly it. Note that Apple has yet to go after or sue someone simply for repairing an Apple device. That's never been the case yet. They've only sued people who claim to use genuine parts that don't, people who have used stolen service manuals, or companies that claim to do authorized repairs but don't.
"There is nothing Apple can do to make such repairs quick or easy."
Uh. Apple literally designs every part of the product in excruciating detail. Pretty sure they can make such repairs quick and easy if they wanted to.
We're talking about a battery replacement, not a replacement laser for a shark.
Phones used to have batteries replaceable in moments without tools. Now it requires 79 pounds of tools. That does seem like a backwards step, though IP water resistance ratings are all the rage now.
However, Apple made the currently existing phones without self repair in mind. Maybe their next generation will do better.
The irony is despite all this right to repair stuff, apple makes some of the more long lasting devices in terms of usability. Their software updates keep coming, their phones are actually surprisingly waterproof (plenty of great rescue stories here). If you have parents who are older, you know how this works - they keep their devices much longer in my experience.
Yes, they glue the crap out of everything, solder stuff down instead of hacking bigger sockets and plug in chips with pins etc so do everything they are not supposed to. But the end result is darn long lasting and useful.
If someone thinks users will trade out for these right to repair devices go for it. Android has TONS of folks playing in that space. But I'd say let Apple try things there way - a phone that just maintains great resale value because it's a bit harder to get screwed buying one - it alerts you if the scammers swap out the battery for a crap one even which used to be one annoying issue buying used iphones that made me stop buying used.
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 reason why they can't) then it doesn't make sense for Apple to require authorized repairs (assuming they value repair over replacement). That doesn't mean they can't have certified repair (just like cars do), but the issue here is of force. All this forcing does is create anti-competitiveness and harm the market as a whole (though it probably helps Apple. But that's what anti-competitive behavior generally does. Just doesn't benefit the consumer).
Apple doesn’t care about repairability one way or another. They thing they care about, that makes it seem like they hate phone repair, is that there are gangs of pickpockets who steal phones and send them in bulk lots to China, where they’re scrapped for parts to use to repair other phones, or to build phones or other devices that use phone parts. (Search “my stolen iPhone ended up in Shenzhen” if you don’t believe me. This is a whole thing.)
Apple borrowed the cryptographic pairing system they created for security in the fingerprint reader, and reused it for the display et al, to make stealing iPhones to scrap them for parts pointless. This has massively decreased the value of these phones on the black market (all you can really extract now are the low-value bits like the speaker or charging assembly); which has in turn made iPhones the least desirable target for thieves.
Every hurdle you have to jump to take part in Apple’s self-serve repair program — the “phone Apple to activate the pairing of these parts” step, the only being able to order parts once you have a specific broken device to order them for, etc. — is the way it is precisely so that the people who scrap the stolen phones can’t participate.
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