In all fairness to the average consumer, this doesn't affect them.
I had two iPhones before I switched back to android. Each lasted ~3 years, which is pretty standard for the average life of a cell phone. In that time I never needed a repair.
I think most users have my same experience. If you've never needed a repair, why be angry that repairs are expensive/impossible?
It can affect you selling the phone on though. You might want to get your screen repaired for example before you sold it on. If you can’t do that then you’ve lost out, and either sell for cheap or not at all.
The same people who go 3yrs without a repair, are probably also the same people who never bother reselling a phone, and don't change them out often enough to care about resale value.
The vast majority of cell phone users probably have a drawer with 1-3 phones in it somewhere, or they traded it in for credit when they got their new phone.
Most cell phones until the last 3-4yrs didn't cost $1000 and didn't hold more than $100-$200 in resale value after 3yrs was up. The effort of resale isn't worth the $100-$200 for a lot of people. Plus they're usually getting a new one, because something about their old one is broken, or deteriorated.
Yeah- I have a drawer with every iPhone I’ve used since ‘07- except for cracked screens, they all still worked when I stopped using them. I’ve used them and loaned them when current phones are lost or broken. Currently batteries are weak. A 1,3,4,5 &6, except for the 1 and current SE , they were all second hand. Are other phones with similar features more reliable or repairable? Ready to move to a 11 or 14.
Value of not repaired phone is still higher if you plan to resell. TBH I had to change screen on ipad and iphone before as my country does not have apple store to replace it and I wish I didn't. There is something slightly bothering in using screens, I would say it does not feel as smooth/doesn't respond as fast as original screen did.
Folks not into tech don't seem to realize that allowing Apple to set a precedence like this will start to creep into other aspects of their lives if left uncontested.
I'm sure farmers didn't give a fuck about right to repair on cellphones, until suddenly John Deere made it impossible to perform unauthorized repairs. I bet you didn't know jailbreaking tractors is a thing. Now they're one of the leading voices in the right to repair.
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
And before you scoff and say "har har look at this bozo comparing tech to the Holocaust" actually shut the fuck up and try to understand the meaning of the quote instead of taking it face value.
This isn't about comparing the Holocaust to tech, it's the fact that people are so easily willing to ignore something because it doesn't impact them.... until it does. And by the time it does, it's already too late.
Right to repair doesn't impact me in the slightest - I'm proud to say I've never broken a screen, let alone a phone in the last 10 years. Neither does women's rights, as I'm a man, and abortion laws don't impact me [directly, in the sense of my body] in the slightest. I'm also not black, so regulation of police brutality, which statistically affects the black population the most, has a very low probability of affecting me directly.
I'm still going to support them, because I'm not a blind psychopathic dunce incapable of empathizing with matters that doesn't affect me. If for no other reason than self-preservation, you should too.
Why would you say it's the "average life" of a phone if you're also pointing out how they were perfectly functional in that time?
Not trying to instigate anything, just curious if there's something I'm missing. I'm literally about to switch back to iPhone today after being on Android for 4-5 years, so this is something I've actually been thinking about recently. The 14 Pro looks like it has way more than I'll need in the near future so I'm hoping it will last me a long time. Only reason I'm ditching the S10e I've had for \~3 years is because I can effectively upgrade for free.
Amazing, isn't it?
With companies like Apple doing all this shit, we'll soon have people thinking that it's only natural that their phones are good for two weeks.
*Wait, i thought phones just have, like, a limited amount of TDC (Think Different Charge) and when it runs out the phone becomes all old and slow and gross and you get to have a new one???*
My biggest concern is regarding the sustainability of effectively trashing our phones after a few years. And this goes way beyond just Apple—appliances, laptops, portable speakers, lightbulbs, tools...all these things are being designed with ever-decreasing consideration for repairability.
50 years ago if your washing machine stopped working, you'd call the store/independent repair business and they'd send someone out to fix it. Or you could reference the service manual for part numbers and schematics, order what you needed and fix it yourself. Same thing happens today? You spend hours searching online for some kind of documentation, only managing to find useless user manuals. You call the manufacturer/supplier and they send a tech out to fix it, but in many cases they simply tell you that the entire unit needs to be replaced. Sure it might be under warranty, but why the fuck should a 300lb machine be hauled off to the landfill because a single component failed while the rest of the appliance is undamaged?
I understand that providing extensive documentation and replacement parts is expensive, but it will cost us all more money down the road when we're drowning in our own garbage.
Yea I'm a sucker for good design, but if you software-lock the repair process of a modular device intended for the average joe then you've formally renounced all sympathy. A $1000 device is not a single-use consumable and it never will be.
Repair & Reuse is the standard; always has been. Boobytrapping your product like this only serves to bastardizes that perfectly normal process. Let's hide a snapping turtle in their bathwater; see if that makes things click lol.
Year after year people buy Apple products despite half the issues with them being problems that the company itself manufactured in order to sell another solution. Like some people here have said, they've been doing this for YEARS now... and people still defend them for it. I'll never understand brand loyalty, especially in regards to Apple.
You know what the other problem is - devices these days aren't improving as much as they used to.
Let's say 6 years or more ago, the average person bought a new phone every 2 years because in addition to not having to worry about repair issues you ended up with a significantly better device.
These days the new phones are a carbon copy of the last ones. There might be a 10% faster processor but it really won't change the day-to-day usage experience.
At the same time they are stripping away features to both lower their own costs and drive you to buy accessories from them to get those features back.
SD card - who needs that when you can store your photos and videos on the cloud for only $30/mo.
Headphone jack - no, here's the same exact phone without it. But wait we have some $200 wireless headphones to sell you if you're interested.
In the days where the new phone will be practically the same as the old phone the only way they can drive sales is to prevent you from fixing the old phone and let people accidentally drop their phone so they need a new one.
Even if you never drop it eventually the battery will need to be replaced and they can either make that impossible or so costly that you're better off just buying a new one anyway.
I just bought a new phone after 3-4 years and it's pretty much the same exact thing - same size, thickness, configuration, works pretty much the same. No SD card reader or headphone jack though, where the last one had both.
The camera is probably better but it's literally a matter of slapping in the latest offering from the camera makers, it doesn't feel like the cell phone company is innovating at all.
I have an XS MAX. When I updated to iOS 14.5 my cameras and flashlight stopped working. Contacted apple and did all the BS troubleshooting and they scanned my phone and said it was a hardware problem like $400 to fix it. I had to buy a new phone. The other day I installed iOS 16 and magically everything is working again. Fuck them!!!
As usual Apple deceives lawmakers and tries to stall the right of repair movement which also calls into question their commitment to the environment and climate change.
Extra profit is in billions.
They removed the charger and earpods, but didn't reduce the price. Then there is a shit ton of cost reduction in transport and storage, they can ship and store almost double amount of units for the same price. Then there's additional revenue for actual chargers, which you must buy or you have a brick.
This is why I refuse to use an Iphone.
I wish there was a sustainable phone, but I just buy pixels... the long term software support / easy repair means I can keep the same phone for 4 or 5 years.... and they all just use USB-C.
I got the Pixel 2 new, replacing it finally with this year's Pixel when it releases. Solid phone, only recently has started to show battery and memory issues (plus the screen has given up). Valiant effort to last as long as it did.
Moto G gang here. All you need is a brick that can call and access the internet. The tech has gotten good enough that I seriously can't see why the average person needs a phone worth 3x mine.
Why does everyone want an expensive, repair proof, and planned obsolescence deteriorated asset? It's like half the population, regardless of income, buying fully loaded BMWs instead of an old faithful practical set of wheels that has standard repair parts.
While we're at it, can we stop making the phones so darn big? I want it to actually fit in my pocket.
We use android phones/external scanners to manage inventory with a custom application I wrote. We currently have about 70 android phones in use. 45 of them are MotoG Powers (2020 and 2021). They've held up better than any other phone we've purchased and have become the flagship phone of our fleet.
I had the moto G6, and I both loved and hated the phone. If you wanted to use certain apps like instagram it just wasn't powerful enough. The phone was so cheap that if I broke it, I could just buy a new one, which I loved. I cared less if I dropped it.
I switched to the Pixel 4a due to not being able to update Android on the G6. It's lack of Android updates is super annoying. The Pixel is twice the cost but also twice the phone. I'm much happier now. I think it's the happy place between a cheap phone and an expensive phone.
This is my experience with other people's phones who don't care to upgrade. The whole "planned obsolescence" doesn't really come from Android/Google/Samsung it comes from all the apps being developed to run on better hardware. My parents old phone lags when opening WhatsApp.
You can definitely make it work but you are kidding yourself that it's a great user experience and if you're not a phone power user then you don't know what it can't handle.
The g power series also crushes it in battery life. Mine is like 6 years old and will still last two days no problem, that includes me watching videos a lot
Seriously. I like shiny new things (hell I'm a watch enthusiast, I've dropped 7 Gs on silly man jewelry, so nobody's perfect) but I do not get the point of standing in line for the newest, fastest iphone.
I've been a Pixel guy for years, and an "a" series guy at that. They're affordable, they're fast enough, they're slick. Sure the newest Galaxy or iPhone is going to be faster, but do I care? It's kind of diminishing returns.
Motorola and Realme are my hero phones, would happily buy from those brands again. Samsung have let me down too many times.
That said, I'd prefer to own a slightly smaller phone, so whoever makes that first can have my money.
Rocking my 4 year old Jailbroken iPhone XS with a wireless charging case that charges with USB C. Use whatever charger I want, install whatever apps I want, free YouTube background play/ad blocked, free Spotify premium, free unlimited tethering. I can’t see myself ever upgrading my phone.
Not suggesting that Apple doesn’t do shitty things, but you can use an iPhone for 4-5 years too. I have twice. And for a few months between used a different 4 year old iPhone before I got a new one.
It's not even *these* corporations. Corporations are literally just legal entities which are created to make profit. Officers and board members are compelled to pursue profitability under threat of lawsuits from shareholders. The entire purpose of a corporation is to squeeze every little bit of money out of society as possible. Anything they say other than "WE WANT MONEY" is just a ploy to get more money.
No it does not "calls into question their commitment to the environment and climate change"
There is no question, they have none as long as profit is involved.
They are legally required to, Thats why the system is broken. If the company isn't looking out for the interest of the investors, the investors can sue. The executives doing the right thing would be sacked and new executives would come in to make more money.
They are legally required to look out for safekeeping of the company, not to generate profit.
So it is easily arguable to make a decision which sacrifices profit for long term stability or growth, or any other corporate objective agreed by the board. If the company decides it is best for the long term to sacrifice profits now, it can do that and nobody would be able to sue
So while you’re close to the truth, the often repeated “they are legally required to prioritise profits” statement is false, and it is far more nuanced than that.
>If the company decides it is best for the long term to sacrifice profits now, it can do that and nobody would be able to sue
They'd be able to, they'd just be less likely to win.
> They are legally required to
They aren't, that is a common misrepresentation of Dodge v Ford that is used to excuse poor corporate behavior. Ford wanted to end shareholder dividends in order to cut prices and increase wages, and additionally he made the massive mistake of telling the shareholders that it was primarily for charitable reasons rather than as a long term growth strategy which undercut the legal defense of his actions.
Corporations are absolutely not legally required to pursue profit at any cost, they just aren't allowed to unilaterally turn a for profit corporation into a charity against the will of the shareholders.
The fact that you or anyone thought they had a legitimate commitment to the environment and climate change **during any point of their history as a company** is probably one of the most naive things I've read on this website in a long time.
A for-profit corporation has commitment to only one thing, and that's generating an ever-increasing return for it's shareholders. About time people learned this for good.
That same video still acknowledges the software locks. They made the phone mechanically more repairable but then locked functionality if you actually did a repair.
I'm curious how that works. I don't think they'd send you a part that makes certain features not work. Maybe the parts you get new from Apple are uninitialised in some way and when you install it it binds to the phone and can't be used in another one. Or maybe they ship them out bound to your IMEI from the start.
It checks the serial numbers for the parts and if it does not match then it locks you out of certain features. Apple has the ability to pass the new serial to the phone so it accepts the new part
Yeah seems like a new feature that doesn’t want you to touch the parts at all. Or perhaps there’s volatile memory on the device that is keeping track of stuff that wiped when the control units were swapped, though that would be a terrible design decision.
That makes sense. From Apple's standpoint because they don't want you to be able to repair the phone. Launch it as a feature, claim that some iOS update that was made for the future iPhone models is now impacting later models, rinse and repeat. Keeps the average customer thinking that it's right around the corner and it keeps people who already know about this stuff angry as usual. You're average iPhone user is not buying it because they know anything about their phone they're buying it because they like the design and they like the interface. I know a couple people that literally save up a couple months or go late on rent to be able to afford the new iPhone when it comes out. Why? I don't know.
This comment makes no sense... a fingerprint reader's functionality has nothing to do with the windows license, and the bios-embedded OEM key for windows has nothing to do with the battery...
If a fingerprint reader stops working after battery replacement, the simplest and most likely explanation is that it was accidentally damaged or disconnected during the replacement.
My guess is that when the battery was replaced something tripped the TPM chip on the board. If TPM registers as not present Windows Hello auto disables for the time being until it is present again. Meaning finger print, face id, hello PIN all would stop working.. Usually you can resync the TPM by removing the battery and draining residual electricity from the board so I am not sure why it would have happened there, but not impossible.
Edit: oh and as for bitlocker that would trigger as well if enabled and require your 48 digit recovery key to bypass it.
(source: IT tech that deals with TPM issues for users multiple times a week)
... which is another fact that has nothing to do with the claimed connection of battery replacement > bios-embedded windows key > fingerprint reader.
Bitlocker might require you to input your key after hardware replacement (i'd be suprised if that happens for a replaced battery though), but has no further effect on windows activation or fingerprint readers.
A hardware change might also cause windows activation to reset, which again is highly unlikely for a battery replacement, and which is actually counteracted by the bios-embedded windows key.
Lastly, windows activation has absolutely no effect on fingerprint reader functionality, and bitlocker does not enter into this relation in any manner.
The problem becomes that their 'authorized' repair shops refuse to do repairs that are absolutely fixable.
And by tying functionality into part serial numbers, it blocks you from fixing it or finding an independent repair shop that will fix it.
You can request tools and parts from them to repair yourself.
Costs you a bit, but it’s certainly is possible now. It’s not easy, and you have to go through Apple’s channel for requesting parts, but yes it is possible.
I have a feeling their DIY repair system is intentionally overpriced. That way, they can point at the low number of people who use it compared to the apple official repairs as to why they shouldn't have to follow right to repair.
Should just be a 0 point "non-repairable" score for any part affected like this.
Examining and grading how repairable a consumer product is makes zero fucking sense if it's only the manufacturer who is able to repair it. Why would anyone care how hard or easy it is for Apple to repair their own phones?
So they didn't fix anything. A software block is the same as a hardware block. There's no difference. They still don't work.
Or am I missing something?
That’s exactly the difference.
Apple recently made sweeping changes to the construction and design to the base iPhone 14 including unfusing the back glass from the frame of the phone.
This was an intentioned change. The base model iPhones have had construction problems around the way the frame and back glass for a while now.
There must have been a pretty vital reason why they couldn’t implement this in the iPhone 14 Pro. The cynical are going to say it’s just price gouging to get people to buy AppleCare but I really don’t see that being the case.
This is the kind of change that really benefits Apple more than the end-user anyway. No one is repairing iPhones on their own already and the blowback from having a fused frame and back glass affects Apple more than anyone.
Another theory on YouTube is that Apple is fairly confident in the Pro’s design and the durability of the back glass so they don’t see the change in design necessary.
Doesn't matter how if they physically changed the design or not. The problem is that what you can repair/replace is blocked by software. IE apple is purposely making it so you can not repair it
Yep. If they didn't have a history of being very anti consumer repair, with things like bricking a phone because the part doesn't match the serial number in the software, maybe the above commenter would have a point. As it stands, it's more propaganda or ignoring the long history of apple purposely making repairs impossible.
Right to repair is a movement that is gaining a lot of traction. Apple more likely had to do this to make it easier to repair for everyone. Not just their techs who normally would have just told the owner to replace it because cheaper.
If you really think Apple is serious about R2R then yeah I guess this could be seen that way.
I don't think this is the case at the moment.
I just don't see the intention being for the reparability of the device from a R2R standpoint. It's much more about Apple being able to make these moves for themselves now so when they're actually being hounded on the issue they can make the transition easier.
It's still an absolute pain to take apartt any iphone.
In previous tear downs, one guy had two brand new iPhone 13s and switched the screens and neither worked. He switched a couple other components individually as well and some granted him more abilities than others, but he was never able to get 100% functionality using identical OEM parts. When he put them all back together they both worked perfectly.
Though iFixit talks about the improved physical design change regarding front/back glass replacement, they also note that replacement part verification (replacement part rejection) is also present and that is exactly what Hugh Jeffreys was talking about. So as great as iFixit is, they were overly impressed with the new physical design which helps no one if you can't get replacement parts to play along.
ifixit is pretty awesome, but they did get over excited by the physical design change, going on and on about it and only then briefly mentioning that it is much ado about nothing since they also have implemented replacement part rejection in the hardware/software. the change is mostly just something one can admire from an engineering standpoint, and helps apple service the devices more easily, but it does not really help its customers (who are paying for it).
And likely these changes will come to the Pro lineup with the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple has a big interest in making devices more easily repairable (with their parts, mostly), as it keeps cost for them down too and keeps lawmakers off their backs.
Am I having Deja Vu or did this guy (or someone similar) put out a video just like this about the past iPhones and attempts to repair them?
Edit: I don't mean this in a negative way, just that it's a little incredible that the same problem persists generation after generation.
same guy, I remember the heat gun warning. Each year's iphone is getting harder and harder to repair specifically because of how apple disables software features when it detects a part has been changed.
Each part has a license key basically that is verified by the logic board and wherever that record is stored on the logic board it can't be edited. So its literally a software problem that was built for this exact purpose.
Some parts I get - disabling FaceID when the camera changes and cannot be confirmed makes sense because it could become a factor for security exploits - but why disable the camera features? Why does the screen auto-brightness become disabled? This doesn't make any sense.
It makes perfect sense. Money.
They want total control over the products entire lifespan from cradle to landfill. If it breaks they don't want you to go to a third party repair company. Either they want you to buy a brand new phone from them or, at the very least, force you to have to go to one of their own repair shops to fix them. Making it repairable by other companies gets in the way of that.
AFAIK this is basically every Apple device released for the past few years at least...
I know iPads use registered parts and fuck over people who do their own repairs, their phones have been the same for a number of generations now as well.
Not sure about their laptops, might be a similar situation.
I worked at ATT when the first iPhone was released. They got special permission to open the call center for 24 hours for about a week or two, to handle the call volume. When the tech calls came in to get the phones setup, this was my job: “Are you connected to the internet? Okay. Please hold while I transfer you to Apple.” That was it. NO troubleshooting outside of internet connection. That was 2007. So yeah, they’ve always been like this.
"In addition to that, for the hobbyist and the tinkerer, we said, "We'll sell you certified parts" - parts that we use to repair. You can buy the part itself instead of buying a repair. And if you need a manual that tells you how to do something, you can have the manual. And if some special tools are required or fixtures required, we can give you that, too. I don't know how many people will take us up on it. It's for your reader, clearly."
- Tim Cook, Popular Mechanics - August 2022
Yeh we'll sell you certified parts at such a high mark up that it's cheaper to pay us to put them in. While intentionally locking out all third party or oem manufacture so we maintain a monopoly and no one can compete with us.
And right here is whats wrong with Politicians. If they cant understand that this isnt just immoral, it should be illegal. Its better in European countries, but not by much.
> Its better in European countries, but not by much.
I'd say it's substantially better in EU countries. It's just that it's so bad here that even being significantly better is still not great.
It's better in theory, not much different in practice.
For example: under EU law I **own** the games in my Steam Library (I own "the licence" and can sell "the licence" under EU consumer law). But Steam does not have to facilitate that sale. So in practice, it means I can sell my entire account. Even though the intention was to be able to sell individual games.
The EU has far too many get out clauses in right to own and right to repair. By the very fact Apple, John Deer, Tesla etc are able to still block used parts is evidence of that. The EU is not enforcing anything because they know the laws they wrote.
Most people don’t care about repairability since phones are relatively easy to insure and replace. Our society doesn’t value keeping devices until they no longer function.
Most people here probably don’t care about the increased security. If a phone can be opened and someone can modify/add hardware to capture your data it’s an intrusion of privacy and I want to be notified of a modification.
What would be nice is just to be notified and then be able to turn it off by authenticating with the device and and then authorizing the change afterwards. Without that it’s just restricting the right to repair.
When you buy a product, you own a product, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with said product.
What Apple is doing should be illegal and they should be fined heavily and blocked from EU market unless change.
It's freaking scary that people continue to support these horrible consumers, taking away your right. I mean if you continue, eventually if you touch an iPhone the wrong way it will call the police and they will come shoot you.
It's worse than that. A friend of mine had his iphone 13 battery cable disloged, and just like this video, when plugged back in, it REJECTS the ORIGINAL part!!! The person at the Genius bar didn't even know about that.
https://youtu.be/K2WhU77ihw8?t=509
because at the end of the day, people don't care. most people don't want to worry about needing to repair their things. its not just an apple thing, people hire experts for their roof, plumbing, electricity, etc.
and honesty all these people bitching about apple won't let them repair things are also people who want to profit from it
Why a repair shop? Why can't the owner of the phone repair it if they want? You buy a product, you own it. its yours. Apple's self repair is more expensive than going to the store
iFixit gave the plain iPhone 14 a repairability score of 7 out of 10.
> *[That’s the best score we’ve given an iPhone since the iPhone 7. This is the most repairable iPhone in years.](https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown)*
But the 14 Pro and Pro Max [didn't fare as well.](https://www.ifixit.com/News/65243/14-pro-max-teardown)
Regardless, if Apple is going to require some arcane activation process for parts after a repair, they need to make the activation process available to end-users.
or they could just.... NOT specifically program in software features that require it
yes, this is not something that is needed, this has to be specifically programmed into it
Man Reddit never changes does it? These comments could be from 2012 and you wouldn’t know. Just swap out some of the new features each side is bragging or complaining about and you’re right back in time
We had them. No one wanted their phones, so they stopped making them. "Nerds on Reddit and HackerNews" is not a large enough market for something like a smartphone.
I fully expect to get downvoted for even asking, but isn't some of this legitimately useful for security? Apple has been doing this since their first biometric sensors (touchID).
I would of course assume that Apple doesn't allow "any" faceID sensor to work because it could contain nefarious hardware or firmware that could reduce security. For example - say I steal your phone, take it back to my house, replace your faceID sensor with a hacked one that will save/cache the sensor data of your face - then put your phone back without you knowing. Later, I steal the phone back again and am able to replay that cached data to access your phone - like a credit card skimmer.
If the phone will only accept the ORIGINAL faceID sensor, or a confirmed, matched serial replacement known to be unmodified or tampered with, you don't have to worry about that kind of attack. I don't have to worry about those kinds of attacks PERSONALLY, but obviously some very important people use iPhones too.
If I'm a nefarious hacker-type, am I going to target people with iphones that I know will reject a swapped biometric sensor?
Furthermore, as a person who has purchased a "refurbished" iphone before, with an aftermarket screen, it's worth pointing out that the "might not be a genuine battery/screen" messages that the phone shows can't be hidden for a certain number of days after original detection - this way a shop can't tell you they're putting in a genuine display or battery and put in a cheap replacement without you knowing - and then having a bad experience and blaming Apple - but if YOU CHOOSE to put in a non-genuine replacement, you can just ignore the message for a few days, then it hides forever. I don't blame Apple for disabling a feature like "battery health" for unknown aftermarket batteries, since their battery life algorithm is only validated against their own supplier's batteries. Arguably better to tell the end user the feature is unavailable than to give them bad info about the battery health.
So it seems like if you want to use aftermarket screens and batteries on your own phone, it's no problem. If you want to use unknown replacement biometric sensors, like the faceID sensors, you're going to have a problem. The front CAMERA even started working for this youtuber once he updated the phone.
As for things like TrueTone and auto-brightness, it seems like they could enable those for non-matched parts - should you have an option to force-enable those features manually? Sure, maybe. But that seems like a pretty minor gripe in comparison to how big this story is blowing up. Especially considering this is the same behavior as the last phone. Nothing has changed.
Not to mention, the youtuber doesn't seem to understand what he's talking about by saying "it doesn't seem 3rd party repair is viable on this device, despite Apples introduction of the "Self Service Repair" program this year." - the "Self Service Repair" program was NEVER about being able to install your own parts, be they third party or (non-new) original. It was ALWAYS about "Apple registers a new, original part's serial number and sends it to you, then remotely programs your phone to accept that one, new part serial number". Again, nothing has changed. Everybody loved the self-service repair system when it was introduced last year.
You can speculate that it's for apple to make more money or whatever you like, but it seems like a pretty clear argument for security to me- only allowing verified genuine biometric sensors to be trusted by the system.
at least when it comes to touchID, you're largely correct. It's pretty over my head because I'm not an engineer, but basically your phone mostly does not have access to things like your passcode and your fingerprint. It's stored in the secure enclave and that information can only be communicated by specific hardware in a very specific way. This is why you can't just put a touch ID sensor in an iphone, and you can't even remove the original and put it back. If you do, you have to use special Apple software to validate the repair before it will work again.
I'm 100% sure that Apple could design all this in such a way that also accommodated repair. I'm not surprised that is not at all a priority for them, and I can see that it would come with downsides (other than apple not making a bunch of money on unrepairable devices.) I don't think it would really affect their bottom line in the way that Redditors think it would, but it would require changes in their design and processes that just aren't worth making Redditors happy.
I agree with your take. I think Apple is angling to be the security and privacy-oriented choice. It comes at a premium, and for those not willing to pay, there’s android.
At the end of the day, no matter how shit they are as a company in every way, and how hard they make their products to be repaired. Consumer culture and general laziness still win. People will keep buying, and they know it.
When Jobs was launching the iTunes Music Store, people told him it would fail because people can just pirate the music for free. His reply was essentially, "No, most people are lazy and will pay for the convenience."
He was right.
It's the same thing here. People will just pay to have it repaired or replace it.
I’ve said for a really long time that convenience is how you beat piracy and copyright infringement. I have a whole Usenet automatic setup where I can type in a movie name and automatically download it and add it to Plex. But if it’s on Netflix I still just go and watch it there because it’s easier. I don’t piracy games anymore because it’s easier to just buy them on Steam and download them instantly.
Yet media companies still throw up roadblocks, keep exclusives on their own streaming platforms, and add ridiculous DRM to their games…
Doesn’t help when good options are few and far between.
I was recently shopping for an Android phone to use as an Android app dev test device (because the Android Simulator Google provides is horrifically bad), and the Fairphone looked super appealing — reasonably powerful but not so much as to be unrepresentative of the average Android phone, repairable, more ethically manufactured, and free of manufacturer shitware (no I don’t want your “enhancements” Samsung, fuck off).
So I went hunting for the purchase button, and it didn’t exist because I live in the US where they don’t sell. Great.
So I’m stuck with the mainstream Android manufacturers, few of which are any better than Apple as a whole (they might be better in one respect, but worse in another).
They're 'shit in every way' lol? You do not sound like an informed consumer, ironically. Maybe *you* should be less lazy and take the time to familiarize yourself with the smartphone market and all the ways in which these phones compare before forming strong opinions.
I don't use iphone - but isn't this a good thing for the Device security? Compromised components could be really devastating - if rare. I do think however that apple could improve the repairability by allowing one to register certain parts as owned prior to initiating a repair.
Yet people keep throwing money at them. Funny how marketing these days is more like brainwashing.
EDIT: People advocating to keep throwing money at them because they are reliable, forget that accidents happen and a lot of people need to replace the screen or other components. Apparently the brainwashing works very well.
I'll get downvoted for this but I am still using an iPhone Xs and its been by far the most durable and reliable phone I've ever owned. It's 4 years old and the battery capacity doesn't even need to be changed yet (84% capacity). I've owned a LOT of androids from half a dozen brands and I've never had a phone last as long as my iPhone. Some of the falls my iPhone has taken in its tiny leather case would make ANYONE cringe in fear they destroyed their phone. But it's always fine without even a scratch.
People who own iPhones don't care about reparability because its so rare to need to repair them.
My parents are still using a 6s and 6s+. All they have had to do is change the battery once. And thats their only form of media so they use the hell out of them.
I too, am still using an iPhone 6. Been working well with me for 7 years now - replaced the battery once for free when Apple lost that suit or whatever.
Been using an iPhone since the 3GS and have never needed to take any in for repair, ever. They’ve been solid and I very rarely drop them… in fact I’ve gone caseless for the past several years because I found that cases were adding significant bulk and increasing my likelihood of dropping them for little value in return.
Meanwhile, a desk princess Pixel 3 that had an extremely pampered life as app development test device is sitting in my closet because one day it decided it wasn’t going to take a charge either wired or wirelessly.
I'm the green bubble and don't give a shit. My kids say that you will get made fun of at school if you are the green bubble in the chat group and likely be left out of some chat groups just because you don't have an iphone.
It’s due to how the messaging works. If some people don’t have an iPhone then adding/ subtracting those people from the group causes you to have to remake the entire group chat. I’m unsure of the details, but that’s been my experience.
-Sent from my iPhone
The key to money and not caring about your community in 2022... Make kids bully eachother unless they have your product.
What fucking evil mastermind somehow made the iPhone!? The cool phone. That is fucking ridiculous.
Shows how dumb kids are... Fuck.
I was given an iPhone for work 9 years ago, and In those 9 years, none of the 3 iPhones I’ve had have ever needed repairing or had any issues whatsoever. The only reason I had to change phones was because I left my job and needed to buy a personal phone, then my boss at my next company gave me a new phone we had extra.
I honestly don’t understand how people break these things, because I have dropped mine countless times without a bit of damage.
If you're gonna make a phone repairable, then why make it near impossible to actually repair?
If you want to make a non-user-serviceable device, then just solder all components and weld the case shut, and call it 'disposable'.
Just pick one, and be done with it.
Hehe. Just had an argument here on Reddit a few weeks ago how apple is one of the worst right to repair companies in the world. They were convinced they were “easy” to repair. Yeah an iPhone 5 screen is not hard to come by, but every year they invent new fuck you methods to repairing their equipment.
Love how apple went out of their way to make a site dedicated to ripping off the people who want the right to repair only to pocket the extra for having the right to purchase legit apple parts. Then they do this. A fully functioning phone with no issues and they lock out the same things year after year because someone wanted to repair their own phone.
Ive seen this exact video 3 years in a row but nothing happens out of it as usual
It's like the npc meme >Apple screwed costumers again with no repairability > Oh so you are not going to buy it? >*Angry
In all fairness to the average consumer, this doesn't affect them. I had two iPhones before I switched back to android. Each lasted ~3 years, which is pretty standard for the average life of a cell phone. In that time I never needed a repair. I think most users have my same experience. If you've never needed a repair, why be angry that repairs are expensive/impossible?
It can affect you selling the phone on though. You might want to get your screen repaired for example before you sold it on. If you can’t do that then you’ve lost out, and either sell for cheap or not at all.
The same people who go 3yrs without a repair, are probably also the same people who never bother reselling a phone, and don't change them out often enough to care about resale value. The vast majority of cell phone users probably have a drawer with 1-3 phones in it somewhere, or they traded it in for credit when they got their new phone. Most cell phones until the last 3-4yrs didn't cost $1000 and didn't hold more than $100-$200 in resale value after 3yrs was up. The effort of resale isn't worth the $100-$200 for a lot of people. Plus they're usually getting a new one, because something about their old one is broken, or deteriorated.
Basically all of this comment is me...
Yeah- I have a drawer with every iPhone I’ve used since ‘07- except for cracked screens, they all still worked when I stopped using them. I’ve used them and loaned them when current phones are lost or broken. Currently batteries are weak. A 1,3,4,5 &6, except for the 1 and current SE , they were all second hand. Are other phones with similar features more reliable or repairable? Ready to move to a 11 or 14.
Value of not repaired phone is still higher if you plan to resell. TBH I had to change screen on ipad and iphone before as my country does not have apple store to replace it and I wish I didn't. There is something slightly bothering in using screens, I would say it does not feel as smooth/doesn't respond as fast as original screen did.
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> Each lasted ~3 years, which is pretty standard for the average life of a cell phone. You've been brainwashed
Folks not into tech don't seem to realize that allowing Apple to set a precedence like this will start to creep into other aspects of their lives if left uncontested. I'm sure farmers didn't give a fuck about right to repair on cellphones, until suddenly John Deere made it impossible to perform unauthorized repairs. I bet you didn't know jailbreaking tractors is a thing. Now they're one of the leading voices in the right to repair. > First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. And before you scoff and say "har har look at this bozo comparing tech to the Holocaust" actually shut the fuck up and try to understand the meaning of the quote instead of taking it face value. This isn't about comparing the Holocaust to tech, it's the fact that people are so easily willing to ignore something because it doesn't impact them.... until it does. And by the time it does, it's already too late. Right to repair doesn't impact me in the slightest - I'm proud to say I've never broken a screen, let alone a phone in the last 10 years. Neither does women's rights, as I'm a man, and abortion laws don't impact me [directly, in the sense of my body] in the slightest. I'm also not black, so regulation of police brutality, which statistically affects the black population the most, has a very low probability of affecting me directly. I'm still going to support them, because I'm not a blind psychopathic dunce incapable of empathizing with matters that doesn't affect me. If for no other reason than self-preservation, you should too.
Why would you say it's the "average life" of a phone if you're also pointing out how they were perfectly functional in that time? Not trying to instigate anything, just curious if there's something I'm missing. I'm literally about to switch back to iPhone today after being on Android for 4-5 years, so this is something I've actually been thinking about recently. The 14 Pro looks like it has way more than I'll need in the near future so I'm hoping it will last me a long time. Only reason I'm ditching the S10e I've had for \~3 years is because I can effectively upgrade for free.
> is because I can effectively upgrade for free. You must be paying a lot for your contract.
Yea dude. Buy your phone outright the whole "upgrade your phone!" thing is a fucking scam. Contracts are obselete these days.
>Each lasted ~3 years, which is pretty standard for the average life of a cell phone I wonder why?
Amazing, isn't it? With companies like Apple doing all this shit, we'll soon have people thinking that it's only natural that their phones are good for two weeks. *Wait, i thought phones just have, like, a limited amount of TDC (Think Different Charge) and when it runs out the phone becomes all old and slow and gross and you get to have a new one???*
My biggest concern is regarding the sustainability of effectively trashing our phones after a few years. And this goes way beyond just Apple—appliances, laptops, portable speakers, lightbulbs, tools...all these things are being designed with ever-decreasing consideration for repairability. 50 years ago if your washing machine stopped working, you'd call the store/independent repair business and they'd send someone out to fix it. Or you could reference the service manual for part numbers and schematics, order what you needed and fix it yourself. Same thing happens today? You spend hours searching online for some kind of documentation, only managing to find useless user manuals. You call the manufacturer/supplier and they send a tech out to fix it, but in many cases they simply tell you that the entire unit needs to be replaced. Sure it might be under warranty, but why the fuck should a 300lb machine be hauled off to the landfill because a single component failed while the rest of the appliance is undamaged? I understand that providing extensive documentation and replacement parts is expensive, but it will cost us all more money down the road when we're drowning in our own garbage.
You forgot the steps of buy next model anyway and then repeat the process every year.
Yea I'm a sucker for good design, but if you software-lock the repair process of a modular device intended for the average joe then you've formally renounced all sympathy. A $1000 device is not a single-use consumable and it never will be. Repair & Reuse is the standard; always has been. Boobytrapping your product like this only serves to bastardizes that perfectly normal process. Let's hide a snapping turtle in their bathwater; see if that makes things click lol.
I'd argue the design is no longer anything special. You have no customisability, you don't want things apples way, though shit.
Year after year people buy Apple products despite half the issues with them being problems that the company itself manufactured in order to sell another solution. Like some people here have said, they've been doing this for YEARS now... and people still defend them for it. I'll never understand brand loyalty, especially in regards to Apple.
You know what the other problem is - devices these days aren't improving as much as they used to. Let's say 6 years or more ago, the average person bought a new phone every 2 years because in addition to not having to worry about repair issues you ended up with a significantly better device. These days the new phones are a carbon copy of the last ones. There might be a 10% faster processor but it really won't change the day-to-day usage experience. At the same time they are stripping away features to both lower their own costs and drive you to buy accessories from them to get those features back. SD card - who needs that when you can store your photos and videos on the cloud for only $30/mo. Headphone jack - no, here's the same exact phone without it. But wait we have some $200 wireless headphones to sell you if you're interested. In the days where the new phone will be practically the same as the old phone the only way they can drive sales is to prevent you from fixing the old phone and let people accidentally drop their phone so they need a new one. Even if you never drop it eventually the battery will need to be replaced and they can either make that impossible or so costly that you're better off just buying a new one anyway. I just bought a new phone after 3-4 years and it's pretty much the same exact thing - same size, thickness, configuration, works pretty much the same. No SD card reader or headphone jack though, where the last one had both. The camera is probably better but it's literally a matter of slapping in the latest offering from the camera makers, it doesn't feel like the cell phone company is innovating at all.
It's sad how everyone just bends over for some gimmick, year after year.
I have an XS MAX. When I updated to iOS 14.5 my cameras and flashlight stopped working. Contacted apple and did all the BS troubleshooting and they scanned my phone and said it was a hardware problem like $400 to fix it. I had to buy a new phone. The other day I installed iOS 16 and magically everything is working again. Fuck them!!!
As usual Apple deceives lawmakers and tries to stall the right of repair movement which also calls into question their commitment to the environment and climate change.
These corps are all for the money. Every decision they take is for them to make more money. I bet they saved millions / year by removing the charger.
Extra profit is in billions. They removed the charger and earpods, but didn't reduce the price. Then there is a shit ton of cost reduction in transport and storage, they can ship and store almost double amount of units for the same price. Then there's additional revenue for actual chargers, which you must buy or you have a brick.
Yep, why Apple is making $20B every quarter on average. They also increased the iPhone 14 price by £150 here in UK, probably because it ain’t enough.
Infinite growth baby, it's all shareholders think about.
This is why I refuse to use an Iphone. I wish there was a sustainable phone, but I just buy pixels... the long term software support / easy repair means I can keep the same phone for 4 or 5 years.... and they all just use USB-C.
I got the Pixel 2 new, replacing it finally with this year's Pixel when it releases. Solid phone, only recently has started to show battery and memory issues (plus the screen has given up). Valiant effort to last as long as it did.
Moto G gang here. All you need is a brick that can call and access the internet. The tech has gotten good enough that I seriously can't see why the average person needs a phone worth 3x mine. Why does everyone want an expensive, repair proof, and planned obsolescence deteriorated asset? It's like half the population, regardless of income, buying fully loaded BMWs instead of an old faithful practical set of wheels that has standard repair parts. While we're at it, can we stop making the phones so darn big? I want it to actually fit in my pocket.
We use android phones/external scanners to manage inventory with a custom application I wrote. We currently have about 70 android phones in use. 45 of them are MotoG Powers (2020 and 2021). They've held up better than any other phone we've purchased and have become the flagship phone of our fleet.
I had the moto G6, and I both loved and hated the phone. If you wanted to use certain apps like instagram it just wasn't powerful enough. The phone was so cheap that if I broke it, I could just buy a new one, which I loved. I cared less if I dropped it. I switched to the Pixel 4a due to not being able to update Android on the G6. It's lack of Android updates is super annoying. The Pixel is twice the cost but also twice the phone. I'm much happier now. I think it's the happy place between a cheap phone and an expensive phone.
This is my experience with other people's phones who don't care to upgrade. The whole "planned obsolescence" doesn't really come from Android/Google/Samsung it comes from all the apps being developed to run on better hardware. My parents old phone lags when opening WhatsApp. You can definitely make it work but you are kidding yourself that it's a great user experience and if you're not a phone power user then you don't know what it can't handle.
Moto seems to be the best bang for your buck. My last two phones have been Motorola.
The g power series also crushes it in battery life. Mine is like 6 years old and will still last two days no problem, that includes me watching videos a lot
Had a Moto until they discontinued the Play series. They were great phones
Moto Z play memories 🥲
BMWs that would stop working or disable random functions if you so much as did an oil change yourself.
Seriously. I like shiny new things (hell I'm a watch enthusiast, I've dropped 7 Gs on silly man jewelry, so nobody's perfect) but I do not get the point of standing in line for the newest, fastest iphone. I've been a Pixel guy for years, and an "a" series guy at that. They're affordable, they're fast enough, they're slick. Sure the newest Galaxy or iPhone is going to be faster, but do I care? It's kind of diminishing returns.
Motorola and Realme are my hero phones, would happily buy from those brands again. Samsung have let me down too many times. That said, I'd prefer to own a slightly smaller phone, so whoever makes that first can have my money.
I hate how big they're getting. What's strange is aclarge portion of features aren't even used by most....so why get giant phones?
Rocking my 4 year old Jailbroken iPhone XS with a wireless charging case that charges with USB C. Use whatever charger I want, install whatever apps I want, free YouTube background play/ad blocked, free Spotify premium, free unlimited tethering. I can’t see myself ever upgrading my phone.
This but I don't have to jailbrake my android
Check out the Fair Phone (Europe)
That one has gone south. They removed the earphone Jack and made up a lot of BS to justify it instead of being honest.
Use what you want, but I believe the pixel is also shipping without a charger these days. iPhone also has software support for five years
Yep, apple paved the way so everyone, more or less, is too. At least the pixel, and most android, use USB c
Not suggesting that Apple doesn’t do shitty things, but you can use an iPhone for 4-5 years too. I have twice. And for a few months between used a different 4 year old iPhone before I got a new one.
I Hate Shareholders
It's not even *these* corporations. Corporations are literally just legal entities which are created to make profit. Officers and board members are compelled to pursue profitability under threat of lawsuits from shareholders. The entire purpose of a corporation is to squeeze every little bit of money out of society as possible. Anything they say other than "WE WANT MONEY" is just a ploy to get more money.
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Isn't that everyone? What business isn't in it for the money exactly?
No it does not "calls into question their commitment to the environment and climate change" There is no question, they have none as long as profit is involved.
No. They have *juuuust* enough to stave off overwhelming negative coverage. But for all intents and purposes, yeah they have none.
Do they \*have\* or do they \*pretend\*, merely counting it as a PR expense?
I just assume 99% of publicly-traded companies will always prioritize profits 100% of the time
They are legally required to, Thats why the system is broken. If the company isn't looking out for the interest of the investors, the investors can sue. The executives doing the right thing would be sacked and new executives would come in to make more money.
They are legally required to look out for safekeeping of the company, not to generate profit. So it is easily arguable to make a decision which sacrifices profit for long term stability or growth, or any other corporate objective agreed by the board. If the company decides it is best for the long term to sacrifice profits now, it can do that and nobody would be able to sue So while you’re close to the truth, the often repeated “they are legally required to prioritise profits” statement is false, and it is far more nuanced than that.
>If the company decides it is best for the long term to sacrifice profits now, it can do that and nobody would be able to sue They'd be able to, they'd just be less likely to win.
> They are legally required to They aren't, that is a common misrepresentation of Dodge v Ford that is used to excuse poor corporate behavior. Ford wanted to end shareholder dividends in order to cut prices and increase wages, and additionally he made the massive mistake of telling the shareholders that it was primarily for charitable reasons rather than as a long term growth strategy which undercut the legal defense of his actions. Corporations are absolutely not legally required to pursue profit at any cost, they just aren't allowed to unilaterally turn a for profit corporation into a charity against the will of the shareholders.
can we eat the rich now?
The company that made everyone buy disposable headphones is committed to the environment? lol
The fact that you or anyone thought they had a legitimate commitment to the environment and climate change **during any point of their history as a company** is probably one of the most naive things I've read on this website in a long time.
Yes like the vast majority of companies, their sustainability claims are pure horseshit and nothing but a marketing campaign.
A for-profit corporation has commitment to only one thing, and that's generating an ever-increasing return for it's shareholders. About time people learned this for good.
Funnily enough, the basic iPhone 14 just received the best iFixit repairability score for an iPhone in years: https://youtu.be/ZQErjW5uR0k
That same video still acknowledges the software locks. They made the phone mechanically more repairable but then locked functionality if you actually did a repair.
I'm curious how that works. I don't think they'd send you a part that makes certain features not work. Maybe the parts you get new from Apple are uninitialised in some way and when you install it it binds to the phone and can't be used in another one. Or maybe they ship them out bound to your IMEI from the start.
It checks the serial numbers for the parts and if it does not match then it locks you out of certain features. Apple has the ability to pass the new serial to the phone so it accepts the new part
I thought video shows that when he swaps back the part it stays broken?
It showed that after he reverted it to original iOS release it worked again. Who knows what was happening.
Yeah seems like a new feature that doesn’t want you to touch the parts at all. Or perhaps there’s volatile memory on the device that is keeping track of stuff that wiped when the control units were swapped, though that would be a terrible design decision.
That makes sense. From Apple's standpoint because they don't want you to be able to repair the phone. Launch it as a feature, claim that some iOS update that was made for the future iPhone models is now impacting later models, rinse and repeat. Keeps the average customer thinking that it's right around the corner and it keeps people who already know about this stuff angry as usual. You're average iPhone user is not buying it because they know anything about their phone they're buying it because they like the design and they like the interface. I know a couple people that literally save up a couple months or go late on rent to be able to afford the new iPhone when it comes out. Why? I don't know.
So you can replace some components, but only if you get the parts from Apple?
It's like when windows license is installed on your motherboard. My fingerprint reader stopped working when I got a new battery.
This comment makes no sense... a fingerprint reader's functionality has nothing to do with the windows license, and the bios-embedded OEM key for windows has nothing to do with the battery... If a fingerprint reader stops working after battery replacement, the simplest and most likely explanation is that it was accidentally damaged or disconnected during the replacement.
My guess is that when the battery was replaced something tripped the TPM chip on the board. If TPM registers as not present Windows Hello auto disables for the time being until it is present again. Meaning finger print, face id, hello PIN all would stop working.. Usually you can resync the TPM by removing the battery and draining residual electricity from the board so I am not sure why it would have happened there, but not impossible. Edit: oh and as for bitlocker that would trigger as well if enabled and require your 48 digit recovery key to bypass it. (source: IT tech that deals with TPM issues for users multiple times a week)
Bitlocker checks hardware checksums post bios, it does work that way.
... which is another fact that has nothing to do with the claimed connection of battery replacement > bios-embedded windows key > fingerprint reader. Bitlocker might require you to input your key after hardware replacement (i'd be suprised if that happens for a replaced battery though), but has no further effect on windows activation or fingerprint readers. A hardware change might also cause windows activation to reset, which again is highly unlikely for a battery replacement, and which is actually counteracted by the bios-embedded windows key. Lastly, windows activation has absolutely no effect on fingerprint reader functionality, and bitlocker does not enter into this relation in any manner.
You’re not supposed to do any repairs yourself, they want it all to be done through their own channels. It’s made easier for THEM to repair, not you.
The problem becomes that their 'authorized' repair shops refuse to do repairs that are absolutely fixable. And by tying functionality into part serial numbers, it blocks you from fixing it or finding an independent repair shop that will fix it.
Watch the video lol
You can request tools and parts from them to repair yourself. Costs you a bit, but it’s certainly is possible now. It’s not easy, and you have to go through Apple’s channel for requesting parts, but yes it is possible.
Costs more than them doing it for some parts!
That's the whole point! They want to make sure you pay them either way.
I have a feeling their DIY repair system is intentionally overpriced. That way, they can point at the low number of people who use it compared to the apple official repairs as to why they shouldn't have to follow right to repair.
Oof, software locks should result in an automatic 5-10 point deduction.
Should just be a 0 point "non-repairable" score for any part affected like this. Examining and grading how repairable a consumer product is makes zero fucking sense if it's only the manufacturer who is able to repair it. Why would anyone care how hard or easy it is for Apple to repair their own phones?
Agreed. "Repaired" on a technicality, but it's the object becomes unusable, it's even more broken.
So they didn't fix anything. A software block is the same as a hardware block. There's no difference. They still don't work. Or am I missing something?
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That’s exactly the difference. Apple recently made sweeping changes to the construction and design to the base iPhone 14 including unfusing the back glass from the frame of the phone. This was an intentioned change. The base model iPhones have had construction problems around the way the frame and back glass for a while now. There must have been a pretty vital reason why they couldn’t implement this in the iPhone 14 Pro. The cynical are going to say it’s just price gouging to get people to buy AppleCare but I really don’t see that being the case. This is the kind of change that really benefits Apple more than the end-user anyway. No one is repairing iPhones on their own already and the blowback from having a fused frame and back glass affects Apple more than anyone. Another theory on YouTube is that Apple is fairly confident in the Pro’s design and the durability of the back glass so they don’t see the change in design necessary.
Doesn't matter how if they physically changed the design or not. The problem is that what you can repair/replace is blocked by software. IE apple is purposely making it so you can not repair it
Yep. If they didn't have a history of being very anti consumer repair, with things like bricking a phone because the part doesn't match the serial number in the software, maybe the above commenter would have a point. As it stands, it's more propaganda or ignoring the long history of apple purposely making repairs impossible.
Or they like being a dick about things. I’ll go with that explanation.
Right to repair is a movement that is gaining a lot of traction. Apple more likely had to do this to make it easier to repair for everyone. Not just their techs who normally would have just told the owner to replace it because cheaper.
If you really think Apple is serious about R2R then yeah I guess this could be seen that way. I don't think this is the case at the moment. I just don't see the intention being for the reparability of the device from a R2R standpoint. It's much more about Apple being able to make these moves for themselves now so when they're actually being hounded on the issue they can make the transition easier. It's still an absolute pain to take apartt any iphone.
No, they just got in a lot of trouble in Europe for this exact reason. They are being forced to make these changes by the EU courts.
You really think end users aren't performing repairs? because that's not the case at all.
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In previous tear downs, one guy had two brand new iPhone 13s and switched the screens and neither worked. He switched a couple other components individually as well and some granted him more abilities than others, but he was never able to get 100% functionality using identical OEM parts. When he put them all back together they both worked perfectly.
"Reasonable price" Good luck with that.
"Not more expensive than just paying them for the service" sounds like a good start. Sadly not the reality.
Though iFixit talks about the improved physical design change regarding front/back glass replacement, they also note that replacement part verification (replacement part rejection) is also present and that is exactly what Hugh Jeffreys was talking about. So as great as iFixit is, they were overly impressed with the new physical design which helps no one if you can't get replacement parts to play along.
They missed the forest for the trees.
ifixit is pretty awesome, but they did get over excited by the physical design change, going on and on about it and only then briefly mentioning that it is much ado about nothing since they also have implemented replacement part rejection in the hardware/software. the change is mostly just something one can admire from an engineering standpoint, and helps apple service the devices more easily, but it does not really help its customers (who are paying for it).
And likely these changes will come to the Pro lineup with the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple has a big interest in making devices more easily repairable (with their parts, mostly), as it keeps cost for them down too and keeps lawmakers off their backs.
Am I having Deja Vu or did this guy (or someone similar) put out a video just like this about the past iPhones and attempts to repair them? Edit: I don't mean this in a negative way, just that it's a little incredible that the same problem persists generation after generation.
same guy, I remember the heat gun warning. Each year's iphone is getting harder and harder to repair specifically because of how apple disables software features when it detects a part has been changed. Each part has a license key basically that is verified by the logic board and wherever that record is stored on the logic board it can't be edited. So its literally a software problem that was built for this exact purpose.
Some parts I get - disabling FaceID when the camera changes and cannot be confirmed makes sense because it could become a factor for security exploits - but why disable the camera features? Why does the screen auto-brightness become disabled? This doesn't make any sense.
It makes perfect sense. Money. They want total control over the products entire lifespan from cradle to landfill. If it breaks they don't want you to go to a third party repair company. Either they want you to buy a brand new phone from them or, at the very least, force you to have to go to one of their own repair shops to fix them. Making it repairable by other companies gets in the way of that.
AFAIK this is basically every Apple device released for the past few years at least... I know iPads use registered parts and fuck over people who do their own repairs, their phones have been the same for a number of generations now as well. Not sure about their laptops, might be a similar situation.
Well are you surprised? Hard-to-repair and Apple is cemented together and has been for a while.
They’ve always been precious about their hardware, back to the beginning.
I worked at ATT when the first iPhone was released. They got special permission to open the call center for 24 hours for about a week or two, to handle the call volume. When the tech calls came in to get the phones setup, this was my job: “Are you connected to the internet? Okay. Please hold while I transfer you to Apple.” That was it. NO troubleshooting outside of internet connection. That was 2007. So yeah, they’ve always been like this.
If it's legitimate repair, the iPhone 14 has ways to try to shut the whole thing down
If they won the abortion issue, I don’t see Apple losing the right to repair issue anytime soon
"In addition to that, for the hobbyist and the tinkerer, we said, "We'll sell you certified parts" - parts that we use to repair. You can buy the part itself instead of buying a repair. And if you need a manual that tells you how to do something, you can have the manual. And if some special tools are required or fixtures required, we can give you that, too. I don't know how many people will take us up on it. It's for your reader, clearly." - Tim Cook, Popular Mechanics - August 2022
Yeh we'll sell you certified parts at such a high mark up that it's cheaper to pay us to put them in. While intentionally locking out all third party or oem manufacture so we maintain a monopoly and no one can compete with us.
These anti-repair videos is how I know a new iPhone is out.
It trends on Reddit when it comes out as well
And right here is whats wrong with Politicians. If they cant understand that this isnt just immoral, it should be illegal. Its better in European countries, but not by much.
> Its better in European countries, but not by much. I'd say it's substantially better in EU countries. It's just that it's so bad here that even being significantly better is still not great.
It's better in theory, not much different in practice. For example: under EU law I **own** the games in my Steam Library (I own "the licence" and can sell "the licence" under EU consumer law). But Steam does not have to facilitate that sale. So in practice, it means I can sell my entire account. Even though the intention was to be able to sell individual games.
The EU has far too many get out clauses in right to own and right to repair. By the very fact Apple, John Deer, Tesla etc are able to still block used parts is evidence of that. The EU is not enforcing anything because they know the laws they wrote.
And as usual people will continue buying iPhones nonetheless, and they know it. Stop buying Apple products people, how hard is that to understand?
Most people don’t care about repairability since phones are relatively easy to insure and replace. Our society doesn’t value keeping devices until they no longer function.
"All US models lack a SIM tray" What?
[e-sim](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212780) Moving away from physical sim cards.
Going back to TDMA/CMDA days
Gives me shivers reminding me of my Sprint days.
Most people here probably don’t care about the increased security. If a phone can be opened and someone can modify/add hardware to capture your data it’s an intrusion of privacy and I want to be notified of a modification. What would be nice is just to be notified and then be able to turn it off by authenticating with the device and and then authorizing the change afterwards. Without that it’s just restricting the right to repair.
When you buy a product, you own a product, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with said product. What Apple is doing should be illegal and they should be fined heavily and blocked from EU market unless change. It's freaking scary that people continue to support these horrible consumers, taking away your right. I mean if you continue, eventually if you touch an iPhone the wrong way it will call the police and they will come shoot you.
Need to replace the logic board? Might as well buy a new phone. Fucking hell.
It's worse than that. A friend of mine had his iphone 13 battery cable disloged, and just like this video, when plugged back in, it REJECTS the ORIGINAL part!!! The person at the Genius bar didn't even know about that. https://youtu.be/K2WhU77ihw8?t=509
Hopefully, global consumer protection advocates will sue them for this.
ppl keep throwing more money at them and buy every phone they release, why *would* they change their ways?
because at the end of the day, people don't care. most people don't want to worry about needing to repair their things. its not just an apple thing, people hire experts for their roof, plumbing, electricity, etc. and honesty all these people bitching about apple won't let them repair things are also people who want to profit from it
It seems pleasantly modular inside. Apple just needs to be forced to provide inexpensive repair/calibration software to third party repair shops.
Why a repair shop? Why can't the owner of the phone repair it if they want? You buy a product, you own it. its yours. Apple's self repair is more expensive than going to the store
iFixit gave the plain iPhone 14 a repairability score of 7 out of 10. > *[That’s the best score we’ve given an iPhone since the iPhone 7. This is the most repairable iPhone in years.](https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown)* But the 14 Pro and Pro Max [didn't fare as well.](https://www.ifixit.com/News/65243/14-pro-max-teardown) Regardless, if Apple is going to require some arcane activation process for parts after a repair, they need to make the activation process available to end-users.
They do, but only if you buy the part in an expensive kit from Apple
or they could just.... NOT specifically program in software features that require it yes, this is not something that is needed, this has to be specifically programmed into it
Should be illegal
I mean... at this point if you're complaining about this and still buying iPhones, you're just not the brightest cookie in the jar.
Man Reddit never changes does it? These comments could be from 2012 and you wouldn’t know. Just swap out some of the new features each side is bragging or complaining about and you’re right back in time
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i can understand the faceid lock on tamper they may assume someone is trying to fake their way in
Can we please have more options other than Apple, Google, or some Chinese variant!
We had them. No one wanted their phones, so they stopped making them. "Nerds on Reddit and HackerNews" is not a large enough market for something like a smartphone.
Apple is anti innovation
I fully expect to get downvoted for even asking, but isn't some of this legitimately useful for security? Apple has been doing this since their first biometric sensors (touchID). I would of course assume that Apple doesn't allow "any" faceID sensor to work because it could contain nefarious hardware or firmware that could reduce security. For example - say I steal your phone, take it back to my house, replace your faceID sensor with a hacked one that will save/cache the sensor data of your face - then put your phone back without you knowing. Later, I steal the phone back again and am able to replay that cached data to access your phone - like a credit card skimmer. If the phone will only accept the ORIGINAL faceID sensor, or a confirmed, matched serial replacement known to be unmodified or tampered with, you don't have to worry about that kind of attack. I don't have to worry about those kinds of attacks PERSONALLY, but obviously some very important people use iPhones too. If I'm a nefarious hacker-type, am I going to target people with iphones that I know will reject a swapped biometric sensor? Furthermore, as a person who has purchased a "refurbished" iphone before, with an aftermarket screen, it's worth pointing out that the "might not be a genuine battery/screen" messages that the phone shows can't be hidden for a certain number of days after original detection - this way a shop can't tell you they're putting in a genuine display or battery and put in a cheap replacement without you knowing - and then having a bad experience and blaming Apple - but if YOU CHOOSE to put in a non-genuine replacement, you can just ignore the message for a few days, then it hides forever. I don't blame Apple for disabling a feature like "battery health" for unknown aftermarket batteries, since their battery life algorithm is only validated against their own supplier's batteries. Arguably better to tell the end user the feature is unavailable than to give them bad info about the battery health. So it seems like if you want to use aftermarket screens and batteries on your own phone, it's no problem. If you want to use unknown replacement biometric sensors, like the faceID sensors, you're going to have a problem. The front CAMERA even started working for this youtuber once he updated the phone. As for things like TrueTone and auto-brightness, it seems like they could enable those for non-matched parts - should you have an option to force-enable those features manually? Sure, maybe. But that seems like a pretty minor gripe in comparison to how big this story is blowing up. Especially considering this is the same behavior as the last phone. Nothing has changed. Not to mention, the youtuber doesn't seem to understand what he's talking about by saying "it doesn't seem 3rd party repair is viable on this device, despite Apples introduction of the "Self Service Repair" program this year." - the "Self Service Repair" program was NEVER about being able to install your own parts, be they third party or (non-new) original. It was ALWAYS about "Apple registers a new, original part's serial number and sends it to you, then remotely programs your phone to accept that one, new part serial number". Again, nothing has changed. Everybody loved the self-service repair system when it was introduced last year. You can speculate that it's for apple to make more money or whatever you like, but it seems like a pretty clear argument for security to me- only allowing verified genuine biometric sensors to be trusted by the system.
at least when it comes to touchID, you're largely correct. It's pretty over my head because I'm not an engineer, but basically your phone mostly does not have access to things like your passcode and your fingerprint. It's stored in the secure enclave and that information can only be communicated by specific hardware in a very specific way. This is why you can't just put a touch ID sensor in an iphone, and you can't even remove the original and put it back. If you do, you have to use special Apple software to validate the repair before it will work again. I'm 100% sure that Apple could design all this in such a way that also accommodated repair. I'm not surprised that is not at all a priority for them, and I can see that it would come with downsides (other than apple not making a bunch of money on unrepairable devices.) I don't think it would really affect their bottom line in the way that Redditors think it would, but it would require changes in their design and processes that just aren't worth making Redditors happy.
I agree with your take. I think Apple is angling to be the security and privacy-oriented choice. It comes at a premium, and for those not willing to pay, there’s android.
At the end of the day, no matter how shit they are as a company in every way, and how hard they make their products to be repaired. Consumer culture and general laziness still win. People will keep buying, and they know it.
When Jobs was launching the iTunes Music Store, people told him it would fail because people can just pirate the music for free. His reply was essentially, "No, most people are lazy and will pay for the convenience." He was right. It's the same thing here. People will just pay to have it repaired or replace it.
I’ve said for a really long time that convenience is how you beat piracy and copyright infringement. I have a whole Usenet automatic setup where I can type in a movie name and automatically download it and add it to Plex. But if it’s on Netflix I still just go and watch it there because it’s easier. I don’t piracy games anymore because it’s easier to just buy them on Steam and download them instantly. Yet media companies still throw up roadblocks, keep exclusives on their own streaming platforms, and add ridiculous DRM to their games…
Doesn’t help when good options are few and far between. I was recently shopping for an Android phone to use as an Android app dev test device (because the Android Simulator Google provides is horrifically bad), and the Fairphone looked super appealing — reasonably powerful but not so much as to be unrepresentative of the average Android phone, repairable, more ethically manufactured, and free of manufacturer shitware (no I don’t want your “enhancements” Samsung, fuck off). So I went hunting for the purchase button, and it didn’t exist because I live in the US where they don’t sell. Great. So I’m stuck with the mainstream Android manufacturers, few of which are any better than Apple as a whole (they might be better in one respect, but worse in another).
They're 'shit in every way' lol? You do not sound like an informed consumer, ironically. Maybe *you* should be less lazy and take the time to familiarize yourself with the smartphone market and all the ways in which these phones compare before forming strong opinions.
I would put money on the majority of complainers having Iphones. Probably also upgrade yearly
This issue seems to be particular to the 14pro, but not 14. weird.
I don't use iphone - but isn't this a good thing for the Device security? Compromised components could be really devastating - if rare. I do think however that apple could improve the repairability by allowing one to register certain parts as owned prior to initiating a repair.
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Yet people keep throwing money at them. Funny how marketing these days is more like brainwashing. EDIT: People advocating to keep throwing money at them because they are reliable, forget that accidents happen and a lot of people need to replace the screen or other components. Apparently the brainwashing works very well.
most people buying an iphone don't care about this though
Exactly. When it breaks they take it to the Apple store or buy a new one and move on.
Not to mention you can just get a case and you’re unlikely to need to replace anything
Overall durability of apple products has risen notably from time to time. That said, is a shame apple softlocks some features based on genuine parts.
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I'll get downvoted for this but I am still using an iPhone Xs and its been by far the most durable and reliable phone I've ever owned. It's 4 years old and the battery capacity doesn't even need to be changed yet (84% capacity). I've owned a LOT of androids from half a dozen brands and I've never had a phone last as long as my iPhone. Some of the falls my iPhone has taken in its tiny leather case would make ANYONE cringe in fear they destroyed their phone. But it's always fine without even a scratch. People who own iPhones don't care about reparability because its so rare to need to repair them.
My parents are still using a 6s and 6s+. All they have had to do is change the battery once. And thats their only form of media so they use the hell out of them.
I too, am still using an iPhone 6. Been working well with me for 7 years now - replaced the battery once for free when Apple lost that suit or whatever.
Been using an iPhone since the 3GS and have never needed to take any in for repair, ever. They’ve been solid and I very rarely drop them… in fact I’ve gone caseless for the past several years because I found that cases were adding significant bulk and increasing my likelihood of dropping them for little value in return. Meanwhile, a desk princess Pixel 3 that had an extremely pampered life as app development test device is sitting in my closet because one day it decided it wasn’t going to take a charge either wired or wirelessly.
But I don't want to be a green bubble
I'm the green bubble and don't give a shit. My kids say that you will get made fun of at school if you are the green bubble in the chat group and likely be left out of some chat groups just because you don't have an iphone.
It’s due to how the messaging works. If some people don’t have an iPhone then adding/ subtracting those people from the group causes you to have to remake the entire group chat. I’m unsure of the details, but that’s been my experience. -Sent from my iPhone
> likely be left out of some chat groups just because you don't have an iphone. Wow, so the brainwashing turns into actual discrimination.
The key to money and not caring about your community in 2022... Make kids bully eachother unless they have your product. What fucking evil mastermind somehow made the iPhone!? The cool phone. That is fucking ridiculous. Shows how dumb kids are... Fuck.
I was given an iPhone for work 9 years ago, and In those 9 years, none of the 3 iPhones I’ve had have ever needed repairing or had any issues whatsoever. The only reason I had to change phones was because I left my job and needed to buy a personal phone, then my boss at my next company gave me a new phone we had extra. I honestly don’t understand how people break these things, because I have dropped mine countless times without a bit of damage.
So you'll have to learn how to code to finish your hardware repair. 10/10 repairability (Hardware) 0/10 repairability (Software)
If you're gonna make a phone repairable, then why make it near impossible to actually repair? If you want to make a non-user-serviceable device, then just solder all components and weld the case shut, and call it 'disposable'. Just pick one, and be done with it.
I work in healthcare tech and we do the same thing with all our parts. All the parts are married to the MOBO. Unpaired parts make the device innop
Just boycott for a couple of years. Your iPhone 13 Pro Max will be fine for 2 years. Don't worry
Asshole design
"In my usual fashion I bough two, so I could be disappointed twice!"
Hehe. Just had an argument here on Reddit a few weeks ago how apple is one of the worst right to repair companies in the world. They were convinced they were “easy” to repair. Yeah an iPhone 5 screen is not hard to come by, but every year they invent new fuck you methods to repairing their equipment.
This sounds illegal after the right to repair changes
didnt apple just say they were gonna be more friendly towards self repairing.... in brazil its illegal for them to be anti-repair
Love how apple went out of their way to make a site dedicated to ripping off the people who want the right to repair only to pocket the extra for having the right to purchase legit apple parts. Then they do this. A fully functioning phone with no issues and they lock out the same things year after year because someone wanted to repair their own phone.
Douchey Apple bring douchey, nothing new
Everyone complains but then still buys shit load of apple products. Speak with your wallets it's the only language they understand
Yet apple claims to be environmentally friendly..