For reference, this is what Apple said they would do last November:
> Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips, Self Service Repair will be available early next year in the US and expand to additional countries throughout 2022.
> The initial phase of the program will focus on the most commonly serviced modules, such as the iPhone display, battery, and camera. The ability for additional repairs will be available later next year.
My iPhone 8 Plus battery capacity has dropped to 76%. Too bad they don't support older devices. Going to Apple care and waiting hours to get battery replaced is too much hassle. I guess I should give the iFixit battery kit a chance.
This just shows people will complain no matter what. Apple charges $49 to replace an iPhone 8 battery. You don't have to physically wait at the store for "hours", you can drop it off and pick it up later. Or you can mail it to Apple and they mail it back in 3-5 business days.
>Name any other phone manufacturer that offers a better service.
Pretty much all of them back in 2013. You'd just buy a new battery, peel off the back of the shell and plop it in. Didn't need to live in a country with proper manufacturer support, didn't need to go without a phone for a week while they fixed it, just swap 'n' go.
Just because everyone else is more terrible doesn't mean Apple still isn't terrible.
It's a design decision to use proprietary batteries that are difficult to change by consumers and can't be easily manufactured by third parties. Batteries aren't expensive enough to warrant that kind of service charge.
I think this is the root issue many people have been complaining about for years: Apple’s obsession with “smaller”.
Many people would be happy with a larger phone, if it meant you could access it a little easier to repair it — or replace the battery, which most people wouldn’t consider a “repair” — yourself.
Apple has made every new iphone and MacBook pro larger than the last generation to fit larger batteries.
"Many people would be happy with a larger phone, if it meant you could access it a little easier to repair it — or replace the battery, which most people wouldn’t consider a “repair” — yourself."
Apple did just that, and you're still not happy. They made the new iphones larger with a bigger battery. They now sell you the parts directly so you can repair it yourself.
They have made it as easy as they can to repair, while still having the device sealed and waterproof.
They literally have done what you are complaining about right now.
> Many people would be happy with a larger phone, if it meant you could access it a little easier to repair it — or replace the battery, which most people wouldn’t consider a “repair” — yourself.
I am pretty curious to know if this is true or not. The general HN or r/hardware crowds would be for sure, but I dont actually think the general public would find it a compelling "feature". Most people would probably buy the replacement battery directly from Apple anyway, and if theyre going to do that, I imagine most will just have them replace it too. Plus degradation is fairly minimal now imo, especially within the ~3 year span the average person keeps their phone. I think most people would just prefer to upgrade at that point.
Not to say I dont support user replaceable batteries (I think all phones should have them), I just dont think it actually matters at all to the average user.
Why are you stumping for less control over things you "own". Do you truly believe that the inability to access the phones battery is related to phone size?
Would it have to become a foot long clown phone to have a removable battery?
That is the entire point here. iPhones are no longer "unserviceable". They are selling the parts so you can service it yourself.
What exactly is your complaint? That they are not as easy to service as your old flip phone? The modern iPhone has more computational power and technology packed into it than a full size desktop computer from 3 years ago. Modern phones are so much more than just a phone and will never be as easy to service as your old flip phone. No tech company will ever satisfy your complaint if that is what you truly desire.
I don't see why battery life is relevant to phone size. My point was just that I don't mind a bigger phone. It doesn't matter to me. We got to the point that they were thin enough long ago. If they could add a few millimeters of thickness and have a phone with a battery that lasted 30 or 40 hours that would be preferable to me. Instead manufactures are obsessed with making thinner and thinner phones.
As for waterproofing I have never in my entire life ruined a phone by dropping it into water. I would still prefer removable batteries. It is a good trade-off in my opinion.
I am willing to concede that my opinions might not reflect those of the general public.
Clearly not so many that it’s profitable to build that kind of phone. The reality is that a phone like the Fairphone, which is a fine phone, does show that down that road you end up with a pretty expensive phone that looks bulky, is not waterproof (even though it’s a great achievement it is water resistant) and uses suboptimal components.
Yeah when did same day service become terrible? Everyone these days wants the world instead of a minor inconvenience. And is mad if they have any inconvenience. My Nintendo Joy Cons started having drift and between shipping them and getting them back it’s just about a week. Not bad by my standards. But seeing people commenting online it’s like Nintendo is asking for their first and second born child waiting that long.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max can stream video for 25 hours. How long can your phone?
Waterproofing is more important to me than a removable battery. Apple will replace the battery for $69 when it is time. And they will still be providing software updates for it in 6 years.
How much is a replacement battery for your non-waterproof phone? How long will it receive software updates? Will you buy a new one when they stop updating it?
It doesn't die in the rain or from coffee or sugary drinks. Also not from dropping it into snow. I have not tested it otherwise. I would estimate IPX4.
> It's a design decision to use proprietary batteries that are difficult to change by consumers and can't be easily manufactured by third parties.
I’m honestly curious… has this ever been proven? It’s decent -and common assertion/speculation.
But I’m curious if there has ever been a high level ex engineer, or court document, or something that just states clearly “yes, a primary/convincing motivation to move to internal batteries was because of increased lock in revenue”?
No, it has not. And it probably is false. It is unquestionably simpler to design devices at Apple’s scale if the battery is hard to replace. Whether you think it’s worth the trade off is a different question.
> Name any other phone manufacturer that offers a better service.
If the "best" company still activity tries to screw customers over (see: planned obsolescence and almost everything apple has done until now, Louis Rossman's YouTube channel etc), then I'm afraid the bar is part of the foundation, it's so underground.
Apple released an IOS update for the iPhone 6s last month. That's 7 years of software updates. A 2015 MacBook can still run the newest OS. A Mac Pro from 2013 can still run the newest OS. You can still buy a replacement battery from Apple for a 7 year old device.
Where is the planned obsolescence? Apple is supporting their devices longer than any other consumer tech company. How are they actively trying to "screw customers over"?
You can’t argue with these people. Almost double the software support period and average device service life of the nearest competitors still counts as ‘planned obsolescence’, yet none of those competitors get dinged for their device lifetimes. It’s complete dislocation from reality.
Mate did you even read my comment before replying?
> yet none of those competitors get dinged for their device lifetimes. It’s complete dislocation from reality.
I literally said that if Apple is the best the rest (the "standard" or bar) is underground. To paraphrase/reiterate: I think other companies are doing an even shittier job.
My point is even when they go to far greater lengths than the others, they’re still criticised (including by you) of actively reducing device lifetime. That is absurd. Vague references to a ‘bar’ without even mentioning their competitors even as a genetic group is hardly equivalent to targeted named criticism of the company.
Considering their full lifetime, it works out to basically you can own these devices for less than a dollar a day. I appreciate that I am not getting gauged by the manufacturer just so I can stay in the ecosystem. Doubt I would say the same about other companies.
As another person here commented, just because Apple is less bad than other companies it doesn't mean they're not bad.
There's really no justification as to why I can install the latest version of Windows 10 on a computer from 2006 and everything works smoothly, but if I try to install Android 12 on a device from 2 years ago then everything turns to shit.
> There's really no justification as to why I can install the latest version of Windows 10 on a computer from 2006 and everything works smoothly
Windows 10 isn't "the latest version" anymore, and they've dropped support for a ton of processors (actually, it's worse than that, they've intentionally broken support for a lot of processors).
Some have fTPM that can be manually enabled, and it may or may not work or cause issues (stuttering, etc) without BIOS patches and other stuff that the vendor may not provide for legacy hardware, so even there it's hit or miss, but stuff from the 2006 era doesn't have fTPM at all and you'll have to do the microsoft equivalent of hackintosh.
But yeah Android's support/device lifetime is egregiously bad, I'm not basing my OS on a custom build by some guy named xXxMark69xXx who posts on a web forum. Even Linux has official distributions that are expected to pretty much Just Work without modifications beyond installing some (audited, signed) driver packages, but the Android model means that it's simply not possible to "just install Lineage", you essentially must have someone customize it for each individual model.
Android phones also usually have terrible spare-parts availability, unless you want to buy a wish.com-tier battery that will have half of its advertised capacity out of the box, and pillow up before six months have passed. It simply is not possible to buy quality battery replacements outside of the OEM supply chains (I've pointed this out here on HN as a business opportunity every time the topic comes up) whether it's phone or laptops or anything else. And the OEM supply chains are just not there, despite every opportunity for vendors to "just use standardized parts" like people are saying.
At the end of the day I'm perfectly happy to just pay Apple 50 bucks so that a technician can put a new battery into my 4-year-old phone and I'll know it's OEM tier and that the waterproofing/etc will be done right and that they won't shatter the back and so on. Not the place I want to try and save 20 bucks in my life anymore.
> It simply is not possible to buy quality battery replacements outside of the OEM supply chains (I've pointed this out here on HN as a business opportunity every time the topic comes up) whether it's phone or laptops or anything else.
I know this is an odd point of your comment to pick out, but just wanted to share this as I thought the way you did for almost a decade:
Cameron Sino are a really reliable aftermarket battery manufacturer. They're the source that iFixit use, and I've tried some of their products myself too. They make damn near everything, including niche SKUs with custom ICs, and the quality is comparable to OEM stuff (both in terms of initial capacity and longevity).
Not odd at all, I am tacitly fishing with Cunningham's Law in hopes of someone indignantly giving me a good hookup for decent batteries ;)
Thanks, I'll keep them in mind! They might very well be the actual OEM for a lot of those products anyway, somebody has to be making the batteries and it's probably somewhere in China.
I mean, there's a few, especially in specific niches (Wasabi Power is good for camera batteries, etc) but like, if you just buy a "X device replacement battery" off amazon or ebay then you're gonna get something with half the advertised capacity. I replaced my PS3 controller batteries and cycled the batteries a few times with my Triton smart charger, and like, the replacements are still bigger than the originals (750mah vs 570) but they're not the 1500 mah they were advertised as. It's damn frustrating because I'd gladly pay another $10 or $20 a battery for a high-quality one instead of something that fails in 3 months...
Well played! And just for what it's worth, you can get a lot of their products on AliExpress, and at least as of now they're not a big enough brand to be counterfeited.
Just because other companies are screwing over customers more doesn't mean Apple isn't behaving in a hostile manner to customers.
>A 2015 MacBook can still run the newest OS.
Big freaking deal, a 2003 Athlon 64 machine can still run modern Linux distros. Until Microsoft went scorched earth with Windows 11, computers from 2006 could still run the most recent version of Windows. Apple has the SHORTEST OS support window for desktops and laptops overall. My 2009 Macbook can run Windows 10 21H1 (2021) but can only run up to 10.11 (2015). All of 6 years of OS support from Apple, but 12 from Microsoft and 13 from Linux.
Actually you can run the newest OS on your 2009 MacBook, its not official, but it is possible and runs OK. Same as running Windows 11 on older unsupported hardware.
I'm running OS 10.13 on a 2008 MacBook right now (officially supports 10.11). Using: http://dosdude1.com/software.html It runs great, beyond 10.13 the OS seems to run slower tho.
It's not necessary at this point, because every App I use still supports 10.11 (including VS code). But knowing I can get several more years out of this Machine is nice.
Yes, I know you can hack it on there. Just like you can hack Android 12 on a Samsung Galaxy S3. But that's not the point. The point is the official support for the device, which was only 6 years.
Also, I did use dosdude's software to hack 10.13 on my 2009 MacBook and it ran like crap and the touchpad driver was total crap.
Microsoft has dropped support for 7th gen Intel processors. They were released in August of 2016, and sold well into 2017.
Apple is still supporting 2015 MacBooks with 4th gen processors.
Again, Apple is supporting their devices longer than anyone else.
Dosdude1's software runs great on this 2008 MacBook. It runs exactly like Apple made it. Touchpad is no different and all gestures work perfectly. Not sure what went wrong in your case.
I replied to another comment here as well on a similar note - software is just one half of the picture, and needs proper hardware. Apple makes hardware that looks good in advertisements - even if it comes at the cost of consumer benefit (see: Apple's unbraided charging cable failure issue amongst others).
They are very happy to support your device... as long as their poorly designed hardware doesn't fail (specific example from Louis Rossman's video - at 48V power cable to the display next to the sensitive data lines.)
Apple know cares about customers as long as it doesn't hurt its PR, much like the vast majority of profit-driven companies.
Applecare+ can now be extended "indefinitely" (we don't know yet how long, but likely around ~7 years). Cost varies from $35-150/year depending on the device. So you can now have your apple hardware covered under warranty for longer than any other manufacturer, along with having longer software support than any other manufacturer.
Applecare+ also includes two "accidental damage" incidents per year. So you can throw your 7 year old Macbook out a window or into the ocean twice a year and Apple will repair it.
I am not an Apple die-hard fanboy. I personally used many Android devices, a Dell XPS 15, and a custom built PC until last year (switched to an iPhone 13 and M1 Air). But Apple is providing longer software and hardware support than any other company right now, and I really don't understand how you can still complain.
Also, repairs still have a deductible. It's not "two free screen repairs a year", it's "up to two screen repairs at $29 a pop with a $150-200 up-front fee", vs $129 a pop for replacement screens (and newer models are more expensive). So if you need it once you're coming out equal, if you use it twice you come out ahead.
I looked at it when I bought my first iphone a couple years ago, it was my first "expensive" phone and it was stressful, but the math is solid, even if you use the service once you're only breaking even, and even then you're getting a repair on a phone that has likely depreciated substantially (yes, even apple) so it's a $150 repair on a $400 phone with a worn battery, etc. At some point even if it's not utterly destroyed, it financially just doesn't make sense to throw more money into it. And this is with me buying a relatively expensive high-capacity model that is "more expensive to total", just wouldn't make sense on a base-tier model unless you routinely manhandle them into an early grave.
Haven't done the math on newer models (mine was a couple gens old, got it as an apple refurb) but it does look better for premium ipad models. $200 for the warranty and $49 service fee, vs $700 (!) for replacing an ipad pro 12.1" screen. If you've got a premium 12.1" pro with a TB of storage, that's easily a $1500 device and would be worth repairing and certainly worth taking out the warranty beforehand.
I originally got my (base-model) iPad for $229 back in 2018, and the screen itself is $249 to replace, vs $80 for applecare+ and $49 for the deductible... so you are coming out WAY ahead if you actually need to use it. I cracked a corner of the screen (took it out of the case ONE TIME and of course I drop it...) and it's basically totaled, it's more than I originally paid for it and only $50 short of a new base-model iPad if you get them on sale.
It's still more than what's even available for the competitors.
It's easy to be pessimistic, but show me any phone manufacturer that offers extended support past 3 years. Hell, even computers hardly will come with more than that as an option.
I don't understand.. How are they not supporting their hardware when they willingly repair their hardware. In cases where they screw up, they tend to even have free replacement programs.
i have no idea about this cable issue, or who Louis Rossman is... I have a thunderbolt cable with data and power running from the display to the notebook. Is the data in danger? FWIW it's transmitting 6016 * 3384 = 20385144 pixels at, I believe, 24 bit color depth and 60H flawlessly.
But mostly I just don't get what this has to do with their service?
The iPhone 8 was released in autumn 2017, 4.5 years ago. It still gets regular software updates for security and new features and the hardware performs well compared to newer smartphones (Apple chips have been loads better than other mobile chips for a long time so an Apple chip from a year or two ago is often bested only by the newer apple chips in metrics like single-threaded performance or power efficiency).
I think it is mostly silly to accuse apple of planned obsolescence when their hardware functions well (and retains its value) for much longer than the hardware produced by their competitors. It feels to me that paying for one phone 4.5 years ago, and $50 for a battery replacement (all lithium ion batteries degrade over time) that will extend its useful life is a pretty efficient use of money.
The issue is that software is useless without proper hardware.
While their software support is admirable, their hardware philosophy, design and real-life practice (eg pricing a screen repair almost similar to a new phone) is anything but.
iPhone XR cost at launch: $849. Screen replacement: $199.
Also, as far as I can tell, screens have stopped breaking at some point? I used to reliably break the screen before the two-year replacement cycle was up. Except for the last two generations, which survived, and not for lack of dropping them.
I stopped reading when I saw "Apple" and "planned obsolescence" in the same sentence. The company is practically the poster child for long-lived products.
Samsung has a repair bus that come to your home or workplace and fixes the battery or anything else workout you having to drive into the city to a store or not having access for multiple days. (At least in Germany)
It's honestly not that hard as long as you're patient and can follow instructions. I replaced both the battery and lightning port in my iPhone 6s with parts from iFixit and was more than happy with the results.
That being said, I mainly did it myself because I like doing this sort of thing and there's no Apple Store near me. I'd also heard of them refusing partial repair when you have a damaged display and I had a crack on the corner.
Are the iPhone 12 and 13 so bad that Apple has decided to cater to only these device, rather than the older models that are more likely to need servicing and parts?
That seems like a bad take. It's more likely that they are the newest designs and it's easier to set up a supply chain for this with the current models than it is with previous models.
Wait a few years and then you can see if your cynicism is appropriate if they stop supporting them when they are older.
Something interesting is that it seems that you are paying a "deposit" on replacement batteries, which is refunded when you return your old battery. After this return credit, the cost of replacement batteries is about the same as iFixit and scam Amazon sellers.
Edit: Other parts also have a return credit... camera, display, etc.
More conventionally this is called a "Core Deposit".
The idea is that you are buying new or refurbished products to replace broken parts. So you pay a core fee so you return the broken parts so that they can rebuild them and resell them.
This is common for automparts stores because as long as the cast metal parts are not damaged and within spec then there is no reason they can't be rebuilt. Alternators, water pumps, etc.
You are not obligated to return the parts. You can keep them yourself and if that is the case then they just keep the deposit.
I believe they do a fair bit of recycling to recover various metals. I don’t think its all fixed up and resold (if any of it is fixed and resold at all)
Auto parts stores depend heavily on refurbishing cores. Only the most damaged units go to scrap.
You will lose a ton of money trying to buy a 15 year supply of starters and keeping them in a warehouse for 20 years (remember your sales only start once a car is out of warranty/production).
Car parts tend to fail in waves, so all the water pumps from 2012 Volkswagens are going to start coming in - and getting remanufactured - around the same time people are looking for them. You just buy a few from the OEM to bootstrap.
I very much doubt the old parts are re-used. Refurbished Apple devices all have brand new screens and batteries installed, even if they were as-new returns.
This is how it worked with Sun Microsystems parts back in the day. You'd put in an order, they'd send the replacement with a return label for the original. I presumed they did testing and maybe refurbished the parts, but no idea what actually happened with them.
For phone and computer batteries, it would be kinda nice. After going through ifixit, I've now got a pile of old lithium batteries that I have to figure out how to get rid of.
In the EU there is the WEEE directive (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive for those snickering in the back of the class!) which states this -
Distributor obligations - All distributors must:
Offer free take back on WEEE; Accept WEEE for free from customers supplied with like-for-like products, regardless of whether this is done in store, online or by mail order
(You're Seattle based so not applicable in your circumstances)
Yep, Switzerland has this too. There is a small tax an every electronic item you buy and you can return it to any other electronics retailer for free. We used to dump old server hardware at the Apple store because it was closest. :)
You'll be surprised to learn that the UK still participates in quite a few EU schemes. Europol for example, the UK helps drive policy and is still a founding member.
Apple has a specific program to recycle used iPhones. There's a video floating around somewhere on their site about some robot they built for the task. I'm fairly certain they'll take your used Apple hardware for free at any store worldwide and might even do a better job recycling it than a generic deposit (although those may just pass it on to them anyway).
This program–the deposit–is strictly about increasing recycling quotas. They do have a refurb program but they'll actually pay you for hardware that can be used for that.
> No kidding. There was a reason apple started doing their genuine battery warnings
Maybe, but that's still a problem they created for themselves. Knockoff sellers would never have marketshare (and thus less economies of scale, reducing their cost advantage) if you can buy the genuine thing for a reasonable price as conveniently as you can buy the knockoff.
A lot of third-party/aftermarket parts are used not even because of cost but availability. Amazon offers same or next-day shipping for a lot of these knockoff batteries.
This reminds me of an incident when I needed to replace a lost AirPod - I was ready to pay and yet couldn't just walk into an Apple Store and buy the part. I had to instead set up a "repair" and wait for shipping and then UPS screwed it up twice. It took weeks and hours of annoyance over email/phone for something that should've taken 15 minutes to buy at the Apple Store on my way to the office.
I recently had my Omega watch serviced, and it worked the same way - parts are X if you send them the old part in exchange, or Y if you want to keep the old part. I'm assuming they refurbrish the old parts and re-use them, seeing as 50-year old watches don't exactly have plenty of parts stock available.
The Swatch Group is doing everything they can to get the consumer to send the watch back to the factory when it needs a Service, or repair. They claim it's for quality assurance, but it just a money grab. They want that after sale guaranteed income. They don't want parts on the secondary market so guys like myself (Watchmaker) can procure, and charge customers a fair price.
The Reichmont nonprofit does the same thing. (I love throwing in nonprofit status. I don't know how they get away with that business entity.)
(NCWAA has been fighting for access to parts since the 70's with zero progress.)
I didn't have to send it back to factory - there is an authorized Omega workshop in my city, they can order all the original parts directly from Switzerland. The watch is even getting a new dial(50 year old "new" stock!) and yeah, Omega is just sending it to them on a replacement basis.
If someone was trying to build a business around buying iPhone parts through their repair website, I'd question their sanity. Even if that return credit didn't exist, how many replacement cameras or whatever could you really order before Apple would shut you down? 10? 50? 100? What kind of product could you possibly build with that?
You say that like it's a bad thing in this context. Cars are (immensely) far from perfect, but hey, parts interoperability is non-zero and for plenty of cars (even newer ones) you can still reasonably get them fixed.
It'd be awesome if I could head on down to a phone parts store and pick up a couple of components so my phone can live perpetually in repair, but we're not quite that far along yet.
"Core" charges make a lot of sense for automotive parts that be reconditioned/refurbished. I'd much rather have to make another trip to the parts store to return my bad brake caliper than toss it in the trash. The same goes for something like phone batteries. Apple is dangling a carrot to get people to return batteries (and other parts) for recycling/proper disposal.
> Something interesting is that it seems that you are paying a "deposit" on replacement batteries, which is refunded when you return your old battery.
And your problem with this is what, exactly ?
If you are genuinely repairing something then we're only talking a small window when you will be out of pocket (the time between receiving the part, replacing old one, sending old one back).
Apple do the same thing with iPhone exchanges under Apple Care. They'll send you out a brand new iPhone in advance (to allow you to transfer data etc. as required), but they'll take a deposit. If you don't send your broken iPhone back, they'll keep the deposit. Seems perfectly fair to me.
AFAIK in one way or another, the practice is widespread in the IT industry. For example, I recently replaced a Dell monitor on warranty. They didn't take payment up-front, but they certainly made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that I would be charged if I failed to return the monitor.
In terms of Apple specifically, its basically the way they work with their Authorised Service Providers. If the AASP fails to return parts, then the cost is billed to their company's account with Apple.
The reality is that in the world we live in, these sorts of parts/repair services are subject to fraud and other malicious use. So manufacturers (whether Apple or otherwise) are perfectly entitled to protect themselves.
The potential problem is that unlike your monitor or a replacement iPhone where the original still has some value, a used up battery has near-zero value and probably less than it costs to ship it back in an individual box (as opposed to dropping it off at a recycling box at your nearest supermarket). This is clearly a bad-faith effort to make stocking up on parts impossible and make the entire process more inconvenient than it needs to be.
> a used up battery has near-zero value and probably less than it costs to ship it back in an individual box
That's if you look at it on an individual quantity. In volume quantity there may be other considerations at play.
> This is clearly a bad-faith effort to make stocking up on parts impossible and make the entire process more inconvenient than it needs to be.
Give me a break !
For a start, this isn't a "parts stocking" programme, it is a self-repair programe. You obtain relevant parts on a Just-In-Time basis. Jeez !
If you want to stock parts, go become an Apple Authorised Service Provider. You even get a credit account so you don't have to pony up the cash up-front.
> this isn't a "parts stocking" programme, it is a self-repair programe
Why can't it be both? Most existing "self-repair" programmes (before such things had to have a specific name instead of just "buying parts") such as the ones for cars work just fine on the model of "show up at the dealership, give them a part number & payment card and walk out with your new part". They don't care if you're buying these parts to repair your car now or keep it for later and managed to stay in business for decades just fine.
> You obtain relevant parts on a Just-In-Time basis.
One major advantage of a self-repair programme (as opposed to just doing the repair at Apple or an AASP directly) is that you can work around some of the logistics and make the operation quicker/more efficient.
If you are particularly careless and smash your phone frequently (or your friends do, like in my case) you can keep spares of commonly-broken parts in advance so that the actual repair process is really quick and only involves a couple hours or downtime.
Having to order parts in advance and having to return the old part in a specific timeframe means you need to schedule the entire thing and plan around the logistics of it and it can no longer be a "I have a couple hours to kill tonight, let's make my phone new again" thing, at which point you get back most of the inconveniences of doing an official repair such as scheduling it, waiting for shipping, etc. I suspect this might be the point of these restrictions.
> If you want to stock parts, go become an Apple Authorised Service Provider.
Can I become an AASP if I do one repair a month? If so sign me up!
They only sell parts for phones that are probably still under warranty or Apple Care+ coverage. They don't sell parts for any models that actually need reliable sources for parts.
'Oldest' model supported is the iPhone 12. Very limited set of parts. Requires a device serial number.
Clearly being done very reluctantly. May be beneficial to those with a habit of dropping phones and smashing their screen, but the real problem is the slightly older phones becoming e-waste due to a degraded battery or parts like buttons wearing out.
(But we've got bigger worries with degraded batteries leading to e-waste, with Chevrolet discontinuing support for a 5yr-old EV (Chevy Spark) setting an example that others seem likely to follow. No battery replacements for your EV! Buy a new one! We're heading for a world where so-called 'green' EVs are barely repairable and thrown on the scrapheap as soon as the battery degrades)
Automotive has a very strong track record of 3rd party parts being available shortly after genuine parts become hard to obtain or not-affordable. As long as there's enough of a given vehicle on the road to justify the cost, surely a 3rd party will create battery replacements for many EVs.
There's plenty of Leaf battery replacement services and parts as far as I can tell. The original Leaf is quite old now in EV-years.
With the move to EVs (and perhaps even before, to some extent), cars seem to be changing, in the same way that 'computers' evolved/regressed from fairly open, upgradeable, repairable PCs to smartphones and tables with locked-down OSs, no upgrade options, and minimal repairability.
We've accepted a world of throwaway phones/tablets (with a life of maybe 2-5 years). We can't afford to accept that with EVs.
You can still very easily buy a PC which has an "open" architecture in the sense that you can plug various CPUs, PCIe cards, memory, disks, etc into it. It's in a very similar form factor to the old "open" PCs, it sits on/under your desk in a sheet metal box. That hasn't gone away, we just now also have these new things which are tiny very portable computers which are locked down and very closed.
I expect EVs which sell well will have robust 3rd party parts available for the kinds of parts that >95% of owners will ever need to replace, just like today. The EV industry is still extremely young, there will be much money to be made with 3rd party parts and repairs on EVs even if the automakers don't want it to be. I firmly believe that the market will find a way for the popular models.
> we just now also have these new things which are tiny very portable computers which are locked down and very closed
...and that need replacing every couple years not because they don't work but because we have been disallowed from replacing parts, thus generating e-waste made up of rare earths and toxic metals and at great cost to people.
Strong consumers laws have a lot to do with it. In India, an entrepreneur started an all-brand service center, and some of the auto-mobile manufacturers ganged up against him and refused to supply him parts. He took them to court and won.
The John Deere tractors that get the right to repair people riled up are the big expensive computer controlled ones. It's an extremely niche market but definitely an important one as farming is extremely important to the global economy.
For the consumer level tractors which are manufactured in a volume which is more similar to automobiles, there appears to be plenty of parts in the market to fix them. Even the consumer level tractor parts with John Deere labels on them seem to just be rebranded cheap commodity parts much of the time.
>But we've got bigger worries with degraded batteries leading to e-waste, with Chevrolet discontinuing support for a 5yr-old EV (Chevy Spark) setting an example that others seem likely to follow.
The Spark is one EV from one manufacturer, introduced ten years ago, and it sold a few thousand units over a couple years. Chevy sells more Bolts in two months than the entire several year long Spark production.
The reason they're no longer selling battery packs is because there was insufficient demand for them. The car sold like shit. It is not "an example others seem likely to follow" like you claim.
Chevy included, given they're warrantying failed Bolt EV batteries and giving them 8 year warranties. Five year old bolts are getting eight-year-warrantied batteries. Weird you didn't cite that.
People have been bleating about "battery-pocalypse" - batteries clogging landfills, failing batteries "totaling" cars, blah blah - since the Prius came out twenty years ago. Still hasn't happened. If you have a Prius and the battery pack throws an error code, there are plenty of businesses offering rebuild services, looks like it's about $1k. They recycle whatever cells are still good, and bad cells are sent out to be recycled for their raw materials.
You either intentionally zeroed in on extreme outside case to push your anti-EV agenda, or you don't know much about hybrids/PHEVs/EVs and you're outside your lane while pushing an anti-EV agenda.
Nah, If I was wealthier I'd probably be driving a Tesla. I've probably been watching too much Louis Rossmann, but I do have concerns about right-to-repair and battery replaceability, and (possibly overblown) concerns of battery degradation - based mostly on experiences with phone and laptop batteries being essentially dead after a few years.
EVs do have real issues limiting mass adoption, though. Even if I could afford a nice one, I couldn't charge it at home (living in an apartment, can't really dangle a power cable down 3 floors).
And as I'm a very-low-mileage driver at the moment, able to WFH, keeping my boring Ford Focus running for a few more years is probably much better for the environment than replacing the entire car.
> The Spark is one EV from one manufacturer, introduced ten years ago, and it sold a few thousand units over a couple years.
Did you mean a few hundred thousand units? Wiki says there were 24,459 Chevrolet Sparks sold in the USA last year, plus a similar number of international sales. Total US sales were roughly 285,000 units[0], so that would fit with “a few hundred thousand”.
They have to start somewhere. This is somewhere. Sure, they could do better, but if this turns into just a thing that they do for all new phones they release then it'll be great. Hopefully they will keep having availability of parts and tools even after software and security updates end for given devices.
This is a bad-faith attempt to try and prevent right-to-repair legislation that's slowly making its way through various legislatures, just like their BS "independent repair provider programme".
I don't understand how Apple starting to do exactly what the "right to repair" people appear to be asking for is in bad faith or in any way trying to prevent it. Can you clarify?
I understood right to repair to be that people want access to parts, tools, and information on how to repair their things. This seems to be the beginning of exactly that. I'm clearly misunderstanding some side of this.
Well my problem is that knowing Apple's (and the tech industry in general) bad faith regarding repair (and any kind of "ownership" users might gain on their devices), I don't think this is a "beginning".
I think this is just a PR piece designed to slow down right to repair legislation efforts that will be left to rot as soon as that objective is achieved, or the experience being so terrible that it's unusable to begin with. In fact, in my case it's already unusable - I keep spares for commonly broken parts for my phone (screen, case, battery & all the seals needed to reassemble) so that I can quickly repair it in a couple hours if I break it. This program would make it impossible as I'd need to ship the old parts back which means I can only order them when I actually need to do the repair and then wait for shipping - it turns a "I have a couple hours this evening, let me fix my phone so it doesn't look like shit" into a thing I have to explicitly schedule.
As of now not only is the selection of parts laughable (where can I buy a genuine new housing or mainboard, or proprietary mainboard components that Apple explicitly prohibits their vendors from selling to the public?) but there's extra BS such as the "system configuration" which has to be done via Apple Support instead of releasing the software or the protocol (so open-source tools can be built) in the open or even making devices be able to perform the configuration directly (new part detected -> a new option appears in Settings to do the initial config).
I used to live in a major Texas city that refused to implement a bus service. After several years of criticism, they decided to finally trial a bus service. They setup bus stops around the city to gather data and determine if this would be a service residents would use. Several bus stop started to appear about 2 miles from my home basically on a main parkway next to an open field. There were no bus stops next to the largest shopping mall in the community, nor in or around any of the growing suburbs that were forming during this time. Of course their trial failed because of lack of demand. They used this lack of demand to justify shutting down the service within a year of starting it.
This is what Apple is doing. Setting a bus stop up next to an open field which will inevitably create data proving their narrative.
A genuine attempt would certainly utilize their own branding. Creating a clear intent to bridge the trust their customers have gained for their brand to this service. Additionally, they would at least attempt to sell parts a lower cost since their own repair service is just a few dollars more.
I think it is fairly clear what their intentions are with this service based on how they are incentivizing it's use.
If Apple sells any parts for any phone for any reason without unjustifiable markups to anyone without requiring registration of phone serial number (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180032 ) or any other random unnecessary requirements whose only purpose is to get in the way of there being a market for parts, well then and only then will I believe that Apple actually is trying to support right to repair. If they're not doing that, then I'm only lead to believe that they are putting this up to deflect criticism and continue their hold on the parts market.
I understand a large margin on the device itself because that includes various software licenses and IP. Auxiliary parts that can't be used to rebuild a full device (as the mainboard is missing) shouldn't carry that markup as you've already paid for those licenses when you originally bought the device.
Yes, but that depends on if the licensing fees are per board or per device. And even if your contract says “per device”, you could still be taken to court by the IP owner.
You seem to be putting words in my mouth. Maybe you think I said that a 50% margin is unjustifiable? Well I'm not sure what to say other than please read my post again and note that I did not.
Not being different, as in the spare parts having the same margin as the full device, is good enough. In the past they've had some very big and unreasonable markups on replacement parts.
There is a little dance that Apple has done a dozen times. It starts with "Apple supports independent repair*!" and ends with terms of the asterisk that completely preclude independent repair. Not in a half-assed way, either, but in a carefully crafted airtight trap. Grandparent post might be jumping the gun, but Apple has shot this gun so many times and hit the RtR crowd so many times that I have a very hard time blaming them for jumping.
It may turn out that this program is good, in which case the correct path forward is to codify it into law. Apple should have a seat at the table when deciding terms. However, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should they be allowed to dictate terms, because they have abused that privilege time and time again. Otherwise, the moment the press looks away, they'll bring back the killer asterisks. They've done it before and they'll do it again if we let them.
That they are not producing old parts is not in itself an indication of bad faith. Manufacturing more after having stopped would be prohibitively expensive. We have to wait until they fail to create enough spares for the current models to support this program in order to draw this conclusion.
They provide repair services for products 5 years after they stop selling them, which will by law be extended to 7 years for products after 2020. They clearly have the parts. See https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201624
They have such a large volume of sales that they would be able to very accurately estimate the number of parts they need in order to fulfill their warranty obligations and paid repairs. Their inventory of old parts would presumably be earmarked for that purpose, without significant leftovers.
I don't believe they've stopped manufacturing the parts (or ran out of stock) since they're still able to "repair" those devices out of warranty at a huge premium.
I mean they even have tool kits that you can rent that come with everything to make the repair (since some tools are very custom like the battery or display press). That doesn't seem very bad-faith of them. Not sure why anyone expected them to release parts and repair guides for every device in the span of five months. They also have to get the logistics sorted out to enable people to order individual parts. These devices were released before the program was announced, so it is not surprising that they may be hard to repair or have limited self-repairable parts when they weren't designed with that in mind. Apple certainly does have an incentive to keep them difficult to repair, so I'm not saying that will change - but they haven't gotten a chance yet.
At least for the repair guides, it's something they must already have internally (in fact some have leaked in the past) so releasing them should be trivial.
> I wouldn't take my device to a third party anyways
Me neither, which is why I want the right to repair to be a thing, so I can get parts just like the third-party I wouldn't use and do the repair myself instead.
> Secondly after owning an iPhone for over a decade not once have I needed a repair.
Beyond actual repair there are consumable parts such as batteries which need replacement after a year or so.
> I feel like the repair issue is manufactured outrage for a problem that doesn't actually exist
It may not exist for you, but does it hurt you or make your situation worse in any way if the repair issue were solved? If not, then why is it a bad thing if some other people (for whom repair is an actual problem) benefit from it?
I'll never do a repair on my phone, my time is too valuable to be futzing around with things I don't truly understand. You most certainly do not need a new battery after a year, my kids are playing with an iphone 4 as a toy. I'm also not the one upset that apple is providing parts, great. It just seems like nothing is ever good enough or everything is done in bad faith and I just don't see the world through that kind of myopic or dystopian lens.
My daughter uses my wife's old iPhone 4 as her "phone" (it's not allowed to connect to our wifi nor does it have a SIM card or active mobile phone plan). The battery isn't super robust but it still works well enough to be a kids toy to play with for taking pictures and making little movies and listening to music. Original 10 year old battery.
I’m a moderately heavy user. I find I have to replace the battery every three years or so. Right now, mine is down to 70%.
One of my gripes is that the replacement batteries are not as good as OEM, even when I buy from iFixit. So, I guess I’ll spend $80 and waste the better part of a day (which is the worst part), even though I’ve replaced several iPhone batteries and have all the tools.
Six or seven years ago I was in Chile for a few weeks as a language-learning exercise. While I was there the power adapter to my MBP broke, making it unusable. At the time there was no Apple store in the entire country! I had to go to Brazil or Argentina to get "authorized" repairs.
I needed my laptop and so I ended up fixing it in my friend's backyard with duct tape and superglue. (Works to this day, AFAIK -- but no more Macs in this household anymore!)
I am taken aback by this attitude against "right to repair" people. Do you guys seriously believe that we must all nuzzle up to Apple to fix our stuff?
> They make devices that last
Seriously beg to differ here. My MBP fried its nvidia graphics chip from overheating and all of my iPhones have had battery issues after 2 years (despite battery health reporting 80-90%). In fact now that I think about it the neither the earpiece nor the bottom speaker are working right either.
My point is simply your Acer notebook is even LESS likely to have parts available in country, they are going to be harder to find etc. The number of Acer stores are going to be FEWER.
So on almost every measure (parts, access to stores, etc) apple has a reasonable story. Now when apple starts going direct to consumer with parts and tools to repair you are claiming "bad faith". It's pathetic really.
I may be confusing things, but a power adapter for a MBP should be readily available on ebay etc.
So how is Chilean eBay then? And who's to say I'm going to have a consistent postal address during my time there? Or that the postal/parcel system is reliable? Or that the package will even arrive in time?
And, ironically, generic parts for an Acer notebook may in fact be more available in less-developed economies, due to their relative cheapness and increased reliance on industry standard parts like hard drives and memory. Plus, in my anecdotal experience, there are a lot more people around who are able to do repairs in places where "making do" is a fact of life.
Apple customer support sucks. I had a macbook air with a dead battery under warranty that I wanted to get replaced. It took a month of discussions with their customer support before the Apple Store (University Village) actually got the damn battery. And then to add insult to injury, the "genius" accused me of damaging the laptop with water and acted like he was doing me a favor by giving me the battery I was owed. I'm certain he was trying to scare me into buying a new computer.
The whole thing made me think back to my old thinkpad, for which I could perform a battery swap myself in seconds (plus two days for the battery to arrive in the mail.)
More recently, my Dell XPS 13 died while under warranty. After a three minute phonecall with Dell customer service, they had a perfectly polite repairman come to my home the next day to replace the motherboard.
I worked with an educational institution that did tons of apple devices.
AppleCare claims were pretty frequent given use case, and hassle free. I honestly haven't even HEARD of months long replacements. This was some time ago though so things may have changed, but something seems off.
My own experience was simply, how can apple be making money with this service?
I believe the cost is $6/month currently. Highly worth it if you are concerned about service.
Dell does a 16/month support offering, but limited to 2 years.
Apple's repairs are extremely expensive for certain things like non-display cosmetic damage (it costs more to fix a broken back glass or housing scratches than an actual broken screen) and relies on an Apple Store (or AASP) being available and you being able to get to it and back or ship your phone off and wait for days.
I have the skills & equipment to do my own repairs and would like the option to do so (in fact, I'm doing so anyway using knockoff or grey-market parts that do the job just fine, but would consider using official parts if the pricing & terms were acceptable).
I would imagine they don't know what demand for this will be like, and parts for older devices are probably not in production at this point - so they probably don't have inventory to support a lot more than what they expected to service through their traditional processes.
------------
While not self-service, I'll note they've expanded service lifespans on the Mac side for repair in recent years. They'd previously guaranteed service would be available for 5 years (from end of new production of the model - which could be a while later than you purchased yours. The mid-2012 13" MBP is still less than 5 years from end of production.), but it was a hard cutoff after that. 5 years and 1 month? Nothing.
Now it's up to 7 years if the parts are available (10 years for batteries on some models), and anecdotally we've had a few repaired in that age range without issue.
That direction suggests to me that in the long run you're likely to see similar things on their "self-service repair" side.
Chances are they don’t have parts for older models. That’s what “Just in time” manufacturing is about, and Apple is fairly good at that.
Also, if they had them, chances are you would find the parts too expensive. They would either have to keep a production line running for low quantities of products, build a new one specialized for small production runs, or stock parts for years.
Both have significant costs.
For example, let’s suppose they decide to stock parts, and plan perfectly, so that all parts can be sold over a period of 10 years. On average, that’s five years between spending money on producing the part and getting money back on selling it. That likely warrants at least a 25% price increase.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a business for offering electronic parts in the long-term (old timer cars are a different case, as many parts can be made almost by hand, and customers are willing to pay good money for them)
> Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a business for offering electronic parts in the long-term
I think that's OK, but I think it's immoral to lock down a device to the point where it prevents third parties from producing these parts if they need to.
Doesn't look like Apple's going to release AST 2 or an equivalent, instead requiring users to contact Apple Support to get the pairing done.
> A System Configuration step may be required at the end of your repair. System Configuration is a postrepair software tool that completes the repair for genuine Apple parts. The repair manual will indicate if System Configuration is required. You will need to contact the Self Service Repair Store support team by chat or phone to initiate System Configuration.
Thats really interesting to have their support team run an AST2 run for you remotely. I guess its probably easier if you are doing a one off repair so you don't have to run AST locally.
As everything in this measure, the point is to make the whole procedure as useless for independent repair shops as possible. Independent repair shops desperately want these tools and that's exactly why Apple isn't giving them to you.
It’s probably cheaper than porting it to Windows, because in that case the tech press would eviscerate them for not letting Windows users repair their devices.
I thought it was a bit sketchy too and spoke to their support agent about it. It seems this site is run by a partner, SPOT or Service Parts or Tools. Their privacy policy lists servicepartsortools.com as a domain but visiting the domain shows a standard parked domain page. The domain is owned by CTDI[0] which does seem more legitimate. The response I got from the support agent after pressing the issue was:
"Apple has partnered with CTDI for the SSR store and the fulfillment of related parts and tools. CTDI will utilize its SPOT subsidiary, including SPOT customer service agents, in support of SSR store customers."
It makes sense that Apple would offload this to someone else, but I agree it's a rather jarring experience.
> "Apple has partnered with CTDI for the SSR store and the fulfillment of related parts and tools. CTDI will utilize its SPOT subsidiary, including SPOT customer service agents, in support of SSR store customers."
It is certainly still a decision to do that. I would guess that for a launch they actually cared about, especially a consumer-facing one, they either would demand to build the website themselves or demand that CTDI follow some design guides. I can't imagine Apple launching their credit card and saying, "okay, Goldman Sachs, you handle everything about branding. The product page for this credit card doesn't need to have Apple in the URL, and doesn't need to follow Apple branding rules" -- because Apple actually cares about getting the word out about the existence of their card, and they actually care about encouraging people to use it.
I don't necessarily think it's some kind of conspiracy to trick people (see TurboTax's shenanigans), but it does speak a lot to their priorities that they do not care about this site looking good or even official, and that they don't think it's important for it to be a recognizable URL or for it to be obvious that it's an official Apple service. None of those things were apparently important enough to get marketing/branding departments involved in the launch.
Kinda strange that Apple has not used the time-and-customers-tested (and with a nice website) ifixit.com for the task. I only hope that iFixit will not die as a result - it’s always nice to have an alternative.
It seems that iFixit will officially be selling replacement parts for Google's Pixel phones [0] and Valve's Steam Deck [1], so hopefully, they are not going anywhere.
ifixit is a somewhat political organization, they're pushing right to repair and grade products on repairability. I'd rather they stay independent from Apple.
I agree. At first I thought they would be uniquely positioned for this role, but it really does seem like they need to stay independent to stay objective. As a customer As a customer I appreciate that ifixit serves the customer's needs rather than Apple's agenda or overall bottom line, which might not have remained the case if they had some kind of partnership.
Independent is often used as a weasel word ie: independent franchises. So sure the could be an independent distributor or whatever but that’s not actually independent as they would have a financial connection.
Remaining objective is of course possible even with financial ties, but the suspicion is going to taint people’s perception.
If ifixit were to partner with a manufacturer (and especially one as large and influential as Apple), there might be a perception among consumers (whether true or not) that they were beholden to the manufacturer not to do anything that might hurt that manufacturer's revenue streams, like (for example) providing parts and information to extend the use of obsolete products or criticizing any of the manufacturer's design practices that might be hostile to repair.
On the flip side, it might be possible for a partnership to provide better first-party parts support and more complete sharing of information, but I'm just too jaded to believe it could happen that way.
No, trying to influence governments to create a legal right to repair is literally politics. Take a step back and look at all the negative connotations you've apparently attached to the word "political." The FSF and EFF are also political organizations.
Partnering with Apple who is against right to repair creates a situation where they might have to choose the money from Apple or their right to repair aspirations.
I agree that would be cool, and probably a better user experience but I’d suspect apple has large amounts of loathing for a company that criticizes their products.
I find iFixit’s repairability reviews incredibly objective, often more generously short on outright criticism than I’d expect given both their opinion and business incentive.
Which is while Apple doesn't like them. If you care about sales, glowing reviews are always better than honest reviews. There are plenty of people willing to praise Apple and so there is no need to cater to objective reviewers.
Apple is one of, if not the, most reviewed company in the world.
For every new product there are thousands of reviews for which iFixit is just one. And almost all of those reviews are overwhelmingly objective and honest as you can see for the lacklustre reviews of the Studio Display.
If I were Apple I wouldn't waste any time on iFixit either since they have limited traffic and limited social reach.
iFixit with real QC approved Apple parts would be awesome. I had a bad experience with a laptop screen from iFixit, their support's options were to accept a partial refund or ship it internationally to them at my own expense. I cut my losses and took the cash. In the end I felt like I would have been no worse off rolling the dice on an eBay part.
Unless Apple expands the options tremendously, iFixit will be around for a while, since the only parts available currently are for a limited range of the newer iPhones.
I poked around to see whether Apple was mentioned at all. Interestingly, clicking quickly through the legal links at the bottom, Apple does at least put themselves forward as the provider of the warranty.
As stated on Apple’s Self-Service support page (https://support.apple.com/self-service-repair):
“The online store is operated by a third-party provider authorized by Apple to sell genuine Apple parts and tools.”
Seems similar to Apple’s trade-in program. The trade-in website is operated by a third-party and (in my experience) notoriously ‘un-Apple’.
In my experience this is on purpose by third party Apple sellers, to avoid any confusion about them being Apple. It's also definitely not a marketing-driven website, but rather a website that aims to be easy to navigate, lightweight and effective.
Clearly a lazy contract job. The "contact us" page is hilarious, who thinks these giant stock images are a good thing on any website? https://www.selfservicerepair.com/support
Yeah, it is so bad that you can't even use the simple "it is made by a third party" excuse, especially considering how much control Apple usually exerts over things like this. In this case I'm pretty sure the directive from Apple was specifically to make the site as bland and un-Apple as possible.
> I find it… curious that the Self Service [0] website of famously brand-conscious Apple is dog-ugly, generic, and has no Apple branding whatsoever.
That's exactly why it is the way it is.
You do not want a brand associated with the highest quality and seamless integration to be associated with self-repair kits. Even under the best of circumstances, with the best of expertise, one must expect self-repair kits sold to the mass market to fail 5%? 10%? of the time?
Given Apple's culture and anti-"everything this pretends to fix" I wonder if this yet another one of those things to serve as a talking point for Senate hearings but in reality they'll sell you some parts at 80% of the price of a new iPhone... ( that old gag ).
Part of the problem with Apple's repair programs is that Apple themselves doesn't want people dinking around with individual electronic components, so they don't let their branded repair centers[0] buy or touch them. This dramatically increases the cost of repair as you have to dispose of a lot of known-good chips purely so that Apple does not have to provide a supply of their proprietary components and does not have to hire skilled labor to solder them onto boards.
People who actually do bother with component level repair are able to frequently undercut Apple on repair cost[1], but have significantly harder time buying the components you need to do this because Apple won't sell chips. As for why, they won't really tell, or if pressed they'll waive their arms around and say "intellectual property" and "innovation". My guess is that they don't want other companies pulling a Strange Parts and building their own iPhones from replacement parts... to which I say, who cares? If you actually do it that way you aren't saving a whole lot of money and all that money is going back to Apple anyway.
Oh, and you can sed s/Apple/any other tech company/g the above paragraphs and still be 100% correct. The whole "what about the innovashun" argument is a cultural toxin that has infected basically every other company that has anything to do with electronics. It's why I don't believe Elon's intentions around Twitter's algorithm for a second[2]. Everyone in tech has been very consistently opposed to anyone other than them touching their stuff, purely because it's "theirs" and not because it actually has a cognizable harm to them.
[0] AASP & IRP members inclusive
[1] Even if we exclude particularly embarrassing cases like when the Genius Bar forgot to check if a backlight cable was installed correctly and recommended a full logic board swap
[2] Tesla is the company that brought Apple-style repair hostility to cars. Elon does not care about "freedom" beyond hearing about it in a meme.
The prices seem very reasonable for genuine parts. Some parts have a "core charge" like automotive parts, to ensure you send back the bad ones so they can be remanufactured.
The $49 rental of the tool kit gets you the use of some quite impressive tools and fixtures which are likely to greatly enhance the chance of success for various repairs.
But this program is rather clearly not aimed at repair shops but seems much more for the retail DIY crowd. For other things which are DIY, like automotive repair, core charges are a normal everyday thing. I don't normally stock various parts for my own cars, I buy them when I need to. This feels very similar to me.
> But this program is rather clearly not aimed at repair shops but seems much more for the retail DIY crowd.
Yes, which is the point. They are offering a compromise for a tiny market (self-repair) in hopes of this distracting from and preventing laws that would benefit the market that actually matters (independent repair).
It's like throwing your underpaid demoralized employees a pizza party so they don't quit, nothing but a damage control gesture that deliberarely doesn't actually help.
You need to know the serial number of the phone before ordering the components. That means repairs will for most people take two to three visits to the repair center over a week, whereas apple can do it in one visit.
They know this makes independent repair uncompetitive, which is why they do it.
IIRC, that's exactly what this is. This program is targeted at "self service" repair, i.e. you fixing your own phone. Apple wants to make it hard/impossible for third party/independent repair shops to offer that service. This does nothing for them: the prices mean that these shops will not be able to make a profit if they try to undercut Apple's own $329 out-of-warranty flat price for screen repair.
So when right to repair criticism is lobbed at Apple, they can now point at this website.
Honestly, when I was first reading I scoffed: $49 for "tool rental"?!
Then I dug further and saw that the tools include an entire set of color coded force specific torque drivers, all of the proper fixtures disassembly and re-assembly, etc all shipped in a Pelican style case.
IMHO, this squarely puts this type of repair in the hands of the DIY enthusiast. Maybe not cost competitive for fixing a single device but great for doing your own and helping out friends, family, and neighbors for the week you have the kit.
Oh the other hand that kit feels absolutely overkill (and the cost of it must be insane) when ~50 bucks worth of iFixit tools and a hair dryer has done the job just fine for me.
I own microsoldering electronics repair tools and fixtures. The price is competitive, especially for factory-quality fixtures. Having the right tools drastically reduces the difficulty of repair. Interestingly, Apple offers the adhesive gasket for $1.80. When used with their display press, this makes restoring watertight factory fit of the replacement display much easier.
Renting the tools is a nice option to have. Torque drivers appear to be priced at obscene level, but not really. Based on handle pattern, these appear to be customized Wera screwdrivers and they cost more to buy direct than through this program from Apple. That just feels like Snapon pricing for specialty tools. By the way, Snapon sells individual torque screwdrivers for $256. Really.
This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware. They will have the option to avoid making a trip to the Apple store and losing custody of their hardware. One of the companies where I work has such a department. They order Lenovo parts and fix the laptops on-site instead of relying on on-site field service from Lenovo.
Yes, agreed, those fixtures would absolutely help with a large-scale repair operation. But if you're only doing it occasionally for your own device, the time taken to receive, unpack, pack and send back the fixtures would probably take more than just using lower-cost tooling that you own.
A big reason why I do my own repairs is because it allows me to optimize the logistics of it by removing the time-sensitive component of shipping; I order common parts & tooling (multiples so I have spares if I fuck up) well in advance of any breakage so that the actual repair no longer depends on the shipping service or my ability to receive packages. Putting the shipping service back in the critical path would negate all those advantages for me, making it no better than just shipping the entire device to Apple/AASP to begin with.
The only major advantage I see here is that the display press would likely guarantee the water-tightness of the repaired phone, though personally I've always just done without and accepted that my device is not watertight, especially considering I don't trust the factory one either after months of heavy use, thermal cycles and minor mechanical shocks & damage.
> This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware.
Hopefully in the future, yes. As it stands though this is unusable for large-scale in-house repair operations as you can't stock parts and have to order them as needed since you need to return the old part in a timely manner.
I will probably order 2-3 sets of parts just to have on-site using some random serial numbers of issued equipment. That should give me the flexibility you mention.
This is still not enough, but for large companies with strict security policies it is a welcome development. Basically, having ability to achieve factory seal on a display assembly in-house for approximately $1000 in equipment is a huge win.
Considering there's still a "system configuration" step that relies on Apple Support, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll just deny it for you because they don't approve of you working around their restrictions.
Similarly, for the tooling, is it actually available to purchase or is it a rental only? If it's a rental they might still retaliate (beyond just keeping your deposit) by banning your account and/or devices and/or denying future "system configuration" on any parts ordered on it to prevent people from "purchasing" the tooling that way.
Exactly. While Apple's special tools might be the best ones to use, It really seems like a way for Apple to frame stuff like iFixit tools in a bad light. Suddenly hair dryers and microwave beanbags are only for hackjob poor quality repairs now that Apple's fancy screen press or whatever is available to rent.
Reading through the comments sections on MacRumors posts pertaining to the toolkit, plenty of people are seemingly very eager to jump to disparaging iFixit, their tools, and any repair store that doesn't have Apple's fancy expensive tools just because they're not doing it "the right way".
What a joke. They're only offering parts for iPhone 12/13/SE and the prices are the same as Apple's own repair service.
So I can pay Apple $329 to fix my broken screen, or I can pay ~$311 + shipping to do the repair myself (actually I can't because they're not selling parts for my broken XS Max on this site).
Maybe the only good thing about this is that they're selling equipment that might be valuable for third-party repair shops, like the "heated display removal fixture". Although I'm pretty sure better alternatives exist.
> Later this year the program will also include manuals, parts, and tools to perform repairs on Mac computers with Apple silicon
I don’t know about pricing as the store site is not working for me (maybe thousands of anxious people trying to buy parts) but it seems later this year it will be possible to repair computers. The guides are already out there.
Let's assume that all iPhones that are "repaired" by an Apple Store are actually replaced by the Apple Store. This matches my experience - go in with broken phone, walk out with brand new identical phone.
Then assume all the old phones are shipped to India/Vietnam/Sri Lanka/China where apple pays the smallest achievable wages for laborers to either:
1) swap out the broken displays, mainboards, etc. to produce a working "Refurbished" unit. Who does Apple sell these to? I don't see refurbished phones for sale on their website. Maybe to T-Mobile/etc who do sell some refurbished iPhones.
or
2) Disassemble the unit, throwing out everything except 100% known-good components, which get used for...what? Maybe new iPhones? Would apple ever include refurbished components...probably not. What do they do with all these known good but used components?
Either way, you can imagine that Apple might only be paying $10 or so to ship all these phones in a giant container to Asia and $20 or so for the labor of repair/disassembly. So maybe the "Self Service Part" really is being offered at the same materials price, minus Apple's straight internal labor cost.
I somewhat doubt this, but it's at least plausible.
> Let's assume that all iPhones that are "repaired" by an Apple Store are actually replaced by the Apple Store. This matches my experience - go in with broken phone, walk out with brand new identical phone.
That used to be very common if not the default (this was my experience too, would always just get a replacement), but these days I believe they actually do a lot of common repairs in stores in a relatively short period of time (screen / back / button / battery replacements), etc.
I think your onto the right track here with the way Apple probably treats repairs but I can't imagine that the parts actually cost this much. Maybe for some specific things it would be decently high (processor, display) but $311 to self repair a screen seems a bit ridiculous when tons of other phones can have a very nice OLED screen put in for much, much less.
> 1) swap out the broken displays, mainboards, etc. to produce a working "Refurbished" unit. Who does Apple sell these to? I don't see refurbished phones for sale on their website. Maybe to T-Mobile/etc who do sell some refurbished iPhones.
available through Apple at https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/iphone. I think availability changes frequently, only see iPhone 11 Pro currently but have seen others in the past.
I once had to do a screen replacement (dropped phone).
They did the swap out. I was on applecare if that matters.
It was something like $30 which seemed very reasonable. I walked out in maybe 15 minutes? This was a long time ago, and I lived a few blocks from an apple store.
My GF was amazed though (her family was on android) because at the time their approved / store repair options were pretty much nonexistent so they often would tape a screen with a crack etc.
I've gone years now without a cracked screen, so they are definitely tougher than they used to be (I don't always use a case etc).
You've forgotten the ~$30 reimbursement for returning the broken part.
Honestly though... what did you expect? Apple said the parts were sold at the exact same prices as their AASPs and their own stores. When you already have the tools, that makes a ~$49 margin for the Store or AASP for a display replacement, a healthy reimbursement of labor and time. Did you expect to save hundreds?
This video shows it being done in 10 minutes with explanation and without any cuts. (This is an XR which is pretty old school but I don't have any positive reason to believe it takes longer with newer displays.)
Is this really a fair comparison to someone that has never done it before, doesn’t have everything perfectly laid out. Doesn't have the confidence to proceed at pace without bricking their $1000+ phone and priceless memories. Doesn’t have to deal with the screen that’s probably shattered to shit and they can’t backup their phone because they can’t enter the password. Has places to put all the little screws so that they don’t lose them and the time needed to remember how to put them right back?
> Is this really a fair comparison to someone that has never done it before . . .
That's not what we're comparing it to. We're discussing the labor cost to Apple of replacing the screen, and asking whether $50 is a healthy margin for labor and other overheads. The answer is yes, since replacing a screen does not take all that much labor. As much as I hate Apple, the fact a screen can be replaced so quickly supports their claim that the parts themselves are most of the cost of the repair, and justifies their charging as much as they do for the self-service program.
(I mean it could be that they're lying through their teeth and they're making a huge profit but that would be bold. Highly visible companies normally either tell half truths or stay silent, they tend not to make direct, clear lies over an item that has a lot of public scrutiny.)
Look into _why_ they're doing it. Right to repair laws are being passed in countries, especially the EU. Cynically, Apple could want to get ahead now for the PR win, that they didn't need to, while all these years they have dragged their feet.
> Apple will offer tool rental kits for $49, so that customers who do not want to purchase tools for a single repair still have access to these professional repair tools. The weeklong rental kits will ship to customers for free.
You're right, the total price is $360+shipping (EDIT: or $327.35 after the return credit) with the additional tool rental. The $311 price is just the display bundle, which includes the display+adhesive+screws. Although to be fair, the tools in that rental kit aren't required to do the repair as far as I can tell.
Also, I just noticed that the display items have this disclaimer:
> This part requires the System Configuration software tool. After performing the repair, contact us by chat or phone to initiate System Configuration.
So they're not getting rid of that bullshit display serial number system, meaning that even if you buy a genuine display from Apple and perform the repair following Apple's own instructions, your phone will still be in a broken state until you call Apple and ask them to remove the software lock.
You also can't even place an order for a display unless you provide a valid serial number/IMEI.
Nuts it looks like the camera parts list doesn't include the external lens glass or bezels. I recently cracked mine and had to resort to ifixit... was hoping Apple would provide an official solution.
> Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips, Self Service Repair will be available early next year in the US and expand to additional countries throughout 2022.
> The initial phase of the program will focus on the most commonly serviced modules, such as the iPhone display, battery, and camera. The ability for additional repairs will be available later next year.
It makes me wonder if they’ll drop support for repairs once devices hit 2 years old. That would largely defeat the entire point of offering repair parts and manuals in the first place.
I suppose that an enterprising shop could stock up on common parts expected to need repair, such as USB ports and screens. They could even speculate on other less-common parts but would need to mark them up 1000% if only 10% of that stock is expected to ever sell.
Note that the core charge might be an attempt to prevent such stocking up.
That's exactly what those mobile phone repair shops do right now (I worked in one for a few years). We would offer to dispose of the device for you free of charge/recycle old devices, and break them down for parts.
Shops could definitely do this, but as others have pointed out elsewhere Apple requires a serial number before they sell you the part as well as a deposit repaid when you return the replaced part.
Absolutely incredible. Being able to order a legitimate new OEM iPhone display is an absolute gamechanger for self repair. I've replaced countless screens for myself over the years, and it is literally impossible to get a genuine OEM digitizer without cannibalizing another phone.
Not only that but it doesn't even say it is by Apple or official in any way on the site. It says "for Apple Products" as if it was not affiliated and even the contact info is a different company.
It looks like they made it appear as sketchy as possible.
Louis Rossmann, who has been outspoken about Apple's repair hostility and is a right-to-repair advocate, has released a video where he goes over his take on this site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agG108sxkyo
It's a pretty good take, and points out some key criticisms: lack of parts for common repairs, lack of support for older devices, and, of course, no schematics.
The problem isn't Louis, it's Apple's repair-hostile policies. Louis is just pointing out that he is physically capable of fixing a thing for $50 in an hour while the apple store would discard the whole motherboard and replace it, costing thousands and taking much more time. Repairing is fundamentally much more environmentally positive than discarding / replacing.
The guy is amazing in his advocacy for systems that can be repaired, updated etc.
If people were on Apple, then got turned off because their device broke and couldn't be repaired legally, so they switched to an android that they _can_ repair, that's not Louis' fault - it's Apple's.
Yes Louis maybe able to fix something for $50 but is he willing to stand behind the work, guarantee that the motherboard will continue to work for years to come and offer warranty. Because that's what a new part will get you - a reliable, guaranteed experience.
It's great that people can fix it themselves but you shouldn't compare that to what the Apple Store will do. Their priority will always and should always be the best customer experience.
This is frankly an astounding take - People like Louis are actively trying to increase the longevity of Apple products with stuff like right to repair.
Louis points out issues with Apple products and somehow he's a bad guy for that? Informing consumers is somehow bad because you think that people should only buy iPhones? Give me a break.
Meanwhile, the only working device (ie: not physically broken) of that sort I still have unused is my iPad2. It's been in a crate of unused electronics for the past several years because it's quite old and unable to be flashed with anything else other than a very old version of iOS. It barely functions, it's so slow. Meanwhile, I've got old HTC, Samsung, and Pixel devices still being used. They typically run some stripped down Android build without a SIM and LAN-only WiFi and make fine media players and "fancy" remotes for lights and such.
Official support is definitely a huge deal and I enjoyed the iPad for several years. But these days, the best way I've found for me to avoid waste is to stick with devices that allow me to install something lightweight of my choice after they are EOL.
From [1] "[with the GPL the FSF is] reshaping how programs are made in order to give everyone the right to understand, repair, improve, and redistribute the best-quality software on earth"
Open source is an alternative to legislated proprietary software. There is no feasible path towards legislating that all software companies must provide the source code for their products today. Though that may have been an alternative future had our timeline forked somewhere in the early 1970s.
Good documentation around how proprietary software behaves so it can be troubleshot (in the automotive field this already exists, they don't give you raw source code but they give you the exact sequence of operations under which a trouble code is set - for example, "this DTC is set if the battery voltage goes below 11V for 2 seconds" or oscilloscope waveforms of raw sensor signals) and a ban on bullshit restrictions in the name of "security" such as the binding of Touch ID buttons to the mainboard.
Heavy NDAs so only large companies could "repair" the software. Thus making repair expensive beyond feasibility.
Better legislation would require timely support for commercial software that is sold for a purpose, with a stated minimum timeframe not unlike a warranty.
No, because software carries copyright, and any law that touches that would be struck down by federal preemption and international treaties. While most of that preemption is specifically America's idea, the US is also chock full of people holding all sorts of base assumptions that copyright and patents are fundamentally good.
This is the country full of people who get angry when China "steals our IP", rather than getting angry that companies were hoarding knowledge from everyone else for profit, or getting angry that China isn't sharing their pirate's booty. Yes, technically, only the agenda of the rich gets passed in the US; but that's mostly because the US has done such a great job of aligning the interests of an enfranchised middle class and rich people that people aren't willing to question copyright at a low enough level to make "software R2R" legislatively viable. We're the country of people who pirate movies and then blame pirates for tanking the sales of those movies.
Anyway, if you want to know what a minimal software R2R bill would look like, it would probably be a copyright exception that allowed distributing unauthorized modifications to software under specific circumstances, probably with the added stipulation that the modifications need to be distributed in a form that cannot be used without a licensed copy of the original software.
That sounds simple enough but you immediately bring on all sorts of related questions if you add such a large gaping hole to the copyright system. Do people who make these fixes get copyright protection, too? In the US, licensed derivative works get a separate copyright that the original author is at risk of infringing upon. Unlicensed derivatives are uncopyrightable; this is why it's legal to pirate fanart[0], because the alternative would be fanworks boxing out the original artist of their own work. If someone fixes software under software R2R, should the original software vendor be allowed to incorporate that fix back into their own work? Should other vendors be able to use that fix and modify it further? Those questions are very critical to answer, and I don't have good answers for them.
FWIW software R2R would also thoroughly break the GPL copyleft, because it relies upon everything I just said about derivative works. The thing is, GPL is also the most friendly software to right-to-repair, specifically because it requires source code disclosure. A badly written software repair exception would not only destroy this, but also give us a repair ecosystem of people with binary-only software patches suing each other for stealing their own work and just recursing back into the same copyright maximalism problem we already have.
[0] Strictly speaking, if you pirate, say, One Piece[1] fanart and sold it on a t-shirt, Shueisha can still sue you. The artist who made the fanart can't - not even if it was Shueisha themselves pirating pirate fanart on t-shirts and selling it.
interesting... but when I try to click the link in the article, https://www.selfservicerepair.com, I got a 403 forbidden error... Is it cause I is in Europe (in my best Ali-G voice [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_G]) or did someone borke the site already? [Update] If I use Cloudflare WARP, I can get in, so either my IP is blocked, or they don't like me coming from Europe...
I was surprised that big, heavy repair equipment like the "display press" and "Heated Display Removal Fixture" sell for only ~$250. You would think these are $1000+ items.
Excellent. I just cracked the screen on my 2020 iPhone SE. After suffering through many Amazon low quality replacement screens for my previous iPhone 6, I look forward to readily available, authentic Apple parts.
I only hope that the 2022 SE display is compatible with the 2020 SE (it appears it should be, at initial glance).
This is pretty shameful. It is clearly a cynical move to save face in the right-to-repair debate. If Apple was committed to the environment and repair there would be a "Repair" or "Support & Repair" link in the top header of apple.com that gets you to a store with every major component for recent Apple products. When a product becomes "vintage" they should release all schematics and CAD designs so 3rd party part makers can sell aftermarket replacement parts.
In a year or two Apple will end this minimally visible and confusing website saying not enough people used it (some BS like "less than 0.001% of all iPhone users ever placed an order") and so it is not worth the time and effort. "See? No one cares about repairing their devices. People don't want to own and care for their things anymore!"
PSA: Do not use Apple’s special courier service to deliver devices purchased through their Apple Shop app.
The courier is Uber. The drivers routinely cancel deliveries resulting in a mandatory 5-7 day wait for the cancellation to be processed and a refund issued. Apple will not ship a replacement device on the original purchase order; instead, customers must place a new order.
This thread is such a train wreck. Just admit you hate Apple and it doesn't matter what they do, you will find a way to make it a bad thing. Some of the complaints here are just hilarious.
What kind of equivalent program does Google offer for Pixels?
I didn't bring up Google for any reason other than they're the obvious alternative. I guess I could have said Samsung, but I tend to forget about them. But the question applies to them, too.
My observation was simply that Apple gets so much hate that doesn't seem to be good faith criticism. It's just hardcore antifanboyism.
Criticism for Apple is proportional to the effort the company makes to appear greener, faster, smarter, more diverse, etc. than its competitors. It's arguably a direct response to the company's marketing, regardless of whether that marketing creates many fanboys that believe it.
Probably almost no fanboys remember this deceptive chart that suggests the M1 is equally powerful as the highest end discrete GPU, while still using 200 Watts less power. But Apple haters like me do.
BTW I'm open to hating on other companies in the same industry, like Google for providing bad service with Google Fi and their smartphone line.
One company doing a slightly less shitty thing doesn't make it not shitty.
> Just admit you hate Apple
I do. I also hate Google (QC issues), Samsung (too many to type out), Motorola/Lenovo (everything from cost cutting to poor updates), Asus (questionable bootloader relocking restrictions), Sony (bootloader unlocking purposely gimping cameras), modern Nokia (no unlocking at all), Microsoft (everything with Nokia/Steve Ballmer)... does that help? I hate everyone to different degrees for different reasons.
Ohh.. btw there's a good bit of suspicion that Apple's efforts are just greenwashing/its right to repair equivalent. Please see Louis Rossman's channel for more info. He makes a living off repairing Apple hardware (mainly Macs).
i agree with this sentiment. to distil the comments into brand allegiance is an unfortunate mistake, as what most people are honestly trying to express is a seemingly unilateral consensus against the wholesale commodification and privatization of the experience of ownership. At best Apple is taking a well read treatise from Redmond and 'Embracing' a competition to their revenue stream.
to put it another way, the cattle are free to graze on grass or grain, so long as they remain to chew the cud on Cooks farm.
Realistically any brand can be okay as long as a) you don't get the short straw of QC [1], and b) you know what you're getting into (and why).
When it comes to phones, the only "true" manufacturer that is repairable and open is fairphone - and they too got mired in controversy over their last phone [2]
With that said, truth is a lot of these cos like locking down their phones, and if you're looking for a Libre-free experience, I'd recommend a Pixel. I myself use a Pixel 5 (it was the last flagship Pixel with an off the shelf chip... Tensor has tons of bugs apparently). The 5a is also out and fairly similar.
My second choice would be Xiaomi, but specifically either their Mi flagships (where there's almost no cost cutting), or Redmi which are very budget and also value for money. I'd highly recommend flashing the Mi-EU ROM if you can, and custom ROMs are fortunately fairly common. Avoid the A series for weird bugs.
Beyond this unfortunately it gets tougher. Older OnePlus were decent but recent phones aren't. Samsungs can be fantastic if you're cool with an ecosystem that's nearly as locked in as Apple's with nowhere as much of adoption.
(Quick edit addition - for laptops Framework is decent but I'd honestly recommend spinning up a cyberdeck/an Intel NUC with a type C powerbank, portable monitor and BT mouse/Keyboard. Not convenient, sure, but unlikely to fail and easy to fix if failed. Commerical laptops that don't have shitty hinges? Maybe ThinkPads, perhaps Dell Latitude and perhaps Panasonic Toughbooks. HP ProBooks can be okay but HP can burn in hell for all I care. I legitimately hate them more than Apple (which isn't an easy task), but that story's for another day.)
If you want to continue this conversation please let me know, I'd recommend another platform (for ease of typing/messaging).
1 - apparently Lenovo at one point realized it was cheaper to RMA ThinkPads than to QC them (as per what I read on r/Thinkpad). What fun (if it's actual, which, given Lenovo, is quite probable).
2 - because they dropped the headphone jack conveniently as the released wireless earbuds. Yes, waterproof headphone jacks are a thing even on budget phones like the 2015 Moto G3 (~$300?)
For Android, it is hard to beat a good Samsung Galaxy. I fix a ton of my friends old Galaxies. I tell them not worth it because the screens are so expensive. But its always for their mom or something who really like the Galaxy and they upgraded them with some other brand of Android, Moto, LG, even low end Samsung and after a few months just can't take it anymore.
Honestly, I used to hate Apple too. Not sure why, it just seemed like more of a glitzy "fashion statement" than a technical innovation. Maybe this was fueled by my own insecurities (I grew up poor), but boy, was I wrong.
After dealing with PC laptops for more than a decade (my first laptop was when I was 19), I finally switched to a MacBook Pro last year and could not be happier. I've had "top" PC products in the past: Razer, X1 Carbon, etc, etc. None even remotely come close in battery life, performance, ease of use, or support.
I switched to Apple phones around 6 years ago, and it's the same story. I still miss my HTC One, but other than that one phone, nothing compares to my iPhone.
I am not sure how this relates to Apple’s repair practices and other business stances ?
To put in context, people probably had the same views around 1994~2000 as Windows was the only platform providing a reasonable GUI, wide hardware support, a vibrant app ecosystem and support from any computer shop at any price point you could wish for.
I still think people hating Microsoft weren’t wrong per se, and we can look at the bright side as well as the shitty side at the same time.
God, I had the HTC One (M7). That was such an amazing device, it's a real shame that nobody has come along and made something that felt quite as... phone as it did.
Even having used punch-hole cameras and OLED displays, that handset was just amazing. The way the curved back would melt into your hand, the perfect button placement and incredible speaker setup... that thing felt like a phone from 5 years in the future. The software experience was fairly clean and beat the hell out of Samsung at the time (and arguably, today), and the performance was really solid. The screen was a gorgeous 1080p LCD panel that made comparable iPhone models look like a kid's toy, and both cameras were super competitive for the time. I'm just gushing at this point, but that phone was really something else. If they made a new one with zero changes except a more recent chipset and better storage, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
And who could forget the price? All that for ~400 bones in the US, in 2013? You could even land it cheaper if you bought it on contract with a carrier! They really just don't make them like they used to, even my S10e doesn't quite fill the void.
When I was in grade school kids bullied you for being an Apple user. Also, people were constantly telling you Apple is for education and there are more applications for windows.
For one, most people now spend most of their time in their browser or in a hidden browser (ahem, Electron?).
So unless you want something specific (video games, a Windows desktop app, ...), I think they just both work. I'm guessing even Linux on a mac is probably okay (since so many people have the exact same hardware as you...)
Yes, today if you text someone not using iphone, you will have a green bubble which means you are practically a pariah and get made fun of. In fact my circle almost does the same, but more jokingly because you make fun of each other cars at the older ages lol.
>> Just admit you hate Apple and it doesn't matter what they do, you will find a way to make it a bad thing.
I am not an Apple fan and I welcome this self-repair initiative and I think their service manuals are quite nicely written but I worry that this may just be their another PR stunt:
1. many repairs can't be done without their direct assistance: "A System Configuration step may be required at the end of your repair. System Configuration is a postrepair software tool that completes the repair for genuine Apple parts. The repair manual will indicate if System Configuration is required. You will need to contact the Self Service Repair Store support team by chat or phone to initiate System Configuration.". They are not providing this software.
2. nothing said about logic board (yet?) and it is not uncommon that logic board goes bad (and also no component-level repair, especially USB connectors which often go bad but component-level repair is not really something I would expect at this time)
3. older devices not covered so the situation is unchanged for those
Coming soon, so they either made this choice because of the same underlying reasons driving Apple, or because Apple did it first. Either line of reasoning has precedent to back it up.
They are trying to slow down the "right to repair" laws that are being drafted in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. They would rather implement it and be able to set the parameters of it, rather than be forced to follow a government mandated and controlled version.
> Isn't that a win? Public pressure forced Apple to do the right thing here and we don't need additional regulation.
It may be a win on short term but do you see any parts for Mac machines there? Such a "minimal offer" has the danger of public officials being ignorant enough to fall for Apple's propaganda of "we're offering that here, isn't it enough?". Also, it does not seem to offer the special tools that Apple uses for calibration or pairing of components.
We need comprehensive regulation covering all kinds of technology self-repair, from phones over laptops and computers to cars and trucks. Anyone should be able to perform the same quality and level of repair service that official Apple stores can.
> It may be a win on short term but do you see any parts for Mac machines there?
Not yet. But I'm pretty sure they are heading down that path as well. They sell a lot more iPhones so it probably makes sense to go that route first. I disagree with your starting point of really awful cynicism, especially given that Apple has a demonstrated track record (albeit sometimes slow and despite their initial intentions) of doing environmentally friendly things. They don't have to power their operations via renewable energy, or build products made of recycled metals. "Fall for Apple's propaganda"? Sorry I'm not buying the negative case.
It took Apple well over fifteen years and the threat of lawsuits and regulation to come up with this portal. Their products still consistently score shit on repairability comparisons.
Yes Apple does do decent things in operations, but anything involving the consumer facing side has been "only Apple knows best" for decades. Operating systems being locked down? That shit started with Apple, Microsoft and Android only followed suit. Hardware using special screws, no 3.5mm socket, or glue? Peripheral sockets needing MFi chips? Again, Apple pioneered that consumer hostility, and look how they're fighting tooth and nail to keep Lightning instead of switching over to USB-C and offering an USB-C to Lightning adapter utilizing a custom Alt mode to offer backwards compatibility fot old accessories.
The only notable progress originating at Apple was the introduction of USB.
But that’s assuming Apple doesn’t want to have people repair their own equipment - it would contradict their sustainability mission that they loudly espouse and take action on.
Like why would they do this, if they didn’t want to, and then roll it all back? It would just bring legislation up again. It seems like a lot of work just to “trick you”.
One of these days Apple will find a way to charge you a premium, not for your phone, the parts, or the tools needed to repair it, but for the actual time you spend doing it.
"You can now repair your iPhone yourself using the new Apple Driver(tm). For only $199 for the basic version ($399 for the Pro version), this screwdriver can be used on any compatible iPhone, iPad or Mac."
This is a hilarious retort to the armchair RTR crew that has been whining of repairability sabotage and price gouging conspiracies for profit. You want the proper tools to do it right? Here's all 70Lb of them shipped to you. Have fun.
I hope it seems a little less predatory and "worth it" to people now to just pay for an OEM part, installed by a professional, with proper tools on hand. I don't think many people will use this, but I admire the engineering and initiative behind this program.
> Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips, Self Service Repair will be available early next year in the US and expand to additional countries throughout 2022.
> The initial phase of the program will focus on the most commonly serviced modules, such as the iPhone display, battery, and camera. The ability for additional repairs will be available later next year.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-...