RIGHT TO REPAIR NEWS! apple's latest news, how it could restrict repairs - its not good

ever since the iphone 11, apple began serializing/pairing screens to their original device. the way it works is there is a tiny chip on each screen that talks to the board and tells the phone that it is the original. its technically possible to transfer this chip but the vast majority of shops and diyers either cant or dont because of the complexity.

at first glance, blocking parts that are lost/stolen/iCloud locked sounds like a good thing but i can tell you its not what it seems. the collateral damage in this news is what happens to screens leftover from a repair. most of you might not know that all oem refurb screens were once on someones phone. at some point the glass was cracked without damaging the oled and the repair shop that did the repair either sent the screen out to be refurbished or sold it to a refurbisher.

as of now apple has not specified wether they will block just regular iCloud lock, which happens the moment you sign in to your iCloud account, or wether they will restrict iCloud lost. the language hints at them leaning towards iCloud lost, but to my knowledge they have yet to specify.

here is where the collateral damaged comes in: in this scenario, the chip on that broken screen would be paired to the device it was originally came from, which has an almost 100% chance that it would be attached to a serial number with 'find my iphone' still on, rendering it potentially unusable depending on wether Apple will opt for regular iCloud Clean or wether they opt for iCloud Lost. bear in mind the above scenario was entirely above board: the device the screen came from was not lost or stolen and there was nothing illicit anywhere in the refurbishing process, from selling the screen to the refurbisher or the refurbisher replacing the glass and selling it to back.

even if apple opts for iCloud clean, what if at some point the devices original owner reports the device as iCloud lost, presumably the screen's new owner would be locked out of being able to use their parts, which once again were purchased and repaired completely legitimately.

this leaves the repair and refurbishing industry with pretty much one option and that will be removing the chip entirely. even if apple opts for iCloud clean, its just not worth the headache that will ensue if 2 years down the line a perfectly fine screen goes bad because the original owner lost their device.

the good news:
as of now the chip that pairs the screen to the original device serves no other functionality than to tell the device it is or is not the original screen, so removing it would not result in any loss of functionality.

the bad news:
more work for the same end result. i can only image this will result in higher screen prices which will ultimately be passed onto the customer. this will also make it more difficult for DIYers to buy donor devices for parts as they will need to remove the paired chip.

if you read this far thank you for watching and reading, please let me know your thoughts below

[BrookshirePhoneRepair]

I'm thinking that on the iCloud lost devices parts, they simply won't allow calibration. Those parts will still be able to be used. This is wishful thinking btw lol