eevBLAB 97 - Is Apple Serious About Right To Repair? (The Verge)

The Verge just took Apple to task over their new authorised repair tools, manuals and parts as part of Right to Repair. Are they giving Apple a fair suck of the sav?

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[gbraadnl]

the issue with this solution is captured in the statement: "and give the company remote control. Which, of course, defeats a bunch of the reasons you’d repair your own device at home!".

[gudenau]

The Verge is known for being fairly inept at hardware stuff in the PC world.

[igotes]

Complaining that Apple didn't provide a way to test that the connectors are plugged in correctly is an admission that he should have got somebody competent to do the work.

[Broken_Yugo]

$49 to rent 80lbs of tools, by mail, freight free? That's a huge favor I'd never complain about, but I know what pro grade tools cost, that $1200 hold is probably lower than the replacement cost of that kit.

[flomojou]

It's hardly difficult to understand why they would charge so little to rent these out-- almost anything would be worth avoiding R2R legislation that could potentially force Apple to open up great swathes of documentation and make them fairly sell all parts, not just a selected few. By preemptively opening up a few popular repairs they can now point to them as showing Apple is opening up their repair process and of *course* there's no need to coerce them via legislation.
Very similar to back when video games were potentially being regulated due to violence; they quickly came up with their own ratings system so it was on their own terms.

[bertblankenstein]

The charger chips are the cd3217 and isl9240. There is no reason for the "no sell" agreement other than making third party board difficult. There is no IP on the 9240 whatsoever and it just is a charging chip only. The 3217 handles other things, like thunderbolt as well as charging but there isn't and software as far as I know.

[Mike]

I'd sooner see them design future products with a simple battery replacement. Sliding cover, pop the battery out, and pop new one in.

[hypercube]

Imagine if John Deere released a $49 rental kit to repair tractor electronics along with affordable (whatever that is for tractors) parts to the customer...

[nand]

Snazzy Lab's has a video of the entire process.
The most disappointing things out of this process is that of the verification one :(

[WacKEDmaN]

too little too late from apple... ill never touch their products...ever...

[MatthiasWelwarsky]

The article is just water on Apples' mills. "We give them the most professional repair kit and genuine parts, but they can't manage them and they still complain".

[whuzzzup]

Those repair manuals are all useless because they boil down to: If broken, replace motherboard.
This is why real schematics and board views are important.

[leer]

This is a step in the right but as you say releasing the schematics would be ideal. I miss the service manuals of old that had all the schematics available, like any piece of sony tech made up until the early 2000s.

[rossjohnson]

I'm no Apple owner, but I thought one of the key issues is that the parts can only be ordered for a specific phone (by SN). That means a customer can't walk into a 3rd party repair shop and have their phone fixed in an hour, because the part must still be ordered for that specific phone from Apple. Another issue which Dave touched on is harvesting parts from other devices (e.g. the Intersil charger chip). It's not such a big deal when the chips are taken from a dead Macbook. It's when brand new powerbanks are dismantled for the same chip and all the cells/electronics are 'discarded' that things start to get crazy.

[nigeljohnson]

Remember when the battery compartment was easy to open, allowing the old battery to slid out and a new one to be fitted?
The question is why new devices have not been designed with easy repair in mind.

[punk]

These phones are designed to be cheap to put together. It's easy to have a machine press a phone together with an adhesive seal. You should be asking why your £1000+ phone is made so cheaply.

[TheFleetz]

Having just experienced Apple’s “service” at Adelaide’s Apple store they have no intention to repair older phones. Had a 7 Plus which appeared to require a battery, booked Genius Bar appt. phone went out the back for 5 minutes comes back with they won’t replace the battery for “safety” reasons!!! Absolute BS. Then playing their game they offer a replacement 7 Plus $576! Of course have you seen the IPhone 13.

[martijn]

I think you’re missing the point here, the right to repair should not mean you need to rent a high tech studio in order to just replace a battery. It should mean Apple needs to redesign their products so almost anyone can just simply replace a battery. The only reason Apple is doing it like this, is so they can evade huge fines while not having to change anything. Obviously no one is going to rent this and they know that.

[godzil]

for certain components, there is a legitimate reason for the serialisation, the camera is one of them, it is not obvious at first, but the front camera is used for user authentication, and is part of the security around the device, having random 3rd party replacement for these would potentially cause the ability to lower the security, that's why the devices do not accept these parts until an authorised technician do the procedure to update the database in the phone chip to accept that new sensor.

Of course it is stupid for other part that are not linked with security.

Also yes, it cost less than $99 to replace a battery (all included) at an apple store, and that indeed include labor.

[radiantxpdd]

I think their strategy is to appear to make concessions on right to repair for PR reasons (as well as making their lobbyists' work easier), while still not giving up any of their control over the products after they're sold, which really is at the heart of the issue.

It's nice that they publish their repair manuals. I mean, until a couple of decades ago it used to be a given that you could at the very least buy a repair manual for any given product, so I don't feel a slight return to normalcy is something to actually be thankful for, but yeah, it's nice, it's proper. Them selling tools: Genuinely a good thing.

But still, what use is "right to repair" if you still can't actually do any repairs without Apple explicitly authorizing them? If they hold a legal monopoly on all components involved, if those same components can't even be traded on the second hand market due to having to be centrally "verified" before they can be used in another device? Just offering tools, parts and repair manuals barely impacts Apple's current business at all, which is why I don't think they should get too much credit for doing it.

The real issue isn't that they previously haven't published repair manuals, or refused to sell parts. The real issue was and remains that they want to control what you can and cannot do with your device after you purchased it. As long as they maintain that control, they can make sure any kind of third-party repairs will never be cost or time saving compared to using their official repair service, so they're really not conceding anything. What these concessions are, is just another weapon they want to use against independent repair. "Look, now we've opened up for independent repair! And see, you're much better off without using it!"