The iPhone 7 Has Arbitrary Software Locks That Prevent Repair (vice.com)

Jason Koebler, reporting for Motherboard: Apple has taken new and extreme measures to make the iPhone unrepairable. The company is now using software locks to prevent independent repair of specific parts of the phone. Specifically, the home buttons of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are not user replaceable, raising questions about both the future repairability of Apple products and the future of the thriving independent repair industry. The iPhone 7 home button will only work with the original home button that it was shipped with; if it breaks and needs to be replaced, a new one will only work if it is "recalibrated" in an Apple Store.

Comments

Security, yes?

[American AC in Paris]

As I understand it, this is a security measure, not an "arbitrary" lock. The home button is part of the Secure Enclave. If you let third parties make modifications to the Secure Enclave, it ceases to be secure.

Re:Not a terrible thing

[dgatwood]

This does not seem unreasonable. I say this because the home button is also a fingerprint reader, which is a security device. If a shop installs some kind of 3rd party button there, the security of the device could be compromised.

Actually, it does seem unreasonable. The proper behavior would be to detect the unknown reader and purge all fingerprints from the secure enclave, forcing the user to set up fingerprint recognition again after unlocking with the passcode. That would mean that the user would be alerted to the fact that the hardware was altered (thus preventing surreptitious swapping as a targeted attack) while still allowing the device to be repaired by swapping hardware at the user's request.

The current situation is exactly the sort of behavior that got car manufacturers a very nice set of laws that mandate repair part availability, etc. Keep going down this path, and Apple will earn the consumer electronics industry a similar set of regulations, and none too soon.

Re: It's for your own safety, trust us you dumb fu

[mrchaotica]

You just can't screw with the engine controls. Contrary to your line of argument, doing that has a very high probability of changing its emissions (like 100%).

No.

First of all, merely "changing" the emissions does not necessarily mean making the vehicle violate the emission standards. For example, if the owner made modifications elsewhere -- such as by switching to a cleaner fuel, like biodiesel -- it's entirely possible for there to be different settings that optimize the engine operation while still maintaining equal or better emissions. For that reason alone the EPA rule is overreaching.

Second, the ECU performs an increasingly large number of functions beyond just things that affect emissions. That means the bullshit emissions argument is used as an excuse to DRM all the other computerized functions in the tractor, up to and including things like GPS tracking or self-driving modes. Even worse than that, John Deere has argued that the DRM infection means the farmer only "licenses" the entire fucking tractor , including the hardware parts!

Therefore, this claim of yours:

You can modify all sorts of crap on a JD tractor. Tires get changed all the time. You can change the entire cab if you want.

...is not true, at least from John Deere's perspective. If this sort of tyranny is allowed to stand, there would be nothing stopping John Deere from requiring farmers to obtain its permission even to change the fucking tires (using only John Deere "licensed" parts), in exactly the same way e.g. Lexmark tries to pretend it's illegal to use third-party ink.

And then we can put it on the list along with other nerd arguments like: There's NO WAY Bell can stop our Blue Boxes! There's TOTALLY ILLEGAL for the government to spy on all our comms! There's NO WAY they can patent computer code! No one will ever get sued when using BitTorrent! etc.

Fuck off with your strawman arguments!