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Apple Is Lobbying Against Your Right To Repair iPhones, New York State Records Confirm (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Lobbying records in New York state show that Apple, Verizon, and the tech industry's largest trade organizations are opposing a bill that would make it easier for consumers and independent companies to repair your electronics. The bill, called the "Fair Repair Act," would require electronics companies to sell replacement parts and tools to the general public, would prohibit "software locks" that restrict repairs, and in many cases would require companies to make repair guides available to the public. Apple and other tech giants have been suspected of opposing the legislation in many of the 11 states where similar bills have been introduced, but New York's robust lobbying disclosure laws have made information about which companies are hiring lobbyists and what bills they're spending money on public record. According to New York State's Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Apple, Verizon, Toyota, the printer company Lexmark, heavy machinery company Caterpillar, phone insurance company Asurion, and medical device company Medtronic have spent money lobbying against the Fair Repair Act this year. The Consumer Technology Association, which represents thousands of electronics manufacturers, is also lobbying against the bill. The records show that companies and organizations lobbying against right to repair legislation spent $366,634 to retain lobbyists in the state between January and April of this year. Thus far, the Digital Right to Repair Coalition -- which is generally made up of independent repair shops with several employees -- is the only organization publicly lobbying for the legislation. It has spent $5,042 on the effort, according to the records.
I'm exercising my right to not buy iphones.
"Apple kicks dogs and steals from your grandmother!"
What a shallow and attention-seeking headline. Ask yourself, how complex is the issue of making a manufacturer publish repair guides so that the public could repair an iPhone? Is it not conceivable that companies might object to some kinds of requirements a law might implement, that would be unworkable?
If a handset company were required to publish guides on how to fix the graphics coprocessor if it broke, would it be sufficient if the instructions said, "buy a new phone"? Or did you mean that the manual should instruct the user on how to remove the SoC, procure a new one, solder it in, preserve/restore all the security features and keys that actually cannot be disentagled from the old SoC and losing the user's data in the process, and then putting it through testing and verification that it works properly? (to give a silly hypothetical)
Exactly what types of broken states of a phone are you requiring a company to publish guides to fix, and make parts available for? Do you even know how many different ways a modern phone can fail? And what level of fix are you requiring they make available, and for what level of user capability? It's going to be pretty much useless if grandpa can't manipulate the microtweezers to fix the parts of the rear-facing camera module, so what then?
Electronic devices have come a lot farther than a car engine that you could demand be user-serviceable, and these laws are misguided attempts to make them so. Don't make a company the villain for objecting to things that are nice in (ancient) principle, but unworkable in reality.
Unless you bribe (I mean lobby) the right people with enough money (I mean alternative facts) then of course you can expect to get nowhere.
Fact, figures and logic dont feed the re-election beast boy, she only eats greenbacks.
And the sooner the better.
Time to get the grassroots campaigns going. Repair Cafe fixers and clients, every member of every hackerspace, repair shops of all kinds, independent repair contractors, a large number of Slashdotters, and just average citizens who are tired of getting the shaft - all of them together could probably kick in enough money for some serious bribes. (Because let's face it - lobbying is essentially bribery). It might succeed in thwarting this loathsome, sleazy corporate assault on decency and fairness; but even if it doesn't, it will at least cost the bastards still more money for still bigger bribes, and will result in more news coverage that may convince more people to get behind the next campaign to tell the corporate bastards to fuck off with their 'you no longer own things, you only rent them' bullshit.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
You don't have a right for other people to do favors for you. Writing you a repair guide is a favor.
Only people who are blind or don't care about Carrying around wrippled creaky junk.
Microsoft drops support for their dwindling phone base... indifference from slashdot
Microsoft never impacts third party repairs of their phones... indifference from slashdot
Google drops support for thousands of phones.. that will theoretically decay (including my 900 dollar Galaxy Note 4).. some bubbling of something from slashdot
Google expects hardware vendors/wireless carriers to absorb some of the security update responsibility beyond the Nexus line... a few burps from slashdot
Apple keeps dropping the French-Revolution guillotine on whatever hardware platform they deem unworthy (i.e. you should pay ca$h for an upgrade)... some interest from the slashdot community.
Now Apple decides they want total control of every handset they've every sold.. direct or indirect. Wow.. This is so comparable to the Hewlett Packard efforts to control who can sell ink-jet cartridges to the consumer. It feels like they are trying to tether a constant lifeline of cash... or maybe I don't understand the difference between Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak and the latest bobble head.. Tim Cook.
that you shouldn't be able to fix something you found either or something that was given to you.
they don't care if you don't buy a new iphone. they care that YOU DO NOT FIX your friends iphone so he has to buy a new one.
btw want to know what apple is going to do with next iphone? just epoxy the whole fucking thing and call it thermal management.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The schematic for the TV set was inside the box. You pulled tubes and took them to the store to be tested. The companies made money hand over fist, and independent repair shops did OK too.
The companies that made those old TV sets *did* eventually go into decline, and in some cases Chapter 11. That had nothing to do with independent repair shops. It had everything to do with other countries making things more cheaply under an open trade policy, and other companies being more innovative.
So. Go ahead Apple. Try to lock yourself into the top spot. Go ahead. We dare you. Oh, and Cupertino? Rochester, NY and Detroit, MI might have some lessons to teach you. Enjoy your spaceship. These are the good ol' days.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Once money changes hands, the hardware is yours to do as you please. Repair it yourself if you want. Pay someone else to do so. Swap out the SIM card and use it on any random cellular network. Leave it in the box in the hopes that it will one day be a collectors' item. Use it in a "will it blend" video. It's all the same. You already have the right to do any and all of these, and Apple can't do a damn thing to stop you.
What these laws are about has nothing to do with your personal rights. What's going on is that third-party corporate interests want to force Apple (and, to be perfectly fair, others) to help them, gratis, build their own businesses. They don't want to bother doing the work to establish relationships and supply chains with components manufacturers in Asia. They want to take a shortcut and glom onto the work Apple has already done. They don't want to learn how to do things themselves, or even to do a Chilton's style teardown. They want Apple to give them free access to their intellectual property.
There's no rights issue involved at all in these "right to repair" laws. People have rights. And you already have every right to do whatever you like with your hardware. This is about businesses wanting to take shortcuts. And screw Citizens United with a rusty sideways crowbar. Businesses aren't people. They're a convenient legal fiction sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere. They don't have rights.
Imagine all the people...
Lets hear a story about a client of mine from two weeks ago.
She was using her computer one day. Goes to turn it on - and the hard drive symbol is flashing on the screen.
So she books an appointment with a Genius. Takes her 2010? 2012? IMAC to the Apple store for a hard drive replacement.
Only to be told "I am sorry. They do not make parts for that model anymore". Disappointed and a little suspicious she contacts my company. I advice her that not only did they mislead her - but I am going to make her computer faster than when she bought it by throwing in an SSD. I am sure you know what the results were.
It was very evident then and it is evident now that the reason why they do not want people to repair their products is because they want the customer to have to shell out money for a new device.
If greed is going to be the sole motivator for the majority of these businesses. As consumers we are going to be left in a very awkward position in a few years when the big business has managed to squeeze out all other competitors.
20% market share and they think this will get them to 21%. LOL.
Until we lose the right to repair, sadly...
You're being given another source of (potentially more lucrative) aftermarket repair product sales, such as controller chips, processors (many shops can reflow these on no problem) headphone jacks, charge ports, etc.
You can charge money for the access to the documentation.
There's so much money to be made that if I were a SMART manufacturer, I'd be sitting here opposing anyone that opposed this law, and going ahead and doing this anyways, and start eating straight into the sales of Apple, Verizon, etc.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
But if you take my right to lockdown my tractors, how am I going to force the farmers to pay me for every repair?! -- John Deere
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...give a shit about their rights to repair.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Lobbying is bribing, I don't understand how the whole country is content with this situation.
This system is a democracy of corporations, where votes are cast with money, and lots of it.
You know, a long time ago I used to feel like Apple actually cared about me as a user. They made some neat stuff that was genuinely easy to use, and whenever they came out with new stuff, it was generally worth upgrading to. If not, then you could be sure that your current hardware would continue to work as well as the day you got it until it broke. They didn't go out of their way to make it easy to service stuff, but they didn't make it hard either- anyone with half a brain, a copy of the service source manuals, and a few tools could pretty much fix 99% of the issues their hardware encountered after a reasonably long life of use.
I look at Apple today, and I just have to shake my head.
The iPhones are now being cryptographically paired on an internal component level. This is being done in the name of "security", which is bullshit, it's just great for their bottom line. You can't install any other software on them other than iOS, which again, is being done in the name of "security", but that too is bullshit- they just want to force upgrades down your throat to the point that your device becomes an inoperable mess (like the 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 9).
The iMacs have gone from a 100% modular, user serviceable layout (which was quite a remarkable feat of engineering) to a 100% user unserviceable built-as-cheaply-as-possible-in-China system, complete with all the major components soldered to the system board and non-reusable foam sealant all around the glass panel (which you have to break and replace to open up the system).
The Mac Mini has gone from a 100% user serviceable system that you could literally open up with two thumbs- to a system with half the power and soldered RAM on the main board. You can no longer open up the case without using special tools.
The laptops all have built-in permanent batteries adhered to the entire upper chassis. You need a new battery? You get a whole new upper chassis. The keyboards aren't even designed to be the least bit liquid resistant, and they're manufacturing them so thin now you're pretty much screwed if you ever drop the machine and warp the chassis (which you will, because it's made out of an extremely soft aluminum).
Then there's the Mac Pro, which went from a gorgeous silver tower that screamed "POWER" to... A tiny cylindrical machine that's prone to thermal throttling when loaded down to 100%, and the 2nd GPU is only accessible through an API that never quite worked right (OpenCL) and is now in the process of being depreciated and dropped.
Now I hear of stuff like this, and them insisting on recycling facilities shredding (yes, shredding) used Mac systems... What the fuck happened to this company? I've never seen a corporation so hell-bent on producing user hostile hardware before. I don't know why people continue to buy their stuff.
fastest-gr0Wing GAY
Enough whining about smartphones. What about fixing other devices?
http://modernfarmer.com/2016/0...
The "hard disks" are unrepairable due to they use locks for avoiding all kind of fixes.
Except for maybe screen repairs, is repairing any smartphone a good option? Personally I wouldn't pay anyone to repair a smartphone or most electronics for that matter. If your smartphone is under a warranty the manufacture doesn't try and fix your phone. They exchange it for another one and either recycle the old one or possible resend it through manufacturing as a refurbished.
Instead of dicking around with toy cell phones, hacker skill would be better spent on big, long lasting equipment, which locks out owners. I am talking about John Deere's difficult tractor software, and hacking cars. John Deere tractors are real machinery, and it will get the attention of the media, and legislatures in farm states. The farmers might not have hacking skill, but they do have money and political power.
Also, used car buyers will choose a car, which can be repaired at old age.
nt
A) any victory gives good momentum.
B) tractors requires a change in EPA regulations designed to fuck off-road toys.
It was killed by "dumping" of sets into the US market at or below cost by Japanese manufacturers beginning in the 1970s, and peaking in the 1980s.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
apple car will give you an error 53 if you use a non apple tire / non apple oil change / non apple charging station / non apple lights and so on.
If I were king, the following would happen where 'should' is expected behavior and 'must' is required by law.
For X in "Apple", "JohnDeere", and many, many others do:
As a technical matter, if X can train their repair network to fix something, then there are definitely folks external to X who can do it better.
That is because X has to train a wide variety of folks and they can't compete with cherry picked external folks.
Clearly, not all external folks are cherry, but the market is there to find the ones who are.
X doesn't have that luxury because they have to provide service over a wide service network.
Legally, X sold the product and the owner should be able to do with it what he wants.
Unnecessary software interlocks must not prevent this.
Warranty terms must not prevent this either.
An interesting question, is should X be required to provide parts to facilitate this?
I think the correct answer is X must provide the same parts they provide to their repair folks.
This must be at a similar price.
Another interesting question is should X be required to provide documentation to facilitate this?
I think the answer is they should freely provide what they provide their repair folks.
If this information is bundled inside a repair tool, then they should document what the tool does.
If they are not willing to do this, then they must not stop third parties from reverse engineering to figure it out.
Patents and copyright are to prevent others from selling a gadget, not to prevent folks from repairing the gadget they rightfully own.
A software license agreement on a consumer good must not be able to prevent this.
This will certainly make for interesting squalking, but it should get us back to where we were before all this consumer and environmentally hostile no repair stuff happened.
The expected consequence of this would be for companies to make things that even they can't repair.
I think the marketing of the product must clearly state what about the product is repairable.
Clever legal tricks like 99 year leases or every thing is a service must not be able to circumvent this.
If it should smell like a sale, it is a sale, even if legal perfume is covering the smell.
(This especially applies to license agreements that 'un-sell' the right to use a copy of s/w.)
Doing this to one company might not be fair.
It would put that one company at a competitive disadvantage.
Doing it to the whole consumer industry should provide a level playing field.
Both company to company and company to consumer.
It would be really interesting to hear what moral justification X is using to stop this other than because we made it and we want to.
The exclusivity of the 'we made it' right ended at sale.
The answer to 'we want to' is 'nice try'.
IP67/68 water resistance pretty much requires a sealed device, and sealing smartphones pretty much guarantees they are irreparable. Sealing with adhesives, thermal or other, denies the average consumer a means to disassemble the phone just to change the battery.
And we will accept water resistance because the phones are so expensive we don't want a brief moment of strawberry daiquiri exposure to cost us even the deductible.
And while battery life isn't on everyone's mind when they buy a new hot phone, it's a fairly common problem to see battery capacity diminish after 2 years. That is, for most of us, at least 800 charge cycles. Nothing is on the horizon that will do better. So we are mostly on a 2 year life cycle for most smartphones, especially the hot fast cool ones. 30 bucks a month in the US.
By design. For a long time to come. And more not less.
To be able to repair current design phones will require compromises, either design compromises or feature compromises. Water resistance the first.
When I laundered my M7 I was really, really peeved. Mostly because I could not disassemble it sufficiently to dewater it. Well, actually mostly because I even sent it through half a dry cycle... But I could, then, replace the display on my wife's iPhone 6s. The M7, impenetrable. And now my Android choices are limited, if I want to skip a generation of CPU and step up to the most current chipset. Which of the options I have are fixable? Oh, and support my carrier's better radio bands, WiFi hotspot, WiFi calling, oh that gets difficult.
We are being designed into losing the ability to fix stuff that could be fixed otherwise. I've been a two-way radio technician, calculator and tape recorder repairperson, typewriter repairperson, then PCs, but I can't see how to repair most smartphones for a living. The tools. The techniques. Impenetrable.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Consumer hostility certainly requires a degree of courage.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Wait, it'll give you a specific error message and not just a SadMac?
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
You'd think by now we would have had enough common sense to be able to update phones with updatable parts. Throwing away a phone, case and all, is insane.
Maybe next they could work on standardized connection interfaces for power tool batteries.
I wish I understood why Apple opposes it. Is it simple they want you to buy new phone (aka more sales $$$)? or do they have another reason for their opposition?
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
IP67/68 water resistance pretty much requires a sealed device, and sealing smartphones pretty much guarantees they are irreparable. Sealing with adhesives, thermal or other, denies the average consumer a means to disassemble the phone just to change the battery.
/me looks at his IP67-rated Galaxy S5
The whole "we need to glue these things down to make them thing/waterproof/solid-feeling/etc" is just bullshit.
more important is your right to contract, right of association, and right to work outside of corporate employment.
Anyone can createvan architecture parallel and compatible to the iPhone. If this was an open market as was homebrew computing back in the 80's and 90's then there shouldve been compwtitors names Fapple HipPhone or Gapple HiPhone.
Instead we see less innovation everyday.
To be fair, IP67 is dust resistance. IP 68 is water resistance. I double dog dare you to change the battery on a S8 without gloves and a screwdriver, and make it something like it was originally... And new adhesives.
Yes, it can be done.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No, the first number is the rating for solid intrusion and the second is for liquid intrusion. Notably, the two numbers are on totally different scales with 6 being the max for the first number but not the second. Both IP67 and IP68 are equally "dust proof", but the IP67 is a relatively poor water resistance rating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The funny thing about item B is that, unless driven on public roads, those off-road toys are exempt from EPA regulations anyway. Because it's not exactly unheard of to completely destroy your off-road toys while using them off road, you should be hauling them to your favorite "playground" on a trailer, at which point the EPA can't say shit about you running it with no exhaust manifold at all, should you choose to; let alone any other modifications you might want to make.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The human species is dooming itself to extinction by accepting the premise of throw-away products as a convenience and to raise sales. We will be buried by our overconsumption.
PlaynBass
I still use a flip phone. I don't need to be connected to the freaking Internet 24/7. And I'm not on Facebook.