Apple Makes iPhone Screen Fixes Easier as States Mull Repair Laws (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple customers will soon have more choices as the company looks to reduce long wait times for iPhone repairs at its retail stores. By the end of 2017, Apple will to put its proprietary machines for mending cracked iPhone glass in about 400 authorized third-party repair centers in 25 countries, company executives told Reuters. Among the first recipients is Minneapolis-based Best Buy, which has long sold and serviced Apple products. The electronics retailer already has one of the screen-repair machines at a Miami-area store and one coming soon to an outlet in Sunnyvale, California. Fixing cracked screens may seem like small potatoes, but it's a multi-billion-dollar global business. The move is also a major shift for Apple. The company had previously restricted use of its so-called Horizon Machine to its nearly 500 retail stores and mail-in repair centers; and it has guarded its design closely. The change also comes as eight U.S. states have launched "right to repair" bills aimed at prying open the tightly controlled repair networks of Apple and other high-tech manufacturers.

Comments

And other devices hopefully

[ncy]

I hope this extends to other Apple products as well. I'd think it would be a good business move for them. I never even consider Apple computers anymore because of how expensive and exclusive the repairs can be. For example, I bought a Macbook Air replacement keyboard for $100 + change, having to buy that off eBay at a "bargain" price, because Apple store would only fix it for a flat fee of $750 regardless of extent of damage (Air model). In contrast, my Lenovo Thinkpad's keyboard cost all but $10, and I replaced it myself in just a few minutes.

Re:And other devices hopefully

[rtb61]

Consider repair laws for Apple products, logically, is not software the same nature as hardware as a product and is not the end user entitled to repair laws to cover software as well. Not just iOS but Windows, they drop support aren't you the end user entitled to access product details in order to conduct your own repairs or have others do it?

Re:And other devices hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes no sense. You didn't buy your hardware as a "license". Your hardware can be sold used without incurring copyright liability (downloaded software cannot; it does not suffer from "exhaustion" where the maker's interest in the item is reduced to 0 after "first sale"). There is a world of difference legally between software and hardware.

Re:And other devices hopefully

[mindwhip]

Given that all they have done is given three authorised repair centres replacement screens (and stated it will do more if the pilot works) and the device they use in AppleHQ to test the screens after fitting (something that isn't really needed... new genuine screen, if touch works it should work!) so that those three authorised apple service centres can actually repair a phone as opposed to being required by Apple to send it back to AppleHQ. This is basicly Apple allowing their authorised stores to do something that (good) unauthorised stores manage to do day in, day out without the special "tool". The need for the tool is Apple saying they can't trust the authorised repair centre to fit the screens properly first time.

This is a meaningless gesture for true right to repair. For it to count for anything it would also need "unauthorsied" repair stores to be able to purchase screens, and if they really want, the test rig, from Apple.

Re: And other devices hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea.

Testing something after repairing it and before handing it back to the customer isn't really necessary.

I see you have real repair experience.

Re: And other devices hopefully

[mindwhip]

Testing with this machine, a process that takes 15 minutes isn't necessary. There are simpler, faster, more practical ways to test a touchscreen... like turning on the phone and seeing if it responds to touch.

not the real target

[Anonymous Coward]

from other stories that I've read, Apple isn't the primary target of these Right to Repair laws, It's the Farm equipment manufacturers like John Deere who are the intended targets.

Re:not the real target

[Anonymous Coward]

If you care about the environment, right-to-repair laws are a must. These smartphone/laptop manufacturers don't care about the environment as much as they care about profits. Either the repair cost is prohibitive (because there is a single repairer), or they recommend a repair path where you spend close to the price of a new device. These options result in customers dumping their existing devices resulting in harm to the planet. You can't expect the fox (manufacturers) to guard the hen house (earth).

Re:not the real target

[mindwhip]

Depends on which state you are in... Farming States, its the Tractors. States with high density urban areas such as NY its more the phones. Different cases for the same general problem.

this isnt a glass repair machine.

[nimbius]

Ceramics/composites engineer here for a large glass maker. This device doesnt repair your glass. For that you'd need an annealer, or a reflow bed. you'd also need to have moulds and castings and a polish/tempering system. thats not feasible in a machine the size of a microwave oven.

what this machine likely does is handle the delicate process of calibration, alignment, and most importantly replacement of the biometric sensor on the device. the access control and authentication from the reader to the rest of the phone is likely a highly guarded component as its used to access encryption keys for the device itself. these machines might contain a copy of sensitive intermediary or signing certificates used to rekey the phone. If Right To Repair passes, Apple could likely delegate the PKI straight to the user with an itunes API or something. replacing the button means you're in charge of generating the certificates.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[Khyber]

" For that you'd need an annealer, or a reflow bed. you'd also need to have moulds and castings and a polish/tempering system. thats not feasible in a machine the size of a microwave oven."

Lapidary/Glass worker here: We've got two tools the size of a microwave oven that does all of that for us. We've had them for over century. They're called a kiln and a flat lap/polisher. Those two tools alone do everything you just mentioned above.

What we do NOT have is the ability to repair the broken traces which usually come inside the glass now days as part of the digitizer.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[Immerman]

I doubt think anyone thinks it is. It's not a glass-repair device, it's a "broken screen on my phone" repair device - and as with virtually all repairs these days, the solution is no to repair the broken component, but to replace it.

That Apple has chosen to integrate the most failure prone component with others that are security sensitive almost certainly has at least as much do do with revenue generation as it does with otherwise solid design goals.

A responsible engineer satisfying the social responsibility aspect of their professional ethics would make sure the most failure-prone components are as cheap and easy to replace as possible. If you repair older appliances and machinery you can see this principle clearly - there's usually a number of easily-replaceable "sacrificial" components that are designed to absorb the majority of normal wear and/or out-of-spec stresses.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[SuseLover]

Most of the cracks I have seen are only in the top protective layer of the display. Is this not simply the machine that heats the glass to the correct temperature to soften the epoxy bond necessary to remove the it from the digitizer?
The only "calibration" need would be to align the glass over the display properly.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[radarskiy]

"there's usually a number of easily-replaceable "sacrificial" components that are designed to absorb the majority of normal wear and/or out-of-spec stresses."

OTOH, when you do this the people then complain that they're designed to fail in order to nickel-and-dime the consumer.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[swb]

If you repair older appliances and machinery you can see this principle clearly - there's usually a number of easily-replaceable "sacrificial" components that are designed to absorb the majority of normal wear and/or out-of-spec stresses.

Somebody explain this to Mercury Marine. Their raw water pumps usually end up destroying the pump housing, a costly part to replace.

Worse yet, the rubber impeller usually destroys itself after about two seasons (or less) and it's pretty much impossible to replace the impeller without removing the entire pump assembly because Mercury engineers were too lazy to do anything other than make it yet another belt-drive accessory in a nearly inaccessible location.

I've always wondered if all this was just deliberate to drive service revenue or if there was some good reason they couldn't have made the pump shaft driven with an easy to access impeller housing.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[mindwhip]

Yes its screen replacement rather than repair as such. The button/fingerprint sensor, with care, if not broken (and it rarely is) can be detached from the old screen and attached to the new, as can the touch digitiser if it is undamaged, reducing new components needed and cost. If Apple are replacing these otherwise working components every time it's wasteful, costing the consumer more than needed, and makes me sad.

Re: this isnt a glass repair machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

True. But the quality is awful and the display often separate within a few months.

Re: this isnt a glass repair machine.

[mindwhip]

Only because you went to the cheapest, crappiest, dodgiest repair person operating out of the back of his van you will never be able to find again. Go to a good established and internet reviewed repair shop that will offer a warranty on their work your repair experience will be much better.

Re:this isnt a glass repair machine.

[Immerman]

This is true - but at least the people who know what they're talking about will know you lived up to your responsibilities.

On the other hand, there are a lot of legitimate complaints on that front too. It's a balancing act to be sure.

Still no competition

[Nidi62]

Among the first recipients is Minneapolis-based Best Buy, which has long sold and serviced Apple products.

And I am sure as part of the agreement, Best Buy will charge a price that was decided by Apple. Oh, and don't forget about forcing their employees to try and upsell on a warranty for the repair-valid only at Best Buy of course.

Re:Still no competition

[Khyber]

Don't forget that the Best Buy employees will "Need the password to your device to ensure repairs are effectively performed/video drivers are installed" while they surreptitiously snoop on your shit for the FBI.

Re:Still no competition

[no1nose]

The thing that really grinds my gears about the Best Buy + FBI partnership is that most of the "Geeks" on the Geek Squad are probably easily motivated by the $100(?) bonus the FBI would give them for finding illegal porn on the customer's computer. They may have been so motivated that they could just put some illegal porn on the customer's computer and called up some of Comey's minions for the reward. What's stopping them from doing that?

Re:Still no competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs Best Buy employees? Just pick up the laptop/phone before it's in the cargo of an airplane, before the owner's flight.

Re: Still no competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing.

Re:Still no competition

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that really grinds my gears about the Best Buy + FBI partnership is that most of the "Geeks" on the Geek Squad are probably easily motivated by the $100(?) bonus the FBI would give them for finding illegal porn on the customer's computer. They may have been so motivated that they could just put some illegal porn on the customer's computer and called up some of Comey's minions for the reward. What's stopping them from doing that?

You want to bet time in federal prison and a lifetime on the sex offender registry vs. $100 that you can fool the FBI forensics suite?

Hint: Steal the graphics card from the machine and sell it on eBay, it's a much better risk/reward ratio.

It's almost as if

[rsilvergun]

Government Regulation, or even the threat of it, works.

Re:It's almost as if

[bill_mcgonigle]

Government Regulation, or even the threat of it, works.

It's only because of patent law that these third party repair machines haven't been able to exist already.

Re:It's almost as if

[Coisiche]

Threats don't cost them anything so they must have reason to believe it's not a threat. For whatever reason Apple have arrived at the tipping point where the cost of providing these machines becomes less than the cost of not providing them. It certainly won't be because of benefit to customers.

Re:It's almost as if

[erapert]

It would be more precise to say that government regulation, or the threat of it, elicits a reaction from everyone potentially affected by it.

Whether it works or not is determined by whether the government action actually achieves the desired outcome and without making the situation worse.

That is sometimes the case. But far too often when the regulation fails to work there is also a failure to roll it back in a timely fashion and so the damage continues.

Re:It's almost as if

[micahraleigh]

So let's just have the government going around threatening everybody then.

Having trouble learning a programming language? Have the government threaten Oracle or Microsoft.

Drop your iphone? Have the government start threatening the companies that make the stuff you want.

My daughter slept in too late. Sure, send the cops to her bedroom.

Problem solved!

Re:It's almost as if

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Government regulation takes away profits from a job creator. It is the right of Apple and other corporations to squeeze its customers as much as they can bear. In fact it is the fiduciary responsibility of the board to maximize profits. Apple can be sued if it did not maximize its profits. If the thread of regulation has this chilling effect on the profits, imagine how much damage actual regulation costs these companies.

Looks like you are trying to establish a quaint notion that it is the job of the government to protect the people and small guy against big corporations. No sir. It is the job of the government to make sure big corporations get all the profits they can get and then we can nurture some faint hope that a few cents of that profits might be used to create a few minimum wage jobs.

Re:It's almost as if

[Anonymous Coward]

This would work quite well to reduce illegal immigration: don't arrest the illegals, arrest their employers. Eventually they won't hire illegals and the problem will take care of itself at that point.

imac's as well so you can change ram / storage car

[Joe_Dragon]

imac's as well so you can change ram / storage cards after buying the system.

the 5K imac pro with only 32G / 1TB (1 slot?) base with no way easy open is a joke.

Batteries too ..

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to make the batteries easily repairable too.

Yeah, take it to Best Buy.

[fredrated]

Later all of your photos will show up on the web.

Not in this case

[Solandri]

Apple would've done it eventually anyway, without any threat of government regulation, just to reduce the wait times for repairing broken screens. The market would've been sufficient to solve this problem without any government interference.

Where government regulation would help is in preventing Apple from bricking your phone if you have it repaired by a non-authorized repair center. But even then it's only necessary because of government copyright and patent laws which prevent said third parties from hacking the product and/or software to bypass Apple's bricking. i.e. It's government regulation designed to fix problems created by other government regulation.

The true cases where government regulations are needed to correct flaws in the free market are few and far between. Mostly dealing with situations involving the Tragedy of the Commons (e.g. pollution), or the emergence of a natural monopoly.

Re:Not in this case

[mindwhip]

No they wouldn't. They are only doing this now due to the number of States considering right to repair in a PR attempt to fend it off. Apple if left to themselves would have quite happily continued to take two weeks to replace a screen (sending it to HQ for fixing) or when they think they can get away with it, declaring your phone "unfixable" and exchanging your phone (with paying 50% of its value new) for a refurb unit that was previously "unfixable" until they fixed and repackaged it.

The "Horizon Machine" doesn't repair glass

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an article about glass. It is an article about cryptography.

You can't repair broken glass on a phone screen. Or at least, you can't replace it without a full factory worth of equipment. What this Apple-produced machine does is reset your phone's security system to accept data from a new fingerprint-scanning home button. When an iPhone leaves the factory, the fingerprint scanner is uniquely paired with the rest of the phone's security system using hardware-level encryption. You can replace the screen and/or home button yourself with any one of hundreds of inexpensive third-party repair parts, but you will lose the ability to scan your fingerprints. The button will still work because it's just a button, but the scanner is core component of the overall phone security system and the new part will not pair with the rest of the phone. The Horizon Machine is able to reset and resynchronize hardware-level encryption throughout the phone.

Considering this, it makes sense that Apple refused to give these machines to third party resellers. This is a machine that might be able to undermine the multi-billion-dollar investment they're put into phone security over the past decade. I'm guessing that they've put an enormous amount of work into this machine so that it can't be reverse engineered to allow any old Best Buy employee to crack any iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised to see the next Wikileaks dump talk about how the NSA sent agents to get hired at Best Buy to get access to this machine so they could reverse engineer the iPhone's security.

Re:The "Horizon Machine" doesn't repair glass

[sensei moreh]

I wouldn't be surprised to see the next Wikileaks dump talk about how the NSA sent agents to get hired at Best Buy to get access to this machine so they could reverse engineer the iPhone's security.

Maybe NSA already has one of these machines, so Apple figures they may as well make them available to third parties, too.

Re:The "Horizon Machine" doesn't repair glass

[Falos]

So it's a machine that can make ink cartridges "authorized".

Re:The "Horizon Machine" doesn't repair glass

[mindwhip]

Or at least, you can't replace it without a full factory worth of equipment

Yes you can. Easily with a little practice and care. It only takes a screwdriver and a heat lamp. "unauthorised" repair shops do it many times daily. There are "unqualified" (according to Apple) people managing to replace them day in day out around the world. The only issue is as they are unable to source the screens direct from Apple they can have issues finding quality screens to use. The machine Apple is touting so much is only used for QA testing and isn't needed to actually replace a screen, just test that it is working correctly, which is should given the stores using it will have fitted a new genuine part from Apple...

More PR than anything else...

[x0ra]

Louis Rosemann (who own an independent repair shop in NY) is less than positive about that move... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Louis Rossman wasn't impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Apple vs. FBI

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ironic that while Apple is battling illegal FBI warrants on one front, it's working to enrich Best Buy which the FBI use[s,d] illegally to avoid warrants.

There are no wait times

[rsilvergun]

if you buy a new phone. I did that for my kid's cracked screen because I tried getting it replaced a week before she went to college only to find out it takes 2 weeks to get a replacement.

How long until it is cloned?

[sethstorm]

It doesn't matter that they bribed a few places with tools, it matters that the processes are known and available to any person (like many of their competitors).

buhner

[Anonymous Coward]

1. go to buy car
2. be asked by black man what ball game you play in school punk without the punk
3. enjoy being irish for the day
4. jay buhner!!!!!!

Apple is why I (reluctantly) stick with Thinkpads.

[sethstorm]

In contrast, my Lenovo Thinkpad's keyboard cost all but $10, and I replaced it myself in just a few minutes.

That, and they also have a service manual collection detailed enough to hint at potential mods.

I don't see Apple ever letting one of these happening easily. Or even allowing raw logic boards to be in the hands of the "unwashed".

I also don't see them allowing enough documentation for various x220 screen upgrades, keyboard mods for x230's, or even an out-of-spec processor support upgrade for a W520.

Or we could

[rsilvergun]

a. Require minimum standards as well as proper funding for schools while ending Visa abuse.

b. Require the iPhone to be repariable.

c. Hold school later in the day as study after study shows is optimal while having a proper mass transit system so they kids can get there.

d. Stop pretending the free market exists, let alone can solve problems more important than a twinkie.

Re:Or we could

[micahraleigh]

Interesting that you feel the government is qualified to be telling ordinary people what is important.

Why not....

[Anonymous Coward]

....just make the glass less "breaky" in the first place?

Re:Why not....

[Anonymous Coward]

....just make the glass less "breaky" in the first place?

And while they're at it they could make water less wet.

Delegation would actually be better.

[sethstorm]

what this machine likely does is handle the delicate process of calibration, alignment, and most importantly replacement of the biometric sensor on the device. the access control and authentication from the reader to the rest of the phone is likely a highly guarded component as its used to access encryption keys for the device itself. these machines might contain a copy of sensitive intermediary or signing certificates used to rekey the phone. If Right To Repair passes, Apple could likely delegate the PKI straight to the user with an itunes API or something. replacing the button means you're in charge of generating the certificates.

That way, at least the button can be replaced without having to resort to Apple magic, just like everyone else on the planet.