Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple: iPhones Are Too 'Complex' To Allow Unauthorized Repair (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the hands-off-approach dept.

Jason Koebler writes: Apple's top environmental officer made the company's most extensive statements about the repairability of Apple hardware on Tuesday: "Our first thought is, 'You don't need to repair this.' When you do, we want the repair to be fairly priced and accessible to you," Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of policy and social initiatives said at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. "To think about these very complex products and say the answer to all our problems is that you should have anybody to repair and have access to the parts is not looking at the whole problem."

Apple has lobbied against "Fair Repair" bills in 11 states that would require the company to make its repair guides available and to sell replacement parts to the general public. Instead, it has focused on an "authorized service provider" model that allows the company to control the price and availability of repair.

12 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Whaaaaaat? by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple is lying and exaggerating about something to make more money? WHAAAAAAAT? This is my surprised face. The only thing that will stop them is laws, the end. We need right to repair laws and that's that.

    1. Re:Whaaaaaat? by srichard25 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The only thing that will stop them is laws, "

      What???? How about people just stop buying products from companies that adopt anti-consumer policies? Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smart phones.

      We don't need a law for everything.

  2. Obvious BS detected... by Timothy2.0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple has lobbied against "Fair Repair" bills in 11 states that would require the company to make its repair guides available and to sell replacement parts to the general public. Instead, it has focused on an "authorized service provider" model that allows the company to control the price and availability of repair.

    I can understand wanting only authorized techs working on their product, but it's a MASSIVE leap to go from that to lobbying in 11 states against "Fair Repair" bills.

    1. Re:Obvious BS detected... by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can understand wanting only authorized techs working on their product, but it's a MASSIVE leap to go from that to lobbying in 11 states against "Fair Repair" bills.

      No, it really isn't. If those fair repair bills pass, then the law will explicitly prohibit only permitting authorized techs to work on their product. Lobbying against those bills is the only reasonable response for a company which doesn't want anyone repairing their products without their permission.

      The root problem is that unrepairable products are literally destroying our biosphere. They're made intentionally unrepairable so that the user has to buy a new computer in order to expand it, like Jobs tried to do with the original Macintosh. In spite of his efforts, the engineers gave the machine some expansion capacity because they knew than an unexpandable computer was bullshit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Then I guess they're too complex for me own by darthsilun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I'll just have to buy something else instead.

    Problem solved.

  4. And then there's this by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a 2009 Mac Pro. It's a 12/24 core, 3 GHz-ish, 64 GB machine, lots of monitors. It's really pretty quick and there's certainly nothing wrong with it.

    Apple, however, has made the next version of the OS unavailable to it, which in turn will make it slowly become incompatible with new software, etc.

    I suspect that the whole "you aren't allowed to repair your iPhone" debacle is based on the same basic policy, which I would sum up as "screw you, customer, buy from us again or go without."

    Particularly because the idea that no one but Apple's authorized money generators can repair an iPhone is patently absurd.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:And then there's this by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is, of course, the history of the Macintosh. From the very start, Jobs didn't want anyone opening the case, and he didn't even want it to have any expansion beyond serial ports. He explicitly wanted the user to have to buy a new computer if they wanted to upgrade, producing revenue for Apple.

      This is literally only business as usual for Apple, ever since the Mac.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re: And then there's this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ubuntu Linux runs great on my old MacBook pro. All the drivers work, even for my Wacom graphics tablet. Linux seems to be a great way to extend the useful life of aging computers.

    3. Re: And then there's this by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful
      He's talking about an OS upgrade, what do the "policies of all other hardware manufacturers" have to do with it?

      But, to the point, the Win10 requirements:

      Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
      RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
      Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
      Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
      Display: 800x600

      The GP has a "a 2009 Mac Pro. It's a 12/24 core, 3 GHz-ish, 64 GB machine".

      So, it looks like Windows is doing a better job of supporting Apple hardware than MacOS is.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    4. Re:And then there's this by michelcolman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Now that wouldn't be so bad if they would not flat out refuse to repair your device.

      I had a broken screen on my iPhone 5, which was otherwise just fine. I brought it in, the price would be about 150 euros which is a lot (you can easily get a replacement non-original screen for less than half the price) but I didn't want to risk getting an inferior screen, possibly even containing malware, so I went through the official channel. A bit later I got a call saying they had diagnosed my phone and found a problem with the battery as well. They "had to" repair that, too, and since it was going to be too expensive, I might as well get a replacement refurbished phone for more than 300 euros.

      I insisted that my two year old battery was just fine (not quite lasting as long as when it was new, but sufficient for me) and only wanted a new screen, but no, they flat out refused. Apple only delivers devices in perfect working order with a three month warranty, so they could not just repair the screen, end of discussion.

      I ended up getting a fake screen from some grubby repair shop after all. Works like a charm, by the way. And the battery still works just fine.

    5. Re:And then there's this by mfnickster · · Score: 5, Informative

      "He explicitly wanted the user to have to buy a new computer if they wanted to upgrade"

      Well, no. Apple offered 512K logic board upgrades to purchasers of the original 128K Macs.

      Against Steve's wishes, though.

      Steve Jobs objected, because he didn't like the idea of customers mucking with the innards of their computer. He would also rather have them buy a new 512K Mac instead of them buying more RAM from a third-party. But this time Burrell prevailed, because the change was so minimal. He just left it in there and no one bothered to mention it to Steve, much to the eventual benefit of customers, who didn't have to buy a whole new Mac to expand their memory.

      Steve had left by the time the Mac II came out, and it was Gassee's call to allow expansion slots.

      I will say the Power Mac 7500 I bought in 1995 was supremely expandable, and easy to open the case and work inside it. I upgraded the RAM, hard drive, CPU (to a G3) and optical drive. I got a lot of miles out of that Mac!

      --
      "Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
  5. Re: Bollocks by Entrope · · Score: 5, Funny

    It takes Courage (tm) and money -- lots of money -- for Apple to create innovations like edge-to-edge screens, splash resistance, HDR displays in a mobile form factor, and OLED screens in phones. It's only fair for Apple to charge more than Android devices to deliver the kind of inventions that they do.