Apple Must Explain Why It Doesn't Want You To Fix Your Own iPhone, California Lawmaker Says (vice.com)

A California state lawmaker says she hopes to make Apple explain specifically why it has opposed and lobbied against legislation that would make it easier for you to repair your iPhone and other electronics. Motherboard reports: Last week, California assemblymember Susan Talamantes-Eggman announced that she plans to introduce right to repair legislation in the state, which would require companies like Apple, Microsoft, John Deere, and Samsung to sell replacement parts and repair tools, make repair guides available to the public, and would require companies to make diagnostic software available to independent shops. Public records show that Apple has lobbied against right to repair legislation in New York, and my previous reporting has shown that Apple has privately asked lawmakers to kill legislation in places like Nebraska. To this point, the company has largely used its membership in trade organizations such as CompTIA and the Consumer Technology Association to publicly oppose the bill. But with the right to repair debate coming to Apple's home state, Talamantes-Eggman says she expects the company to show up to hearings about the bill.

"Apple is a very important company in the state of California, and one I have a huge amount of respect for. But the onus is on them to explain why we can't repair our own things and what damage or danger it causes them," Talamantes-Eggman told me in a phone interview. Talamantes-Eggman told me that the bill she plans to introduce will apply to both consumer electronics as well as agricultural equipment such as tractors. Broadly speaking, the electronics industry has decided to go with an "authorized repair" model in which companies pay the original device manufacturer to become authorized to fix devices.

Comments

Dead simple

[r00t_of_all_evils]

If you buy a phone and fix it for 10 years, Apple doesn't make any money off of you for 10 years.

Re: Dead simple

[Luthair]

Yup, cars have far more dangers than cellphones and yet it was decided many years ago that we didn't need car manufacturers to nanny us.

Re: Dead simple

[cordovaCon83]

Haha I'm fine with the consumer paying the e-waste tax. People pay too much for those silly iPhones already. If you make the phone more expensive then less people will buy it and other phones that abide by the right-to-repair legislation will outpace iPhone sales and also cut the number of new cell phone sales overall.

Re: Dead simple

[ceoyoyo]

And yet I can't buy an oil filter wrench from my car dealer. I'm all for a law that says a manufacturer can't *impede* a third party (including individuals) who want to do FSM knows what to their property, but requiring that every company actually provide a full suite of tools and instructions for how to do so seems a bit far.

Also, where do you draw the line? Do all electronics manufacturers have to sell desolder stations and BGA soldering instructions?

Re:Dead simple

[FatdogHaiku]

spare parts usually have quite high markup

It works out great for the auto industry.

Johnny Cash had an answer for that...
Larceny !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws-_syszg84

Re: Dead simple

[msauve]

The requirement would be to make required, proprietary tools available, not ones which are readily obtained elsewhere.

Re: Dead simple

[msauve]

Cars were brought into the discussion, opening it beyond phones. Your own argument used cars. Other than the fact that your argument had no merit, why are you now trying to restrict the discussion to phones?

But, to answer your question with just one example, you can't replace the TouchID fingerprint sensor on an iPhone without a special Apple tool/software.

Re:Dead simple

[tlhIngan]

You can repair it now, but you void the warranty. Don't like the manufacturer's rules, buy something else. It's that simple.

Anyone who's worked a customer service desk knows this - warranty fraud is rampant.

We're not talking about the lame ass buy-a-new-product return-old-product-inside-it trick, but customers lie through their teeth. You can have a laptop that's fallen into the pool, or bathrub, or whatever, and is dripping water all over the return counter, and the customer will say there is no water damage.

And most people are incompetent. Just think about your time fixing software issues. Now figure out what happens when you unleash them to fix hardware problems too. The old butterknife screwdriver is the least of your problems.

Think about it - a site like iFixit - probably the biggest pusher for right to repair, doesn't really want you do it. I mean, if they did, why don't they warrant their products? You buy it, you try to fix it, it doesn't work, why can't you return it? It's almost as if they know if they sell you a cable to fix your iPhone, you're going to return them the damaged one and claim they shipped you a bad one.

And it doesn't cover even things like security - TouchID and FaceID sensors are paired with the phone so people don't swap them. Why? Because if you swap them, you could swap them with "evil" versions of the sensors that record (and transmit) your fingerprint and facial data to a third party who may use it to log into your phone when you're not around. Since this is specialized tech, you can assume it would be a state agency that does this. That would be the deepest of ironies - the FBI uses the law to force Apple to make it so they can break in.

And what about stuff that's safety related? If you replace the battery yourself and it causes the phone to catch on fire, is Apple responsible? Even an official first party battery can be problematic with a fat-fingered person prodding it with their butterknife screwdriver.

I'm guessing we'll see the return of the "warranty void if broken" sticker. Because right now, there's an IQ test in place for people fixing their stuff. And if you think it's ridiculous, well, you haven't seen what the public can do. If you fix computers for a living, you know exactly the people who are going to try to fix their stuff.

Re: Dead simple

[Rick Schumann]

BGA packaged devices had nothing to do with planned obsolescence or deterring people from repairing their own devices, it had to do with component density and PCB size, and you can spend the thousands of dollars that hot air rework equipment costs, and even get the training on how to use it, but it likely wouldn't benefit you because while it's simple enough to remove a BGA package IC, installing the replacement is an order of magnitude more difficult to do correctly, always carries a measurable chance of complete failure, and you literally have one shot at getting it right, after which you have to remove the device and start over with a new one, or send it out to have the solder balls replaced, and hope that the heat didn't damage or destroy it. This is why on a case-by-case basis it's not cost-effective to repair PCBs that use BGA packaged devices, it's only cost-effective in a large-scale assembly-line setting, more or less like the factory that assembled the PCB when it was new. You could conceivably use sockets for everything instead and make replacing devices simple, but then you'd have an iPhone that's 2 or 3 times as thick. Even when cutting-edge was QFP (quad flat pack) with hundreds of wire leads coming out all 4 edges, it wasn't trivial to remove and replace a device, and I've done it.

Re:Dead simple

[Ogive17]

Not as high as you think. Takes a lot of infrastructure to provide OE parts a decade after production ended for a vehicle.

Offical reason versus real reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone already knows both answers.

The public "official" answer will have to do with brand quality and not tainting their image by allowing inferior unauthorized work to be done, thereby artificially making the units statistically less reliable.

The real reason which they won't say publicly, is because obviously they want to sell you a newer phone.

Re:Offical reason versus real reason.

[Registered Coward v2]

They don't want the overhead of having to support multiple versions of hardware and ending up like the PC market.

They still could EOL older machines, just like car manufactirers do. Parts for some older vehicles are no longer available, although the life cycle is longer for cars than computers. A large third party source of suppliers has arisen around making parts no longer available from manufacturers for vehicle long out of production; especially for cars popular with enthusiasts. Specialized trim pieces seem to buy the hardest to find, which is why I recommend buying a compete set of decals for a vehicle that has a unique set if they plan to keep the car forever; even if they decide to sell it they can either include it and get a few extra bucks or sell it to someone restoring one.

I repaired my iPhone5

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an iPhone5 with an expanded battery that pushed the display out of its case. For $50, I bought a display, battery and "repair kit" from eBay. After watching an internet video 3 times, I was able to repair it, breaking the camera in the process. For another $5, I got a camera from eBay & replaced the broken camera. I was able to use it for a number of years before the charging connector failed. I'm still thinking about repairing it.
    As a degreed EE, though, who has worked for some of the high-tech firms (not Apple), I can kind of understand Apple's position. Suppose the battery I bought from eBay had shorted & burned up the phone. Suppose I left a metal fragment in there which shorted one of the I/O pins when I needed to call 911. A repair shop which has nothing to do for a few days might figure out a software mod which causes problems later, etc. Years ago, computers became too complex for component repair and companies went to board repair. With cellphones today, even board repair is difficult -- the best route for a company like Apple is to offer a pretty good trade-in value for a new phone.

Re:I repaired my iPhone5

[Anonymous Coward]

I can kind of understand Apple's position. Suppose the battery I bought from eBay had shorted & burned up the phone. Suppose I left a metal fragment in there which shorted one of the I/O pins when I needed to call 911.

Can't-make-a-911-call example is a joke compared to what might happen if I don't bother to tighten the lug nuts on the wheel that I'm allowed to change on my car. All the dead and injured people on the highway are why you want to call 911.

Yet we're still allowed to repair cars.

Pretty much the only way you're going to have a phone failure be as bad as the routine auto repair risks that we already accept, is to take that phone on a plane and have an overly-rapid battery discharge. So use such an example next time.

My ideal phone upgrade

[llamalad]

Can I get an iphone that's more durable and has a removable battery?

I'm willing to accept it being double the weight and thickness; I bet with the extra structure they can also improve its durability and let me keep my damned headphone jack.

Re:My ideal phone upgrade

[AmiMoJo]

You are lucky, or a very light user.

My fiancee and all her friends and family have iPhones. All heavy users. Batteries typically last around 18 to 24 months, which is what you would expect. The batteries they use are good for about 500 cycles, and because they are relatively small average about one a day.

Being thicker and more damage resistant would be a great benefit to them. They all have chunky cases and screen protectors to protect their fragile phones anyway. The naked phones are very slippery and the front and back are literally glass.

The chances of such legislation passing

[Streetlight]

The chances of such legislation passing the California, or any other state legislature, depends on how many legislators Apple has bought. I'm sure Apple's out shopping now.

Re:The chances of such legislation passing

[Trailer Trash]

It's California. Apple already owns the Democrat Party from their numerous donations over the years, so this is apparently a legislator who missed out on that and doesn't have his marching orders. This could turn out interesting.

Everyone's forgetting DRM

[Sloppy]

Everyone is aware of the planned obsolescence angle, but nobody seems to have noticed that particular irony of California (i.e. the state containing Hollywood) being the one asking for a right to repair. Lots of hardware makers are either in bed with content companies, or are one. As long as DRM is still legal, this results in an unavoidable conflict of interest.

DRM is always what these companies are really talking about, whenever they use the word "security." They mean they want to keep the machine's master's interests secure against the great adversary: the machine's owner.

DRM and right-to-repair are fundamentally incompatible. You can't implement DRM and also be owner-maintainable, because from an owner's point of view, DRM implementations are bugs (or malware, depending on how strict you want to be about the implementor's intent), and bugs need to be fixed.

I think California will cave in on this, and their legislators will eventually realize that it's necessary that people have adversarial relationship with their computers. The only way this can be avoided, is if DRM ceases to be a thing. And the only way that's going to happen, is if it's outlawed.

Expect this bill to die, for much more inflexible reasons than wanting to protect planned obsolescence. They simply can't allow people to be in charge of their own computers. It's not happening.

Having the right to repair purchased items.

[GregMmm]

I had to think about this for a while, but it all points back to Apple wanting to sell phones. After I've had my phone for say 3 years why can't I try and fix it? It's not a warranty problem, that's expired. Important point is the phone is mine, not the selling company. I throw the BS flag on the idea it's to keep the integrity of their product. I know, it would be better for me to walk around with a cracked screen on my phone, cause that's great advertisement. Buy this phone, it breaks. And lastly as a couple of people have commented, there is usually multiple detailed youtube videos available on exactly how to do it.

Personally I'm sick of people telling me what do to with my stuff. I'm curious by nature and I've fixed a lot of broken stuff. It's what drive a number of us nerd types. Can I fix this, or better yet, how can I make this better.

This just seems to be all about the money.

Re: Chicken, egg

[fyngyrz]

You'd have us go back to briefcase-sized cell phones just to be able to replace a DIP chip.

Hyperbole much, there, Mr/Ms AC?

Thanks for the laugh. :)

"Right to repair" is a terrible name

[Solandri]

It implies we don't have the right to do what we want with the products we own, unless the state gives us that right. Nobody that right to us - it is ours by virtue of the fact that we own the device.

What this really is is a law to prohibit companies from using manufacturing process and designs which deliberately impede the owner's ability to tinker with a product. And Apple products are not the most egregious violator. It's printers with chipped ink cartridges which refuse to operate unless you buy a new cartridge from that specific manufacturer. (Software is worse, but it gets a pass because you typically buy a software license, not the software itself.)

Did you even read the post you replied to?

[Brannon]

Replacing the fingerprint sensor triggered a security check that said "hey somebody is fucking with this critical piece of the authentication chain".

It turns out that a lot of people were getting their home button fixed in unauthorized repair shops and this lead to the brickage. Apple's response was to release a software path to unbrick their phone and update the OS to instead just disable the TouchID when it detected an unauthorized sensor replacement.