Slashdot Mirror
Recent iOS Update Kills Functionality On iPhone 8s Repaired With Aftermarket Screens (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Apple released iOS 11.3 at the end of March, and the update is killing touch functionality in iPhone 8s repaired with some aftermarket screens that worked prior to the update. That means people who broke their phone and had the audacity to get it repaired by anyone other than Apple is having a hard time using their phone. "This has caused my company over 2,000 reshipments," Aakshay Kripalani, CEO of Injured Gadgets, a Georgia-based retailer and repair shop, told me in a Facebook message. "Customers are annoyed and it seems like Apple is doing this to prevent customers from doing 3rd party repair." According to Michael Oberdick -- owner and operator of iOutlet, an Ohio-based pre-owned iPhone store and repair shop, every iPhone screen is powered by a small microchip, and that chip is what the repair community believes to be causing the issue. For the past six months, shops have been able to replace busted iPhone 8 screens with no problem, but something in the update killed touch functionality. According to several people I spoke to, third-party screen suppliers have already worked out the issue, but fixing the busted phones means re-opening up the phone and upgrading the chip. It remains to be seen whether Apple will issue a new software update that will suddenly fix these screens, but that is part of the problem: Many phones repaired by third parties are ticking timebombs; it's impossible for anyone to know if or when Apple will do something that breaks devices fixed with aftermarket parts. And every time a software update breaks repaired phones, Apple can say that third-party repair isn't safe, and the third-party repair world has to scramble for workarounds and fixes.
Seriously, who cares about this, or anything else Apple does that's shady? They're not harvesting or selling our data, at least. Surely that's well worth all the premiums and walled gardens.
Why would anyone go for aftermarket repairs when the device is still under warranty? They arent even a year old!
They haven't been caught harvesting or selling our data, at least.
Fixed that for you.
Possible explanation #1: they intentionally killed the functionality of third party chips.
Possible explanation #2: some third party chips were not actually up to spec in some subtle way, which wasn't an issue before.
Both seem fairly plausible. I didn't see anything in TFA that gave a solid reason to believe one or other.
Something I learned working in technology, "Do not confuse incompetence with malice."
Just because something breaks doesn't mean it is malicious move. It could be a lack of testing or just plain incompetence not realizing there existed thousands of 3rd party iPhone 8 screen repairs done. I don't think Apple intentionally wants to upset this many premium customers.
Right to repair, which should be the law. You can't get OEM parts because Apple won't sell them.
If you buy an iPhone then Apple is going to do everything in its power to ensure that all repairs (that are under warranty) will be done by authorized Apple repair shops. Why are people surprised when they push an update that invalidates third party repair? You're buying a product that bases its profit on the fact that it'll break just after warranty (or several months, whichever comes first) and you'll have to shell out for a new one. Apple doesn't give a shit whether or not they piss off a few people, they know that what the consumer is buying is their image. The only way they'll release a patch to allow third party screens is if they piss off enough people to affect their bottom line. Same thing happened with the fingerprint sensor.
Of course, Apple will say that they're protecting their "customers" by preventing those inferior third party parts from making their "product" unstable as a coverup, but that's just business right?
tl;dr: If you shell out the cash for the image product, why cheap out on repairs? Go whole hog with your bucks for the full user experience and feel the burn.
Its just one thing after another with these guys. You'd think that a company would do everything that they could to make sure everything worked for the customer. That would include publishing specs so aftermarket manufacturers could provide alternative screens and then ensuring the software works with that spec. But when they don't, customers expectations are not met, and you get people like me, that long ago stopped doing anything "i".
Microsoft breaks hardware all the time with Windows updates, and they are trying not to. Apple never pretends to offer any support for non-OEM hardware, especially for internals. Why would anyone expect things to always work?
Also, 11.2 was released in the timeframe discussed in the article, so if Apple was purposefully breaking anything, they could have done it a while ago.
when the OEM has the 'audacity' to issue an update for the device that does not take your 3rd party hardware into account.
Oh, they take it into account. You really think they don't try to break this stuff with their updates? The same company that got caught slowing down old hardware to make you buy a new phone?