iFixit Urges FTC to Establish Stronger Right to Repair Rules

[wanha]

I feel rather... conflicted about all this, because there are benefits and drawbacks to both sides, but as is often the case, it becomes a polarizing issue where people are forced to take a side.

On the one hand, the fact that some components are not user repairable allows for devices to be lighter and thinner and it gives you the assurance that you are getting an authentic part when you do get it repaired. Also it makes it less lucrative to steal phones and sell them for spare parts.

On the other hand, there is a real concern that companies will exploit this by jacking up the repair prices as users have nowhere else to go. Also, if a product cannot be repaired, well that's not exactly a win for the environment or our future generations on this planet.

 

[wanha]

iPhones are so common… who would even want to steal one these days. They practically come out of vending machines 😂

Yup, they practically come out of vending machines... for a measly $500 to $1400

 

[ChrisA]

If the arts could be swapped then people would start stealing iPhones again. They would have value if disassembled.

Requiring the name of the person getting the repair deters thieves. Los Angeles City have an issue where people where steeling aluminum grates over storm drains and taking them to recycle centers. Then the passed a law that recycle centers had to copy an ID of the person selling the grates and theft stopped.

A solution would be to have every part have a serial number on it and ther would need to be a huge penalty for the possession of stolen parts. No one would be them if simple possession could land you a fine.

 

[ChrisA]

iPhones are so common… who would even want to steal one these days. They practically come out of vending machines 😂

Who wants them? They take them not to use as phones but for the same reason they seal cars, for parts. The repair shops buy stolen goods to dismantle for parts. If any shop can repair a phone then there will be a market for parts.

Ideally, every part would have a serial number, and repair shops would be forced to query a database of stolen phones before the part could be used. But if parts are valuable and un-numbered, phone theft will dramatically increase.

 

[dypeterc]

Apple's "support" for right to repair is basically a farce.

They support bills that enable Apple to serialize components for anti-theft purposes. The problem is, Apple is serializing EVERY. SINGLE. COMPONENT, such as the iPhone rear glass and MacBook lid angle sensor. Nobody is stealing rear glass or the lid sensor. It has nothing to do with security either.

You have uninformed people asking, "Apple supports RTR, what's wrong?" In reality, Apple doesn't.

Because counterfeits… if Apple doesn’t serialize parts, the market which is already flooded by counterfeits will be even more flooded. I‘m glad that there’s 3rd party repair but would never send my phone to one to get fixed. No way I’d want a fake or unofficial part in my phone with how vital it is to me (i think I’m on it like 8 hrs a day when at work).

 

[NQHE]

What if I told you engineers could engineer a device that was fixable without sacrificing any of its great attributes for the same price?

THAT'S LITERALLY THEIR JOB.

These arguments against repairability are getting so old. There's not a single one that holds any water.

This. I would even go so far as to add that these problems are manufactured by Apple and it would cost their engineers LESS time to remove these checks than continue to update and maintain them.

I run a number of service centres certified by Apple, Samsung, and Google. I can perform parts validation checks on all their devices and only Apple will prevent functionality due to a failed validation.

True Tone, Touch ID, Face ID, NFC, display assys. All of these things can function after repair with the flick of a switch that Apple makes impossible through policy (and supporting software) that can easily account for third-party repairs but don’t. If every other manufacturer in the world can do it, I’m sure Apple can work it out. And if consumers want to void their warranty by performing a cheap repair, let them. It must cost Apple a small fortune to pretend to support right to repair while actively building systems against it.

 

[NQHE]

Apple's "support" for right to repair is basically a farce.

They support bills that enable Apple to serialize components for anti-theft purposes. The problem is, Apple is serializing EVERY. SINGLE. COMPONENT, such as the iPhone rear glass and MacBook lid angle sensor. Nobody is stealing rear glass or the lid sensor. It has nothing to do with security either.

You have uninformed people asking, "Apple supports RTR, what's wrong?" In reality, Apple doesn't.

Serialising all parts is an industry norm and typically used for quality control. I 100% agree with your message but it’s worth noting that every manufacturer does this. In my experience only Apple takes it to this extreme level. Every other manufacturer I have worked with enforces checks on core parts (think PBA, display, cameras, batteries) but don’t care about anything else.

It bothers me how much of this information is fed back to the manufacturer automatically and at what point might they block parts usage (ie “This charge port you’ve just installed was originally registered to another phone so it’s going to just not charge now” but disguised as “Unknown Part”).

 

[JPack]

Because counterfeits… if Apple doesn’t serialize parts, the market which is already flooded by counterfeits will be even more flooded. I‘m glad that there’s 3rd party repair but would never send my phone to one to get fixed. No way I’d want a fake or unofficial part in my phone with how vital it is to me (i think I’m on it like 8 hrs a day when at work).

Invalid reason. Apple could display a message saying, "counterfeit detected."

Right now, if you have non-OEM rear glass, the camera just doesn't work at all. Ridiculous.

 

[truthsteve]

I'm talking about shareholder greed, not inflation.

and so what?

a device that's super repairable would decrease profits.

"even more so" point stands. people who were fine with apple products before end up paying unnecessarily more.

 

[SanderEvers]

I’m aware of all that. I still don’t think it’s an excuse.

It's not meant to be an excuse. It's a valid reason. Though I agree that it makes repair harder, but they could make that easier. For example; free pairing of new parts after you can proof that you are the legitimate owner of the device.

Or a check that disables parts that have been paired to a different device before it pairs to yours. (This will block black market sales of parts) Here you could even automate the pairing. Of course the pairing should only work with genuine parts.

 

[tcgjeukens]

You can't print it big enough

 

[Imperial926]

lol always complaining, even after Apple pushes for right to repair

Sounds like you haven’t looked at how difficult this is in practice!

 

[Motorola68000]

Really at a loss that some seem to not like the idea of a longer warranty in the first place. Inexplicable.

 

[carloslegarda]

How does a common user extend the life of a computer? You upgrade the primary and secondary memory, and graphics. As SoC has everything built in, and NAND chips are soldered in MacBooks are not repair friendly.

Government’s should force manufacturers to give options for consumers to add extra RAM and storage afterwards like in the past.

Soldered RAM dramatically reduces memory failure and having to open up the computer and re-seat RAM which happened quite a lot back in the day.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

lol always complaining, even after Apple pushes for right to repair themselves.

go ahead, add more and more regulation and see what happens to the price tag. I'm sure it'll make everything cheaper, right?

Apple is charging $1600 for a 14 inch Macbook Pro with only 8gb of RAM. Even without regulation the price tag is still ballooning because Apple is overcharging it's customers since they know there's no alternative for them.

 

[polyphenol]

Way back when I had phones with easily replaceable batteries, there was an ongoing problem in getting hold of suitable batteries.

I've tried manufacturers - they had washed their hands of the issue. Simply not available from them.

I've tried other reputable manufacturers - and not found the battery I needed.

So it's then over to ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, etc. where the problem wasn't locating a battery that is claimed to be suitable, but trusting it. Batteries are far too dangerous to risk "maybe" regarding overheating, current limitation, and so on. And I want to have reassurance that they have the claimed capacity, any electronic bits work properly, etc.

 

[MacLawyer]

Compare a Macintosh LCII to todays mac mini or iMac and the repairability and disassembly ease are night and day. Its shocking how easy it is to disassemble an old macintosh! You could have the logic board out in 2 minutes. Todays Mac Mini is a horrible device for repairs and upgrading it is out the question.

Ehhh. Depends on the model. Some old Macs are pretty tough to disassemble without breaking old plastic tabs and shredding your fingers. Then there are the old capacitors leaking and ruining the traces.

 

[cocky jeremy]

Give idiots an inch, they'll try to take a yard.

 

[rhegyi]

lol always complaining, even after Apple pushes for right to repair themselves.

go ahead, add more and more regulation and see what happens to the price tag. I'm sure it'll make everything cheaper, right?

what a bunch of dumb ****ers. ifixit still mad apple banned them from the App Store probably

Agree 100%. It's good to be the King...Right Apple! They have been trying to get rid of independent repair shops for years and years so that you can only go back to them or the "GEEK SQUAD". We were Apple Authorized repair for 30 years and Apple opened three Apple stores within 25 miles our our location and they said you need to do more repairs....OK how do we do that when Apple Care points them to the apple stores? The other solution -- Ok we'll rent you the equipment and you buy the parts from us and or if you screw up the repair...Oh Welllllll.... Like I said it's good to be the King...

 

[Aoligei]

If the arts could be swapped then people would start stealing iPhones again. They would have value if disassembled.

Requiring the name of the person getting the repair deters thieves. Los Angeles City have an issue where people where steeling aluminum grates over storm drains and taking them to recycle centers. Then the passed a law that recycle centers had to copy an ID of the person selling the grates and theft stopped.

A solution would be to have every part have a serial number on it and ther would need to be a huge penalty for the possession of stolen parts. No one would be them if simple possession could land you a fine.

Who wants them? They take them not to use as shoes but for the same reason they seal cars, for parts. If any shop can repair a phone then there will be a market for parts.

Serialized parts does not stop anything other than making legitimate repairs more difficult.

Most stolen iPhones and parts aren’t sold in US or Canada, they got shipped elsewhere. What “fine” can police issues to? Seriously

 

[Aoligei]

Until it's your iPhone that is stolen. Locking down key components on devices with a lot of private data is what keeps us safe and happy. Also it makes the device worth less on the black market, so less criminals will go after it.

When you loss your iPhone, it gets reared apart, shipped to third country.

iPhone storage can be replaced, display serial number can be reprogrammed etc.

Serialize pasts or locked down parts doesn’t do anything.

 

[eicca]

interchangeable = more theft on spare parts

Even this argument has been refuted over and over and over.

iCloud lock the parts like the entire phone. If the phone hasn’t been activated/deactivated properly, parts won’t be accepted in another device.

Boom. Problem solved. Next.

 

[cmcbhi]

How does a common user extend the life of a computer? You upgrade the primary and secondary memory, and graphics. As SoC has everything built in, and NAND chips are soldered in MacBooks are not repair friendly.

Government’s should force manufacturers to give options for consumers to add extra RAM and storage afterwards like in the past.

Buy an Android.
Bing-Badda-Boom.

 

[eicca]

This. I would even go so far as to add that these problems are manufactured by Apple and it would cost their engineers LESS time to remove these checks than continue to update and maintain them.

I run a number of service centres certified by Apple, Samsung, and Google. I can perform parts validation checks on all their devices and only Apple will prevent functionality due to a failed validation.

True Tone, Touch ID, Face ID, NFC, display assys. All of these things can function after repair with the flick of a switch that Apple makes impossible through policy (and supporting software) that can easily account for third-party repairs but don’t. If every other manufacturer in the world can do it, I’m sure Apple can work it out. And if consumers want to void their warranty by performing a cheap repair, let them. It must cost Apple a small fortune to pretend to support right to repair while actively building systems against it.

Kaboom.

It cracks me up that swapping displays on MacBook Pros makes them both break in identical fashions. Somebody is actually getting paid to take the time to build that malfunction just so Apple can make a few extra bucks on repair and fill the dumps with e-waste.

 

[eicca]

lmao someone didn't read the article.

if a component commonly breaks and is required to be readily available and replaceable, no matter how good an engineer is, Apple required to hold inventory of a new particular part will be infinitely more costly than not having to deal with that particular part.

you're just flat out 100% incorrect.

What if I told you they already hold inventory of parts? Have you heard of their self repair progscam?

Not only are they currently maintaining inventory of parts like you think they shouldn’t, they’re maintaining software locks to scam users out of their repair budget. They have to maintain all those software locks for compatibility as well. Way more upkeep required than just holding the ALREADY-EXISTING parts on a shelf.

Try again.