It’s not so much about stopping the greed, as stopping the LAZINESS.
Make ‘em work for their money. Push them to be; creative, thoughtful, innovative, efficient.
Same as all the rest of us. That’s only fair, isn’t it?
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California to Introduce 'Right to Repair' Bill Requiring Smartphone Manufacturers to Offer Repair Info and Parts
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Make ‘em work for their money. Push them to be; creative, thoughtful, innovative, efficient.
Same as all the rest of us. That’s only fair, isn’t it?
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
It's their phone. If they want to try to repair it themselves, who are you or Apple to say they cannot?
And no, this law is not about product design at all. It's an attempt to break potential monopoly-like holds (and potential exploitation) on repair services & parts. Corporations oppose such laws because there can be great profit in completely controlling repairs and parts themselves (the auto industry tries to play this game ALL the time). Occasionally governments actually take actions that favor consumers over big business. This appears to be one of those rare times where maybe something will get done for consumers over corporations.
Again, this kind of law would NOT affect anyone seeing this issue as you do at all. They could still take their broken Apple product to Apple and pay whatever Apple wants to repair it. What the law would change is give those same people options to take it to other repair services and those entities would be able to get proprietary parts and make repairs (perhaps for much less total cost) than the OEM. It would not force someone like you to repair anything yourself, nor use non-Apple repair services... just give someone like you those options in addition to taking it to Apple and having them do the repair... and paying their price.
And it certainly does NOT force Apple to redesign products- such as making them thicker- to make products easier for individuals to repair.
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This isn’t good news necessarily. It will end up being a tax on consumers at best and a cluster in security and accountability at worst.
You think Apple handled the battery issues poorly? Wait until you get their stance on third party repaired phones.
I hope this crashes and burns.
You think Apple handled the battery issues poorly? Wait until you get their stance on third party repaired phones.
I hope this crashes and burns.
I'm sure these replacement parts will have standard Apple markups. I don't expect the savings vs repair cost to be much.
Sometimes, they just don't want to fix, e.g., when you need to downgrade iOS because of buggy behaviour on older hardware or because of performance issues. Sometimes you have a perfectly working hardware after five years of usage and you want to install a more modern OS on it. With PCs (or Macs) we can install a flavour of Linux or replace OSX with Windows. The consumer has choices. It's not happening on the mobile world.
The problem isn't only the cost of repairing, but also the support duration. These days, an iPhone lasts 5 years in an optimistic estimation. But it could last way longer if the user could fix it (installing OS by himself and exchanging parts) after expiring the official support.
This is dumb. A user repairable device will only compromise the experience for something that 99.9% of users aren't at all capable or interested in doing themselves. The only way to conform to this law would be to make the device much larger or much less capable.
This is absurd. If that was the case, Apple could never repair their own devices and there would not exist Apple Authorized Service Providers.
Plus, Apple will put all the 3rd party repair folks out of business if they decide they want control of the repairs.
There is no limit to the innovation they’ll come up with to fix this issue. They’ll create a company called Apple Repair Corporation if they want.
There is no limit to the innovation they’ll come up with to fix this issue. They’ll create a company called Apple Repair Corporation if they want.
The fact that since the battery replacement program for older phones subject to throttling there have been multiple explosions at Apple stores around the world. Having just anyone with a toolbox repair this type of device is a very bad idea.
Beautiful!!!! The other thing we need to resolve is the right to keep our software. I am tired of Apple pushing updates on my iPhone. I really adore kicking Apple's butt.
Consumers already have choices. They are authorized centers that Apple has certified they will keep your phone from blowing up in your face while you talk on it.
If I’m understanding this properly. This means Apple only has to provide genuine parts and guides on repairs for repairs shops?
Couldn’t Apple still say that warranty is voided if the repair is completed by anyone other than non-certified repairers (assuming they can apply to become certified) or Apple themselves.
Couldn’t Apple still say that warranty is voided if the repair is completed by anyone other than non-certified repairers (assuming they can apply to become certified) or Apple themselves.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No, this law is not about product designs. It's not about forcing product designs to change.
What it is about is making corporate choices to weave in proprietary parts available to third parties (or individuals) so that repairs can OPTIONALLY be done by shops other than the OEM. Think about some proprietary part in your car needing to be replaced. You take your car into a local repair shop and they tell you it's only a simple part that probably costs about $50 BUT it's a proprietary part only available from the car manufacturer... and the OEM wants $300 for that part because only they have (control) the part to supply. Tough luck buddy. Cough up the $300 for the part and pay the manufacturer whatever they want to charge you to install the part. Or throw away that car and buy another?
That's basically what this is about- preventing companies (not just Apple) from leaning on proprietary parts that basically forces repair work only to the OEMs where that OEM can charge anything they want for the part and the repair.
It's barely about individuals being able to repair something themselves (though that is also there). It's much more about forcing more than one OPTION to be available for consumers to be able to get their stuff repaired at places other than the OEM at OEM pricing.
Apple has come out against this kind of law because monopoly-like controls of parts & repair services are very, very profitable business. But since Apple has come out against it, some of us have to be against it too. Some of us can only sync with whatever Apple wants. For the rest though, simply THINK (different) and imagine this as a story about Samsung or Google or Amazon or Microsoft being against government wanting to give consumers more options than only getting stuff repaired by Samsung or Google or Amazon or Microsoft and having to buy parts from only Samsung or Google or Amazon or Microsoft, paying whatever those players want for those parts & services. If by removing Apple from the equation, an opinion shifts in favor of yourself- as a consumer- and your fellow consumers, why does one have to feel differently when Apple is lumped in with that foursome?
In short: if this was California vs.- say- Samsung where Samsung is wanting to completely control product parts supply and be the exclusive repair service for Samsung products at relatively HIGH prices, are we so quick to side with Samsung at our own expense? And since this law is not California vs. Apple, it actually includes California vs. Samsung, California vs. Google, California vs. Amazon, etc too.
Bottom line: if the law passes, those who believe only Apple should repair Apple products still have that exact option for their own repairs. And those who would rather be able to get repairs by more competitive services would gain such options too, probably save up to a lot of money while still getting quality repairs by entities that don't necessarily demand Apple's fat margins, nor having the same opportunity to charge up to anything for parts as sole supplier.
Are you joking?
You're unbelievably wrong about this.
The issue you're mentioning is something exclusive to the battery (in terms of iPhone components) you won't find other components exploding due to faulty repairs.
And if your sole argument is batteries, then I don't know why because they are already easy to repair, along with the screen. Anyone with a toolbox can already do this!
In fact this would make it safer as Apple would distribute official batteries, avoiding 3rd party batteries that may not be safe.
Those explosions were likely because Apple stores have been rushed off their feet with battery replacements and there were mistakes made. It's entirely irrelevant.
Even if there were other potentially dangerous components in the phone, this is about principle. People already repair them, this would make it safer, more accessible, and potentially less expensive.
To use Apple's own defense when the iOS 9 boot loader leaked, security through obscurity is not security. Custom parts (mass manufactured in China or Brazil anyways) and a tools does not make your device secure if someone gets physical hardware access.
If it was good enough for Apple on the boot loader, its good enough for security with 3rd party hardware repair.
An exaggeration for sure, but it has some truth to it.
Apple Stores (and certain repair centers, AFAIK) have a custom built machine for calibrating screens after replacement and also matching the TouchID sensor to the phone/secure enclave. Obviously a device that can match a TouchID sensor would be something that hackers would love to get their hands on. Considering the relationship between the sensor and the secure enclave, I can see why Apple would not want to be forced to allow repair centers to be able to purchase this machine for their own use.
Anyone can buy their own iPhones and tear them apart to try and figure out how they work (and how to hack them). Not everyone has access to Apple proprietary equipment that's so closely tied to security.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Yes but is that really choices? Or do those "authorized" centers charge about the same as Apple? This law appears to be about making repair services & parts more competitive. In short: it appears to be an attempt to put a check in place against companies that might leverage exclusive parts supplier status from exploiting consumers by charging just about anything they want... and consumers not having any other tangible option to get that same repair.
Personally: I'm pretty capable at hardware repairs myself. A few years ago my iMac needed a new hard drive. I could pretty easily do that kind of repair... EXCEPT Apple decided to slug in a proprietary connector that required a special hardware purchase. Apple also decided that only select hard drives could be installed by Apple, leaving out much larger capacity drives already available at the time at generally much cheaper prices.
I HATE that kind of product development mentality- slugging something extra in solely to exploit or somewhat thwart the potential of upgrades and/or future repairs and locking down the installation options to very high-margin parts not very competitive with what is generally available. Fortunately, I was able to lay my hands on that proprietary part and was able to do the repair myself, installing a much bigger hard drive than Apple was willing to install. Had I just let Apple do this repair, it would have cost me about $300 more than it did and I'd have less than 50% of the storage capacity I chose to install. I preferred to keep that $300 in my pocket. That iMac is still working well for me, and I've long since exceeded the capacity max that would have been if I would have gone with only the Apple "choices" of hard drives.
Since then, everything seems to be made so much more un-repairable & un-upgradable. It's harder than ever to get at even a dead hard drive in a desktop. It's chosen- a conscious design decision, not some technical "it's our only choice" limitation- to be very difficult to upgrade SSD capacities or even replace a battery. However, when one needs something like that, there's Apple's (generally highest) price option and there's some third parties that can do some things just as well for a lot less. End result is the same (or sometimes better as in the case of my bigger capacity iMac hard drive) but one costs less-to-much-less than the other.
And that's what this kind of law is about- forcing OEMs to be competitive with others rather than allowing them to make choices so that they become the ONLY option for repairs & parts and a customer is pressed to use ONLY them for repairs or upgrades. That kind of lock-in is NEVER good for us consumers, unless we just hate extra cash in our wallets.
Sometimes government tries to do something that actually benefits us consumers over big business. We should let them.
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Yes. And that's part of the price consumers could opt to "pay" by choosing what is probably a cheaper repair instead of paying up for Apple to do the repair. If a person values whatever time is left on their warranty and needs a non-warrantied repair, they probably pay up for Apple to do the repair. But if they don't value whatever time is left on their warranty- if any- they can opt to use someone else for the repair and probably pay less for the repair.
Per my iMac hard drive replacement example above, that iMac was already out of warranty, so the choices for me were:
- Apple option #1: pay the highest price and get a much lower capacity drive than readily available.
- Apple option #2: throw away that iMac and spend a couple thousand on another just because the one I already owned needed only a relatively minor repair.
- Other option: save about $300 in total (vs. option #1 and a couple thousand vs. option #2) and get a much higher capacity drive too that still serves me well today- years later.
Let's face it: many repairs that require payments are beyond the warranty window anyway (else, the warranty probably fixes whatever has stopped working). So this is really about paying more for a repair or paying less for a repair... perhaps compromising some confidence in getting an OEM to do a repair vs. a third party repair shop. Consumer choice is always good. Robust competition is always good for consumers. Wishing away competition and choice is basically just begging a corporation- any corporation- to exploit us. And why not when some of us are essentially asking for it?
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Uh no. Go to other second rate manufacturers if that’s what you want.
Thank you. The only person in here that seems to have a cogent, logical, non-sheepish thought on the matter!
Nobody bothered to think about how governments benefit from this. Of course they want to make the inner workings of the devices more transparent. That way they can figure out how to hack it easier and faster. No thanks.
But repair shops can order genuine OEM parts from the manufacturer to fix the car.
Schematics of Apple devices are available anyway. Ever seen videos from Rossmann? He repairs MacBooks over his YouTube channel. Missing diagnose tools and official parts and schematics only complicates things for the average customer.
I hope the bill passes and forces Apple to do the right thing, because Apple itself won't.
Yes because California has absolutely no other issues to attend to. Lawmakers can now take on the real issues and make laws on who is allowed to fix your phone.