Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools | Repair advocates say Apple’s move is beneficial, but also strategic::Repair advocates say Apple’s move is beneficial, but also strategic.
Yeah, this isn’t suspicious in any way. Totally on the up and up.
I can’t think of any reason why Apple, which has historically been against the right to repair, wouldn’t support this!
Probably marketing, and hoping California doesn’t make it worse for them.
No, the right to repair apple supports is the one they can control. You have the rights, but you need to buy the parts from them, you need to buy the specialized tools from them, with their terms en conditions.
In other words: you’d be better to let Apple repair the stuf cheaper instead of repairing it yourselves.
“get your iScrewdriver for only $999”
- iScrews sold separately for $99.99 each
iScrewdriver stands now available for only $799
Ars did the math (it’s in that article), and they said that people with the know-how will be financially better-off renting the tools and doing the repairs themselves than getting them done at Apple. It’s not a great deal, but it’s probably enough to get California regulators off their backs. Which, again, is the goal.
I suspect that they have found a loophole in the current bill’s wording and don’t want it to be changed.
They charge an insane amount for you to rent a repair kit for a short time to also order parts and do it yourself with no training. It’ll be ‘available’ you can self repair, but not likely.
Plus, you will still need their software to enable a replacement chip due to serialization. From my understanding, this entire aspect isn’t addressed in the current wording of the bill.
Well to be completely honest; even if Apple in no way helps me fix ther products, them simply just stopping to actively make it harder would be a giant leap forward.
That’s what they aren’t doing, though. They’re trying to rig it where the only parts that will work are new ones purchased from them. They’re also making third party repairmen have a nearly impossible time to do it for you due to all this call in and activate part nonsense.
Wait, so pigs can learn to fly?
I mean yeah, cops have had helicopters for years now.
Totally getting a handle on the narrative. But actual RTR? Nahhh…. This is Apple.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“We intend to honor California’s new repair provisions across the United States,” said Brian Naumann, Apple’s vice president for service and operation management, at a White House event Tuesday.
“I think most OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] will realize they can save themselves a lot of trouble by making parts, tools, and other requirements of state laws already in NY, MN, CA, and CO available nationally,” wrote Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association, to Ars.
“If they try to differentiate between selling one type of product in New York and a different one in neighboring Pennsylvania—the border is porous, and they will only create more complexity in their distribution network than they would gain.”
Gordon-Byrne noted that firms like HP, Google, Samsung, and Lenovo have pledged to comply with repair rules on a national level.
At the same time, numerous obstacles to repair access remain in place through copyright law—“Which we hope will be high on an agenda in the IP subcommittee this session,” Gordon-Byrne wrote.
Elizabeth Chamberlain, director of sustainability for iFixit, a parts vendor and repair advocate, suggested that Apple’s pledge to extend California’s law on a national level is “a strategic move.”
The original article contains 549 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Just waiting for Louis Rossman
Idk why everyone is so damn suspicious, it seems really straightforward and it makes complete sense business wise. Let people repair their stuff, charge them an amount equal to what they’d pay to send it to official repair centers, and fire all your repair staff. It’s just stonks and these people aren’t trained so they might fail at repairing it and need to buy more. It’s easy money and makes the consumer happy
A couple years ago, Apple announced a program to let people buy replacement parts for their devices just as Congress was talking about right to repair. The program ended up having tons of limitations: very small part selection, and prices identical to Apple’s own repair prices, etc. It was clear that this was an attempt to make it seem like they allowed end-user repair, while doing as much as possible to prevent it. Apple still uses software pairing so that you can’t use working components from donor devices. You can’t swap the camera module between two identical iPhones without getting errors, and this can only be fixed by getting Apple’s help. They are going out of their way to stop independent repair, and have been for some time.
So what’s the catch this time? I suspect it’s probably more software restrictions. Currently, nobody can sell aftermarket parts for most phones, so any replacement parts need to come from Apple (and with Apple’s restrictions). I’d want to see legislation to ban software locks and enable third parties to make replacement parts for phones.
Article like this explain how they might be trying to look good and yet still do an end run.
