Let's just remember that the reason behind these "innovations" are strictly coming because of external pressures, if it wasn't for those, they would probably make the phones implode into a tiny black hole and charge you an implosion fee for that.
Cool that they are doing this but it's not out of their own kind heart.
I think it's important to recognize that morality does not apply to any corporation. Corporations respond to incentives and disincentives, that's it. If we want to change the way a corporation behaves we need to arrange things so that its incentives align with our own.
People like to ascribe malice to Apple's history of making difficult-to-repair devices. I think that's wrong-headed. It's more appropriate to say that Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
Now that the right to repair movement has been gaining steam and regulations are being drafted, Apple has been given the incentive to prioritize repairability. Thus they are responding to that incentive with the iPhone 16 (with its new battery adhesive), the repair kits, and the documentation they've provided. They likely also see the opportunity to get ahead of their competitors and tout repairability as a competitive advantage. I would not be surprised at all to see future models have even higher repairability scores with Apple aiming to become the market leader.
As for the serial numbering and activation of replacement parts: that also has a simple explanation that doesn't involve a nefarious lock-in plot. Witness the recent attacks in Lebanon. How were they carried out? By a supply-chain attack! This sort of capability represents more than a physical danger from explosives or chemical weapons, it's also a major cyber security and privacy threat. Supply-chain attacks via counterfeit, backdoored parts is a huge area of concern for Apple. The potential is there for the company to suffer severe reputational damage should a large-scale attack occur.
Downplaying how much Apple fought to prevent R2R around the world.
Meanwhile Steam chose to make the Steam Deck as reparable as possible then revised it to be even easier.
Both of these options exist, but Apple is one of the greediest companies in the world.
~80% of publicly listed multinationals are roughly as greedy as each other, and Apple belongs to that 80%. Then there's 10% in each opposite direction. Pretty standard 80/10/10.
Apple could easily be even greedier if they'd wish, and get away with it. Even accounting for their intentional obstruction to repairs, I bet the active lifespan of the average iPhone and M-series Macbook are longer than the average Samsung flagship, and certainly comparable laptops.
I have no particular attachment to Apple, I currently use only one of their products. But they're just one among the grey cloud of awfulness, nothing special about them when it comes to greed.
Apple historically haven't been great, but they're getting better now. I know people don't want to give credit for that because it didn't happen of their own volition, only when they were incentivised.
Me personally, I've never gotten to the 3 year mark on a smartphone and remained happy with it before my current iPhone 12. They would break, or stop receiving updates or have abysmal battery life or become too slow - literally none of these are issues I'm facing. I'll probably keep this for another year before replacing it with the iPhone 17.
My Android from 2020 still mostly feels like a new phone too.
Steam is not publicly traded, though. Apple can’t really say no to “more profit”, otherwise they will be immediately made to resign.
They give money away, and they actually reduced their fees for the apps with almost no transactions, so obviously they have a fair bit of wiggle-room on what is an acceptable quantity of profit.
I really don't see why we should refrain from judging a corporation on its values. Morality applies to people, and corporations are (still) entirely driven by people. If Apple's C-suite and a couple activist shareholders wanted to make it an eco-friendly company, they surely could. Instead, Apple has spend many years lobbying against any kind of regulations around repairability.
> Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
You forgot profit at the head of that list!
> If Apple's C-suite and a couple activist shareholders wanted to make it an eco-friendly company, they surely could.
They’re trying.
https://www.apple.com/environment/
> By focusing on recycled and renewable materials, clean electricity, and low-carbon shipping, we’re working to bring our net emissions to zero across our entire carbon footprint.
I agree that repairability is another avenue to help with eco-friendliness, but I also see the argument on some decisions (not all) that make Apple devices less attractive to theft if they can’t be used for parts. That bit is also partially consumer facing.
I don’t want to defend Apple too much, there’s a lot I dislike about Tim Cook’s tenure. But they deserve some credit (or at least moral incentive) for attempting an environmentally friendly future. The fact they’re being vocal about it means we can call them out when they do wrong too.
Microsoft, in comparison, blew its environmental goals with AI and just said “fuck it”. They pledged in 2020 to be carbon negative by 2030, and by 2024 they’re emitting 30% more than when they made the pledge. That shows how much their promises are worth: less than nothing.
I really don't see why we should refrain from judging a corporation on its values
We can judge them all we like for any reason we like. We just can’t expect a corporation to change its behaviour until it is incentivized to do so. Whether that’s through market forces or regulation, it does not matter. It’s all about incentives and disincentives.
I’m glad you brought up eco-friendly companies. Many people think this is an example of businesses behaving morally. It is not. Advertising your own morality is not a moral act. Eco-friendliness is just a marketing strategy aimed at eco-conscious consumers.
As for Apple’s lobbying efforts: they were a response to an incentive. We can’t expect the response from a corporation to always be exactly what we want. We should expect them to follow the path of least resistance. Apple likely calculated that it would be cheaper to lobby against and attempt to delay the regulation rather re-tool immediately. Perhaps they were even carrying out the R&D that enabled the iPhone 16’s repair scores at that time, and it wasn’t ready at the time.
Honestly you can only judge private companies based on values, when the power is in the hands of shareholders a company become more a phisical phenomena than a human construct
> tout repairability as a competitive advantage
Haha, can't wait for "Repairability. That's iPhone" ads. I won't even be mad when it happens. Go for it Tim!
Best part is that when their devices are repairable, they'll turn their lobbying might towards supporting repairability legislation. That way they ensure they're not paying a cost in terms of manufacturing ease, or thickness that their competitors aren't. Again, fine by me. As long as all our devices become repairable over time, that's a win for all of us.
Switching from torx screws to pentalobe on iPhones is completely inexcusable. More expensive, less available tooling, no torque advantage. [0]
[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/News/14279/apples-diabolical-plan-to-...
If that was how Apple behaved, it would actually excusable but it did oh so many things which make absolutely no sense other than "business sense". Why did they have to use some super strong glue for their batteries when a tape or a set of screws did the job in the past? Why use some screws from hell which take 1 wrong twist to mess up? Why require 10 pressure points to be pressed at the same time with thin clamps normally not available to anyone?
Nobody really complains about parts having to be changed completely because they are too minuterized: that's the price of having a tiny form factor, we get that. But it's all the BS around it, which often was shown to work just fine in the past, that irks many about Apple's practices.
Exactly,it's the same tactic that people keep falling for.
Find a legitimate argument like security, abuse it to make everything unrepairable and glued together, so that when people ask it's all about keeping their phone safe. Couldn't do otherwise.
That's also why they are supposedly pushing for the right to repair, and in the same time lobbies politicians to keep the current status quo.
You'll have right to repair, in an extremely convoluted way and not cheaper. And you'll be happy about that !
In a relationship it would be considered an abusive partner, manipulative and lier. I just don't get why people defend it.
Almost every battery is done this way, and literally every repair shop can easily replace them. Maybe find something actually worth getting angry over.
> Why did they have to use some super strong glue for their batteries when a tape or a set of screws did the job in the past
Because these are soft batteries, unlike the previous generation batteries? Like, again, there are way more thought going into stuff like this than “I hate the Earth”.
What you are describing would be totally fine, if corporations would not be able to spend money on branding and/or humans were not susceptible to that.
I’m really curious to know how a world where branding was illegal could possibly work. Branding, when it comes down to it, is reputation management. If you don’t allow anyone to manage their own reputation then you don’t really have a free society at all. Heck, even people in prison are able to manage their own reputations within the prison population.
If you suppose, by wishful thinking, that no one could know the reputation of anyone else then you would have a chaotic and unpredictable society. You’d be unable to trust anyone to act fairly in even the most trivial circumstances. It would look like an unmoderated forum where everyone is anonymous and no one can pin anything on anyone else. Quite dystopian.
From a European perspective, I would never suggest making information about individuals public, not even criminals. Even though where I am from, we seem to swing to far in the other direction when it comes to protecting the rights of perpetrators vs. the victim's rights, I think registries of any kind in that regard are a big mistake.
Nevertheless, it should be possible to set higher standards for corporate communication than for individuals. I am thinking about this more in terms of markets and information asymmetry than personal liberties. I think it is fine when corporations are required to publish what they are doing. There is room to improve how mandatory disclaimers work and for what they are required.
This is much needed nuance that is sorely missing from these discussions. I'm sure it will fall on mostly deaf ears, but thank you for that.
There's a lot of criticism against Apple for not doing things in the right order. Repairability is one of them. Would it have been better for their devices to be easier to repair from the original iPhone? Sure. Would it have been better for you, me, or Apple to focus on repairability above all else? Absolutely not.
In the meantime, Apple have built a device service model that looks like this for the average consumer:
Having a high degree of confidence that the product will be serviceable with OEM parts, which do not impact the resale value by causing buyer confusion, guarantees of these replacement parts working, having these parts available for years and years, and that the company is not going to disappear, through a network of nearby first and third party repair shops, at a transparent and reasonable price.
Like most criticism of Apple, there is a concentrated yelling at one particular tree, while missing the forest around. It can be valid criticism and missing the bigger picture at the same time.
To be absolutely fair, after the iPhone 4, they could and should have totally focused on repairability above everything else.
Sure we got some more pixels out of cameras but that's not much when you've got to throw them away after X years.
Apples main objective is to make tech jewelry. Thats what made their company successful, and they have no reason to switch from that. With every iPhone or Mac release, their software is still is absolute trash compared to Android or Linux (My S24 can be plugged into a display and used as a computer with Samsung Dex for example), and thats by design - people who buy these devices don't make
Exclusivity is a big part of that. They want to keep things in house to make sure that their devices are seen as "the best". If you can buy a used iPhone and get it repaired for cheap, that means that people of lower income can have these devices, which decreases their standing. Preventing this is a well known marketing strategy with luxury items, from watches, to cars, to clothes. That is why they have serial numbers/activation, not because of supply chain attacks, which are not an issue for any developed country due to mechanisms in place.
Swappie is a popular service that refurbishes and sells used iPhones. They are doing very well, and expanding. They have sold over a million phones so far. Apple do not prevent this.
I guess that most of these are to "people of lower income". I have purchased devices there for my children.
As someone who has switched from Android to IOS and pretty happy with it. I do not want to connect my phone with an external display. I have my laptop or desktop at home for that. I do not want to work or think about work when these devices are not accesible for me.
None of your "points" are in response to the parent comment.
> their software is still is absolute trash compared to Android or Linux
2024. The year of Linux on the desktop.
The moment you spread fud, to keep on doing the bad behaviour you are showing and try to political destroy the mechanisms that prevent your bad behaviour, it is intentional behaviour. DOT.ENTER.SEND.
This has long been a kind of systematic public relations problem for the EU; generally, the fruits of EU regulation become, in the minds of the consumer, an example of corporate benevolence, with the EU's role being solely as a thing to blame when things go wrong.
The problem with EU regulation is basically that it regulates foreign companies and products without creating domestic products.
EU regulation primarily governs European companies and the European subsidiaries of foreign companies; at most, you generally only see leakage outside Europe (eg RoHS has kind of spread; rather than produce separate non-toxic products for Europe and toxic for RoW, a lot of companies have gone non-toxic everywhere; Apple was a leader there). If your only window into EU regulation is Hackernews, I can _kind_ of see how you'd come to this conclusion, but regulation of tech multinationals is very much a drop in the bucket.
But also I mean I think you're confused about the purpose of these rules. While certain EU rules are protectionist, these ones aren't; the purpose of forcing manufacturers to make things repairable isn't to promote European manufacturers over foreign ones, it's to protect the consumer.
Schrodingers EU. Can't make any products or services but is rich enough to attract foreign companies to massively invest in to gain access and compete in said markets. Where do you think the EU gets the wealth if not making and selling products and services?
I think for many Europeans, we 100% know that these changes are thanks to the EU: GDPR, right to be forgotten, right to repair, etc.
I think it's some people from the outside (i.e. the US) who are absolutely anti-government but pro corporations-as-a-government which can't see that a for-profit company is like a wheel: it needs a stick for it to go straight.
For some Europeans, certainly, but, well, see Brexit. For instance, remember the outrage about the reintroduction of roaming charges within the EU by British mobile providers? Or the current scandal in the UK over the pesticide residue limits on imported fruit and vegetables being, in some cases, _hundreds_ of times higher than they were under Europe.
A lot of people seem to have been genuinely surprised that these things didn't just happen by magic, they happened due to EU regulation.
Brexit by now should be seen far what it was: a farce of misinformation and lies which should have been halted as the playing field had been contaminated.
Also a great example of why you can't have a single and very important choice being put to the public without said public being used to participate to the government's choices.
I believe Brexit as a question, if ever, should have been asked after at least 3/4 other new referendums on different topics and seeing how the public responded.
(to note: the UK had, so far, only 3 nationwide referendums with Brexit being one of the.)
The EU being EUseful.
All product development is essentially from external pressure. Whether it's from customers, competitors or regulators.
Of course they'd rather sell you the same thing every year without any R&D expenses, if they could. Anyone would. Pointing this out isn't really saying anything
No company does things out of the kindness of their own heart. That's just not how enterprise is designed to work, and it is a mistake to ever assume otherwise. Regulation needs to always be the driving force for something like this.
Are they seriously praising apple for repairability ?
The same company that locks people people and third party company out of repairing their phone with parts that are serial coded. I don't know any other company that does that.
And they can't even pretend it's for security like with faceid, it would be possible to wipe the phone when a part is not recognized. I'm sure people would be fine with it.
I believe they are only making these changes to appease the law makers, and in the case of the battery because Europe said they will need to be replaceable.
This is just corporate doing corporate stuff, nothing to praise.
For me the day they locked me out of my apple watch because I dared to replace it's broken screen is when I realized apple is full of shit when it's about repairability and especially about environment.
The reason they do the serial coding is to reduce the incentive for stealing iPhones. Due to locking, you can't really sell a stolen iPhone. Instead, thieves break it apart and sell the parts. Serial coding disincentives this. I know many people that had their iPhone stolen and it is an awful experience.
I'm a simple man, I'd never have the ability to solder and fix my own phone. Instead of repairing it myself, I'd always go to an official repair shop. I'm not benefitting from non-coded parts. On the other hand, reducing the likelihood of people stealing my phone is a huge upside for me. So for me, and people like me, these measures that Apple takes are a net benefit. I understand that for tinkerers it is a different equation - but you have to agree that for the majority of iPhone owners the equation might also tip in favour of not having to worry about stolen phones instead of being able to fix their own hardware (which most normal people also would never do).
>As for the serial numbering and activation of replacement parts: that also has a simple explanation that doesn't involve a nefarious lock-in plot.
People really need to use their brain more.
If parts pairing was to deter theft, then it would work like this - any time a stolen part is detected in a non paired phone, it would notify the user and Apple, and allow that part to be tracked down. Or, just make the phone completely inoperable.
It doesn't work like this. Swapping to a unpaired display makes the display still work plenty fine with some limitations.
EVERY SINGLE DECISION that Apple makes is for revenue gathering, and keeping their devices in the status of high end tech jewelry. They will never be a company that gives a fuck about things like right to repair, or offering more features to consumers for free.
> People really need to use their brain more.
You included, perhaps
> Swapping to a unpaired display makes the display still work plenty fine with some limitations.
Apple has to walk a tight rope here. Every change they make is risky and you could end up bricking legitimate devices.
It's undeniable that the limitation they've applied makes stealing the parts less desirable. You can't easily pass off a device made with stolen parts as completely genuine which reduces the resale value in the most lucrative second hand markets. Every generation they're slowly moving more in this direction, while also balancing these restrictions against repair-ability and risk of unintended bricking.
This effort is creating a lot of work for Apple. I seriously doubt it's worth the trouble just to make repairing the devices harder. The money they make from that is peanuts. What they gain from customers being happy that their phones are less worth stealing, and the price they get for a fully genuine phone in the second hand market when they upgrade, is probably much more important for driving the sale of new phones.
> EVERY SINGLE DECISION that Apple makes is for revenue gathering
Of course. Why do you say that as if it's news, or as if it's something not every single person here knows already?
Yet the fact is that sometimes these decisions overlap with the genuine interests of the customers, either because of customer feedback, increase/decrease in sales, or from competition, or due to regulations.
And I personally think this effort is something that heavily overlaps with consumer interests. Especially now that they're putting more effort into making pairing/calibration of swapped parts easier.
You are yelling about Apple making every single decision about revenue. This is demonstrably and famously not true - not every decision.
Apple was challenged by shareholders to only commit to environmental or accessibility projects if they increased ROI. Tim Cook rejected that out of hand [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...
I see this argument constantly, but how many times have people had their phone stolen?
Isn't it a better option to just have the phone have proper robust security preventing people without proper permissions to access personal data?
It just seems a bit much just to prevent an unlikely scenario. I think that its purpose is for Apple to control who repairs and gain revenue from it.
Wait, how is this a benefit for you or a deterent for thieves? iPhones get stolen all the time. Leave your iPhone unattended in a public space and I guarantee it will disappear in no time. Where do you see the reduction in iPhone thefts? This feels like a myth that keeps being spread around HN.
This would be a valid response if first party parts were easily available to be bought directly from manufacturers.
They are, https://selfservicerepair.com/home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4_mLw2BGM&t=270
TLDW Apple has slow response times. Not all parts are available. Parts are super expensive. Liability with heavy NDA's.
I’m sure Rossman has legitimate complaints that he can’t order thunderbolt controllers or whatever in bulk from Apple to conduct complex main board repairs in his repair shop, but the fact is that any repair that Apple themselves will perform at an Apple Store or service centre is performable at home with official Apple parts often with significant discounts over getting it done by Apple.
I recently replaced an iPhone 12 Pro Max battery myself at home for £44 rather than the £85 Apple charges to do it for me. All I had to do was send them my old battery. No NDAs or sketchy agreements.
Maybe you can talk about which parts are not available and/or are unreasonably expensive.
Because looking at the repair site it looks pretty comprehensive and you can even hire everything you need for $49 a week.
> I don't know any other company that does that.
It's common in the car industry as well. Seems to be the reason my airbags are still in place after 10 years while a certain popular german brand here is uninsurable because it's not a question if but when the airbags will be stolen.
Yeah, wasn't it an Audi a few series back where the headlights were ridiculously expensive, but you didn't even need to unlock the car to remove the whole light fixture? If you had a long metal rod you could reach in under the light, release a hook and then just walk off with the lights.
Well, they just introduced the “Repair Assistant” which allows you to pair new parts after a repair. They talk about it in this article, had you read it.
But, yeah, about fucking time, I agree on that.
i did read it in full but i knew too well apple to not trust it, i believe it's going to be another half done attempt that is overcomplicated and totally inefficient.
Like, i don't know... the recent self repair program. cost as much as sending your device to apple but you get to do the manual labor and take the risk to break it. WHAT A DEAL !
Edit: went to look on the Repair Assistant, it sounded promising until i read that it requires you (who repair the phone) to be able to authenticate with the Apple Account of the owner of the phone that you are taking a part of.
Basically it means that every iphone thrown away that the owner didn't take the time to remove it's apple account, and god knows people don't care about this even if they should, is useless.
You also can't buy a part on the internet because how do you know it's been taken from a phone that got it's apple id logged off ? it throws away 90% of the available phone to scavenge.
And most important, you can't buy third party parts. Why can i replace the shaft drive on my bmw, which is deadly important part, with third party shaft drive yet i can't replace iphone battery with a non apple one ?? Does apple consider us to be that retarded that we can't buy batteries from genuine reseller ?
Are you upset that you won't be able to buy stolen parts anymore?
The fact that Apple will make it impossible to use stolen parts is a great feature for me as a customer. I want potential thieves to get nothing when they steal my phone.
If I buy a phone from someone else, asking them to remove it from their account before the transaction is already a good idea, and trivial to do. Beyond the physical parts, I don't want any of their data or account info on my new phone.
I'm not upset anymore since i ditch my iphone for an android, i'm merely pointing the corporate hypocrisy from apple.
> If I buy a phone from someone else, asking them to remove it from their account before the transaction is already a good idea, and trivial to do. Beyond the physical parts, I don't want any of their data or account info on my new phone.
Do it with the ssd then. you don't need to lock the screen, the battery or the faceid sensor. it makes no sense security wise.
I'm all in for fighting against stealer and pickpocket, but also lucid enough to know that it doesn't prevent them from stealing it. They still steal them and then sell them on internet, only for people to buy it and receive a brick. It just doesn't work.
And honestly if i get my samsung stolen, i'd rather know it's been resold by some scumbag, but still being used, than having it get shiped to india for 'recycling' into one of the many landfill site.
If you are going scam people with locked iPhones over the internet, why send an iPhone at all? You should just send a literal paperweight. It will serve the same purpose. It's not like the marketplace will be like "It's an iPhone. Even if it is locked, the seller is right. We will remove the negative rating and let the seller keep their reputation".
By the way, I recently sold an iPhone 8 (through App, but the transfer was in person) and out of 5 potential buyers, all of them asked the same three questions: "Is it on and unlocked?, is it carrier sim-locked?, which is the battery %?".
> Do it with the ssd then. you don't need to lock the screen, the battery or the faceid sensor. it makes no sense security wise.
They don't lock the battery or display.
The display sensor and FaceID components are paired because they don't want rogue actors e.g. governments/spouses replacing them with compromised ones.
Privacy and security may not be a priority to you. But for many it is a million times more important than being able to repair the device.
Oh is it ? Seriously, they could make the phone wipe itself when a new faceid touchid sensor is put.
There is absolutely no reason to put a lock on these parts when other simpler solution exists.
Guess what happens when I unlock the bootloader of my Samsung ? It wipes itself. Samsung are as much secure as iphones yet they allow parts to be replaced, how can it be ? Korean are just stupid and apple knows better ?
And it's not just samsung, Google does it too.
There are many things great with iphone but it doesn't mean it's perfect in every way and everything apple say is true.
Where do you live that getting your phone stolen is a bigger concern than being able to repair your stuff? Thats more a society issue, not something that Apple needs to fix.
You can buy a third party battery it’ll just say “you have a third party battery” in the settings
It's good that we go in a direction where we have accessibility to the devices components and the high end technology. I can't assess how easy it is for the layman to repair an iPhone, but the inertia is there to make a device longer usable.
How about they just get rid of that nonsense instead?
All this just means that replacement parts are expensive, repairs are expensive and Apple continues to control the ecosystem. I can't believe people are praising Apple for it.
Related:
Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals
More discussion on the iFixit post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251
This is a significant step forward for Apple. As someone who's struggled with battery replacements in the past, I'm impressed by this innovation. The use of electrically debonding adhesive is clever and could be a game-changer for repairability.
However, I'm curious about the long-term implications. Will this adhesive maintain its properties over the device's lifespan? And what about the environmental impact of this new material?
I'm actually curious what would happen if the adhesive did stop working? The phone is so tightly packed, it doesn't seem like there is any room for the battery to move around anyway.
This was mentioned in the Apple environmental report. They want their devices to be more repairable.
Always cool to see innovative solutions like this
Forgot the /s
Or, crazy idea: Just use adhevise that isn't unnecessarily strong.
How does your crazy idea perform when that adhesive comes loose after being exposed to 100 hours of vibration?
The battery is still held in there pretty well even without any adhesive. See also: Any phone battery before ~2015.
No.