I am out of the loop on this one. I am probably wrong, but…Wasn’t the bill nullified by the fact apple has the sole right to supply the replacement parts? Or does the bill work as intended where replacement parts can be sourced elsewhere as well as documentation being made available?
My point was that it may have been made useless. I seem to remember Louis Rossman complaining about it, but I have no idea over which issue. There is no point in having a right to repair act if it can still be abused in some way shape or form by large manufacturers.
I think the problem with this one was that manufacturers can hold all the cards on the cost of buying replacement parts. This would open up the issue of people being gouged. I was hoping that someone could give me more accurate information on the issue.
Basically you have the right to repair, but the only tools that will work are those you buy from apple and call-in to make sure you didn’t buy them second hand.
What does this mean regarding their components pairing? Will they still force indepent repair shops to go through apple to validate a repair by requesting a new pairing for the replaced part? Will it be free? Will it depend on whether the part is a genuine apple part? A salvaged one? A third party part?
this is a ruleset though, and it’s likely much cheaper for them to produce one SKU for the US rather than two, a california rule abiding one, and a rest of the country one.
Right, this is absolutely because it’s cheapest for them to adopt across their product line and their PR team is trying to spin it like they are doing it for altruistic reasons. It’s the same with USB-C. Once forced by the EU, it was announced all iPhones would use usb-c, same situation
Their carbon neutral claims are a stretch, but they did massively reduce their carbon footrprint in addition to using offsets. The majority of the reduction is from using green energy at their factories and no longer using air shipping.
The iPod Touch 7 was great… but then they decided it didn’t actually deserve long term support even though it was the last version they’d be making. So go ahead and come out with an iPod Touch 8, Apple, but I won’t be trusting enough to buy it after getting burnt.
iPod touches were great for giving kids a small device without needing a cell connection. You could give them a iPhone without service but they cost way too damn much for that.
Ehhh with eu sideloading, right to repair and generally a good phone it looks like a good deal but i also think full software liberty(you can replace the software on it) is a part of RTR and i dont know if thats ever gonna happen especially with even android phones getting more and more restricted.
I don’t like giving money to Google but at least I can flash a free software operative system and I’m not in a golden jail under the tyrannic rule of a corporation.
I feel like going on an article about Apple and saying “but I don’t like apple” is a waste of screen real estate honestly. It’s such a pointless and stupid thing to say.
they saw the writing on the wall and decided to get ahead of it, by agreeing to locked down firmware apple only replacement parts, which isn't a full right to repair, but it does extend the life of an apple device, if you pay the apple tax
Same thing happened with net neutrality, California put NN into law, and the rest of the country followed because it doesn’t make sense to build a separate Internet for California.
I understand this as the California Effect and similarly the Brussels effect. While both do change company policies, I do understand that many companies are going to continues to try and avoid a regulatory ruling as there is so much status quo market loss on the line for them.
This article describes how they’ll be trying to use MOUs with nongovernment bodies to mollify consumers and regulators.
4 choices: don’t sell in CA, fight the law, make a separate phone to meet R2R laws that are likely going to become more prevalent, release a press report portraying magnanimity towards R2R and make the bare minimum effort to meet the law.
This is Apple wanting to sell things in California, combined with Apple not wanting to manufacture two separate versions of their devices for the US market.
This is also why everyone gets USB-C iPhones now, instead of only the EU.
They supported this legislation before it was passed. Still not out of the goodness of their hearts, this version includes provisions that they had wanted previously.
They “supported” this legislation by implementing a system where parts still require users to call in to activate them, you are “strongly encouraged” to rent or buy specialized tools from apple, and the price of parts plus rental generally comes out as only slightly less than paying an apple store to do it for you.
It is malicious compliance that they get to use for a PR boost.
Because this has highlighted the “loophole” to these kinds of laws. Strict control of parts and equipment to manipulate pricing so that third parties cannot exist and this becomes “your phone is under warranty” by another name.
It definitely sounds like the law kind of sucks and needs to go further in the future, but are you really saying that being able to repair your existing device, even if the parts are overpriced, is exactly as bad as having to buy a whole new one? The reduction in e-waste alone seems like a potential improvement.
If anything, this has increased the amount of waste.
Because, as a customer (making up the numbers but it IS something like this)?
I can pay Apple 300 bucks to let their geek squad repair it for me. Or I can pay 290 bucks to have their special tools shipped to me as well as their official parts, with all the packaging associated. And then I have to ship them back my old parts. All with extra packaging because you can’t send a customer a box full of monitor mainboards. And, because I need to source all of these directly from Apple, the moment they are no longer legally required to offer replacement parts, they won’t.
So… I can save something ridiculous (let’s say 10%) to fulfill my own warranty and nothing else.
But let’s think about this as a repair shop.
I can’t use third party or even OEM parts because basically everything requires the customer to authenticate with Apple. I can’t stock parts because Apple strictly controls parts and requires customers to special order them and return the old part during a repair. And I can’t compete with the geek squad because THEY get to stock spare screens in the back room. So I am exactly where I used to be of “Some stuff I can repair even though Apple says not to. Most stuff I can’t”
So yeah. The end user experience is almost exactly as bad as it used to be. And this is “a win” which means pressure has been let down and companies have a path to neuter these laws. So yeah, it is worse.
Prohibitively expensive tools that push anyone but a repair shop to rent
Pricing so that, with renting, you are paying more or less the same to fix it yourself or have apple do it for you
You need to provide the old broken parts to Apple for them to send you the new ones. This adds considerable hassle to the end user and ensures that third party repair companies will always be a worse experience.
Incredibly invasive terms if you want to authenticate your phone after the repair. ifixit speculate this is a limitation of their tools but it still boils down to needing to phone home to Apple to activate your new screen and so forth.
So how about you actually look at the policy you are championing rather than vaguely imply that other people are being dishonest for actually having looked into it?
I was trying to agree with you in the previous comment, but I guess that wasn’t clear. I appreciate all the explanation, but no need for the hostility and rudeness. Saying something was a step forward is a pretty far cry from championing something, too. You’ve really jumped to conclusions on where I stand on this and you clearly know more about it. Hopefully you can treat the next person with greater kindness, as you clearly have a lot to teach and people will listen better if you do. I wish you well.
parts still require users to call in to activate them
How else would you do it? Phone theft used to be way too common. I’m fine with Apple reducing phone theft by making it harder for thieves to get value from stolen devices
I’m buying my phone as a functioning device: I may need to repair it or replace the battery but why would I want to mod it? Those who do, can go through the extra steps
This is far different than a server, which I buy with very different expectations
So you are arguing this is to prevent some Gone in 60 Seconds like movement where Giovanni Ribisi and Scott Caan are in the wings waiting to rapidly replace a single component to sell those stolen phones before the Faraday cage bag mysteriously dissolves?
This has nothing to do with thieves. This has everything to do with keeping third parties from not being able to exist. And I should not have to explain why someone might want to buy a third party version of an apple accessory.
Why would preventing someone from replacing a broken part without calling in to Apple, prevent phone theft?
The phone isn’t going to magically disconnect from Apples network just because you replaced the screen.
Maybe if they replaced the internal storage, but Apple could easily require to call if you only replaced that part. Everything else should be more than fair game.
And what about those who would rather mod their Apple phone than have phone theft security? Their opinion does not matter because you decide you don’t need it?
Why would preventing someone from replacing a broken part without calling in to Apple, prevent phone theft?
Digitally locking some of the major components together make it harder for a thief to part out the phone - you can’t just buy a new screen from someone on the street who stole a phone and took it apart, and expect it to work
In this case, they managed to delay the bill long enough that they now have a bunch of programs in place to actually profit from third-party repairs of their devices. This gives them an advantage over their competitors, so they are now in support of this bill.
They get to sell their parts without having to pay all of the repair people and probably getting out of a certain amount of warranty liability. Win-win-win for them.
And people repairing their own stuff is always a good idea. People learning how to maintain their electronics is never a bad thing! Everyone should pick up a soldering iron at some point. :)
While in complete agreement that it's good the option is there, have definitely interacted with plenty of end users who, for various reasons, really should never.
Hey, some people learn from their mistakes. Hell, my first PC build (23 years ago…) was DOA because I had inadvertently bent a pin on the CPU, and it got smashed when I tightened down the cooler. That was an expensive mistake, but one I certainly learned from.
Thank god PGA is officially dead, finally. My first Ryzen cpu came in the mail with bent pins, I spent fucking hours straightening all of them. Worth it tho, got 5 years of life out of it between me and my brother before it was finally allowed to rest and spend the rest of it’s life on a shelf(it still works, its just slow).
Not that I fully disagree, just that there’s a reason they didn’t do it before. Probably more profitable to not have repairable devices. Not that they won’t try to make the best of the current situation, as you said.
Also, it would likely be more expensive to produce a line of repairable products just for one state and do different for the others, so this is the best way of spinning this.
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