"The more I think about it, the more I realize Apple’s Self-Service Repair program is the perfect way to make it look like the company supports right-to-repair policies without actually encouraging them at all."
I don't think it's incumbent upon Apple to invent a new set of tools for self-service repairs.
Assuming these are the tools they actually use, rather than a cumbersome set they invented just to be insufferable, then making the tools available seems like a fair way to (reluctantly) satisfy the right-to-repair demand.
I think a better indication of whether they're really honoring the right to repair is if they keep doing things like inventing new screws that existing tools can't open. Time will tell.
Agreed - I'm not sure why we assume that a modern smartphone is designed to be completely taken apart and reassembled with a standard toolkit.
I've had two third party repairs on my iPhones - one was done with a heat-gun and the finish was awful and the screen popped up in one corner at the end and the metal frame was dented from the pry-tool, and the second shop used a proper heat pad and an assembly tool and the finish was like it was a new phone.
Personally I would have been suprised if Apple recommended/advised use of a hairdryer / conventional heat-gun when that's not what they use themselves and clearly not how the iPhones are designed to be reassembled. Also presumably asking amateurs to use a heat-gun on their electronics would come with it's own risks (particularly heat guns + lithium batteries if you aren't careful!).
Like this article includes the following complaint:
> The repair manual not only suggests you need three pages worth of tools but also a jar of sand in case your battery catches fire — one of many not strictly necessary items that don’t come with the kit.
This doesn't sound entirely unreasonable from Apple's perspective - because at their scale they probably should be worried about the risk of people piercing the battery during a repair or using a heatgun near their battery. Also seems weird to throw shade at Apple for sending you too much stuff, but then also note that Apple didn't ship you a bucket of sand, but appreciate that was a kind-of joke.
> Agreed - I'm not sure why we assume that a modern smartphone is designed to be completely taken apart and reassembled with a standard toolkit.
The point is that they chose to do it that way because it makes them more money, not because their technology is too advanced to let the user easily change their battery.
If companies designed their product in a way that you can exchange parts that often break (batteries) and make generally easy then we would at least slow down the growth of the e-waste problem.
But of course it's not our problem because we like to externalize the costs. Here in Europe we ship our electronic waste mostly to Africa where it is a huge health hazard.[0]
> It's $100 for 3 more years of battery. If you can't handle that, buy a slightly cheaper phone or a refurb.
But tell me, where does it say on the iPhone box that the phone battery only lasts three years, give or take? How is a customer supposed to know what they need to 'handle'?
The battery is effectively a wear-item, where a very finite lifespan is an acceptable trade-off for better initial performance. However, designing the phone this way also makes the service an intended part of phone ownership, not merely a response to damage or accident.
Apple (alongside the other manufacturers, by this point) is double-dipping by designing a phone that effectively requires service and by being the only reasonable provider for that service.
Lithium battery lifetimes vary greatly on operating conditions, and degrade at a non linear rate.
It should be common knowledge by now that lithium batteries start showing performance losses around 700 charge cycles, and definitely by 1,000 charge cycles.
Parent commented on the crazy design screws, and I think it’s an important point.
We didn’t end up in the current situation with Apple innocently improving its technology and the lack of repairability being an unexpected side effect of the advancements. They pretty much always straddled the line of making their own repair job doable while having self repairs as hard as possible.
I really don’t think customer safety was their primary motivation.
Time won’t flow back, but it was less than a decade ago that you replaced batteries by popping the phone’s back. I wouldn’t say Apple bears no blame in making 79 pound tools necessary to replace a battery.
And as they basically opened that path for every other maker to follow and point at Apple as a justification, we really shouldn’t give them a pass.
Is your argument that we currently don’t have the technology to have the phone’s screen and back enclosed hermetically in a reversible matter, while staying thin ? We’re also not arguing that no tool should be required, just not 79 pound ultra expensive ones.
We have 3d stacked nm features processors, I would not see the above as an unsolvable problem, nor even a very hard one to be honest.
I agree but I thought the same when SMDs (surface mount devices) came on the scene many, many, years ago. I did not have a reflow oven, nor a rework station capable of replacing a bad capacitor, etc.
Alas, had we all poured out into the streets and demanded companies stick with through-hole components....
It does seem technology (more specifically, manufacturing) are moving beyond the means of a "guy in a garage".
And for that matter frequencies and other specs have generally moved beyond the scopes and logic analyzers that individuals are likely to be able to afford to debug problems (though they've gotten cheaper as well).
I certainly support right to repair and voted for it in my state (both times as Tesla in particular tried to do an end around) and strongly oppose artificial barriers like DRM. But honestly I find framing this around a less than $100 repair by Apple (or a third party) maybe every 3 or 4 years seems to me like an odd hill to die on.
