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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain.

Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA3szW9nWk

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Yeah I believe the strategy is to make consumers think they should "just buy a new one".

Apple is also putting up a very poor "training" program (Independent Repair Program) so that it looks like they're entertaining "right to repair" while they ensure the program is not adequate enough for people taking the course to handle even the most basic repairs.

Apple also locks it all up in tight NDAs so that they can't discuss this publicly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvFuNIZuxq4

I don't think it's so much "buy a new one" as it is "buy apple care."

Apple care doesn't last too long. More like buy apple care and when that runs out, buy a new one.

Point well taken, but that doesn't seem to be Apple's MO.

Most of my apple devices have lived far past their life. Now maybe in 10 years I look back to this time and say that is no longer true, but I have multiple 10 year + old pieces of apple hardware that still function remarkably well.

You can mail a mac to Rossman's company and they'll work for P+L without the Apple upsell woo. Contact is on the about link above.

What does "work for P+L" mean?

Parts and labour cost

the cost of parts and labour.

parts + labor

Parts and Labor

Parts and Labour?

Wouldn't you also in theory be able to get a donor part from someone's laptop which is otherwise busted?

He addresses that in the video as well (I think he said it wasn't economical).

Apple started to crack down on this by burning an ID in each part with a security chip that will brick the laptop if it detects a part changed and only apple can reset it so it works again.

And customers are fine with it.

He addresses that in the video, customers are fine because Apple sabotages repair shops and then blames them for the failures.

No, they are generally not. It's just that there's so much unethical _shit_ to keep track of, that you have no chance to even know half of it.

And even if you do, what can you do about it? Switch to another company? [1]

The amount of effort that I need spend just to fight only _some_ of the unethical behavior in my area of expertise is already high. Just imagine the issues in other fields which I don't know about.

[1]: https://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/618/221/47...

Seems to be this massive untapped market of people who are upset with their options.

Or the reality is most people don't care as long as they can check instagram and open tiktok.

What is more likely?

It's both: People are upset but they lack agency, so they deal.

I just don't think people are that upset about this. I think there are other things that they are more upset about that happen far more often.

We constantly get anecdotes on here like this post, Yet everyone I know who has a mac never has any of these troubles, or if they do apple takes relative care of them. My mom's macbook still kicks after 10 years. The only issue which I saw a friend have was the keyboard debacle. Other than that, I never hear of these situations.

What are the actual numbers?

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