Apple would like you to have them / their contractors repair your device, or better yet buy a new one.
Everything about this program signals that Apple is grudgingly doing this. It's designed to scare people away from doing the repairs themselves.
Everything about this program signals that Apple is grudgingly doing this. It's designed to scare people away from doing the repairs themselves.
The gripe of the right to repair movement isn’t that tech should be made less complex, it is that the access to parts, information and schematics/designs should be made more accessible for repairs — useful if you have the necessary skills required to carry out repairs without OEM tools.
This is coming from someone who does board level repairs on the side.
If I go out and ask everyone I know, if they are happy with the current unrepairable appliances, the amount of people who answer yes is < 10%.
The only people I know who are happy, live in extreme privilidge where they can afford replacing devices annually.
But let us say that both claims you are making are true -> so what? What are the economic and environmental implication of unrepairable equipment?
The question seems pointless because it's a combination of asking something that people always want more of (who doesn't want more repairability, at least in the abstract?), and fails to mention the trade-offs (eg. price, thinness, water resistance).
Anyway, is your result from doing simiar diffetent?
I find this incredible.
Most people have been throwing away / replacing perfectly repairable appliances since long before mobile phones.
What makes mobile phones different?
(Obligatory Framing: I'm all for RtR. I don't think it's practical to require Apple to dumb down their design or construction to fit what a consumer could accomplish at their basement bench. But if I, or my neighborhood repair shop, is sophisticated enough to perform the work, I do think parts should be available.)
iPhones and iPads are very easily good for, at a minimum, three to four years of very heavy use before any battery replacement would be necessary at all.
Your numbers are sourced from a very atypical population, and you are obviously smart enough to know that. My numbers are accurate, as evidenced by, um, people still buying hundreds of millions of iPhones a year and Apple still having the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry. Astronomically high ratings.
As for the environmental implications, that is of course a fair question, but have you taken some time to familiarize yourself with Apple's extraordinary efforts to build robots for the specific purpose of fully disassembling its devices so that materials can then be recycled? You should. You might be impressed.
I rest my case.
> It's designed to scare people away from doing the repairs themselves.
I don't think the program is perfect, but I don't see how missing components scare people away.
Lastly, as I already pointed out in a sister comment, the grandparent said the program is designed to scare people away from repairing their phone. I actually don't see how. In fact, providing the tooling makes it more accessible than just providing the parts. I'd love to see everything replaceable, but this is a step in the right direction.
You'll find 404 responses when you click on repair manual links; the link to the self service repair is at the bottom of the support page; the self service storefront is very deliberately non-descript and as others have mentioned immediately raises red flags for people trained to look for basic clues about a site's legitimacy. Etc.
The argument will be made that the "App Store" is there to protect you because security/privacy. And the DRM'd components are there to protect you from cheap chinese knockoffs. I think that's fine as long as it's opt-in.
But no, it's not for your protection - it's to control the market and drive the cost of repair higher so you will forced to buy a new phone more often. This is a blatant case of "OK you demanded right-to-repair, so let's show you how to make it as difficult as possible". It's not grudging - it's willful and spiteful.