this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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702
Apple will honor California's 'right to repair' rules nationwide (www.engadget.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well if it really works out like you're speculating that definitely sounds shitty I'll give you that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is less speculation and more pointing out the actual policy.

Plenty of youtubers have done videos on the subject. Here is the ifixit article https://www.ifixit.com/News/59751/apple-self-service-repair-is-this-the-end-of-ifixit

But it boils down to everything I said:

  1. Prohibitively expensive tools that push anyone but a repair shop to rent
  2. Pricing so that, with renting, you are paying more or less the same to fix it yourself or have apple do it for you
  3. 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.
  4. 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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.