“It’s no secret that the tech industry really hates third-party repairs, whether they’re in the form of an unlicensed business, or just a device owner tinkering with their own property,” Kaloyan C. writes for phoneArena. “In a bid to combat them, Apple, along with several other tech companies, is heavily opposing a set of so-called ‘right to repair’ bills in eight American states, which would require easy access to tools and knowledge regarding electronic device repairs.”
“One such case is a Nebraska bill, known as LB67 or the Fair Repair Act, which is scheduled to be debated this Thursday. If passed, it will become the first such measure in the United States,” C. writes. “If LB67 becomes law, it would require tech companies such as Apple to make their diagnostic tools and service manuals publicly available to consumers and repair shops alike.”
“Apple is spearheading the campaign against the bill, and in doing so uses scary and misleading rhetoric, such as claiming Nebraska will become a ‘mecca for bad actors,’ and that passing the bill ‘would make it very easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska,'” C. writes. “The company appears to have concerns regarding its intellectual property, as the act would require tech companies to freely share previously non-public information, even though the text of the proposal explicitly states the following: ‘Nothing in the Fair Repair Act shall be construed to require an original equipment manufacturer to divulge a trade secret.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
As we wrote yesterday:
Using authorized channels is the only way to ensure you are getting genuine Apple parts and that the repair will be done to the right specifications. With so many second-hand smartphones, for example, being sold and re-sold, how are buyers to know their battery is the genuine part and that it was correctly installed? How safe are would these smartphones be to have on airplanes, for example?
Certainly it can be dangerous to mishandle/damage lithium batteries during DYI repairs and the results can injure not just the repairer.
What if somebody’s half-assed DIY battery installation burns down an apartment building at 3am or sets fire to a plane in flight? When even Samsung can’t fix their own batteries correctly, we doubt every single Joe and Jane Sixpack would be able to manage a perfect battery installation every single time. It only takes one mistake to cause a tragedy.
SEE ALSO:
Right to repair: Why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple – March 6, 2017
Right-to-Repair is ridiculous – February 16, 2017
Apple said to fight ‘Right to Repair’ legislation – February 15, 2017
I get shiny disposable items not being repairable.
But desktops should be.
Very simple: legislation should say that if a product is not repairable by the user or a 3rd party repair shop, then the product must be biodegradable or the product must be recycled by the manufacturer when it no longer works.
We have to stop converting the world into toxic landfills. Right to repair doesn’t have to be complicated by artificial categories or past practice. If Apple wants to be greedy and sell disposable products, fine, then Apple can take care of the recycling. In this day and age, manufacturers of disposable plastic junk should be taxed to oblivion. Everything could be recycled if it wasn’t for the unfettered greed of companies that just don’t care. Those of you living in manicured gated communities should get out sometime and see what a mess that ewaste is today. It is out of control.
They are repairable, but Apple wants to keep a lock on that, for the most obvious reasons ($$$$$$$)
And what desktops? Those don’t exist in today’s Apple.
just like the movie tron —- LAME!
I am compelled to repair things — I have been a backyard mechanics and general maintenance dabbler since I was a kid. Not only does repair often save a lot of money, but it also avoids prematurely sending appliances and other devices into the waste stream. As a result, I greatly appreciate devices that were designed for maintainability and I loathe designs that break because of a poor/cheap design (e.g., plastic boss in the load path) or force you to disassemble other systems to obtain access.
That said, some items are less conducive to maintenance and repair than others. And we always need to consider the potential unintended consequences of a law before enacting it. What are the potential unintended consequences of a “right to repair” law? It is necessary to understand all of the details of the proposed law in order to assess the potential impacts. One concern of mine is that companies might be forced to make suboptimal design decisions in order to satisfy the law. We need to understand the fundamental issues – what is the law trying to fix – and ensure that the law addressed valid issues while minimizing adverse effects.
For example, the main computer in modern cars is designed as a replaceable unit in modern cars, and it is generally rather expensive. I have never heard of an option to replace a card or a component on the computer board. Would the law affect this? Would the design have to change to facilitate maintenance (e.g., ZIF sockets rather than soldered-on or BGA components)?
In most modern electronics, the components are not marked (e.g., microprocessor part number, resistor value/power rating/percent, etc. That makes them very difficult to troubleshoot and repair. Schematics are provided for a few major appliances (inside clothes washers and dryers, for instance, even though most people don’t know that), but not for the majority of appliances. Should manufacturers be required to release schematics to assist in troubleshooting and repair?
Long story short, I am very much in favor of being able to repair devices. But I am also cautious about the potential impact of the unintended consequences of new laws.
While I wouldn’t take my Apple products to a third party, it’s the product owner’s right to do so. I’m not sure how that right precludes Apple to make tools and schematics available to the repair shops.
If you dig deep enough, I’ll bet you find Microsoft or Samsung behind this as an attempt to gain access to information.
Here you go:
Apple makes it’s money by iterating devices ad they want you to buy a new iPhone, Mac, etc every couple of years. The last thing they want is for you to have an easily upgradeable device that you can keep for years.
I think this is on of the primary reasons Apple replaced the Mac Pro Tower with That Damn Cylinder™️. A 2010-11 era Mac Pro can easily be upgraded to SSDs, newer and better GPUs, USB 3, and even CPUs in minutes for far less than a new computer. An overpriced, glued shut iMac 5K is a throwaway device that is already outdated the day it rolls off the line in China. An overpriced, glued shut Apple MacBook Pro has likewise been morphed into a throwaway device destined for a third world recycling pile.
because of the complexity of many devices, even with manuals, without appropriate training, (Which should not be cheap if this were to happen) Many people are going to be really ticked when Joe fixit destroys their favorite device, loses all their data. Then they are going to have to do what needed to be done in the first place, get it replaced through appropriate Apple or other authorized dealers for various products. If its under warranty or not, still can be replaced or upgraded.. Some things do lend themselves to some level of repair, but most of the time, they get tossed too. Microwaves, other appliances.. the repair costs in many cases are to steep in comparison to replacement.
As far as E-Waste. many many companies and some cities have had electronic recycling programs for years, its up to the owners to bring their dead or replaced devices and appliances to the appropriate places for recycle.
The problem is that most waste is resold a number of times and still usually ends up in the third world getting burned by uninformed people making a subsistence living.
India has workers with asbestosis as US companies send old ships there to be scrapped. There is no EPA or OSHA and nobody wears a mask.
MDM, you’re either missing the point or on the wrong side of this debate.
3rd party repairs are important if consumers are to have choice. Choice is important in a democratic, capitalistic system regardless of your political leanings. It’s a non-partisan issue. When Apple refuses to release high quality parts and schematics to repair their hardware, they are doing so for 2 obvious reasons.
One, is profit.
Nothing is wrong with profit.
But Apple is the most profitable multinational in the history of the world, right? They show no evidence of lowering the cost of their hardware and reducing prices to consumers and they like to park their money far, far away from where it might benefit the country and state from which it comes. They’re paying some dividends if you want to own the stock, but you should not have to loan a company your money to get a fair lifetime from the products they sell. Again, all legal, no strong judgment here, just noting the facts.
The Right to Repair legislation would not hamper anything at Apple other than their hardware devices would last longer, there might a small dip in profits, and people would have choice and reasonable market forces to determine the cost of repair –vs– the cost of buying a new Apple bauble. Right now, the playing field is slanted heavily toward buying new on anything that’s out of warranty, extended or otherwise because Apple is control the cost of a quality repair, as well as controlling OEM parts.
The second reason Apple is fighting this legislation tooth and nail is multilayered. Yes, there is liability when it comes to batteries and chargers and anything that could harm person or property. Fair enough. But that can be figured out and Apple has the finest, highest paid lawyers in the world. I have full confidence the terms of sale of said parts can be done in such a way that would protect Apple well enough.
But what many miss in this particular issue is the insanely freakish Jobsian corporate philosophy that still says, “This is not your Mac. It’s OUR Mac. You are basically leasing it and we will tell you if and how it can be repaired, for how much and when it is ‘obsolete.’ You cannot open OUR Mac without OUR permission. If you do so, we will punish you by walking away no matter what you find when you open it up. We will put crazy, tiny, unusual screws in the cases that we will also lock down with glue and solder.”
There’s more, of course, but you get the drift.
Almost all of the evidence of the last decade of hardware design from Apple indicates that they don’t want to design computers that last 10 years anymore. With iDevices rakes in monstrous profits along the lines of 70% of Apple’s global profits, the Mac devision has been getting memos. Memos along the lines of designed obsolescence.
Memos that say things like:
“Hey, we make the best fracking computer in the world and are able to charge more than twice what others do. We can’t have them lasting forever and innovation will only nudge people to upgrade to new if it’s actually innovative. We need to start building computers that last 3-4 years and if we make ‘em un-openable, unrepairable, control ALL of the OEM parts and the labor costs to repair, we can teach our customers to expect buy more of OUR Macs, every 3-4 years, rather than the 7-10 years that they used to last. Note to Mac Division, we need disposable Macs and a much shorter repurchase cycle.”
And that’s how we moved away from iMacs that had magnets holding in the glass and replaced them with super skinny glued on glass. That’s why we started soldering all RAM onto logic boards because Apple controls all of the logic boards at Chinese labor prices. And that’s why we made the OS free and completely easy to accidentally upgrade an older machine.
All of these things and more contribute to the goal of Apple wanting “Apple’s” Macs to have half the lifecycle they used to have and why they will use their lawyers and tens of millions of dollars to defeat Right To Repair laws.
And that’s just a few reasons why we, as consumers who believe that when we buy a piece of hardware that we actually OWN that machine and should have choice as to where to upgrade or repair it with the highest quality parts available.
BTW, having run a 3rd Party repair center for a decade or so, I can say that the diagnostic procedure of 3rd Party repair centers is often superior to Apple’s. Apple doesn’t really care what has failed on your machine. They own all the pieces on the game board at waaaay below wholesale prices and just keep replacing parts till everything works. There’s very little intuitive or investigative testing that goes on a Depot or whatever factory the device is sent to. That’s a legitimate repair technique, of course, but if 3rd party repair centers had a level playing field, we could get repaired computers back to clients in 24 hours or less, —vs— the AppleStore’s “3-7 days” window they often quote.
The Right to Repair benefits ALL owners of Apple iDevices and only slightly dings profits in the most profitable company in the history of the world. The whole “authorized” repair center BS is an invention of Apple’s. It’s just a word that Apple imbued with meaning that some simple legislation could render meaningless and more consumer friendly.
MDM, I hope you’ll reconsider your position on this. This is not about Uncle Harold catching the garage on fire. This is about qualified, trained professionals getting access to the same toolkit as Apple. You need to get on the right side of this issue.
…
One of the reasons I decided not to buy an iMac was how difficult it would be for me to access the fan for some dusting and regular maintenance.
I believe a good compromise would be for the government to impose a reasonable warrantee period like 3 years. Apple of late has lowered it production quality so as to bump up their Services business. IE make it break after the included 1 year warrantee so people will have to buy you pricy 2-3 year one. I never used to get Apple care because I knew the computer would last longer than it. Now it is a must.
The European Union does that today. Consumers have a 2 year legal guarantee for just about all physical items sold in the EU. If it fails in 2 years, the consumer has the right to get his money back, period. http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/faq/index_en.htm
It doesn’t help the home tinkerer with repairs, of course, but it is one way to stop manufacturers from making shoddy disposable junk. Of course, this is one of the “unreasonable bureaucratic legislation” excuses that greedy US corporations whine about constantly, an greedhead sentiment that asswipes like botvinnik repeat ad nauseum. Now Apple is one of them. They care only about profit, not about sustainability, and not about consumer rights.
APPLE: Monopoly
Right to repair: COMPETITION
You do have a choice already.
If a product company doesn’t want you or a third party repairing their devices, you have a choice NOT to buy it.
You also have the CHOICE of getting off your tuchus and spending your own considerable time and lack of engineering talent to build your own products. Then you can repair as much as you want, since you made it. That is your choice.
So, if you need an operation, are you saying if you don’t like the way that the surgeon will perform it, you can just say fuck it, go to medical school and operate on yourself? You are a moron.
The most idiotic analogy of the month. For sure, moron.
I didn’t make any comparison to a doctor, but you did. You’re more than welcome to demand that your heart surgeon train someone down the road to do his job, just so you can save money and have ‘choice’. Good luck with that.
Under your “choice” model, then would you agree that monopolies are acceptable? After all, that would increase profitability for the one company in business and consumers would still have the choice to go without. Brilliant way to run a market, indeed.
I’m not sure a monopoly would apply here. Apple isn’t the only supplier of tablets, phones, wearables and desktops in the market.
Sure that would work if we then get rid of the patent system that stops me from building my own iPhone from parts that any company can build. If Apple wants the protection on the 1 side then consumers should have protection on the other side.
Thank you!
So many Ayn Rand worshippers forget that no one builds their product or company in a vacuum. They hire workers educated at the public’s expense, their materials are brought in on public roads, they are protected from rampaging hordes (or there aren’t any in the first place) by the military/police, and so much more.
Stop pretending that any single person/corporation is an island.
MDN is off the mark on this. Third party repairs *can* be safely done, and *can* be done with genuine OEM parts. The warning about safety is misleading at best. Let’s see- there are plenty of non-dealership automative service shops in the country, and I don’t see cars bursting into flame left and right as MDN seems to think that iDevices or Macs would if serviced by anyone other Apple. And a car catching fire can be just as dangerous, if not more so, than a phone.
Apple’s *only* reason for making maintenance, repairs, and upgrades so difficult is to drive up profits. There’s no technical reason. This is far different from the “old days”, when Macs lasted much longer than their equivalent PC’s because it was relatively easy to upgrade storage, RAM, processors, graphics, etc. Now, Apple products don’t last any longer than their competitions, yet still have the much higher price tag. What truly innovative thing has Apple done recently? The TV app in iOS/AppleTV? Even MDN scoffed at Apple’s claim that there was no reason to use anything else for consuming TV content. Pro desktop Macs? Haven’t been updated in years, and are much more expensive than any competitors products, even while being less capable. MacMini? Also outdated, and overpriced. I could understand not updating a product for years on end, but when that product is no longer anywhere near as compelling as it was at introduction, maintaining a high cost, when competing products offer more capability at a lower cost, is either shortsighted, or plain old greedy.
MDN thinks that Apple products are exceptional and the commodity items that Apple incorporates into its designs are somehow endowed with special fairy dust that makes them untouchable by mere mortals.
The world has gone from organic/metallic/biodegradable consumer stuff prior to WW2 to almost entirely plastic toxic junk since the 1950s. People are too lazy to wash tableware, so the vast majority of food in the world is now served with plastic disposable landfill fodder. Coffee, formerly consumed in ceramic mugs that kept it hot and lasted decades, is now served in plastic-covered paper cups.
Apple isn’t the worst offender in waste creation, but they are a large and growing contributor and are certainly not taking the ecological lead that they claim to be.
You are now seeing Cook showing his true anti-consumer stripes. He knows profit maximization is all about making disposable products and forced subscriptions. So he is steering Apple to be just another corporation, greenwashing its message but fundamentally making the same anti-consumer designs as any other electronics maker.
Mike, you’re right on the mark. Have a look at MickG’s take on things. That’s me, I just put it under the wrong WordPress account. 😉
I disagree with the knee jerk reaction of so many cynics here that this is purely about greed. I’ve been an Apple customer for a long time and in my experience that’s never been the case and still isn’t today. Apple is a company that was founded by hippies that had the primary goal to make great products; products that could “change the world.” And change the world they did. Now yes, I know this is still a company and as such it has a responsibility to its shareholders to generate profit. But I still think it is very much in the DNA of Apple to put design and customer experience first. If they were really only about profit they wouldn’t, for example, be such stalwarts of customer privacy when so many other tech companies make so much money commoditizing personal information and customer data.
It is perhaps because they have so much money sitting in their coffers that Apple is an easy target. We see that here on MDN as we read story after story about people who go after Apple for all manner of self-serving reasons. I think that liability is probably the high order bit in this situation. Allowing third parties to go in and tinker with Apple products, built with volatile lithium batteries, and in such fine tolerances is a recipe for disaster. And I think the other issue is design. Mandating that Apple products have more accessible components can be burdensome in terms of space, mountings, access doors, etc. There are many other plausible reasons than greed.
Hippies can be greedy too. They’re all aging baby boomers now and money changes everything. Jobs transcended the political spectrum because his politics were liberal in some sense (social justice issues) but he was a stone cold conservative when it came to profits, Apple’s money and how to protect profits.
Corporations are amoral. It’s a mistake to think that Apple is just a bunch of hippies sitting around a table like the early days. They are arguably the richest, most powerful global multinational in the business today.
This is not your father’s Apple Computer. This is Apple, Inc.
All I want is to be able to upgrade RAM and drives. That’s all.
And batteries and gpus and pci cards. These are all commodities that Apple locks down for greedy purposes only. That accelerates the depreciation in value of a Mac these days because it cannot be improved or repaired when new and better components become available. A sane company would have dropped the price on obsolete non-upgradeable Macs. Apple just watches the sales of desktop Macs dry up and claims that it must be because hier iPad ads are successful. #Stupid Greedy Apple#
Well said, MacObserver. Well said.
Toothpicks are about the only disposable item I want to own.
If Apple wants to build disposable machines with no upgrade or repair options, they should be responsible for their recycling in perpetuity.
If I was Apple, I’d be making it clear in their EULAs (E-User License Agreements) that ANY repair from a NON-Apple-approved repair service will VOID THE WARRANTY and Apple will assume NO responsibility for the quality of that repair or the future working of that device.
I’d then make Apple products exactly as they do now, with state-of-the-art microelectronics. Provide the instructions and diagrams to whoever wants them. Provide a method for obtaining tools that Apple themselves would use. Then rightfully IGNORE the consequences.
No doubt Apple would:
• Lose income from repairs.
• Receive bitching, whining and moaning from victims of bad repairs from 3rd party repair shops.
• Vicariously and wrongfully suffer from a decline in their reputation due to the bitching, whining and moaning victims of bad repairs, despite it being entirely the fault of the 3rd party repair shop.
Let the states that demand it have their wormy Potemkin bread and eat it too. I don’t see it as practical or wise for Apple to effectively FUD these states beyond common sense, thereby inviting another avenue of reputation decline. Simply tell the states what’s going to happen and let them munch on the lunch they set for themselves. *gag*
Meanwhile, this is an entirely fair legal argument by Apple:
‘Nothing in the Fair Repair Act shall be construed to require an original equipment manufacturer to divulge a trade secret.’
Clearly I need more coffee. A correction:
EULAs (End-User License Agreements)
I admit I don’t know much about the right to repair legislation but just looking at it from layman’s perspective:
say a car, you can repair and even replace things like spark plugs, fuses and even engines but you can’t take apart a pressurized halogen lamp for example and replace the filament or repair the often dozens of onboard computers. (making lamps user repairable, i.e you can replace burnt out filaments would be crazy expensive I imagine… )
iPhones for example have very tiny and finicky components. Seems to be very hard for them to be made user repairable (they would be much bulkier for another thing with clips etc ).
(personally though I think desktop should have replaceable components like RAM, drives etc. Soldering the RAM in the Mac Minis is a bad user experience… )
as in most things SHOULDN’T THE MARKET DECIDE?
if consumers really want repairable phones etc won’t the companies that make them get all the business? (dwindling sales in certain Mac segments like the Pro show that Apple is being punished for making GPUs etc non upgradable ).
If everyone has free and equal access to the market, a reasonably level playing field, letting the market decide is one way to determine consumer choice. But there needs to be a fairly large amount of players. In the U.S. there are really only 4 cell phone service companies and none have really driven down prices. If there were 15 or 20, I think we could expect to pay a lot less. The problem is that with business shifting more and more toward global, international corporations, we just don’t have much incentive for true competition.
There are also many instances when laws have been passed to provide great safety and choice to consumers. We could have let millions more die in auto wrecks until Ford decided to put in seat belts, but we didn’t wait. Same for fuel economy in cars, or pollution standards for all industries, etc.. There are some things that are very desirable in society that will not have profit motivating the move.
No one is talking about replacing filaments on bulb. Just buy a new bulb. Almost no one wants to replace chips on a stick of RAM, or pry a capacitor off a logic board. We just want removable RAM so when that $20-$70 part fails (and it will) you can open it up and replace the part and not the entire logic board or computer.
That’s really not too much to ask.
The market does not have enough players in it to respond to this need/desire from consumers.
“No one is talking about replacing filaments on bulb. Just buy a new bulb. ”
so does the new legislation SPECIFY OUT OF TENS OF THOUSANDS (Millions?) of components in all kinds of products what will be the be made repairable ?
how would they do this?
YOU may want to change RAM (like me) but some people want to change power units, fans in Macs, processor chips , even the wiring etc. So where does the line go? Who decides? (for example: I’m currently trying to route extra power from a SATA drive of a Cheese Grater Mac Pro to power a 980 T card which uses more power than the Pro was originally designed for, even the two PCI extra power connectors are not enough, I also have a 6 core Xeon I want to put in … Typing this on another upgraded Cheese Grater. BTW most of us old Mac Pro user have put in all kinds of PC cards beyond the 2-3 ‘Apple approved GPUs’ and probably violated warranties )
I want Pro desktop machines to be upgradable and reasonably repairable, but I was just wondering how legislation decides? On the other hand I don’t want iPhones to be clunkier (and perhaps more expensive with added safety issues … )
btw:
interestingly the Xeon I’m trying to install although seems to have the same basic part number as the Apple part it is actually DIFFERENT in that the Apple ordered the part without a heat spreader cap, so the generic part I have is THICKER (which 90% of the Youtube ‘how to ‘ videos don’t explain), so if you put the processor in an tighten the screws of the Mac assembly that goes on top as per the Apple manual you would possibly BREAK the logic board (which according to some blogs even repair shop techs have done) …
LOL: That’s why I’ve been hesitating as I’m not the greatest tech repair person. (but since Apple hasn’t upgraded the Mac Pro for years I have no choice)…
Actually, Dave, you do have a choice. Find a great professional 3rd party repair center and pay them to do the work.
This legislation is not about turning everyone into DIY computer repair people. It’s about giving equal access to professionals who do this for a living that Apple doesn’t control.
So you DO have a choice here, and it’s not to go out an buy a Dell PC. Just hire a Mac professional if you’re not, in your words, “the greatest tech repair person.”
Why not hire “the greatest tech repair person” and move on with what you actually want to DO with your upgraded MacPro?
All of the stuff you’re struggling with is bread and butter stuff for professionals.
“This legislation is not about turning everyone into DIY computer repair people”
why do you all argue with me when you don’t read the stuff?
here:
“Eight states, including Nebraska, are considering right to repair laws that would require companies, whether they are in the tech sector or not, to make their service manuals, diagnostic tools, and parts available to consumers and repair shops—and not just select suppliers.”
AVAILABE TO CONSUMERS.
CON – SU – MERS….
and ” NOT just to SELECT SUPPLIERS.”
as Apple is arguing they already have bunches of Apple authorized repair shops that are doing repairs. The legislation want the tools available to EVERYBODY (including me).
The legislation is the dilute the power of AUTHORIZED repair shops and give equal access to UN authorized ones.
:
article:
——
“The bills are aimed at diluting the “authorized repair” model that most tech products …..
many independent repair shops end up purchasing parts from Chinese grey markets or taking parts from recycled electronics to compete. This results in raids from the Department of Homeland Security as the independent shops end up unknowingly selling counterfeit parts.
Apple currently runs the Apple Authorized Service Provider Program, which allows companies to obtain Apple-genuine parts, reimbursement for repairs covered by Apple’s warranties, a performance-based bonus program, on-the-spot technical service, comprehensive repair information, inclusion on Apple’s website and more…
The bills are being pushed by Repair.org, a lobbying firm representing independent repair shops.”
—–
the Bills like I said wants to DILUTE apple’s authorized program (your qualified tech) and OPEN it up to everybody.
(so like I’ve been saying do Consumers and un authorized dealers have the right to open delicate Apple watches, iPhones etc ? Can many consumers TELL the DIFFERENCE between authorized and non authorized repair shops or will they just blame apple? )
also as my other post points out : how does legislation decide WHICH components can be accessible?
for example : Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemptions in 2015 authorizing the public to tinker with software in vehicles for “good faith security research” and for “lawful modification.”
TODAY SOFTWARE RUNS BRAKES ETC. Do we really want people even supposedly ‘trained’ mechanics at your local tire shop to fiddle with brake software?
there are dozens of computers on each new car today, do you want modified software in these cars driving on the same road as you do?
Well, DaveWrite, I confess you’re wearing me down and my passion (and self acknowledge verbosity) is flagging. DaveWrite is a well chosen moniker, my friend. 😉
So let me just say this.
Who has the authority to “authorize” anything when it comes to repairing any device, large or small from any manufacturer?”
If it’s under warranty, fair enough. Take it to the place the MANUFACTURER “authorizes” to do the repair. [I’ve used CAPS here because I sense you’re fond of them, but basic HTML tags do work.] If it’s under warranty, and you get it repaired for free, why would you go anywhere else? In this scenario, being “authorized” makes sense.
But warranty is only the first 1-3 years of a Mac or Apple product. If a Mac can last 7-10 years, the word “authorized” has little meaning. Out-of-warranty work should be open to all. If all have equal access to the same quality of parts, you can let the market decide who to trust with the labor on your repairs.
If these suspect “UN-authorized” repair shops had access to high quality parts, trust me, they’d use ‘em! Nobody wants to put bad parts in anything. Ask anyone who has worked in the repair industry! It comes back to BITE you every time. To some degree, it’s not even an issue of integrity (although there is plenty out there). It’s simply an issue of a returning, angry customer who can leave a really nasty Yelp review is just too costly for a small business. Repair shops will use the highest quality parts they can find if it means they will not have angry, upset people returning to yell at them.
I don’t really care that some end users or CON-SU-MERS, as you put it for the phonetically challenged, can get these high quality OEM parts too. There’s no liability if they mess up their own Mac, strip screws, poke a hole in a lithium battery, break the screen while trying to replace it and so forth. They will learn that if they don’t have the skills they can go to someone who does.
I also flat out don’t care that whoever they buy the part from will still have to warranty the part, but not the labor. That’s what we have now with (in some instances) inferior part quality. I would like everyone interested in repair to have the same high quality OEM parts that Apple has. This issue is not as complex as it seems you believe it to be and even if it was, you don’t need to do Apple’s work for them.
That’s all.
There’s no “dilution” of Apple’s “authorized” repair centers and they will no longer have an unfair advantage in the quality of their parts.
If the playing field is level, consumers can still choose to go to the very few remaining Apple “Authorized” repair centers that the AppleStores have not run out of business. If their device is still under warranty, they would be foolish to do otherwise.
But for out of warranty work, the majority of repair work that’s done on Apple hardware, the word “authorized” is meaningless if everyone has free and equal access to the same parts.
If you really love taking your out of warranty Toyota to the dealer every time to get new tires, oil changed, new battery, brakes or whatever that’s cool with me. But you’re going to pay, on average, about 150% or more of what a small, independent mechanic will charge you for the very same work and you’ll likely get a lot more personal attention.
I lot of people like paying less for more in this case, but you’re always free to return to the “authorized” dealer if that feels better. Or do your own brake job at home and sue yourself when they fail. 😉
BTW, since you’re not in the Apple industry, you might not be aware that Apple is driving most of the independently owned and operated Authorized Mac Repair shops out of business. They’re removing their authorizations and taking away their ability to sell new Macs because they want to control everything from corporate AppleStores.
You seem really concerned that people will blame Apple, but I just don’t care. It’s like saying
Again, less choice for anything you have to spend money on in this day and age is not good.
Peace out.
“Who has the authority to “authorize” anything when it comes to repairing any device, large or small from any manufacturer?”
eh… manufacturers like Apple ?
Apple can authorize them after giving the training, legal setup, support system etc.
if an Apple authorized repairer screws up , you know you can blame the repairer and Apple.
For un-authorized people who can say?
Also these Un authorized people like I explained already exist — you are completely free right now to go to them to fix your Mac etc — , the legislation just forces Apple to cooperate with them (regardless of whether they use substandard or dangerous parts — as the article I pointed out quotes, regardless of whatever ‘training’ or no training they might have) . (the legislation proposals also forces companies to release software which manufacturers say is dangerous unless the techs are specially trained and bound by legal constraints).
You say customer reviews will keep un authorized resellers in check but more than likely their Posts will ALSO whack Apple, (as most consumers are not aware of the ramifications of all this legislation), especially if the tech pulls out official Apple documentation, software etc the legislation wants Apple to provide.
Apple believes this will damage their brand.
You say “you don’t care” if they blame Apple which is your right and I as an aapl investor I say “I do care”.
The rest of your (I suppose you don’t consider it ‘verbose’? 🙂 ) adds little new although I can see where you are coming from (I live on an island, the nearest Apple Store is 1.5 hrs by ferry and hour by car, and mom and pop repair shops in my town ARE being closed down due to various factors)
Peace.
(I must say you are polite).
My point is that “authority” is a made up concept.
Apple has ZERO authority to do anything with my purchases, other than tell me where I can repair them under warranty. If we wanted, a town could vote and give “authority” to one auto repair shop and all other repairs would be “unauthorized.” It’s just branding. It’s a belief system that they’re trying to get everyone to believe in by using FUD.
It’s not real.
Kings and Queens were supposedly given their authority from God. Does that mean the atheist elected official in Parliament has no authority?
Of course not.
Apple is making all of this up for branding and to determine who will do warranty work for them.
Beyond that, it’s meaningless unless you or I decide to give it meaning like so many did with Kings and Queens.
It’s about parts, Dave. Say that 3 times. Even the repair manuals are not as important as the OEM parts.
Apple has “some” legitimate concerns about branding, but as long as these repair shops don’t use the Apple logo or claim to be blessed by Apple, there’s nothing they can do. So they do what they can to control all the pieces and force repair shops that don’t have to walk lock step with Apple to use whatever parts they can find on the closed market.
I’ve made tens of thousands of dollars on AAPL and this will not affect their value in any shape or form and is irrelevant to the issue of a free and open market.
I love most of Apple’s products, but what lifetime fans often don’t see is that Apple Inc. is a big, brutal, powerful company that is controlling all of the cards now. They are not the starving, junk yard survivor from the 90’s before Jobs came back. But the fact that they survived near erasure and now dominate an industry brings “pay back” to their corporate culture. Apple Inc. sits on one of the largest war chests of cash in the history of publicly traded markets. Not because it’s wise, but because their corporate culture is mad. And they’ve forgotten that it was the Mac that made them great, not just the iDevices.
Apple doesn’t need you springing to their defense against the little guy. They are a Goliath corporation and the small Mac repair shops are David’s dog. They’re doing just fine and this legislation can give consumers more choice and level the playing field.
I get that you don’t like it and want everything to be authorized by big daddy Timo and Co., but if we can pass some decent Right to Repair legislation, it will bring down the cost of repair and benefit all consumers of Apple hardware.
Now, Dave, I’m starting to wonder if you get a paycheck from Apple to defend them on these boards. Kindly disabuse us that notion?
😉
I want to add :
” Find a great professional 3rd party repair center and pay them to do the work.”
how does the average consumer know which tech is qualified?
when I went to a shop to get a mac pro upgraded the tech said it was impossible what i wanted to do. His manager overhead and came down and added to it saying that “his 20 years experience” fixing macs tells him that what I wanted would cause issues.
I walked out and did the upgrades myself. Five years later I have a Cintiq and another larger monitor connected to the Mac Pro and run Adobe suite, Lightwave, Clip Studio etc on it with zero issues . I am typing this on the machine right now.
If repairs by un authorized tech guys fall or cause issues many consumers will just blame Apple . These repair people ALREADY exist, the legislation just wants to force Apple to COOPERATE with them, which I think will give Apple a huge bundle of hurt as the article quote above many un authorized resellers use inferior or counterfeit parts.
(and BTW I use CAPS not as ‘shouting’ , just that I don’t bother with html ‘bold ‘ type face as emphasis. I’m not sure MDN forum does auto bold).
Actually, determining a parts list is really not that hard and we’re not talking “TENS OF THOUSANDS OF COMPONENTS.” It’s just the same parts list that Apple has, or iFixit, or PowerBook Medic, etc… Really it’s a few hundred and the information has already been collected and Apple already has a very large parts shelf.
You don’t need to be able to buy every soldered-on component on a logic board, you just need to be able to buy refurbished logic board at a reasonable price similar to Apple’s.
If everyone were able to order from that same shelf, there would be a lot more choice in the repair market. The quality of the repair could be decided by the market, not by lack of speedy, easy access to OEM parts. It’s like today you cannot say “Oh, Apple makes bad hard drives,” because they don’t actually make hard drives and ALL other PC manufactures use the same hard drives, the same parts. If the quality of parts was not at question, the quality of the labor, the speed at which it was done, and the price they charged could actually determine the success or failure of the business.
Right now, the gorilla in the space holds pretty much all of the cards and they are actively suppressing competition for many of the reasons already discussed here.
“TENS OF THOUSANDS OF COMPONENTS.”
friend, that’s for ALL the products BESIDES Macs, the proposed legislation specifies for example TRACTORS …
like I asked does the legislation describe exactly which component can be repairable?
Should the computers in cars be repairable (if Macs which are computers should be?). Who is to decide what level?
Like my Xeon replacement example, even improperly apply thermal paste (even leave fingerprints on them apparently can mar the thermal surface) can damage the machine besides things like static etc ( the majority of Youtube video ‘experts’ don’t even show anti static precautions ! ) .
” you just need to be able to buy refurbished logic board”
So should the logic boards of tiny devices like Apple Watches ALSO be repairable, again does the legislation differentiate them?
But if you want to use the car analogy you’re making, repairing, replacing or upgrading your Mac is not all that different from the most common car repair jobs. Replacing a dead battery (they both have ’em), a water pump (the last G5 Towers had ’em..sort of), or getting a new, nicer set of tires is about as natural as it gets.
This is pretty much the same as replacing a dying hard drive, or upgrading to a larger, faster hard drive, or replacing a battery, or upgrading the RAM, and so forth and so on.
How far down the food chain would “right to repair” go? Does Qualcomm have to give me schematics for their baseband chips so I can upgrade it myself when 5G becomes ubiquitous?
An absurd example, I know, but I’ve had solid state hard drives fail and I am helpless to repair them ‘cos the key parts of the mechanism are sealed tight.
Dave, I think you’re making this unnecessarily complex and suggesting that it’s impossible to do because there are many parts. That is just not the case. They’re already doing this in Europe and the parts list is there. It would not be that hard to make basic OEM parts available, and it could be done directly from the suppliers (like Samsung and other Asian component suppliers to Apple).
It wasn’t my intent to get into the nitty gritty details here of how Apple should do this if required to by law.
Again, richest company in the world, they can handle it.
The point is, they don’t want to for all of the reasons listed here by many fine writers.
you’re not following me,
I’m all for more upgradeable, repairable etc especially for PRO machines. I live in a small town now, on an island, the nearest Apple Store is One and half hours away by ferry and Mom and Pop repair shops closing down is bad for me.
WHAT I AM TRYING TO GET IT SINCE MY ORIGINAL POST IS;
can you LEGISLATE IT? can politicians decide WHICH PARTS of thousands of products should be repairable?
Like I said before i can only see the MARKET decide. Like I mentioned already many people (unfortunately) are moving away from desktop Macs because windows machines have more options in changing or fixing RAM (the Mini’s ram is soldered) , Graphics Cards etc. Apple has to change or lose the market. Legislation seems to me unworkable (even if you don’t consider all the thousands of other products, just Macs there are a large VARIETY of Macs. Laptops etc needed more soldered parts for example to give rigidity : that’s why MacBooks are so much more sturdy than cheap Windows laptops etc. Legislators will never be able to work all this out)
Yes, it can be legislated. Been done in other industries in the U.S. and in Europe.
I get your concerns (AND YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT!) but we don’t have to solve this problem for Apple or legislators. It has been done in the past, it can be done now.
Hope that answers your question.
Cheers.
go read my latest long post above as you obviously don’t know what the legislation means.
Apple is playing to the market in regards to consumer attitudes. Individuals that buys Macs buy them because they afford quality and they want a repair strategy that is reliable and guaranteed. Enterprise don’t want their employees changing hard drives, ram or internal parts. They want to buy to order, lock the machines down, write off the depreciation, and sell to a discounter after the machine reaches a certain age. This type of legislation is impossible to enforce and works against how the market is moving.