A French environmental activist group, L’association Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (HOP), filed a complaint against Apple over practices it claims restrict possibilities to repair products with spare parts, causing waste.
“In many of the cases documented in the complaint, malfunctions are found in cases where the device is repaired with a part, even an identical and original part, not authorised by Apple’s software,” the HOP association said in a statement.
This new complaint targets an increasingly widespread practice among the manufacturer: serialization (also called “pairing”), which consists of associating the serial numbers of the components and peripherals of a product with that of the iPhone via microchips in particular. This practice has recently affected the parts most frequently subject to failures (screens, battery, camera, etc.). It allows the manufacturer to limit repair possibilities, especially for non-approved repairers.
In many cases documented in the complaint, malfunctions are found in cases where the device is repaired with a part, even identical and original, not authorized by Apple software. These can also be triggered during an update (as in the recent case of a repaired touch screen on an iPhone XR made unusable after the iOS 16 update). While a simple return to iOS15 corrects this failure, Apple does not allow it, preferring to incriminate a “non-Apple original screen that causes a touch problem.”
These practices affect not only the right to repair, HOP contends, but also the development of smartphone reconditioning, insofar as devices put back into circulation are at risk of current or future malfunctions.
MacDailyNews Note: Just yesterday, Apple launched its Self Service Repair program in France (and also in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) which provides repair manuals and genuine Apple parts and tools through the Apple Self Service Repair Store. Customers in France and all of the supported countries who wish to complete their own repairs will be able to perform many of the most common repairs for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and Mac notebooks with Apple silicon. More info here.
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