I'm a little amazed by how many people in this thread don't understand how much work developing for, testing, and maintaining actual physical devices is.

Conversely, the update just needs to reliably detect if the screen is Apple brand, and abort the update if it's not. If this can be done, then the current driver could be considered generic and working everywhere, and the engineer would just need to maintain the generic and the current version.

That is, if Apple didn't mind to pay for making easier for third parties to get sales instead of Apple. Somehow I don't think that's the case.

If the update wasn't all-or-nothing, now you have to test interoperability between this generic driver and the rest of the system. That might be OK if it was just this one driver, but what if you suddenly have a generic driver for N subsystems? The combinatorics explode quite quickly.

Unless the Pixel 2's touchscreen is so weird that it needs a new driver, this will work for everyone.

As much as open source is a thing for software, it is not for hardware and especially silicon.

I have to agree with you on this. This is not a full hardware specification, it just tells how the hardware should behave up until the driver was released.

Modern open source hardware is still far in the future.

If it works, why change it?

Bricking a device is certainly a bad user experience and not at all what the user wishes. Nagging him at least lets him use the phone and keeps him informed.

You cannot assume the user is stupid and not assume the user will not repair the phone outside your network. You cannot have both things at the same time and get away with it.

That is what I think. If the user is stupid, let him be so.

For goodness sake no! Blocking software updates is a terrible thing to do, because most people don't want to install them anyways. You're basically putting people in an already bad situation in a worse situation.

> Nagging him at least lets him use the phone and keeps him informed.

It only takes the user using the sketchy Touch ID sensor once for their fingerprint to be sent out to malicious actors.

> If the user is stupid, let him be so.

That's what you think, but that's not how Apple works. It's their job to make the default work well for those who may not be completely knowledgable about security.

However: where does Apple state that their products may stop working if repaired with different components? (Honest question, I have tried to find it).

> Service Exclusions and Diagnostic Fee. Apple may charge you a diagnostic fee (including shipping charges) as described in the Country Variation table, below (“Diagnostic Fee”), if Apple inspects your product and determines that (i) your product does not require service, (ii) your product has failed due to or has incompatibilities with software or data residing or recorded on your product (iii) service is required due to the failure of parts that are neither supplied by Apple nor Apple-branded, (iii) additional labor or parts are required that were not specified in the original estimated charges and you do not agree to authorize service based on Apple’s revised estimated charges, or (iv) service cannot be performed because the serial number has been altered, defaced or removed or the product has failed due to accident, abuse, liquid spill or submersion, neglect, misuse (including faulty installation, repair, or maintenance by anyone other than Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider), unauthorized modification, extreme environment (including extreme temperature or humidity), extreme physical or electrical stress or interference, fluctuation or surges of electrical power, lightning, static electricity, fire, acts of God or other external causes (“Service Exclusions”). Apple will return your product to you without servicing it and may charge you the Diagnostic Fee.

This is from Apple's Repair Terms and Conditions: https://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/terms/repair/gener.... It doesn't say that the product will stop working, but it does say that Apple isn't responsible for fixing it if it goes wrong. I'm not sure if that could be extended to them not having to support your third party component in software, though.

You see it is really not very noticeable and the writing says nothing about hardware stopping working.

I guess we have both learnt from this exchange.

Thanks a lot.

That sounds like it could be not working, with root cause as bad repair.