Plus a lot of people repair things by taking it to a repair person.

So where‘s the problem? People who fix them are out there and spare parts are available.

The problem is that only Apple approved people can repair and can order parts. Keep in mind that there are not Apple stores in all locations around the world where there are plenty of third party repair shops.

Apple Store isn‘t the only place where things can be fixed. There are authorised service centres, like Gravis in Germany.

And the parts? Just went to iFixit, they‘re all there to buy. I‘m sure anybody serious about fixing these things professionally can source the parts.

Even Apple had the famous episode of releasing an update that bricked phones with replacement parts that weren't sanctioned. They reversed it after much public outcry.

For less common hardware the situation is just as bad. Agriculture equipment has been a pain point for many to get repaired, as the parts are much harder to find and the limited number of certified repair shops can be pressured to stop servicing equipment deemed end of life by the manufacturer

> And the parts? Just went to iFixit, they‘re all there to buy. I‘m sure anybody serious about fixing these things professionally can source the parts.

You'd be surprised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkPUoUJPJAQ

At least try to understand the issue, even if you don't agree.

Maybe it's OK to you to live in a world where you car can only be repaired by the dealer. "No big deal!" A valid opinion.

But that's fine until they want to charge you $2000 for something you can do yourself. Thank god the dealer will sell you the part and you can do that. Let me do it even if you don't want to.

I don't think the GP meant that to be a problem. What I got from it was "even if safety concerns are legitimate, trained professionals often do the work."

So the safety angle becomes even more silly.

For general public, I am not do sure. There‘s a reason why I‘m not attempting replacing the battery in my 2015 mbp or in an iphone. I just don‘t want to cause the damage but I can imagine random people not even waiting until the battery is fully discharged before going in.

Yet there are any number of equally dangerous activities the average citizen can participate in if they like. There are 100 things in your home that can kill you if you decide to start fiddling. Why are Apple products any different? Why should Apple own the repair aspect? Does Maytag tell me that only a Maytag authorized repair shop is allowed to service my water heater?

But they are not. Go on ifixit, order parts and fix, if you wish. Why the downvoting. Heh.

This article is literally about Apple lobbying to make it harder for independent operations to repair their devices. They won't sell people parts. What does that say to you?

Source them from places where such laws do not exist?

I said:

>Why should Apple own the repair aspect?

And received a response:

>But they are [sic] not

Whether or not you can work around Apple not shipping parts is irrelevant. They are actively trying to make it harder to source parts and fix your devices.

> Why should Apple own the repair aspect?

I guess that would be relevant if they were trying to retrieve all spares back. Them not wanting make sourcing spares easier does not mean they own the repair aspect.

The difficulty of sourcing parts is _directly_ related to how much ownership one has over repairability. If the sourcing of parts becomes overly difficult or impossible, one effectively loses the ability to repair the device how they wish.

Tesla also does not sell spares to general public. Yet, there are people who manage to fix them. There are always spares available.

Well, as long as Tesla is the only one, it's not a big deal if you can live without a Tesla. But people are naturally concerned that it might lead to a change in the way others do business if it is not regulated.

So? Whataboutism isn't a strong case. There are also FAR fewer Teslas out there than there are iPhones and iPads.

Whataboutism, whataboutism. Major argument on HN to drop the conversation. It's a comparable example. You know, like a relevant case showing that things are possible without supplier support. Some people here behave like they are totally square headed. Do not deviate an inch away from an example or you get accused of whataboutism. Geez.

> There are also FAR fewer Teslas out there than there are iPhones and iPads.

Which ultimately makes sourcing iPhone / iPad parts even easier.

> It's a comparable example.

But irrelevant. That one entity is doing something bad in no way means that it's OK for another entity to do the same thing.

Besides, the right to repair movement is not focusing on computer products. It's covering a wide variety of products, including Teslas and (perhaps the most egregious) farm equipment.

Yeah, it‘s irrelevant because it in the negative context. If it was towards something positive, it would be then relevant. Seen so many examples of this here. But hey, I‘m doing „whataboutism“ again. Meh.

No, it's irrelevant because an action cannot be judged as right or wrong based on whether or not others are doing it.

It shouldn't be so hard to understand the problem. Let me give you an example. Apple develops a product with components that are doing the same thing as standard components that are ready available at the market. But instead of using those readily available components they make some twist on it just to ruin compatibility. Then they forbid the company that made that component to sell it to anyone but Apple. That basically gives Apple a monopoly on repairing the device. You talk about sourcing parts, but in this case no one can source parts except Apple unless they salvage parts from other devices which is not always viable.

Why would we hope that in the future they didn't get better at shutting down 3rd party repairs instead of making them support that case?

There are more of us then there are of them. Break it down to the smaller case. Imagine 7 of us are in a lifeboat and 1 person has most of the food and the rest of us have a handful of dinner mints and candy bars. Do we vote to make the one guy share the food or do we hope our candy bars last us until we get rescued.

If necessary not only will we eat his food eventually the rest of us might decide to eat him.

They made that problem with the batteries for themselves. I have owned a couple of different mac laptops, and the ones from 2011 and earlier used to have a built in bracket on the battery that stabilised it and made it trivial to fasten and unfasten with screws.

The brackets did not take up all that much space, but apparently it was worth it to them to save a few minutes in manufacturing and a few seconds in assembly and just use adhesives directly against the unibody for fastening and stabilising.

The 2011 ones were even easier than that. You pressed a lever then half the bottom case came off, exposing the hard drive and battery. The battery came off by just pulling a plastic tab, the hard drive had a couple screws iirc. The 2012 one that I'm typing on now requires unscrewing the bottom case, but still everything is right there behind a couple obvious screws and you can upgrade RAM/HDD/battery/replace disc drive with second hard drive in 20 minutes if you are working slow. I knew it was the beginning of the end when the 2013 macbook shipped with soldered RAM.

But ultimately it does not stop those who want to try. I don‘t see a problem. Will this right to repair revocation put those who attempt in prison? What‘s the underlying problem.

Look, I bought a new car. It comes with cameras in the bumper. It made replacing a damaged bumper inherently more difficult for an average Joe. It doesn't mean though that it is impossible to replace it without visiting an authorised service centre. Same logic.

The "spare" parts come from donor boards that are obtained via unsanctioned back channels. Authorized repair shops are generally not allowed to actually fix anything. Instead they tell you it can't be fixed, your data is gone, please buy a new device.

It seems to me that an iPhone is a lot easier to repair than a car. Sure you need to be careful about the gluing if you want to retain the aesthetics, but replacing the motor in your car is also a pretty extensive operation requiring extremely expensive tooling and if you aren't careful you'll end up hurting the aesthetics just the same. Of cause you could then redo the paint job, but at that point, aren't we really in the realm of cost/tools/effort where doing a decent repair job on an iPhone is still much easier?

>replacing the motor in your car is also a pretty extensive operation requiring extremely expensive tooling

Well SOMEONE's dad didn't have a small collection of junker vehicles in the yard to pull parts from growing up. Shoot, I know multiple people (including Dad) who rebuilt their Volkswagen Beetle engine in their unlucky girlfriend's living room (yes that unlucky girlfriend is now my mother) with hand tools. If you think working on cars requires expensive tooling, you just don't know enough rednecks! lololol

I knew a biker who had a beautiful girlfriend he was thinking of marrying. Every winter he tore his motorcycle apart in the living room and rebuilt it with incremental improvements. His buddy said to him, Will she let you overhaul your bike in the living room every winter? So he asked her. She said, Hell no!

He ended the relationship right then and there.

Its still an absolute bitch even with all the right tools. You get one rusted nut in a tight spot where you can't fit the breaker bar then go ahead and add 4+ hours of cussing and fighting with the car to your job.

I remember my mothers look of shock when my hand me down car started back up after three months of engine and transmission parts slowly spreading across the garage floor.

"Rebuild" is kind of a vague term that doesn't specify exactly what is done and what condition the engine was in.

Have you tried to find a mechanic who will rebuild a worn out engine and give a reasonable warranty on the work in your town? If a local professional can't make that work these days economically, it tells you something.

I see ads for cars that had a "rebuild" a few thousand miles ago and need serious work already.

> It seems to me that an iPhone is a lot easier to repair than a car.

In my short 55 years on the planet I've heard of 4 friends of friends[1] who died or were badly injured by having cars slip off a jack and fall on them.

[1] AKA friends coworker didn't show up one Monday. Friend recently had to dash across the street to jack a car back off of his neighbor.

Yeah never heard of anyone seriously hurt messing with ordinary consumer electronics. You would think if that were a possibility then UL etc would refuse to certify.

The motor in your car rarely goes bad compared to the oil and brake pads. Those things are purposely made easy to change, and Apple could design their phone so that the failure-prone parts were swappable just as well.

Both of those typically require jacking up the car (and getting under it for the oil change), which strikes me as much more dangerous for a novice than the risk associated with puncturing a phone battery. Never mind the added risk of an amateur doing either of those car jobs incorrectly.

Many cars are designed nowadays for "topside oil changes" (as a factory recommended procedure).

You stick a vacuum line down the dipstick hole, suck out all the oil, replace the filter, fill the oil, put the dipstick back in. I didn't trust it the first time, so I sucked the oil out and then removed the drain plug to see how much oil I was missing; it was less than a shot glass worth.

Brake jobs don't require putting your body under the rotor/hub, making the risk of serious injury low. You could use jackstands, but I generally don't as I don't have my head or limbs in a crush area.

I would love to find a car that I could replace the filter from the top. Easily the most annoying part of the oil change is getting under the car into a position to find the oil filter conveniently located in a dark crevasse against the firewall with just enough space to make it an absolute bitch to get the tool over the filter. Maybe my car just sucks though.

I think most Mercedes and modern Porsche are topside oil filters, probably others now. My wife's CR-V has a backside filter but that can reached from the right side without jacking the car by turning the wheels full left lock.

One tip: To aid removal next time, use Dow DC-4 silicone grease on the filter gasket (rather than motor oil or nothing) and the oil filter gasket just needs a little crush; lots of people over-tighten filters, making them needlessly hard to remove. Contact plus a half turn will put about 1/32" of crush on the gasket which is enough to seal.

I think top-mounted oil filters have been a common feature on German cars for a long time. Even though mine has a top mounted filter, I find changing the oil to be one of the least interesting common DIY car maintenance items. It has big mess potential, requires a stop at a shop anyway to drop off the used oil, and doesn't really save much money.

It seems to me that you have never worked on cars before. (I'm not trying to be mean here it's easier than you think!)

Replacing a motor requires hand tools and a motor lift. That's it. Upgrading or modifying might take special tools like an ECU programmer, but a straight mechanical replacement is just a bunch of screws and bolts.

don't forget the vacuum lines and electrical...

Is it? There are a lot of very small, fiddly components.

I'm not exactly dexterous, and I replaced the screen and battery on my iPhone and it went really well. You need to be a bit slower than you would repairing a car, but I really don't see it as harder.

Yeah, I can see some components as being relatively easy to replace, but I've also seen people trying to swap out components that are soldered on…

Depending on the car, there are quite a few more small fiddly components. Magnitudes more.

It's not even about making it repairable. It's about just making the repair tools and manuals available for sale to the public.