They already do: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electro...

It's always better to avoid throwing something away by repairing it that trying to recycle it.

It depends, most of the time the issue is a small component from a big system failing. This large companies should not block a competent repairman to diagnose and replace the broken part. I am not asking companies to make Lego phones just don't block people with DRM,copyright and supply chain restrictions.

They block competent repairman? Or they ask money for competent repair?

Apple does not allow the companies that make chips from their laptops to also sell those chips for people that want to repair this laptops. So this repair people need to "illegally" obtain the chips from someone at the factory.

Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to fix the problem.

Maybe it's a joke to you. For me it's fine. People pay real money in order to have Apple quality. If all you need is "a computer", go ahead, there's plenty around any corner.

Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.

There's a big difference between someone saying "I'm a repair shop that is capable of fixing Ford vehicles" and "I'm an official Ford Certified repair shop". Both are allowed to fix your car. The third party shop can order parts to repair your car.

And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.

Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.

> Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly

So what? Apple's interests don't matter, unlike its customers'.

Companies often have the monopoly on repair for their products because they don’t make the parts and diagnostic tools available. Yes, they ask money for repair, but there also plenty of repairs they flat out refuse to do. Apple refuses to repair phones with water damage for example. Repairs that repair shops might be happy to do, if they had the access to parts.

How do you repair water damage? Look at the colour of the motherboard and declare it's fine?

Besides that, most Apple phones since 2016 or so are water resistant.

Scrape off rust, replace chips that have been shorted.

Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).

Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU

Manual work like that should be more expensive than buying new.

I would be very surprised if Rossman charged more for that repair than the cost of a new Macbook.

Apple loves to say that their products are so expensive and complicated that manual repairs just aren't worth doing. But observably, in the real world, even with all of the crap Apple puts in front of repair shops to slow them down, that isn't true. Third-party repairpeople still manage to regularly beat Apple's prices.

"should be"? I can see how it's more expensive now. But I think that as a collective having things repaired is preferred.

For most manufactures the incentives now is to minimize repairability. Increasing the repair cost.

Having some regulation in place to limit repairability prevention may tip the scale a bit towards repairing.

Reduce, re-use, recycle, IN THAT ORDER.