of course you can, you can make any law, if you can gain enough support. Its matter of preference. I'm okay with safety regulation, even then there is a limit with that, I'm not okay with too much safety regulation.
As such, I do not see why it would be wrong to impose additional controls on Apple (and other companies -- I'm not singling out Apple) to such effect. If you really need a way to spin this as a net positive to society, how about that we would throw away fewer phones and thus do less damage to the environment?
As to the government controlling design of products, the precedent is narrow and scoped only to prevent direct harm to consumers for a reason - liberal democracy is based on the principle of freedom as long as you aren’t harming anyone.
If you broaden the scope to the government imposing arbitrary design decisions on companies, you stop having a liberal democracy, and move into fascism.
I know that’s an inflammatory word to use - but state control of companies is a defining feature of fascism, and limiting state control to only what is needed to prevent direct harms is a defining feature of liberalism.
So I think we must oppose the generalization.
The environmental argument is reasonable to consider, in the sense that it is within the scope of liberal democracy to control environmental harms, because those are ways we harm other people through our actions.
By this logic, design changes could only be required if they had a substantial impact on reducing waste.
Apple themselves are investing an enormous amount in increasing the life of their products, especially phones.
I think it’s likely that if they had to compromise their designs in arbitrary ways, there would almost certainly be more broken phones and more waste, not fewer.
This is where the rubber meets the road for me.
Does making a phone easier to repair make it last longer? I’d say most likely not.
Things that make phones last longer are more robust physical designs so they can withstand heavy use, and everyday use without breaking.
Reasonable people may disagree on this, but for me this is where the argument gets interesting.
What designs lead to the most sustainable products?
I'm sure car manufacturers would love to exclude all those pesky expensive safety features from their new cars, but they're not allowed to do that. We've required them to design parts of their product in specific ways.
Or how about airplanes? Boeing sure seems enthusiastic to get rid of safety features on their airplanes, should we really allow them to do so?
Or how about the phone you might have in your pocket? It talks to a cell tower right? We've restricted the designs of the radios in the phones and cell towers such that they don't emit more EM than a set limit. Surely Verizon could get much better coverage if they just crank up their signal, drowning out everyone else?
Point is, we regularly and consistently restrict how manufacturers can design, manufacture and eventually operate various goods. Why should Apple get a pass?