The main board should be just as repairable as any other device. If that requires changes to copyright law, the DMCA and or even WIPO treaties then that will eventually happen.
It's not that many years ago—certainly well within my lifetime—that 'deep' repairs of this kind were not only commonplace but actually encouraged by manufacturers. (If you want examples then I'll provide some).
By such action, we would only be returning to the status quo as it was some 40 or more years ago.
(To detractors of this comment, I accept and understand that you never lived through that time to see it in action, if you had then very likely you'd have a changed point of view.)
You are implying the two concepts are incompatible. There is no reason why they should be other than a manufacturer's planned obsolescence strategy, which is what the Right to Repair movement is all about and fighting to fix.
If Apple made a repairable iPhone with the same profit margins and specs, I'm guessing it would have to be more expensive. I would have to pay for this, even though I don't want to repair my stuff (I just buy new stuff when it breaks).
Who knows, the amount Apple has spent lobbying may have allowed them to create a more repairable iphone without increasing consumer prices.
Apple makes about 38% on hardware, right?
Suppose I pay $100 “extra” for an iPhone thanks to limited repairability.
Without that $100, Apple would have to find $38 somewhere else.
As I don’t value repairability, all the options seem worse.
Maybe it would make me $100 happier at the cost of $38 to Apple’s “bottom line”. But I don’t think they would like that investment strategy.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/complete-control-apple-a...
At the same time, restricting how and what customers can repair is good for future phone/etc sales, which I imagine it's why they're doing it.
Take the essential ph-1 as an example. Now that the company is gone, if a device bricks during an update, that's it. Having the firehose file would make it possible to unblock it, but without it, a bricked phone is just spare parts (less the main board).