I knew a guy who used to run one of these little repair stalls, almost all of his parts came from stripping down stolen devices he got from local scallys. These were all genuine parts, but it made stealing these phones more lucrative.

Seems like that market could also be hurt by apple just offering genuine replacement parts

I guess cost would be a factor. It seems like they could also offer some sort of service where phones can be reverified if the shop can evidence where it got parts.

or have them be one time programmable, so you can use new replacement parts from apple but can't transplant them. although in terms of e-waste that's still not ideal

Actually there is another good reason for this, and that is preventing theft.

What is the point of stealing an iPhone 13 if you can't just sell the phone on (because of iCloud lock) and you can't chop-shop any of the expensive parts because they're all cryptographically registered?

This is true, but there is absolutely a solution here that Apple could implement: verification of users who want genuine replacement parts.

Apple could empower their customers to be good citizens of the earth who want to reduce electronic waste while simultaneously making the lives of thieves difficult.

The most difficult aspect would be warranty, shipping damage, assembly damage and false claims arising under all three by less scrupulous individuals and criminal groups.

They likely considered the possibility and decided that it wasn’t worth the extra hassle.

How would this prevent a shop from using stolen phones as parts for repairs?

> you can't chop-shop any of the expensive parts because they're all cryptographically registered

They're not cryptographically registered. iOS does a simple check to see if the serial numbers of the installed parts match the expected original values. Also, you can still sell them, and you would not have a hard time finding a buyer, because they're still intrinsically valuable parts and can still be used (with some annoyances). Anyhow, I'm sure someone will reverse engineer the system well enough to reprogram the serial numbers without Apple's assistance eventually. I can't wait -- the writeup will probably be a fascinating read, and it will provide users more control over their own devices, which is always a good thing. Same reason it made me very happy when it was discovered that Apple dun goofed and let an unpatchable bootrom bug slip into all iPhones from 5S through X, which means these phones are forever jailbreakable: https://checkra.in/

There is no way to verify the screen is genuine in a way that could not be copied. The current way works because there is nothing that can be copied. The main board asks for a serial number and only it knows what the correct one is. No 3rd party can fake that without tailoring it to the specific phone.

It’s a real shitty situation but it’s a little more complex.

Presumably, the "security" does not come from the assumption that the serial numbers are private information -- it comes from the assumption that you can only reprogram the parts with top-secret Apple internal tools. There's no reason the serial numbers need to be paired per device; iOS should be able to check any serial number to see if it is genuine Apple. Much like you can go to https://checkcoverage.apple.com and check the warranty status of the whole iPhone based on its serial number.