Given his prior record, he'll wind up giving credit where credit is due, and then having to eat his words a few days later when it turns out the program is far too restrictive to be useful to repair shops.

Cynically, I wonder if what Apple will do here is make it difficult/impossible for independent repair shops to take advantage of this. Thus, Apple gets good press ("See! We support right to repair!"), but in the end, they know most consumers won't feel comfortable effecting these repairs themselves so it won't eat into Apple's bottom line much.

Parts bought through the self-service store will cost significantly more than even what the IRPs pay.

This doesn't target repair shops at all so doesn't improve the situation there. So my reading is it's going to be "this is better for consumers but they still need to do something for those users who aren't technical enough to carry out their own repairs".

Still waiting to see if Louis finds any problems though

His initial response is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jCtVDCiY_8

I don't see anything on this post about how they will warrant self-repair, so I imagine Louis will be bringing this up.

Years back I replaced the battery on my iPhone (I tried to have Apple replace it ... it's a long, infuriating story). But I took it in for a charge port recall due to the port losing connection to the cable. It was completely unrelated issue but they wouldn't replace it under recall due to prior third party repairs. It's similar to Ford not replacing your recalled alternator because you replaced your radiator with a third party. In any case I haven't bought an iPhone since because of the frustration this experience left me with.

So this is definitely a positive step in the right direction but hopefully it doesn't end without amendments to their warranty and recall policies.

I don’t see how they could possibly warrant self repair. There’s a hundred ways you can mess up your device while attempting a repair, and they’re not going to pay for your mistakes.

Unless, of course, a way to remotely verify no damage occurred to the device while repairing it existed, which isn’t the case.

Ok yeah I can budge on warranty, but recall? If the part is flawed from the get-go, who cares if it was "broken" during a repair? Under recall it was clearly broken or bound to break imminently (assuming Apple can verify that the part was OEM).

And if Apple doesn't want to do the repair themselves under recall due to 3rd party repairs, sure, just send me the part and I'll do it. One part per phone. Just don't tell me to pound sand and eat the full cost of part+repair. Sounds straightforward, though perhaps there's something I'm missing.