There's zero reason they would need years to come out with this self-repair announcement, when all it is right now, is a blog post, announcing something that'll come out "in 2022".
It's not a legend. Apple even mentioned the switch to glass in a press release at the time [1]. The original prototype iPhone shown at the announcement event had a plastic screen, but the version that shipped 6 months later had glass:
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/06/18iPhone-Delivers-Up-...
Apple will want to scale this from the web or from on-device apps. Previously we've seen that Apple is detecting each part by serial number, so even mixing genuine parts disable a lot of features [1]. So, now it becomes clear part of their reason: If they can detect all the genuine parts, they can ship for self repair and it will work for the intended customer and not for other devices. This reduces chances of cloning, theft and scams, while guaranteeing quality (and guaranteeing their revenue on replaced parts too).
IMO, yes, it would require years for them to announce this. There is all the checkout part, they would need to issue the right part with the correct serial number to the exact customer and charge taxes accordingly. All this logistics is centered on software Apple has a bad reputation at best, and very slow process of development from what is seems from the outside.
Woah what? Having a 10TB+ media library with Apple what are you talking about? They use both AWS and GCP to host their services. So again, what?!?
For reference, I’m a few months into downloading my library to some spindle drives, and haven’t had a hiccup yet.
The same John Gruber claims $159 AirPod were sold at near cost. Which leads to a whole world of misinformation passed along as fact in all AirPod discussions.
He may get a few things right in terms of design and software. But seriously his creditability in terms of hardware and supply chain is practically zero.
And no, camera or lens dont get get finalized 2-3 years before the phone comes out.
But I agree it absolutely does not need years. And if anyone has been following Apple for a long period of time should know this PR means it wasn't prepared for YEARS. Not to mention they are basically opening up their repair programme from 3rd party to end users. The only thing that take time rather than a flip of a switch is user instruction and legal clearing.
The only curious thing is why OPs comment is so far up. Do people really want to believe that story so bad?
I know how companies of this size work. When they have regulatory/pr/legal risk, they can move really fast for their size. Don’t know if that’s the case here, but given it only covers subset of parts of few latest models, limited to USA initially, and will likely take a few years to properly expand, it could totally be rushed in timeline of under a year.