So if our goal is to prolong the lifecycle of consumer electronics, then repairability isn’t a necessary metric.

If regulators instead went after service pricing abuse, that would force companies like Apple to drive down their repair prices—which might force them to design their hardware in a more modular manner, but not necessarily, so that if it becomes negligibly cheap to manufacture and replace the entire part of a less modular architecture, then they still have the freedom to design electronics in a less modular architecture. Repairability, considering the arbitrariness of the level of modularity that it stops, really does seem like a constraint on innovation.

User-serviceability is another unnecessary requirement, in my opinion, and in this regard, regulators can go after service availability. Electronics manufacturers who insist on tight integration of their products should make their repair services highly available, which seems like a fair trade-off.

>If regulators instead went after service pricing abuse

How would this work in a manner that isn't vastly more invasive than right to repair bills? I can't think of anything similar.

In what sense would it be vastly more invasive than right to repair?

The most obvious option to me seems to be price controls, which historically have been a very blunt instrument and as far as I know, most economists recommend against them.

Err… it doesn’t have to be price controls? It could be as simple as an investigation to their pricing strategy and seeing whether the markup is obscene or not. Of course what is obscene is relative, but that’s why you investigate, so that you can see abuse on a case-to-case basis.

Also, how is this level of regulatory inspection invasive? The architectural tight integration almost guarantees that the device manufacturer has a monopoly on servicing their products—it’s just that the monopoly is being allowed because it’s the kind that allows for innovation. The regulatory crackdown would be fair and justifiable.

Saying certain prices are obscene is just an ill-defined price ceiling i.e. a form of price control.

Now that is moving the goalpost, and hard. A senate inquiry or a class action suit (that Apple doesn’t have to lose by the way) is not how “price control” is defined, and even if such cases swing in the way of consumers, there’s no general rule that specifies how much Apple should lower their service pricing.

>Apple has gone out of their way to make life as hard as possible on third-party repair shops

No they haven't. They just had no reason to prioritize or put effort into making sure that third-party repair shops had an easy time to do this. Not putting effort into something isn't the same as actively putting effort into making things more difficult.

Pairing parts with phones is going out of their way to hinder self repair.

That is an incredibly ignorant statement. Pairing parts with the SOC is a security feature. The intent is to increase security with the side-effect being a more difficult repair process. You're acting like they did it with the purpose of trying to hinder self-repair. If that was the case, they wouldn't be taking any measures to make self-repair easier.

> You're acting like they did it with the purpose of trying to hinder self-repair.

That’s certainly one interpretation. What’s the security rationale behind disabling functions if you don’t pair the phone’s replacement glass panel? Or if you take a genuine battery from another phone (since Apple doesn’t sell them for most models directly) and put it in your phone? It’s a genuine battery but it’ll nag you and disable functionality because you didn’t pair it with your phone using software Apple didn’t release.

This goes beyond security and is downright hostile to user repair.

Both of those questions are easily answerable with a simple Google search.

1. >disabling functions if you don’t pair the phone’s replacement glass panel?

That's not what's happening. The "glass panel", as you put it, is the same part as the FaceID and TouchID sensors. They're cryptographically paired so that someone doesn't replace that part with a compromised sensor that would allow them access to the device. If you're referring to the back glass, then it needs to be paired to the hardware only on newer devices because of the Magsafe functionality and the fact that the cameras are built into the back. Compromising the back panel could allow an attacker access to any photos taken with the camera or, in some cases, access to data on the phone via the Magsafe connection.

2. >take a genuine battery from another phone (since Apple doesn’t sell them for most models directly) and put it in your phone

The only functionality that's disabled when this happens is the health measurement of the battery because there's no way to tell if the battery being installed is brand new unless the chain of trust for the hardware is intact. It doesn't nag you at all. It simply says on the battery health screen that the battery that's installed can't be verified. It doesn't affect the usage of the phone at all outside of the battery health display.

You're either being disingenuous or just outright lying here.

Alright, sure, putting a genuine battery and disabling some functionality is perfectly reasonable, let’s say. The battery fully knows it’s health, the number of cycles and charge levels are tracked by the chip inside the battery itself. The phone can and 100% does know exactly the condition of the battery. But you replaced it without involving Apple so the battery health functionality is disabled. Perfectly reasonable.

Just in case, what about auto brightness on the iPhone 14? If you swap the display with a genuine one from another iPhone 14, auto brightness is now disabled which means that your screen is black every time you unlock the phone and you have to manually go and crank the brightness up again (without actually seeing anything in the display) every time you unlock the phone.

I’m sure this makes the phone way safer too and is actually intended for your own good rather than being actively hostile to self repair by making the phone obnoxious to use as a result.

Design is a balancing of constraints, some of which are constraints of the product of the design, and some of which are constraints of the process. Repairability is a constraint, and when that constraint becomes stricter something else has to give. Maybe this is more expensive to manufacture (and given the massive price hike in europe it wouldn’t surprise me), maybe this design took up a lot of designer hours, which held up other products. Whatever the trade-off is, it must be real.

My point is: improved repairability always comes at the expense of something else.

An organization only has so much mental capacity to focus on challenges. Having a required repair-ability goal would hinder the pace of innovation.

It might be worth the hit, but naive to think such an accomplishment is without innovation cost.

Isn't innovation frequently a result of limitations?

Seems to me like Apple was more innovative when they had fewer employees and fewer resources, so perhaps we should break up the company in order to increase innovation.