Apple Emails Reveal Internal Debate on Right to Repair (ifixit.com) 36
Tim Cook didn't reveal anything new during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. But emails his company shared with the committee spoke volumes. These internal discussions reveal that what looks like Apple's united front against Right to Repair is really an internal debate, rife with uncertainty. From a report: The New York Times editorial in favor of Right to Repair last April set off a fire alarm inside Apple's public relations team. When Binyamin Appelbaum reached out to research the issue, Apple's VP of communications said in an internal email that "We should get him on the phone with [Apple VP Greg] Joz [Joswiak] or [Senior VP] Phil [Schiller]." That spawned an instant debate. "The larger issue is that our strategy around all of this is unclear. Right now we're talking out of both sides of our mouth and no one is clear on where we're headed."
The emails show the high profile of Right to Repair inside Apple as leaders debate how to respond to a request for comment on an upcoming column. "The piece is using [Senator] Warren's new right to repair for agriculture to talk about the broader right to repair effort and plans to use Apple as a symbol in that fight. We're meeting with everyone shortly about the overall strategy and then I'll connect with [Greg 'Joz' Joswiak]." The email goes on, "Appelbaum has, of course, talked with iFixIt [sic] and others." They're right about that! The conversation resulted in a set of talking points that Kaiann Drance, VP of Marketing, talked through with Appelbaum. Afterwards, Apple PR wrote, "Kaiann did a great job and emphasized the need for a thoughtful approach to repair policy because of how important it is to balance customer safety with access to more convenient repairs." Apple was less convincing than they hoped. The editorial, carrying the weight of the Times' entire Editorial Board, came out forcefully in favor of Right to Repair. Of Apple specifically, the Times remarked, "The company is welcome to persuade people to patronize its own repair facilities, or to buy new iPhones. But there ought to be a law against forcing the issue."
The emails show the high profile of Right to Repair inside Apple as leaders debate how to respond to a request for comment on an upcoming column. "The piece is using [Senator] Warren's new right to repair for agriculture to talk about the broader right to repair effort and plans to use Apple as a symbol in that fight. We're meeting with everyone shortly about the overall strategy and then I'll connect with [Greg 'Joz' Joswiak]." The email goes on, "Appelbaum has, of course, talked with iFixIt [sic] and others." They're right about that! The conversation resulted in a set of talking points that Kaiann Drance, VP of Marketing, talked through with Appelbaum. Afterwards, Apple PR wrote, "Kaiann did a great job and emphasized the need for a thoughtful approach to repair policy because of how important it is to balance customer safety with access to more convenient repairs." Apple was less convincing than they hoped. The editorial, carrying the weight of the Times' entire Editorial Board, came out forcefully in favor of Right to Repair. Of Apple specifically, the Times remarked, "The company is welcome to persuade people to patronize its own repair facilities, or to buy new iPhones. But there ought to be a law against forcing the issue."
Definition of repair (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Definition of repair (Score:4, Interesting)
Might require repair afterward. Perfect example - the 2015 Macbook Pro. The battery is glued to the top case with an adhesive so strong that Apple replaces the entire top cover (trackpad, keyboard, and all) instead of the battery when they're doing the replacement.
3rd-party repair involves using acetone to soften the glue and pry/floss it out. One wrong move and the acetone damages the trackpad or the screen.
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Perfect example - the 2015 Macbook Pro. The battery is glued to the top case with an adhesive so strong that Apple replaces the entire top cover (trackpad, keyboard, and all) instead of the battery when they're doing the replacement.
3rd-party repair involves using acetone to soften the glue and pry/floss it out. One wrong move and the acetone damages the trackpad or the screen.
Why do you think it's so difficult?
Technical inevitability?
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Replacing a battery is not "repair"
The problem is they want it both ways, they want to keep treating the battery as a consumable when it comes to warranty and returns but don't want to treat it as replaceable.
A bill moving slowly through Massachusetts (Score:3, Informative)
https://malegislature.gov/Bill... [malegislature.gov]
At the public hearing, Apple devices took front-and-center. Apple isn't the only ones, though -- Lenovo, Dell, Google, Amazon, etc make all of their devices extremely hard to repair, and almost never offer any repair information, materials, or access.
Some years ago, my company tried to get access to Lenovo parts and repair information. Their requirement was $100 000 per year in sales. This was a small town out West, and Lenovo was something of a direct competitor -- we were doing local repair work because the only other option was Staples or drive 60+ miles to the next town over where you might also get support from Office Depot. $100 000 per year in sales for Lenovo would have been contrary to our state of being. As a result, we got parts off eBay, billed $60/hr, and repaired local users' computers when we could -- they're just computers, really. (If you needed to fix a BIOS, well, that was a motherboard replacement. With a forevermore incorrect serial number.)
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My Dell came with a full service manual online. Including instructions on how to replace pretty much every component. I may have to buy certain components from Dell (e.g. motherboard), but I can replace it.
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Yeah, Dell is actually really, really good about this, at least if you're buying their business lines. My Dell laptop has regular screws holding it together, a full service/repair manual easily available online, and parts I can actually buy.
This may not be as true for their consumer lines, I tend not to buy consumer-grade laptops because they're annoying to repair and not built nearly as strong. My old HP laptop (Elitebook) lasted over 10 years, and still works fine (though it's a bit slow and the battery
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Dell is really good about things.
But not perfect. I have a server right now that is yielding a "Hard drive not connected" iDRAC error because I swapped the hard drive controller from a PERC raid device to an HBA devide, which required changing cables. iDRAC now no longer detects the cable, so it consistently throws an error. How do I get this fixed? I don't.
Round two, suppose you buy a motherboard off eBay to fix your latitude. How do you fix the Dell Service Tag so it's from the same machine? Again, if you
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I encountered a similar situation with an iDRAC in an R720. Ultimately, I had to do the full iDRAC reset to factory procedure. It was a hassle, but it worked. I'm guessing that some things are only probed on first boot rather than every boot. The iDRAC signaling/communication with PERCs has always felt very... clunky and cumbersome.
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It's funny when people confuse "the manufacturer makes the device difficult to repair" with "the manufacturer make the device as compact and sturdy as possible." There's always the hint that a manufacturer goes out of their way to make devices difficult to repair.
Re: A bill moving slowly through Massachusetts (Score:2)
Triangular shaped screw heads do not improve stability.
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I can understand using screw heads designed to minimize the use of material and maximize the amount of torque put on them before camming out... but five-lobed screw heads are not any better than Torx or Torx TTAP screws. Neither are other screwy items like screws with different size lobes. Those are designed to be security devices, not maximize torque or minimize material used.
Some things like Phillips screws need to be replaced because they cam out. However, Torx answers this, and has been a standard fo
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It's funny when people confuse "the manufacturer makes the device difficult to repair" with "the manufacturer make the device as compact and sturdy as possible." There's always the hint that a manufacturer goes out of their way to make devices difficult to repair.
I disagree with you, but in what may be an internet first, I respect your opinion and don't have any critique or snarky comebacks to offer.
Instead, I'm fascinated about how one cultivates your opinion. Sites like iFixit highlight design choices for
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Instead, I'm fascinated about how one cultivates your opinion. Sites like iFixit highlight design choices for which lack of upgradability is the only plausible explanation. Apple is also known to solder RAM on some of their larger computers, necessitating an entire motherboard swap when a part of RAM goes bad, when they previous included regular DIMMS in the same form factor, thus increasing costs of purchase and repairs, while saving no space.
Except that soldered-in RAM is a helluva-lot more reliable than friction-fit contacts in a device that's going to get thrashed around in a backpack for most of its life. I don't have any figures on failure rates but an equally plausible explanation is that the hugely decreased failure rates due to soldered chips outweighs the cost of a motherboard replacement. It also reduces manufacturing costs to solder in-place rather than faffing around with sockets and having to insert the RAM later as a separate ste
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How often have you had to reseat your CPU because the friction-fit connector got jostled in just-the-wrong-way? Personally, never.
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What information were you looking for that isn't already in Lenovo's Hardware Maintenance Manuals? I'm genuinely curious. I've done several of ThinkPad repairs/refurbishments and have had good luck locating the parts I need through the HMM, though this obviously depends on the parts needed.
Re:A bill moving slowly through Massachusetts (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked for a Dell partner and even with internal Dell contacts could not get part numbers or access to parts for a Latitude laptop. The laptop shipped with an M.2 SATA module but had the space and ports for 2.5" SATA disk but required a supplementary cable that wasn't inside the laptop, and I couldn't figure out how to get this cable to save my life. I ultimately got a part number, but the part was unobtainium until the laptop had been out for about 18 months and I guess scrap parts hit the market.
My general take on this is that modern end-user technology production is designed around an efficiency model where it's all literally made once and as close to actual units sold numbers as is possible. The concept of "parts" is meaningless, as they only exist as either limited production overruns/surplus or as breakdowns from complete manufactured units. The intention is just to manufacture a bunch of complete units and then the line is switched to whatever the next model is. That parts exist at all is almost an accident.
I'm also not sure from a manufacturing perspective whether "hard to repair" is a result of deliberate engineering to defeat disassembly and repair, or whether it's just a byproduct of high tech assembly and reliability combined with on-trend thin design. If the dumb thing is mostly meant to be put together once by robots and then epoxied into place, is that a conspiracy against repair or just engineering for a purpose?
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Honestly it sounds like you needed a generic adapter but couldn't find it because you expected it to be proprietary.
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No, it was proprietary. The motherboard had a small header that connected to a breakout connector for the SATA drive data/power, plus there was a bracket for the drive itself missing.
I mean maybe if you were super handy with tiny header cables and fine wire you could source the stuff from Digikey as I would ultimately expect the individual pieces to be some industry standard, but it would have been a huge PITA. Plus the bracket was totally proprietary.
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Lenovo, Dell, Google, Amazon, etc make all of their devices extremely hard to repair, and almost never offer any repair information, materials, or access.
You can get pretty good repair instructions, at least for Lenovo stuff, from Russian hacker web sites. That includes repair techniques that even Lenovo is probably unaware of. Only downside is a working knowledge of Russian.
Don't know about non-Lenovo gear but I assume it's the same there, just never had to look it up...
You need to buy the Business line (Score:2)
There is a marked difference in all these brands between their cheaper consumer lines and their more expensive business/enterprise targeted lines. Enterprises *demand* repairability, because you can not afford to have an employee without a laptop for days on end waiting for a new one to be shipped.
Such Brave Waffling (Score:2)
Apple executives are painting themselves as conflicted, but the conflict isn't the one that one might expect. They're not wondering whether the right to repair is reasonable; they're wondering how to best oppose the right to repair without making Apple look bad.
Re: Such Brave Waffling (Score:2)
edited email? (Score:3)
"Appelbaum has, of course, talked with iFixIt [sic] and others." [sic] usually means a typo was corrected, or slang was replaced with a more accurate term... Who wants to bet what the original word was???
Re:edited email? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, "[sic]" abbreviates "sic erat scriptum", translated, "thus was it written".
It is generally used to indicate the material being quoted is wrong in some way, but it is repeated verbatim. It means it was -not- corrected or altered, but instead is "left wrong".
Looks like the company name is actually "iFixit", not "iFixIt" (wrong casing), and so the "[sic]".
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I guess I should have read one more comment down and saved myself some keystrokes.
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[sic] usually means a typo was corrected, or slang was replaced with a more accurate term...'
No, it means a typo or slang WASN'T corrected.
If someone emailed the following to a repoter:
"When I opened the door, I found Bill Gattes stone-cold getting butt-hammered by Mark Zuck and Jeff Bozos was straight-up punishing the primate while the hole thing went down."
The reporter could write it as so:
When contacted by email, Irving47 said, "When I opened the door, I found Bill Gattes [sic] stone-cold [having anal i
tractors (Score:2, Interesting)
Is already illegal in some countries (Score:2)
Reality -vs- marketing (Score:2)
Right now we're talking out of both sides of our mouth and no one is clear on where we're headed.
The problem is that everyone on planet earth wants the right to repair EXCEPT the people who hold the money and the microphone. They are the wealthy ones who can drop a new phone on the ground and buy a new one every 30 seconds and not care. So yeah, there's gonna be "internal debate" because the marketing department is tasked with backing a policy that no one wants.
I read it as "right to despair" (Score:2)
Apples and Net Zero Carbon No actual commitment (Score:2)
if Apple dont make their devices easy to repair or prevent users from doing this - they simply cannot claim to
be aiming for Net Zero carbon by 2030 - it simply isnt possible. Right to Repair is one thing but actively preventing it
is not the correct way to lead us into regenerative culture.Companies can not wash their hands of responsibility once its
left the shop floor. We all have a responsibility to avoid sending stuff to landfill which has a huge Co2 problem.