Apple Launches Do-It-Yourself Repairs For iPhone 13, iPhone 12 and iPhone SE, But There's a Catch (cnet.com) 58
Apple on Wednesday followed through on its plans to begin publicly releasing repair manuals for some of its products, in addition to selling parts and tools online. The goal, the company said, is to allow iPhone owners an alternative way to repair their devices. From a report: The tech giant's new program, called Self Service Repair, is starting out for US customers with Apple's iPhone 13 line of smartphones, the iPhone 12 and new iPhone SE. Apple said it designed the program to offer adventurous and capable people access to the same parts, tools and instructions it gives to its own certified technicians and partner repair shops, hopefully making it easier for people to repair devices instead of resorting to buying a new one. "We believe we have a responsibility to customers and the environment to offer convenient access to safe, reliable, and secure repairs to help customers get the most out of their devices," the company wrote in a document published Wednesday that outlines its plans. "As the doors open on this new venue, we're underwhelmed, and settling back into our usual skepticism," iFixit posted on Wednesday. The firm adds: The biggest problem? Apple is doubling down on their parts pairing strategy, enabling only very limited, serial number-authorized repairs. You cannot purchase key parts without a serial number or IMEI. If you use an aftermarket part, there's an "unable to verify" warning waiting for you. This strategy hamstrings third-party repair with feature loss and scare tactics and could dramatically limit options for recyclers and refurbishers, short-circuiting the circular economy. As of today, you can buy an official Apple iPhone 12 screen and install it yourself, on your own device, with no fuss. Until now, DIY repairs relied on keeping the Face ID speaker and sensor assembly intact, then very carefully moving it to your new screen, and finally ignoring some gentle warnings. If your assembly was damaged or defective, you were out of luck. The new program will solve that problem -- assuming you've bought an official Apple part.
Great but i would still hire a professional (Score:3)
Re:Great but i would still hire a professional (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you look to how many warranty claims they've denied due to water damage only to have the customer say they've never dropped it in water you might begin to understand. Taking a phone from an air conditioned room outside on a hot humid day floods the internals with moisture and causes damage. It leads to customer dissatisfaction which reflects on future purchases.
There is more than one way to waterproof a phone but heat-activated adhesive is reliable and if you have the right tools, relatively simple to
Re: Great but i would still hire a professional (Score:2)
Meanwhile I can actually drop my Pixel into a puddle deep enough to immerse it and it still works fine.
Somehow, I'm not buying Apple's argument.
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while I'm sure they could have figured out a way to waterproof them without gluing everything together, adhesive is the cheapest and most reliable.
Absolutely there are other ways. I still wear a Timex digital watch (with fancy INDIGLO technology [EL panel]). It's waterproof as deep as I've managed to get it when swimming. Its battery panel is held shut with four screws on the back with some kind of rubber foam seal around the edge. It would take significantly more screws for a phone - but these phones get flexed and bent in pockets in ways that my watch doesn't. They could start to leak but the adhesive will stretch.
And my watch has had its batte
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I still wear a Timex digital watch (with fancy INDIGLO technology [EL panel]).
I had one of those back in the day, they were bad-ass.
It would take significantly more screws for a phone
Not only that, but then you have a bunch of "ugly" screws around the perimeter of the phone. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but being done in a cost effective and "pretty" manner is a different story. Who knows though, I'm not a mechanical engineer.
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I still wear a Timex digital watch (with fancy INDIGLO technology [EL panel]).
I had one of those back in the day, they were bad-ass.
It would take significantly more screws for a phone
Not only that, but then you have a bunch of "ugly" screws around the perimeter of the phone. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but being done in a cost effective and "pretty" manner is a different story. Who knows though, I'm not a mechanical engineer.
Not possible to maintain an IP68 rating with a relatively-flexy phone chassis and however many perimeter screws you want to put. In fact, the more screw-holes through the back cover, the weaker it becomes.
All it takes are a few torsional twists (like from being in a pants pocket), and you your phone's back might as well be made of mesh netting!
No gasket would stay sealed.
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Yep. They're small enough that I don't know how to even measure their width or thread pitch, but if I had that knowledge, I could buy them.
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Only the original Pixel didn't have that sort of waterproofing.
The Pixel series might be rated somewhat more repairable, but it's not something I want to do. My Pixel 2 ended its life with a dead battery and cracked screen, neither of which I felt confident dealing with. I did replace the camera shield on the back when that cracked.
My Pixel 6 Pro got a case. I ended up ordering a junk cheap case because the official one I was going to buy was still backordered when the back of it fell and cracked. I rea
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There is more than one way to waterproof a phone but heat-activated adhesive is reliable
It's not even a reliable way to keep a phone assembled, let alone to keep it from getting water in it. I've got a moto phone right here that the adhesive just failed on. And lo and behold, the same thing happens to Apple phones [ifixit.com].
Adhesive is not a reliable way to assemble a phone.
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It's pretty reliable but it's not failproof. Especially against swelling batteries. Replace your ancient battery and it will probably seal up fine with new adhesive. And be less of a fire hazard too.
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The moto phone I've got where the adhesive failed presses back together just fine, so the battery can't be swollen. (I've had other swollen batteries before, I know what they are like.) Still works great and has great battery life too.
Adhesive is a shit way to assemble a product which might need service, and it is done for only two reasons, size and cost. But the whole fucking planet pays more for it in the end.
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You can't just press heat activated adhesive back together - it won't stick. You need to warm it up. If you're not good with a heat gun (I'm not), a reusable tool like the iOpener from iFixit or even a disposable heating pad could do the trick.
Chances are the phone got too hot or got flexed too hard to cause the initial failure. That's why the failure points tend to be around more rigid parts of the phone frame like buttons. But yeah - the fact that the adhesive can get to hot to stay together just throu
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You can't just press heat activated adhesive back together - it won't stick
I was using the fact that it would physically go back together to show that the battery is not swollen. I know about heat-activated adhesive. I don't want to have to cook my phone. I'd pay someone to take responsibility if they fuck it up. To be fair this is an old phone so the risk is low, but I'm still not that interested. if it had cost more, I might put in the effort, but it was like $160. I have a heat gun but no rework station, so I don't have reliable air temperature control (it's a Bauer from HF, it
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It's an old phone with the original battery and you say the battery can't be swollen because you can squeeze it back together? It's what happens to every lithium battery when they start to wear out. Yours is no magical exception.
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Many lithium batteries "wear out" without inflating. I've seen plenty of both, even among the cheapest pouch cells. And adding insult to injury, I've seen inflated batteries that still worked great, but of course I got rid of them.
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Not like a balloon, no. Those are defective batteries. All lithium batteries start to offgas and swell to a minor degree as they age and no longer chemically charge and discharge perfectly. It would present as a minor bulging if you were to open it up and look.
Re: Great but i would still hire a professional (Score:2)
Yep. While the ability to swell is a design feature, it's there to deal with an unusual catastrophic failure. Most lithium batteries with this feature will never see it. They are instead destined to see every decreasing capacity until they can no longer hold a charge.
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You can't just press heat activated adhesive back together - it won't stick
I was using the fact that it would physically go back together to show that the battery is not swollen. I know about heat-activated adhesive. I don't want to have to cook my phone. I'd pay someone to take responsibility if they fuck it up. To be fair this is an old phone so the risk is low, but I'm still not that interested. if it had cost more, I might put in the effort, but it was like $160. I have a heat gun but no rework station, so I don't have reliable air temperature control (it's a Bauer from HF, it does what I need it to do.) And I don't have any thermal scanner either.
The phone guts go through an IR Reflow oven during manufacturing. They get a heat soaking that you would frankly have a nearly impossible time achieving with a mere hand-held heat gun blowing against the outside of the case. You'd probably notice all the glue boiling and smoking before you were in danger of cooking any of the internals.
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The moto phone I've got where the adhesive failed presses back together just fine, so the battery can't be swollen. (I've had other swollen batteries before, I know what they are like.) Still works great and has great battery life too.
Adhesive is a shit way to assemble a product which might need service, and it is done for only two reasons, size and cost. But the whole fucking planet pays more for it in the end.
There is another reason adhesives are used: Because it is impractical to use conventional fasteners. Phones that want to be water-resistant is one of those product-classes.
Re: Great but i would still hire a professional (Score:2)
Yep. If the battery has swollen then it's highly unlikely a phone will report any kind of battery life let alone attempt to charge it.
Unless a manufacturer has done something very wrong, that it can still hold a charge suggests the batter did not swell. Swelling is after all a catastrophic failure of the cell's chemistry.
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There is more than one way to waterproof a phone but heat-activated adhesive is reliable
It's not even a reliable way to keep a phone assembled, let alone to keep it from getting water in it. I've got a moto phone right here that the adhesive just failed on. And lo and behold, the same thing happens to Apple phones [ifixit.com].
Adhesive is not a reliable way to assemble a phone.
Neither are screws and gaskets.
Now what?
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The funny part is it is not the battery technology which has advanced to the point of being too complicated. All of these obstacles are fabricated on purpose.
Prove it.
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Also, while it's all well and good that Apple are selling the tools specific to their devices; they're presumably not providing the electronics workshop, workbench, and all of the other assorted other basic tools requisite for working on electronics in general. They won't be providing the space in your home for all that either. Nor are they providing the steady hands and 20/10 eyesight that you need to be competent with modern electronics. These aren't Heath Kits we're talking about here. The inside of
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I had Apple replace the battery in my iPhone 8 because it was still under AppleCare warranty, so it wasn't going to cost me anything. Took it to an actual Apple Store at the local mall. When I got it back, it was scratched all to hell. It looked like they tried opening it with a rusty knife. After contacting customer service, they agreed to replace the entire phone (and I had to use some crappy Android phone* that I had lying around, while waiting for the replacement iPhone to arrive).
I've worked on iPh
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They're a lot simpler now. A couple of screws and the screen comes off. Take off the cable, then pull the battery tabs to release the adhesive and remove the battery.
It's gotten really easy since the iPhone 6 or so. The batteries aren't even soldered to the board - it's on a connector
Of course there is a catch.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is after all to early in the process for a genuine right to repair thing.
Basically the pressure to allow yourself or a third party shop to repair your device is mounting, but slowly and this is an attempt to head off laws that require such by being able to say "see it is possible", while at the same time doing as little as possible.
Re:Of course there is a catch.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Of course there is a catch.. (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all. You can't even tear down an iPhone and swap parts with another iPhone and expect it to work. Third party repair with equivalent parts was happening with Apple phones right up until they started having DRM checks on each component - and this hit phone owners sometimes months after the repair. Now, if you replace the whole screen assembly it won't verify because the touch ID sensor is paired with the CPU. Can't replace a motherboard without carefully separating the touch ID sensor from the donor phone's screen for the same reason.
Apple launches bid (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Headline corrected. Seriously, just pass laws mandating repairable devices. We all pay for landfills and the damage they do to groundwater.
Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:1, Interesting)
iFixit is so full of shit. Apple is making sure that some third party doesn't order a ton of parts, and it's still making sure that end-users know when a part has been replaced with a non-Apple part.
Both of these are reasonable and protect the user from resellers who use B/C class parts.
For example, the repair shop buys an Apple part, uses a B/C grade part, then sells the real Apple part. And yes, this happens.
Re:Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:5, Insightful)
iFixit is so full of shit
iFixit is a useful resource that is giving accurate information. If you disagree, which stated fact do you disagree with.
Apple is making sure that some third party doesn't order a ton of parts
What Apple is doing is making sure that nobody else can stock parts, so that nobody else can provide better repair service than Apple. In fact, they've made sure that everyone else's repair service is inferior. That's anticompetitive.
and it's still making sure that end-users know when a part has been replaced with a non-Apple part.
They are in fact going far beyond that. The only thing they need to do for that is use certs, then notify you if a part on your phone doesn't have one.
Both of these are reasonable and protect the user from resellers who use B/C class parts.
Wrong, and wrong. They don't have to do any of this stuff except for implementing the DRM part to provide warnings in order to achieve that goal. You have no idea what you're on about.
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You sound like you work for iFix. Maybe try replying without so much bias and we might believe you.
Re:Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:4, Funny)
You sound like you work for Apple. Maybe try replying without so much bias and we might believe you.
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Those who make extraordinary claims bear the burden of proof.
Re:Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:4, Informative)
Those who make extraordinary claims bear the burden of proof.
Which of my statements do you see as extraordinary claims? It's not extraordinary, but extremely ordinary that Apple behaves in a consumer-hostile fashion. It's literally their entire history since the first Macintosh. Only the Apple 2 series was owner-friendly.
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Beg to differ. I recall some pretty sweet Quadras from my days in the nineties as an Apple tech. Cases that opened fully and accessibly, easily. Memory and drives wide open for swapping.
In addition, all the earlier Powerbooks had only one thing that made them tricky to get into - torx screws, which weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. Memory upgrades took under a minute. I also upgraded many a SCSI drive in the old Macs all the way back to the SE/30 - good old "stiction" problems on the 40GB Quantum driv
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The trend toward lockdown took a while.
It didn't. Jobs wanted no expansion of any kind on the original Macintoshes for example. They literally snuck in SCSI. It wasn't until (approximately and not gonna look it up) the SE that they had expansion any way but brute force through the CPU socket. Now, Apple did have some pretty sweet cases that were easy to get into for a while there (Macintosh IIci, and a couple of the Quadras) but they've also had a lot of weird and nonstandard crap. Also, speaking as a former owner of a revision 1 B&W G3 with
MB, not GB... (Score:2)
...40 MB quantum drives. It seems so crazy now, but I remember paying $1000 for 16MB of memory for my 486DX266, and $600 for 2 WD 200MB drives.
Obviously my early 90s stories are Johnny-come-lately ones. "Why that's nothing!" stories to follow...
Re:Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:4, Insightful)
iFixit is so full of shit. Apple is making sure that some third party doesn't order a ton of parts, and it's still making sure that end-users know when a part has been replaced with a non-Apple part.
If a repair shop doesn't order parts, then how are they supposed to have them in stock to fix your phone when you bring it in? With this program, they can't even order a replacement part until you bring in your broken phone and then they have to order the part and wait until it gets delivered because any parts they order will need to be tied to that specific phone through the IMEI. Apple doesn't have to do that, they have all the spare parts they need because ONLY they have the ability to lock a replacement part to the phone and THAT is anti-competitive.
Both of these are reasonable and protect the user from resellers who use B/C class parts.
For example, the repair shop buys an Apple part, uses a B/C grade part, then sells the real Apple part. And yes, this happens.
This is going to happen in ANY repair market, buy a cheap component and charge the customer for a more expensive part. Any repair shop that does this isn't going to last very long, the market will take care of this. Any reputable repair shop that cares about customer loyalty and repeat business isn't going to be doing this to make a few quick bucks for the sake of their reputation.
Re: Good for users, bad for iFixit (Score:2)
Theyâ(TM)re also making sure that security isnâ(TM)t compromised. You know whatâ(TM)s included in the camera module? The scanner that unlocks the phone. Allowing its replacement without verification would open up all kinds of attacks like replacing the module with one that gives specific inputs.
Hypcrocrite-Speak (Score:5, Interesting)
"We believe we have a responsibility to customers and the environment to offer convenient access to safe, reliable, and secure repairs.."
OK Apple, I get you want to Go Green and all, but can you please not sit here and pretend you're talking to a bunch of 4-year olds who didn't happen to catch the fact that you fought against a Right to Repair for years, in a legal battle that went all the way to Congress? You know what you did to get to this point, and we consumers didn't magically forget either. Hell, I've seen more authenticity coming from a modern White House press statement.
Really gets old when consumers are treated like absolute idiots by Corporate Arrogance who suddenly pretends to give a shit post-guilty verdict. I'm not even going to ask who falls for this shit anymore. Clearly enough sheep do.
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One always has to translate corporate speak into human speak. In this case, Apple is reserving the right to determine what is "safe, reliable, and secure", and defining it as that which does not interfere with their business model of utilizing anticompetitive practices to stifle competition and preserve profit. It's whatever makes Apple's profits safe, reliable, and secure. It is of course typically offensive that they pretend that they care about the consumer's interests, and typically pathetic that most o
My way to fix Apple devices (Score:2)
Is not buying them. It just works.
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this!! works every time!!
There are alternatives, things like fairphone are good, open, flexible
Too Little from Aniti-Right-to-Repair Apple (Score:2)
Company Type (Score:1)
Great but release the parts (Score:4, Insightful)
Release the schematics, release the parts and let the market handle the repairs. Apple has gone out of its way to block access, this is a token gesture. If I don't get a battery or screen that's functionally equivalent to the original Apple OEM then it should work; I shouldn't have my phone bricked because it doesn't have the firmware secret sauce.
Amend Magnuson-Moss Act (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that hard, we pretty much got there 50 years ago with the Magnuson-Moss Act. Simply amend the act to account for today's shenanigans from the likes of John Deere, Apple etc.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-g... [ftc.gov]
"Tie-In Sales" Provisions
Generally, tie-in sales provisions aren’t allowed. These are provisions that state or imply that a consumer must buy or use an item or service from a particular company to keep their warranty coverage. Here are some examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.
“To keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner warranty in effect, you must use genuine Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have scheduled maintenance performed, at your expense, by the Great American Maintenance Company, Inc., voids this warranty.”
“This limited warranty shall not apply if the warranty seal has been broken, removed, erased, defaced, altered, or is otherwise illegible,” where a device cannot be repaired without such effects.
However, a warrantor can require a consumer to use select items or services if they’re provided free of charge under the warranty or the warrantor receiver a waiver from the FTC. To get a waiver, you must prove to the FTC’s satisfaction that your product won’t work properly without a specified item or service. Contact the warranty staff of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection for information on how to apply for a waiver.
In addition, it is permissible to disclaim warranty coverage for defects or damage caused by the use of parts or service you didn’t provide. Here is an example of a permissible provision in that circumstance:
Necessary maintenance or repairs on your AudioMundo Stereo System can be performed by any company. Damage caused to the AudioMundo Stereo System by you or any non-authorized third party, however, may void this warranty.
Total scam (Score:2)
Prices (Score:1)
There is a problem the summary doesn't mention. Prices for parts are very close or equal to what Apple charges for repair, so there is a little incentive to do it yourself, apart from wanting to tinker. They do offer a credit if you return broken parts to them, so it might look a bit better, if these will be published and are reasonable.
So far this looks like nothing more than a token gesture to escape potential regulatory fines.