Apple Relents - We Can Fix Our Own Stuff!

[Anderton]

Consumers being able to do their own repairs is becoming a thing. Apple had always resisted this, to the point of lately, not even letting third-party service centers fix iPhone screens. But the company recently announced that starting next year, it will be possible for consumers to do repairs like replace batteries and screens on some iPhones, followed by being able to do repairs on some Mac computers. Apple will make parts, tools, and instructions available.

 

This is a big deal not just because Apple is doing it, but because Apple sets trends - and this is a trend I'd like to see accelerate. One reason I have an Android phone as well as an iPhone is because I can replace the battery in the Android, and expand the memory (the wicked long battery life didn't hurt, either).

 

So companies use repairs as a profit center...got it. But will this change really make a difference? I actually think it could increase revenue. A lot of people aren't going to do their own repairs. Third-party shops will have to buy the parts from Apple anyway, probably at relatively high prices, and the customers who patronize the shops will keep them in business. One reason I use a Windows laptop for live performance is the ease with which you can replace or repair it compared to a MacBook. A thriving third-party service business diminishes Windows' advantage. Another consideration is that one reason I haven't upgraded to a new iPhone is that the cost of memory is absurd compared to getting an Android and sticking in a 1 TB SD card. Also, I've had battery issues in the past with my iPhone 7, and it was a hassle to get it fixed. I figured at some point, a new iPhone would have the same issues. But if I can replace the battery, that's no longer a consideration.

 

We'll see how this plays out, but Apple's doing very well selling services, and they're sitting on a lot of bucks. Letting their products have a longer useful life is good for consumers, good for the environment, and I think long-term, good for Apple.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Looking forward to that development.

[Joe Muscara]

https://daringfireball.net/2021/11/apple_self_service_repair_program

 

nothing announced today changes the fact that Apple still requires Apple genuine parts for all authorized repairs, no matter who does the repairing. There"s good reason for that, and it"s not a money grab. Today"s announcement, to my eyes, is about nothing more than reducing regulatory pressure from legislators who"ve fallen for the false notion that Apple"s repair policies, to date, have been driven by profit motiveâââthat Apple profits greatly from authorized repairs, and/or that their policies are driven by a strategy of planned obsolescence, to get people to buy new products rather than repair broken old ones. I don"t believe either of those things,* but for those who believe either or both, I don"t see how this Self Repair Program really changes anything other than who"s performing the labor.

 

* While running some benchmarks for another article, today I upgraded my iPhone X from 2017 to iOS 15.1. iOS 15 doesn"t just run on that four-year-old iPhone, it runs great. No company comes close to Apple in supporting older devices for longer.

 

P.S. Doing memory upgrades on Apple stuff is probably not going to be a thing in the foreseeable future, since all the memory is part of the SoC. The pro is that it's way faster and accessible to all the processing units, the con is that you can't change it.

[Notes_Norton]

It seems Apple is reluctantly giving up a revenue stream.

 

Look for patented parts in the next iPhone that only Apple can make or license to repair shops.

 

My mechanic tells me car dealers already do this. Aftermarket parts makers can't duplicate certain parts because of the patents, and the charge for those parts are about twice as much as a similar part for a comparable engine.

 

Capitalism at it's greediest.

 

Notes â«

[Anderton]

From the above article...

 

Also, nothing announced today changes the fact that Apple still requires Apple genuine parts for all authorized repairs, no matter who does the repairing. There"s good reason for that, and it"s not a money grab.

 

The reason, of course, is that a lot of the parts are proprietary. Whether it's a "money grab" or not depends on what the margin will be, but I think it will probably be in line with Apple"s Product Gross Margins, which according to NASDAQ are around 35%. That's not excessive.

 

Today"s announcement, to my eyes, is about nothing more than reducing regulatory pressure from legislators who"ve fallen for the false notion that Apple"s repair policies, to date, have been driven by profit motiveâââthat Apple profits greatly from authorized repairs...

 

Anyone who thinks repairs aren't about a profit center is naive, but a profit center is NOT the same as a "money grab." The days of replacing a 50 cent transistor and charging $2.00+$8.00 for labor are over. Now it's board swaps in the hundreds of dollars. Think for a second - companies already have the parts, they had to use them for their own products. They keep some (which were amortized on the original production run) in inventory for repairs. A board swap requires almost no time and very little skill, but you get to mark up something that costs $100 instead of the $10 part that was the actual problem. And, doing repairs justifies buying enough extra parts to have them in stock if needed. Otherwise, it's just capital tied up in dead inventory.

 

On the other hand, Apple charges $49 to $69 to replace an iPhone battery. It probably costs about that much not just for the battery, but to log it into their system, pack it up, track, deal with customer service if the people delivering the phone screw up, etc. If that's a "money grab," then Apple isn't very good at it.

 

But spare me from "legislators who've fallen for the false notion..." I have no problem agreeing that Apple is being fair, while also juggling dealing with the realities of the marketplace. What this person completely fails to realize is that time is money. I can get a battery for my Android for $17 that shows up on my doorstep the next day. I can remove and replace the old battery in under 5 minutes. So could my kid. Or my neighbor. Total time spent ordering, unpacking, and installing: 15 minutes max. There's no way I can do that with my iPhone. I can send it back (3-5 days), or drive an hour round-trip to go to an Apple store, after making an appointment at their convenience. So yes, Apple is making my life more difficult and expensive. I don't blame them, that's an unavoidable side effect of their business model. But my time is valuable (especially that one-hour drive). Fixing the Apple battery is going to cost me far more, above and beyond the cost of the battery itself.

 

I don"t see how this Self Repair Program really changes anything other than who"s performing the labor.

 

Who performs the labor is NOT trivial. Being able to do it myself (or have someone do it who can) makes my life simpler, puts the unit back in operation sooner, and yes, will cost me less - much less when taking the cost of my time into account. It also means I can keep some spare parts on hand in case of emergency. I fixed a floppy drive in Belize once on my MacBook (the kind with a trackball) because I was able to find a dead MacBook and cannibalize the floppy drive.

 

...and/or that their policies are driven by a strategy of planned obsolescence, to get people to buy new products rather than repair broken old ones. I don"t believe either of those things

 

Then this guy has a short memory. When the iPod came out, the battery was not meant to replaceable by anyone, including the factory. Jobs's attitude was "the battery lasts long enough, buy a new iPod." After enough people screamed, Apple made the batteries factory-replaceable. It was a black eye for the company at that time. Old reputations die hard, and while I believe Apple learned its lesson and changed course early on, you can't blame people who are skeptical, based on the history.

 

Then again...

 

Although anyone who thinks Apple doesn't have a strategy of planned obsolescence is insane, anyone who doesn't realize why this is so is also insane: Apple's entire brand is built around 1) being on the cutting edge, 2) offering reliable products, and 3) knowing that people will gladly pay more to get both. The Apple Silicon chips embody planned obsolescence - Apple has planned to make a new generation of computer silicon that's faster, has better battery life, generates less heat, and has a serious roadmap for future development, which of course means that previous products become obsolete. (At least during both of Apple's major transitions, there was software that provided more-or-less compatibility until companies got on board.) Nor is Apple unique. Use LTO tape storage? Capacity doubles about every 3 years, and the newer devices almost certainly won't be able to read backup tapes beyond the previous generation. But these aren't toys, they're for companies that need petabyes of storage, and they KNOW they'll have to spend thousands of dollars on new machines, and thousands of hours refreshing tapes. It's what allows them to store more data, which is constantly being generated. Being on the cutting edge means that something else got cut in the process. If Apple didn't plan to obsolete their products by coming up with more advanced stuff, they'd be outrun by companies that did. (Whether a constant drive for more/better/faster is sustainable, while producing tons and tons of toxic electronic waste, is a whole other discussion. But, keeping older units running longer is baby steps toward at least mitigating that somewhat.)

 

While running some benchmarks for another article, today I upgraded my iPhone X from 2017 to iOS 15.1. iOS 15 doesn"t just run on that four-year-old iPhone, it runs great. No company comes close to Apple in supporting older devices for longer.

 

Dude...seriously, you need to get out more.

[Anderton]

P.S. Doing memory upgrades on Apple stuff is probably not going to be a thing in the foreseeable future, since all the memory is part of the SoC. The pro is that it's way faster and accessible to all the processing units, the con is that you can't change it.

 

The 32 GB memory in my Android is part of the SoC, but the microSD card slot isn't

 

I upgraded to half a terabyte for $55. A lot of a phone's storage is for stuff that doesn't have to run at blazing fast speeds, it just needs a home. Whether Apple left out a microSD slot as a design aesthetic, to help make the phone more waterproof, or to make you pay a stiff price if you want more RAM, I have no idea.

[spokenward]

Apple's change in policy didn't happen in a vacuum, there has been a public policy movement to address "right to repair" (that's the legislative lobbying name for the various efforts to change laws and address the ways that government agencies have protected these questionable claims for intellectual property protections).

 

Part of it has been driven by the people trying to fix phones, tablets and computing hardware and part of it has been driven by people trying to fix high tech farm equipment.

 

https://www.repair.org/legislation

 

https://uspirg.org/blogs/blog/usp/half-us-states-looking-give-americans-right-repair

 

It's a necessary thing. If you can't open it, you don't own it.

[Anderton]

Apple's change in policy didn't happen in a vacuum, there has been a public policy movement to address "right to repair" (that's the legislative lobbying name for the various efforts to change laws and address the ways that government agencies have protected these questionable claims for intellectual property protections).

 

IIRC, it started in Europe?

[spokenward]

Apple's change in policy didn't happen in a vacuum, there has been a public policy movement to address "right to repair" (that's the legislative lobbying name for the various efforts to change laws and address the ways that government agencies have protected these questionable claims for intellectual property protections).

 

IIRC, it started in Europe?

 

hmmm... dunno, "right to be forgotten" RTBF started there. I started sending emails to my state rep around 2017. It was news to him at that time and I got a couple of serious responses from his office.

[Anderton]

Did a little research...the movement started in the US with cars, then spread to Europe and elsewhere. Interestingly, Steve Wozniak was passionate in his insistence that Apple get behind it, even when the company was committed to preventing it.

 

I also found an interesting article about the lengths to which Apple (along with other tech companies) went to try and kill any legislation that would allow right-to-repair. The reasons against it were so overblown about "safety and security concerns" that I can't help but conclude the opposition was founded on something else, like companies trying to protect a revenue stream.

[Notes_Norton]

It's a symptom of capitalism.

 

In a small, privately owned business, all that is necessary is that the business makes enough profit to pay the owners and employees a fair wage and keep up with inflation.

 

In a corporation, approximately half the owners are not working for the company, but instead have money invested in stock.

 

If the corporation were to only make enough profit to pay the owners and employees a fair wage and keep up with inflation, the stocks would not increase in value, and the stockholders would bail.

 

The corporation needs ever-increasing profits. The profit from this quarter must be larger than last quarter. The next quarter's profits must be better than this quarters. And so on, ad infinitum.

 

Perpetual growth is what a corporation needs to keep the stockholders from jumping ship. After all, what's the use of buying stock in a company if it isn't going to constantly increase in value? Perpetual growth is unrealistic in a closed system. This is the dark side of capitalism, its Achilles heel.

 

So investing in new companies often brings a big profit for the stockholders until the market is saturated. When the entire world doesn't have your product, and if you created a product the world wants, the stock grows until everybody has one.

 

Then what? How are you going to keep the cash flow and profits escalating when everyone who wants what you have to sell already has one?

 

Creative ways are needed to keep the income stream coming and even more than that, perpetually increasing profits. The stock needs to grow in value.

 

Planned obsolescence, upgrade or perish, no support for old gear - so you need to buy new, subscriptions, selling your personal information, selling parts, cheapening the product, outsourcing cheaper labor, avoiding taxes, etc., are just a few ways to keep the stockholders happy.

 

Repairing is another revenue stream. That's why corporations fight the right to repair laws.

 

It's not money-grabbing as some people put it, but simply keeping the company alive and keeping the stocks growing for as long as they can and not ending up like Sears, K-Mart, Montgomery Wards, Sharper Image, Commodore, Westinghouse, Blockbuster, Woolworths, and so many others in the corporate graveyard.

 

And we the customers are in a tight spot. We hate to see the never-ending payments, but we would hate to see the company go belly-up even more.

 

I don't know the cure for this. Marx and Engels saw the problem, but Communism wasn't the solution, it had its own set of problems that proved to be even worse than capitalism's.

 

So you are going to have to buy only overpriced Apple parts to fix your phone, overpriced GM or Ford parts to fix your car, and everything is going to have a planned life in your hands to make sure you buy a new one at whatever interval the company thinks it can get away with.

 

There has to be a better way, but I can't think of one, and nobody else I know of is proposing anything.

 

Got any great economic ideas?

 

Insights and incites by Notes â«

[Anderton]

In a small, privately owned business, all that is necessary is that the business makes enough profit to pay the owners and employees a fair wage and keep up with inflation.

 

Sorta. Some people have their sights set on more than stasis, and want to be able to do R&D to develop interesting ideas that could benefit the world. Or, some owners might decide that spending money on powerful new computers would improve productivity to the point where employees only needed to work 4-day weeks. But they have to make enough money to buy the powerful new computers before they can implement the 4-day work week that makes employees happy, prevents turnover so people don't have to be retrained, lowers operating costs, and makes the business more sustainable. So eventually the company would make back their investment, but it might a while.

 

Overall, though, this is something where you don't want me offering my opinions, which in a nutshell are: The source of a system's problems are how people implement it, not the system itself. Any political or economic system works as long as people are cool and don't try to game the system, and the corollary is no political or economic system works if people aren't cool and try to game the system.

 

Since all people aren't cool, and there has never existed a system that couldnt' be gamed, there is no solution available at the moment.

 

Of course, I have solutions...but implementing them would require that people be cool

[Notes_Norton]

OK, so how are we going to make everyone cool. That seems like a very good idea to me.

[Anderton]

OK, so how are we going to make everyone cool. That seems like a very good idea to me.

 

Any further discussion into the details would veer into political philosophies, which I don't want to do.

 

The broad view is that removing fear as a factor in people's lives will make them stop being predatory. Of course, not all sources of fear can be eliminated. But some can. People who have fear that they won't be able to eat, become bankrupt because a loved one gets ill, will lose their job and not be able to take care of their children, won't go someplace because they're afraid of crime, etc. are all preventable if humanity as a whole recognized that a healthy society has tremendous value to everyone. In other words, the overriding goal would need to shift from individual survival to survival of the species as a whole.

 

Buckminster Fuller once said there are enough resources on the earth do that every man, woman, and child on earth could live comfortably, up to a limit of about 20 billion people IIRC. He estimated that to make that happen, every person on earth would have to dedicate two weeks out of the year to maintaining the ways to create and distribute those resources - sort of like compulsary military service. The unique twist was that it was an interesting hybrid of pureplay communism, where everyone had to contribute to society as determined by society, and pureplay free enterprise, because you could do whatever you wanted the other 50 weeks of the year. If you just wanted to lie on a beach, you could, knowing that you were covered for the basics. But if you wanted to start a company, become immensely rich, and buy a million dollar yacht, then that's how you would spend your other 50 weeks.

 

He also proposed ways to generate and distribute power on a global basis, instead of the current patchwork quilt of utilities. He argued that it would be vastly more efficient, and guarantee that all people would have access to energy.

 

Of course, humanity is too untogether to try this out to see if it would work. But maybe it would.

 

In the meantime, random acts of kindness to others seems like a good start

[KuruPrionz]

 

In a corporation, approximately half the owners are not working for the company, but instead have money invested in stock.

 

Got any great economic ideas?

 

Insights and incites by Notes â«

 

I do have a great economic idea, buy the dips!!!!

I've owned Apple stock for 8 months or so, it is up 28% or 1,084.00. That is about what I paid recently for an Apple refurbished Mac Mini M1 with 16gb ram and 512 gb ssd.

Yeah, I played the casino. At this point I can consider the Mac Mini to be free, no?

 

Over the decades, stocks have been a great investment for me. You do have to spend some time following trends, buying and selling. It's not that hard to do, often the current news will inform your next move.

 

I'm just a "little guy" but sometimes we can be winners. Cheers, Kuru

[Anderton]

I'm just a "little guy" but sometimes we can be winners. Cheers, Kuru

 

Are you more like a day trader kind of guy or a long-term investor?

[KuruPrionz]

I'm just a "little guy" but sometimes we can be winners. Cheers, Kuru

 

Are you more like a day trader kind of guy or a long-term investor?

 

Definitely not a day trader. More of a long term investor now as I've learned. I've done some quick flips that were profitable but I'd have been better off to hold long term. I didn't sell any Apple stock to buy the Mac Mini, I kept it in my Roth IRA and plan on growing it for as long as possible. At the same time, I did make enough to pay for the computer, that only took about 8 months or so.

[Greg Mein]

People like to think of Apple as being cutting edge but that's not necessary the case. I bought a brand new MacBook Pro from the Apple website in August this year along with a "magic" mouse. The MBP is apparently a left over from 2019 and the mouse came with a USB charging cable.......a 2019 MBP doesn't have a USB port.

[Anderton]

I bought a brand new MacBook Pro from the Apple website in August this year along with a "magic" mouse. The MBP is apparently a left over from 2019

 

Wait...didn't Apple still make MacBook Pros in 2020? The M1 machines didn't come out until November of 2020, and they weren't MacBook Pros.

[Greg Mein]

I bought a brand new MacBook Pro from the Apple website in August this year along with a "magic" mouse. The MBP is apparently a left over from 2019

 

Wait...didn't Apple still make MacBook Pros in 2020? The M1 machines didn't come out until November of 2020, and they weren't MacBook Pros.

 

When I go to About This Mac in the upper left hand corner it reads, "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)" and I can certainly prove that I bought this from the Apple website in August of 2021.

[Franknputer]

Apple doesn't release new versions of every model every year. There wasn't a new version of the 16" MacBook Pro released in 2020. Doesn't mean they stop selling them because the year changed.

[Anderton]

Apple doesn't release new versions of every model every year. There wasn't a new version of the 16" MacBook Pro released in 2020. Doesn't mean they stop selling them because the year changed.

 

No, but I'm surprised they have so many computers in inventory that computers made in 2019 are being sold in 2020. I figured they were a "just in time" kinda place to avoid tying up capital in stuff sitting on a shelf.

[KuruPrionz]

Apple doesn't release new versions of every model every year. There wasn't a new version of the 16" MacBook Pro released in 2020. Doesn't mean they stop selling them because the year changed.

 

No, but I'm surprised they have so many computers in inventory that computers made in 2019 are being sold in 2020. I figured they were a "just in time" kinda place to avoid tying up capital in stuff sitting on a shelf.

 

Manufacturing space is best utilized constantly. Dedicating a space to produce one item isn't efficient practice either.

 

If you are using a line set up for a specific item and will need that space to manufacture a different item then it makes a certain amount of sense to produce a run and store them. For whatever reason, maybe they didn't hit the numbers they projected.

They could probably just give them all away and not ding themselves too badly. Not something you'd want to repeat too often.

 

I'm glad I don't make those kinds of decisions!!!!

[Greg Mein]

I've always thought that thunderbolt 3 ports exclusively was not one of their better ideas but I haven't had any trouble with these models and I hope the couple I have will hang in for a long time. I'm glad to see they've gone back to a better selection of ports on the M1 models.

[Theo Verelst]

I like competition as opposed to dictatorship in electronics, while it's somewhat fun what the hybrid chip in presumably reliable modern apple can do, it better to consider getting a good sale on a decent giga air or something, even if it means paying 21% tax in Europe. More fun to be able to change a fan or memory yourself, and a new drive is kind of a must for serious creators.

 

T