We need to have a serious chat about iPhone repairability. We judged the phones of yesteryear by how easy they were to take apart—screws, glues, how hard it was…
I work in electronics manufacturing and I’m torn on this issue.
On the one hand, fuck Apple for requiring to go through so many hoops.
On the other hand, every device my company makes has an internal checksum and if one PCB is installed incorrectly, the main board throws a fit because the device checksum doesn’t match.
It sounds like Apple may do something similar for their products and it sort of makes sense: determined people try something crazy like take an older iPhone and install a newer Wireless module or replace Lightning with USB-C. Neither of those things were intended by Apple, and there’s a huge potential that it wouldn’t work.
With that said, it’s absolutely overkill for things like display or digitizer replacements, which are going to be the majority of repairs on iPhones.
Tl;Dr - fuck Apple, this is dumb, the users have the right to repair
I think signed hardware components are actually a good thing. The problem is that Apple makes it so that unapproved hardware doesn’t work at all. I think the device should warn the user, but allow them to override and continue at their own risk.
Of course, Apple isn’t going to allow that unless they’re forced to. Glances sideways at the EU.
Yeah, it would be a fantastic thing if it showed a permanent history of parts and their serials in the settings, as well as a date on which the change was noticed, so you have an idea of the history of the phone and what’s been replaced. And, of course, not locking you out of features.
Makes me wish Google hadn’t canned phonebloks. Can you imagine how much waste we could have cut down on if we decided to standardize every component like the usb-c port?
Phonbloks would never have worked. Phones are all different shapes and sizes, so you just run into tons of compatibility issues whenever you want to upgrade anything, as new components will be larger than the old ones. Technology just doesn’t progress in ways that nicely fits into form factors from five years ago, fingerprint reader, FaceID, multiple cameras, wireless charging, etc. None of that fit into a block model. Phones are also a weird market place where people give up headphones and replaceable batteries if it makes their phone 1mm thinner, so a big bulky modular device would really have much chance against the much sleeker competition.
Fairphone is a much better compromise, it’s modular and repairable, but in a way that is actually practical. Turning everything into LEGO blocks looks fun in concept images, but nobody would want to use that.
Moto Z is/was another more interesting approach, instead of making the phone itself modular, it has some contacts on the back to dock extension modules. So you get extensibility without really changing anything about the phone itself.
Maybe the warning could require Apple sign-in to dismiss, but can be hidden at startup? Then make it an industry standard to present the phone when it is powered off.
EDIT: Yes, I know that this is still shitty for most customers.
I can understand why installing the wrong part should give a warning, but the IDs are unique to the part, not the model of part, so even identical parts are not interchangable.
1- theft risk/reward is crushed. It’s simply no longer feasible for stolen iPhones to be parted out if the valuable bits don’t simply work. Sure, dumb and non networked components like frames and glass can probably be salvaged, but when even batteries are involved in the handshake process, you lose out on the ability to sell anything of value.
2- positive supply-chain validation. Not important for the majority of people, but for those who require a little more security, they can be a little more sure that their device isn’t compromised from illegitimate parts. I imagine this to be a fringe benefit for executives and the like. I know at one point government officials had access to some “special” variants of iPhones which were more locked down, but specifics are difficult to come by.
For everybody else, this plain sucks. We move farther and farther into not even owning the physical things in our possession.
That’s odd. That’s really dumb for those third-party technicians to take that, as (aside from the damage to their reputation and simply not being a good person), it would probably be a degraded battery anyway. Being constantly plugged in is very bad for a battery.
I don’t know how old your Mac was, but I think system info does record battery details. If not a serial, it definitely reads the cycle count, so it may have been possible to cross reference that if you knew the cycle count previously, but of course, I don’t blame you for not making backups of all that information and cross referencing it, you should never need to do that in the first place.
I work in electronics manufacturing and I’m torn on this issue.
On the one hand, fuck Apple for requiring to go through so many hoops.
On the other hand, every device my company makes has an internal checksum and if one PCB is installed incorrectly, the main board throws a fit because the device checksum doesn’t match.
It sounds like Apple may do something similar for their products and it sort of makes sense: determined people try something crazy like take an older iPhone and install a newer Wireless module or replace Lightning with USB-C. Neither of those things were intended by Apple, and there’s a huge potential that it wouldn’t work.
With that said, it’s absolutely overkill for things like display or digitizer replacements, which are going to be the majority of repairs on iPhones.
Tl;Dr - fuck Apple, this is dumb, the users have the right to repair
I think signed hardware components are actually a good thing. The problem is that Apple makes it so that unapproved hardware doesn’t work at all. I think the device should warn the user, but allow them to override and continue at their own risk.
Of course, Apple isn’t going to allow that unless they’re forced to. Glances sideways at the EU.
Yeah, it would be a fantastic thing if it showed a permanent history of parts and their serials in the settings, as well as a date on which the change was noticed, so you have an idea of the history of the phone and what’s been replaced. And, of course, not locking you out of features.
With the healthy second-hand market for iPhones, that would be great. Let buyers decide how they feel about previous repairs, offer transparency.
The unhelpful move is requiring a connection to Apple’s servers to calibrate replacement parts.
Makes me wish Google hadn’t canned phonebloks. Can you imagine how much waste we could have cut down on if we decided to standardize every component like the usb-c port?
I think we would need something like a Framework.
Project Ara had no future if all modules need a case for protection AND the components.
Phonbloks would never have worked. Phones are all different shapes and sizes, so you just run into tons of compatibility issues whenever you want to upgrade anything, as new components will be larger than the old ones. Technology just doesn’t progress in ways that nicely fits into form factors from five years ago, fingerprint reader, FaceID, multiple cameras, wireless charging, etc. None of that fit into a block model. Phones are also a weird market place where people give up headphones and replaceable batteries if it makes their phone 1mm thinner, so a big bulky modular device would really have much chance against the much sleeker competition.
Fairphone is a much better compromise, it’s modular and repairable, but in a way that is actually practical. Turning everything into LEGO blocks looks fun in concept images, but nobody would want to use that.
Moto Z is/was another more interesting approach, instead of making the phone itself modular, it has some contacts on the back to dock extension modules. So you get extensibility without really changing anything about the phone itself.
Sounds good, but how do you stop an unscrupulous repair shop from clearing the warning before the end user can see it?
If it is persistent but buried in settings, most people won’t notice.
Maybe the warning could require Apple sign-in to dismiss, but can be hidden at startup? Then make it an industry standard to present the phone when it is powered off.
EDIT: Yes, I know that this is still shitty for most customers.
Yeah, unfortunately that would be up to the average person knowing better than to give out passwords.
I can understand why installing the wrong part should give a warning, but the IDs are unique to the part, not the model of part, so even identical parts are not interchangable.
There’s exactly two positives to this system:
1- theft risk/reward is crushed. It’s simply no longer feasible for stolen iPhones to be parted out if the valuable bits don’t simply work. Sure, dumb and non networked components like frames and glass can probably be salvaged, but when even batteries are involved in the handshake process, you lose out on the ability to sell anything of value.
2- positive supply-chain validation. Not important for the majority of people, but for those who require a little more security, they can be a little more sure that their device isn’t compromised from illegitimate parts. I imagine this to be a fringe benefit for executives and the like. I know at one point government officials had access to some “special” variants of iPhones which were more locked down, but specifics are difficult to come by.
For everybody else, this plain sucks. We move farther and farther into not even owning the physical things in our possession.
deleted by creator
That’s odd. That’s really dumb for those third-party technicians to take that, as (aside from the damage to their reputation and simply not being a good person), it would probably be a degraded battery anyway. Being constantly plugged in is very bad for a battery.
I don’t know how old your Mac was, but I think system info does record battery details. If not a serial, it definitely reads the cycle count, so it may have been possible to cross reference that if you knew the cycle count previously, but of course, I don’t blame you for not making backups of all that information and cross referencing it, you should never need to do that in the first place.
Sounds like that shop may have gone out of business for a reason.