Web Excursions 2021-11-18
Daring Fireball: Apple’s New Self Service Repair Program
This appears to be a cause for celebration in right-to-repair circles, but I don’t see it as a big deal at all.
Almost no one wants to repair their own cracked iPhone display or broken MacBook keyboard;
even fewer people are actually competent enough to do so.
I just don’t see how more than a sliver of people would even want to do this rather than go to a professional shop.
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 motive —
that 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.
I don’t see how this is eco-conscious at all.
It doesn’t enable people to repair older devices that Apple itself and authorized repair shops weren’t themselves able to repair.
Apple announces Self Service Repair | Hacker News
pembrook:
Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works.
When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.
now, when the revenue growth is coming from services instead of hardware,
it doesn't pay to piss off customers by making them buy a new phone a year early because the battery died.
justapassenger:
I know how companies of this size work. When they have regulatory/pr/legal risk, they can move really fast for their size.
Don’t know if that’s the case here, but given it only covers subset of parts of few latest models, limited to USA initially, and will likely take a few years to properly expand, it could totally be rushed in timeline of under a year.
webmobdev:
this move is created to kill the growing criticism against its increasingly hard to repair devices,
while also ensuring that they have a ready excuse to reject parts bought from a third-party so that consumers are forced to buy only costly "genuine" parts from Apple.
nostromo:
I'm sad to see even Apple is now pumping out terrible Alegria corporate art.
There's even a subreddit dedicated to hating the Alegria trend: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckalegriaart/top/?t=all
cpeterso:
It's also called Corporate Memphis, a reference to the Memphis Group, an Italian architecture group from the 1980s known for its designs often thought to be garish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis