Want to repair your own iPhone 12/13 (and soon M1 Mac) with official parts? Apple will now sell them to you complete with instructions and tools

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

I understand there may be technical reasons for these matching-part-prompts but at the same time it's a bit asshole-ish to not offer a "dismiss forever" option for people who don't care if the display is slightly miscalibrated or whatever.

I think that It is fair to continue to prompt at least in a way that means if you go to buy a second hand device it is easy to validate what you are getting.  Best would be a way to attached to it (with a cable) in DFU mode and get a report of all the hardware that then has an option to check in with apple to see if this if these were certified reapries or not and validates if the parts are first party or not. (maybe the first time you set up the devices with a new iCloud account it should also warn you!) 

Just hiding the alert for ever does make it way to easy to buy broken devices put in low quality screens etc then sell them on as if they are legit products that in the end for most consumers ends up with the consumer thinking apple uses bad screens. 

[TetraSky]

They saw that they couldn't win against right to repair, so they decided they may as well be the ones getting that money instead of independent repair shops, eh....

[HenrySalayne]

6 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Things like screws and speakers in fact its not just the serial number, the reason for these alert are really that the have not been calibrated, both the screen and speakers on Appel devices will be calibrated in the factory and that calibration info needs to be written to the firmware.

Do you have a reliable source for this claim? Apple is most likely not calibrating each device individually (way to much work). They will either do a generic batch calibration or calibration will be included in the part itself. Individually calibrating every device at the final production stage would be an economical nightmare. The entire idea of automated mass manufacturing was inter-compatibility and a constant quality level for each and every part.

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

They saw that they couldn't win against right to repair, so they decided they may as well be the ones getting that money instead of independent repair shops, eh....

There is nothing stopping someone getting the parts from apple and taking them to a repair shop to do the reapair if their are not confident in doing if themselves. The question does remain if you will be able to pre-order parts without a device id or if when you order you need to provide your device id (I expect the latter as apple will want to ensure they are not at risk of breaching their suppliers contracts on not acting as a parts re-selfer). 

[Blademaster91]

27 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Apple could send you spare parts serialized to your device ID. And this might be their plan all along: dry out 3rd party replacement parts. If there is still a multi-million dollar market which is not already absorbed into the Apple universe, they will find a way to do it.

Yeah that would be only other way to sell parts because Apple wants to DRM lock everything, that still isn't an ideal method of repair IMO, you just can't swap a working display from another phone, and parts that have to be serialized to the device ID still makes replacing parts difficult for any independent repair.

24 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Also DRM / soft locking.   Think: inkjet printer not working unless you buy their ink that has a little rfid tag in it.  Or what Apple is doing where if a speaker gets replaced with an aftermarket one you get a serial number mismatch prompt on the phone.  (Although I don't think Apple is intentionally being evil here...a lot of aftermarket parts are garbage and it makes a bad user experience when you get a "repair" that sucks and is worse than OEM).  So what Apple is doing that is great is eliminating this by just offering the OEM parts directly.

 

John Deere are assholes that block you at every step possible. No schematics, no diagnostic tools which are required to reset things, no parts sold directly to you, and DRM if you want to swap in used parts.

Well  because of the DRM locking of parts with proprietary chips, or chips that only apple can use through contracts, is a reason why aftermarket parts usually suck, if anyone else were allowed to contract out for parts the replacements would have to be OEM quality, similar to replacement auto parts.

Apple are just as much of assholes as John Deere, only certified technicians can get the diagnostic tools, but no schematics, most technicians don't have parts on hand, and from the news article it sounds like hardware would still be DRM tied to the device ID.

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, HenrySalayne said:

Do you have a reliable source for this claim? Apple is most likely not calibrating each device individually (way to much work).

Screens are individual calibrated for sure (at least on the Macs).  Doing per device calibration in fact is better for economics as it massively increases your yields, if you can compensate for issue in software then you can use a camera, screen etc that would otherwise need to be discarded.  

Speakers I'm not sure but even if it is batch calibration over the lifetime of a part being produced there will be many batches so they still need to transfer over the calibration details.
 

[HenrySalayne]

2 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Screens are individual calibrated for sure (at least on the Macs).  Doing per device calibration in fact is better for economics as it massively increases your yields, if you can compensate for issue in software then you can use a camera, screen etc that would otherwise need to be discarded.  

Speakers I'm not sure but even if it is batch calibration over the lifetime of a part being produced there will be many batches so they still need to transfer over the calibration details.

But why would you do that on the completed device and not before each individual screen leaves the factory? You have to do QA anyway on every part before you assemble the device. And it's much easier to calibrate a screen without it being in a bulky, scratch sensitive enclosure and running some software on the main processor. Adding these additional steps doesn't make economical sense.

 

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, HenrySalayne said:

But why would you do that on the completed device and not before each individual screen leaves the factory? You have to do QA anyway on every part before you assemble the device. And it's much easier to calibrate a screen without it being in a bulky, scratch sensitive enclosure and running some software on the main processor. Adding these additional steps doesn't make economical sense.

 

No I mean they do it for each screen and save the profile info then when the screen is used they write that profile info to the device.

Key is that the paring process is really a process of looking up the calibration profile for the part and writing that to the device.  I expect most parts (if not all) can be calibrated before being attached in the factory this also means when apple does repair they do not need the calibration tools to hand they just need a software tool that can lookup the profile and load it onto the device. 

[tkitch]

3 hours ago, hishnash said:

I would expect if you buy all the parts to build a phone/Mac yourself it will cost 2x to 3x buying it personally. What will however realymatter for cost is how broken down the parts are? 

eg when you replace the screen do you need to buy the entire screen assembly you can you purchase just the screen and re-use the existing backlight? or when you replace the tackbpad does apple sell that as a single part or do you need to buy the entire top case? That is what will really factor into if an repair is economic. 

 

You're missing my point.

 

A replacement LCD & Glass for a good android phone costs:  around 125-150$  (I checked on a Galaxy S21 Ultra, so a good phone)

 

If Apple charges 400$ for that part?  I'd say that's pricing it at the level where "Do I pay 400$ to fix this, or do I replace it for not a ton more?"

[lostcattears]

YEs! Finally screen replacements and battery replacements sometimes camera! generally those are the only 3 things... Apple's iphones usually last forever. Unless they are gonna sell us a whole motherboard as well.

 

And finally the tech industry is finally going back the the age where we can repair stuff by ourselves again.

[tkitch]

26 minutes ago, lostcattears said:

YEs! Finally screen replacements and battery replacements sometimes camera! generally those are the only 3 things... Apple's iphones usually last forever. Unless they are gonna sell us a whole motherboard as well.

 

And finally the tech industry is finally going back the the age where we can repair stuff by ourselves again.

don't put the cart before the horse, we have no idea how apple is doing this yet

[saltycaramel]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

Wow. First time I think I've ever seen Apple running scared from potential legislation. There is no way in hell they did this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Also called “front running” legislation.

The market seemed to like it, based on AAPL stock performances on Wednesday.

 

That said, I think no legislation would have forced them to setup a whole one-click-experience individual-consumer-friendly online store with bells and whistles, and rolling it out internationally at that, so going that extra mile is on them. (although we still have to see the actual implementation)

[ImAlsoRan]

14 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Batteries are glued into MacBooks, SSDs are soldered, parts in the iPhone are paired to the logic board, etc. I really hope this program works out in the long run. 

In the latest MacBook Pro, they actually included pull tabs for the battery and didn't require taking out the logic board since it was smaller. Hopefully this "software" they refer to does away with the issues of part pairing, but only time will tell. SSDs being soldered is a bit of a neither here nor there for me, since I'd love to have user replaceable storage on MacBooks but the speed they offer is very impressive, let alone in a laptop. Maybe Apple could offer a hybrid approach in the future if they could even find room in the machine for it where you have super fast, on board storage and replaceable SSDs for longer-term work, assumedly with some "it just works" app to move stuff between the drives based on usage.

[Mihle]

8 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

This is one of the things that blows with Android.  Everyone wants to blame someone else.  Google blames handset manufacturers who blame carriers and the end result is still your 1 year old phone being obsolete with no more updates.  Spoiler alert: even google's own devices don't get more than 1 update so the whole "woe is me the middlemen are the problem" is a red herring.  Ultimately it comes down to Google only caring about how many users they can latch on to for data mining and the ownership experience is secondary so long as people aren't jumping to someone else like Apple.

Well that is false, plenty of Android phones have 2 year main updates and 3 year security, Samsung said they will start doing 3/4 year now. Google is doing 3 themselves at the moment.

[lewdicrous]

14 hours ago, Commodus said:

I'm sure Apple is doing this under pressure from governments (thanks Biden!), but still, it's a good move.

Had this thought too. I wonder if it has anything to do with this;

 

[HenrySalayne]

8 hours ago, hishnash said:

No I mean they do it for each screen and save the profile info then when the screen is used they write that profile info to the device.

Key is that the paring process is really a process of looking up the calibration profile for the part and writing that to the device.  I expect most parts (if not all) can be calibrated before being attached in the factory this also means when apple does repair they do not need the calibration tools to hand they just need a software tool that can lookup the profile and load it onto the device. 

Sure, but I don't see why serialization is necessary? If any Apple device detects a different screen it could just contact the Apple Update server and ask for the new calibration file. And there is already storage baked into the screen (manufacturing date, ID and stuff like that), surely the calibration file could be a part of it (ICC files contain just 4 kByte of data).

So serialization is completely unnecessary and arbitrary? Seems like it.

[mr moose]

It's sad that people are celebrating this not because it is a win for consumers (assuming it comes good) but because it takes the wind out of arguments against apple.  I mean WTF?  really?  people are more interested in stopping criticism of apple rather than fighting for better consumer protections?

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

Sure, but I don't see why serialization is necessary? If any Apple device detects a different screen it could just contact the Apple Update server and ask for the new calibration file. And there is already storage baked into the screen (manufacturing date, ID and stuff like that), surely the calibration file could be a part of it (ICC files contain just 4 kByte of data).

So serialization is completely unnecessary and arbitrary? Seems like it.

Depends, ICC and software calibration is something additional to firmware calibration and ICC/software calibration doesn't do any electronics level calibration at all so I think there would be a raft of things that couldn't be done as easily without giving the OS and app access to hardware firmware in a way that might not be a good idea security wise. Having the screen be an attack vector for malicious code would be less than ideal.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

If any Apple device detects a different screen it could just contact the Apple Update server and ask for the new calibration file.

It's not good idea to have the booted OS be able to modify the firmware data (lots of security confers, do you want an exploit to be able to force your phones screen to be black an white?)  Profiles like this need to be written in DFU mode. 

 

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

surely the calibration file could be a part of it (ICC files contain just 4 kByte of data).

Depends a lot on the chip and the protocol used. Its likely a lot cheaper to do this paring in the factory than add extra controller chips to every single parts (not just the screen we are talking bout also the light sensor, camera etc). On iPhones today you can attach a screen and it works but true toon dose not likely due to not having the calibration info for the light sensor, every single sensor in the device needs to be calibrated and putting a chip onto each one of these to store the calibration information will increase the cost of parts, use up more space within the device etc. 

[Video Beagle]

39 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It's sad that people are celebrating this not because it is a win for consumers (assuming it comes good) but because it takes the wind out of arguments against apple. 

Did you read the effin' thread? It's mostly people working up grand conspiracies about how this is Apple's way of destroying the right to repair movement or them running from laws that don't exist or complaining it's going to suck or that it doesn't let them also buy chinese knock off parts to shove in the iphone they keep dropping in the toilet.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

It's sad that people are celebrating this not because it is a win for consumers (assuming it comes good) but because it takes the wind out of arguments against apple.  I mean WTF?  really?  people are more interested in stopping criticism of apple rather than fighting for better consumer protections?

That's not what I am seeing in this thread. It seems to me like 90% of the thread is just people somehow trying to spin this very positive news article into "Apple bad". 

I think we should be celebrating that Apple did something good. Credit where credit is due and all that. A lot of people on this forum are more interesting in talking shit though. 

[WolframaticAlpha]

I am seriously considering picking up a 12 mini if they do this stuff reasonably.

[mr moose]

51 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Did you read the effin' thread? It's mostly people working up grand conspiracies about how this is Apple's way of destroying the right to repair movement or them running from laws that don't exist or complaining it's going to suck or that it doesn't let them also buy chinese knock off parts to shove in the iphone they keep dropping in the toilet.

I effin read enough.  Do you think people being distrustful of a company that earnt said distrust makes it logical to defend them for everything then by all means do that.  But the reality is that some people would rather quash debate and defend a company than be realistic about motives and consumer rights.

[mr moose]

Just now, LAwLz said:

That's not what I am seeing in this thread. It seems to me like 90% of the thread is just people somehow trying to spin this very positive news article into "Apple bad". 

I think we should be celebrating that Apple did something good. Credit where credit is due and all that. A lot of people on this forum are more interesting in talking shit though. 

Yes I noticed that,  but I also read how its good to shut up the haters.  Keeping in mind the haters were only hating something legitimate.    It's like the only reason Apple have said anything is because the "haters" got organized and held them to account. 

 

Also, so far they have only said they are going to do something good, Whilst I praise the principal suggestion, I am going to wait for action before I sing their praises.

[D13H4RD]

Even though I own an iPhone 13 Pro (excellent phone Btw) and dearly hope that this is exactly what it looks like it is, given Apple's track record, I'm putting on my "healthy skepticism" hat for a bit.