Apple Opens up parts swapping between devices

leadeater · April 16

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

also - you're arguing that this is a requirement to reduce phone theft, why isnt your car's door bound to the computer by serial number? do you also lock your bike with a lock on the back wheel *and* a lock on the front wheel? is your TV chained down so that it cant be stolen? should your laptop's parts be tied on serial number to make sure you wont get robbed each time you are in public with a backpack? fact of the matter is that apple is unique with this implementation, and yet we're not living in the theft armageddon you imagine. maybe you live there, but in that case i suggest either moving or advocating for better policing.

Preventing theft derived repairs is squarely an Apple created narrative. If they say it's a problem then apparently it's a problem. Where as what we know from every other product ever is that the majority of non-guanine parts come from the supply chain itself either by non-certified "genuine parts", QA rejected, warranty spare supplies never used or dipped in to etc.

There are a lot of parts on the market that come from the manufacturer itself, multiple different ways, but don't have the proper authority of sale/existence.

Does it actually make sense that phones are being stolen on mass and parted down for repair? Why would any of even the most dodgy repair stalls go with suspected stolen good when they can get a "new, totally genuine *wink* *wink*" part for next to nothing and up charge it? Which isn't actually a crime unlike dealing in stolen goods.

Parts pairing isn't about stolen devices it's about the above, that's what Apple or really any tech brand (HP, Dell etc) actually care about. Only Apple is as ruthless about trying to stop it though.

hishnash · April 16

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Does it actually make sense that phones are being stolen on mass and parted down for repair? Why would any of even the most dodgy repair stalls go with suspected stolen good when they can get a "new, totally genuine *wink* *wink*" part for next to nothing and up charge it? Which isn't actually a crime unlike dealing in stolen goods.

If your a store your not going to be buying stolen parts directly from thieves your going to be buying them in large shipment from re-sellers. It is already the case that many of them get court up being part that pretend to be OEM but are not so completely feasible that if it were possible to re-use stolen parts they would also be buying shipments containing stolen parts.

Currently there is no market for stolen iPhone parts as you cant use them as assemblies (you need to spend a LOT on breaking down to raw panels), but if you could there would be a good bit of value in stealing an iPhone and selling it for parts, when you look at the cost of a display assembly or a main camera assembly there is a lot of value there and if your a gang that can capture 100 to 1000 phones a day in a city this would be a very nice source of revenue (back before device locking was a thing there were many street gangs epxliclty targeting early smart phones due to the high value, small size, and rapid snatch and grab low risk mechanic).

Stealing a car takes a LOT more skill and is much riskier (with lots of the world have dedicated laws around auto-theft and entire police departments focused on this).. snacking phones from people as they walk down the street is tribal and very low risk.

---

I don't see the issue with stopping the use of stolen parts.

Dracarris · April 16

11 hours ago, manikyath said:

parting out an iphone requires a cleanroom

Absolutely fucking not.

leadeater · April 16

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

If your a store your not going to be buying stolen parts directly from thieves your going to be buying them in large shipment from re-sellers.

In which world are there resellers selling stolen parts from stolen devices? 0.1%? 0.2%?

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

It is already the case that many of them get court up being part that pretend to be OEM but are not so completely feasible that if it were possible to re-use stolen parts they would also be buying shipments containing stolen parts.

Apple calls all parts not come from them as stolen, this does not mean taken from consumer devices that are stolen, parted out and then sold. What happens is what I pointed out, unauthorized distribution of parts aka stolen.

I see an issue of lying about what is really happening and pretending that consumer iPhones are being stolen in any meaningful quantity to harvest parts from, this isn't happening and not because of serial number pairing, this wasn't ever happening.

There is a very clear line between an iPhone being stolen from a person and parted out and unauthorized sale of parts, I really don't care that Apple ignores this line. These are categorically and objectively different event types.

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

if your a gang that can capture 100 to 1000 phones a day in a city

You should really sanity check your examples, in which city would it ever be possible and realistic to steal 1000 phones a day? In all of Brazil, the whole country, just under a million phones are stolen a year and in the US about 3 to 4 million.

Then to follow on from that how many would ever actually be stripped for parts...

This is also phones not iPhones.

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

(back before device locking was a thing there were many street gangs epxliclty targeting early smart phones due to the high value, small size, and rapid snatch and grab low risk mechanic).

Correct, to on sell the stolen phone and not for parts.

Kisai · April 16

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I see an issue of lying about what is really happening and pretending that consumer iPhones are being stolen in any meaningful quantity to harvest parts from, this isn't happening and not because of serial number pairing, this wasn't ever happening.

IPhones are stolen by street theives and organized crime, and then "refurbished" and sold to people who don't know the origin. All the stuff that is locked and doesn't allow activation, gets chopped up and sold as parts on eBay that amazingly some sellers have hundreds of.

You may not want to believe it, but this is pretty much what the majority of the used electronics on eBay and other market places. "Sold As-IS" = Stolen, "No Warranty", Broken "parts only", are all stolen devices if they are still under the manufacturer's warranty date. We know this is true because of the kinds of disputes raised at Paypal.

A three year old device, nobody is going to question if it's stolen or not. But a seemingly "new" device being sold for parts is.

leadeater · April 16

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You may not want to believe it

I don't because it's not a thing, not for parts. Not only because this doesn't happen for not iPhones but because it has been widely known that non-genuine Apple parts are essentially worthless so the addressable market size for people not aware and willing to buy is not that large.

The phone theft crime statistics are poisoned by ~70% simply being misplaced phones. The vast, vast majority of crime reported phones are not actually stolen.

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

and then "refurbished" and sold to people who don't know the origin

Not for a long time. Few have the devices and capability to unlock and wipe them making them able to be sold. You can only fob off so many that are still locked before it'll bite you like I already said.

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You may not want to believe it, but this is pretty much what the majority of the used electronics on eBay and other market places. "Sold As-IS" = Stolen, "No Warranty", Broken "parts only", are all stolen devices if they are still under the manufacturer's warranty date. We know this is true because of the kinds of disputes raised at Paypal.

This as I have already said don't originate from stolen phones, they come through the supply chain unauthorized, sold as "new"

Are stolen iPhones sold, yes, meaningfully so by numbers? Not really. Again Apple saying it is a problem doesn't make it so and Apple labels the mentioned unauthorized sale of parts as stolen. If everything is stolen then it's a problem right? Because it doesn't matter that thousands of QA rejected screens are passed off by the ODM and then end up on the market, that's the same as an iPhone stolen in NYC right?

Really the core issue and what I have been pointing to is that parts pairing is a supply chain control and not an anti-theft measure.

Kisai · April 16

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

This as I have already said don't originate from stolen phones, they come through the supply chain unauthorized.

Ask how they're getting into the supply chain unauthorized.

Because after-market parts are unauthorized, but somehow "Genuine Unauthorized Apple parts" doesn't make a compelling reason.

https://in.mashable.com/tech/52519/rotten-operation-finally-comes-to-an-end-14000-pirated-parts-of-apple-and-samsung-seized

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/international-trafficker-counterfeit-apple-products-sentenced-prison

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3ppvj/dhs-seized-aftermarket-apple-laptop-batteries-from-independent-repair-expert-louis-rossman

https://www.vice.com/en/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-screens-jessa-jones

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-owner-and-lost

I don't need to tell you that "Counterfeit" doesn't mean it's fake, the same factory could be producing the "counterfeit" part and a third party is putting apple logo's on it to sell as legit. Counterfeit in terms of how it's treated globally simply means "this bears the trademarks of a company who didn't manufacture it"

The serial numbers, defeats the ability for counterfeit items to be installed in devices, be it obtained from broken phones, stolen phones, or "aftermarket" sources. Customers don't want to be deceived by Louis Rossman and Jessa Jones that their devices have been fixed with genuine parts when they clearly haven't been.

This entire parts swapping issue stems from a practice many tech people do, which is "Frankenstein's Monster" assembling a device from several broken or obsolete devices to make one or two devices that work. In which case Apple's compromise here solves that.

But many customers just lose devices, and if they're not locked out, someone else wipes it and uses it as their own if the owner doesn't report it stolen.

leadeater · April 16

Just now, Kisai said:

Ask how they're getting into the supply chain unauthorized.

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Because it doesn't matter that thousands of QA rejected screens are passed off by the ODM and then end up on the market, that's the same as an iPhone stolen in NYC right?

Kisai · April 16

Just now, leadeater said:

Because it doesn't matter that thousands of QA rejected screens are passed off by the ODM and then end up on the market, that's the same as an iPhone stolen in NYC right?

This is what we're often told, and have been told ever since people learned NIKE counterfeits are sometimes this in the late 90's.

But electronics aren't so simple. I doubt QA is getting hundreds of "barely failing" parts that someone then dumpster dives to sell. Someone is being paid to recycle these and isn't doing what they are paid to do.

leadeater · April 16

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

But electronics aren't so simple. I doubt QA is getting hundreds of "barely failing" parts that someone then dumpster dives to sell. Someone is being paid to recycle these and isn't doing what they are paid to do.

It's not dumpster diving, the manufacturing knowingly sells them off and doesn't care how or where they get used. As I mentioned on the other page a large supply of HP parts come from warranty supply when HP end support of the device.

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Someone is being paid to recycle these and isn't doing what they are paid to do.

Yes and in what way is this counter to anything I have said.

Again parts pairing is a supply chain control and not a measure of defense against stolen phones. Apple simply brands all parts in this situation as stolen because it suits them to do so. A big bust of ~10,000 devices of all kinds is pittance to the actual sale of non genuine parts that actually happen and even in your articles they aren't pointing to literally stolen phones from people.

It is critically important to differentiate between a phone being stolen from a person and broken down for parts and the sale of non genuine and/or unauthorized parts. It's important because the chain of events is different, the facts of the situation are different.

I don't think that iPhones aren't being stolen, I am countering the proposed scale of impact to the market of device parts specifically.

itsabearcannon · April 16

16 hours ago, manikyath said:

not some methhead taking something that looks valuable hoping to trade it for a good time not even understanding what "activation lock" even is.

So....the methhead trades the stolen phone into one of those mall kiosks for some cash. Great.

What do you think happens after that? The phone is unusable, so whatever company comes to collect all the phones in that bin can't use it. They sell the locked phones off in bulk to the cheapest "recycler" they can find.....who sends the devices off to China to get scrapped into parts.

Nobody's arguing it's some mafia don calling the shots for all his underlings to go steal iPhones and disassemble them in the basement of a suspiciously-empty-all-the-time Italian restaurant.

Just that stolen devices, when locked, are scrapped for parts. Making those scrapped parts from stolen devices more difficult to resell is a win. Nobody is saying all parts should be unusable when brand new. Nobody is saying if YOU scrap your phone for parts, you shouldn't be able to use those parts to repair a device. Nobody is saying if you make a legitimate sale to a repair shop, THEY shouldn't be able to scrap your phone for parts and reuse them.

manikyath · April 16

1 hour ago, itsabearcannon said:

Just that stolen devices, when locked, are scrapped for parts. Making those scrapped parts from stolen devices more difficult to resell is a win. Nobody is saying all parts should be unusable when brand new. Nobody is saying if YOU scrap your phone for parts, you shouldn't be able to use those parts to repair a device. Nobody is saying if you make a legitimate sale to a repair shop, THEY shouldn't be able to scrap your phone for parts and reuse them.

stolen phones might be scrapped for parts in the same way that cash may be used to buy drugs.

should we then also ban cash?

Kisai · April 16

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

I don't think that iPhones aren't being stolen, I am countering the proposed scale of impact to the market of device parts specifically.

We will likely never know the scale at which stolen iPhone parts enter the supply chain, but it's clearly enough of a problem that Apple chose to do this in the first place. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

And having worked for Auction place, I also know the scale at which some of these sellers have been punished for selling counterfeit stuff. It's not singles, it's literately thousands of sales per day. The iPhone was new when I worked there, and it was the single most counterfeited electronic device next to SD cards and pokemon carts.

OhYou_ · April 16

tbh i've bought *probably* stolen locked phones off ebay before and used them for parts.
it's not my problem, i'm just doing my part to recycle.

leadeater · April 17

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

We will likely never know the scale at which stolen iPhone parts enter the supply chain, but it's clearly enough of a problem that Apple chose to do this in the first place. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

That is just your assumption. My assumption is that the reason did this is for supply chain control like I've been saying. Making sure their suppliers or parts can't or can't easily pass of parts they aren't supposed to be is an actually known wide scale problem in the tech industry.

Parts pairing doesn't address many things, counterfeiting being one of them unless we are talking about actual Apple parts not authorized again to construct the device and that would be happening in the ways I have already pointed out.

If Apple wants to call out stolen device specifically as a justification for parts pairing then they should provide the data evidence for it. I'm not directly against parts pairing either but I don't apricate false motives either.

At least when HPE does this for their servers they state it is for supply chain control and security so you can trust all parts in the server are genuine and untampered and it will even tell you it's not the first time the server has been powered on since shipping and there is no way to bypass this power on counter.

So like HPE I don't mind Apple doing it for supply chain reasoning but they should at least say so, few are going to be able to raise legitimate objections to that, particularly not now that you can get parts from Apple. Also parts authorization doesn't have to prevent usage across devices, that's an implementation choice which also isn't a problem if you can reauthorized the part to another device easily too.

Ultimately and working iPhone is so much more valuable than the parts from it and if someone is stealing it and has the means to unlock it then they won't be selling it as parts or anything like that. If they don't have the means to unlock it then it's also unlikely the matter at all in the global scale of iPhone parts as well.

Just remember what Apple says is a reason for something doesn't mean it's the actual reason for it. Or they could be untruthful about aspects of it like what is "stolen".

hishnash · April 17

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also parts authorization doesn't have to prevent usage across devices, that's an implementation choice which also isn't a problem if you can reauthorized the part to another device easily too.

This is exactly what the press release is, you can know use parts from other device (so long as those devices are not iCloud locked).

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Making sure their suppliers or parts can't or can't easily pass of parts they aren't supposed to be is an actually known wide scale problem in the tech industry.

The fact that apple keep the calibration profiles servers side rather than embedding them on the parts is the protection against this. The change in this press release has nothing at all to do with that.

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Or they could be untruthful about aspects of it like what is "stolen".

Apple considers any iPhone that is iCloud locked as not being authorised to be used for parts.

This is very clear. I really don't get what your issue with this is?

Under the new rules apples calibration database servers will provide calibration profiles for:
* New OEM parts from apple (that thus have not been paired do any SOC yet)
* Use used parts from another apple product so long as the product is not iCloud locked (thus transferring the lock to the new device)

---

Third party parts, or parts that fall of the production line, QA rejections etc do not have calibration profiles stored in apples servers so its rather impossible for these servers to provide said calibration, and it would be extremely odd for any OEM to do this even if they had the profiles.

It is a completely seperate question as it if apple should document the calibration profile formats and provide a method (over USB diagnostic DFU to provide them to the phone so that third parties could make and provide profiles). But such a method would never permit QA rejects or stolen parts either but only light third party OEM parts.

Kisai · April 17

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

At least when HPE does this for their servers they state it is for supply chain control and security so you can trust all parts in the server are genuine and untampered and it will even tell you it's not the first time the server has been powered on since shipping and there is no way to bypass this power on counter.

HPE isn't dealing with chop shops. Cisco isn't dealing with chopshops. Nobody sells HPE and Cisco server room equipment to pawn shows and computer repair locations.

Both HPE and Cisco have to deal with counterfeiting of their equipment, because their equipment is easily copied, having mostly off-the-shelf parts.

https://www.hpe.com/emea_europe/en/validate.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/legal/brand-protection/identify-counterfeit-products.html

Quite frankly the amount of labels on Cisco's stuff is ridiculous.

In fact, the very reason why Apple chose to solder RAM to the CPU and storage to the PCB in the MacBook, iMac and MacMini likely comes back to saving pennies but also protecting against counterfeit aftermarket parts. But we all know that "counterfeit RAM" is not a thing, either it works 100% or it works 0%. Other parts I could reasonably go "yeah a screen or a camera on a mobile device likely is more complicated and should be paired"

Honestly we aren't even disagreeing on the reasoning, we're disagreeing on the input/source of parts.

hishnash · April 17

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

In fact, the very reason why Apple chose to solder RAM to the CPU

The reason memory is soldered on the M* chip lines is the same it is soldered on a PCIe dGPU... bandwidth in addition to saving power.

Soldering SSD will be about power draw.

Kisai · April 17

28 minutes ago, hishnash said:

The reason memory is soldered on the M* chip lines is the same it is soldered on a PCIe dGPU... bandwidth in addition to saving power.

Soldering SSD will be about power draw.

That doesn't matter. Apple's markup on RAM is 200%, and has always been that way, even when it's the exact same chips. Soldering it to the CPU instead of having some kind of socket or interposer to upgrade it is about cost and preventing after-market upgrades and after-market repairs.

itsabearcannon · April 19

On 4/16/2024 at 10:05 AM, manikyath said:

stolen phones might be scrapped for parts in the same way that cash may be used to buy drugs.

should we then also ban cash?

Uh....you do realize it's a criminal offense to use stolen cash, right? We're talking about stolen phones, too. Like if you use a bill with a serial number that's been marked as stolen, you can be sent to prison for it.

Nobody is saying legitimately sold phones can't be scrapped for parts, just like nobody is saying you can't use legitimately obtained cash to buy whatever you want.

But if the phone is stolen, or the cash is stolen, that should be put to a stop in any way possible.

mariushm · April 19

It's just another Apple scheme to prevent parts from being used.

They claim you can use them as long as they're not marked stolen, but they can simply say they're marked as stolen and come up with something like "Ask the original owner to take a picture of the receipt and send it to us and an operator will review it within 7 days" and now your third party repair service is dead, because nobody's gonna wait that long to have their screen repaired, and no original owner is gonna find their receipt and upload it or whatever... if you even know who sold their iphone as broken (for parts)

Even if that works, you think their service won't magically get "under maintenance" periods or Apple will log whatever IPs request the most replacements and then come up with ways of raiding those places for illegal parts or for other reasons.

manikyath · April 19

3 hours ago, itsabearcannon said:

Uh....you do realize it's a criminal offense to use stolen cash, right? We're talking about stolen phones, too. Like if you use a bill with a serial number that's been marked as stolen, you can be sent to prison for it.

Nobody is saying legitimately sold phones can't be scrapped for parts, just like nobody is saying you can't use legitimately obtained cash to buy whatever you want.

But if the phone is stolen, or the cash is stolen, that should be put to a stop in any way possible.

but let's use an analogy that's more suitable to this topic:

let's say a car brand announces that they tie the headlights to the computer by serial number, to avoid car theft.

would this outrage you, or would you gladly buy a new car when the brand decides to no longer offer you headlight replacements? because that's what apple is doing.

and no, we're not talking about "stolen phones", we're talking about things that severely limit consumer rights, under the premise of "mathematically decreasing the potential value of stolen goods, wether or not that actually affects actual thefts". you're also baselessly assuming "these parts MUST come from stolen phones", when there's no reason to assume this is any significant portion of the market compared to otherwise broken or 'recycled' phones. there's also no reason to assume that before mentioned parts shops in china buy any stolen phones at all, as opposed to buying 'recycled' phones by weight.

blocking the motherboard made a huge impact, from what i can find.. but i havent seen any data suggesting that tieing components together by serial number has had any impact.. while it all but destroyed the consumer's ability to repair their own device if they so desire.

itsabearcannon · April 21

On 4/19/2024 at 1:43 PM, manikyath said:

but let's use an analogy that's more suitable to this topic:

let's say a car brand announces that they tie the headlights to the computer by serial number, to avoid car theft.

would this outrage you, or would you gladly buy a new car when the brand decides to no longer offer you headlight replacements? because that's what apple is doing.

and no, we're not talking about "stolen phones", we're talking about things that severely limit consumer rights, under the premise of "mathematically decreasing the potential value of stolen goods, wether or not that actually affects actual thefts". you're also baselessly assuming "these parts MUST come from stolen phones", when there's no reason to assume this is any significant portion of the market compared to otherwise broken or 'recycled' phones. there's also no reason to assume that before mentioned parts shops in china buy any stolen phones at all, as opposed to buying 'recycled' phones by weight.

blocking the motherboard made a huge impact, from what i can find.. but i havent seen any data suggesting that tieing components together by serial number has had any impact.. while it all but destroyed the consumer's ability to repair their own device if they so desire.

I'd be totally fine with that. That policy would not prohibit third parties from manufacturing their own compatible headlight replacements, and it would also not prevent me from buying used OEM parts off eBay as long as they weren't from a stolen vehicle. I don't know what "gotcha" you think you had there, but if no stolen car is involved I could still use, buy, or manufacture any compatible headlight I please.

What you seem to be assuming is that the company making the car in question would then proceed to blacklist NON-stolen parts. That's a whole different discussion than the one we're having.

manikyath · April 21

26 minutes ago, itsabearcannon said:

I'd be totally fine with that. That policy would not prohibit third parties from manufacturing their own compatible headlight replacements, and it would also not prevent me from buying used OEM parts off eBay as long as they weren't from a stolen vehicle.

"tied by serial number" - how did you miss that? this means no third party parts, no self replacements.

27 minutes ago, itsabearcannon said:

What you seem to be assuming is that the company making the car in question would then proceed to blacklist NON-stolen parts.

yes, because tieing by serial number implies that you're only whitelisting the exact part it was made with, it's not even about blacklisting parts, it's a whitelist of "part".

besides that, until any actual evidence to the contrary is provided, i'll continue assuming that the theft story is to simply hide the fact that apple quite blatantly does not want you to keep your old phone working to the extent they can get away with within the law.

common sense simply dictates that stolen phones make up a neglibly small part of the stream of phones making their way into 'recycling' flows. even if we assume that "10% of people in some given scope have had their phone stolen at some point" actually means that 10% of smartphones gets stolen, that still means that 90% of phones end up discarded by the owner, and i'd like to believe that somewhere in the workflow between said users and "blender for recovering metals" there is at least someone that takes aside the devices that might have parts that can serve a new life before they meet the blender of resource waste.

Kisai · April 21

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

besides that, until any actual evidence to the contrary is provided, i'll continue assuming that the theft story is to simply hide the fact that apple quite blatantly does not want you to keep your old phone working to the extent they can get away with within the law.

There's been plenty of evidence to the contrary, even links in this thread. Louis Rossman literately bought counterfeit parts. Where did they come from? the OEM? Stolen Phones? Both? We don't have that information because quite frankly nobody selling counterfeit parts is going to say they are anything but legit. Usually counterfeit products meant to fool customers into paying premium prices for literately unsafe garbage, are cast from molds used to make the real thing. But they don't have the ability to replicate the markings, and if it actually contains Apple marks, Apple didn't make or sell it, thus it's counterfeit. EVEN if it was stuff sent to be recycled by the actual OEM.

On the flip side, there are products marketed as "OEM" versions of "fits Apple device" which are also counterfeit, but they aren't pretending to be Apple parts, which again, might be produced by same OEM as Apple, but without having Apple markings and serial numbers, they would be considered counterfeit. BUT you can still buy them if they don't say they are apple parts at all.

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

common sense simply dictates that stolen phones make up a neglibly small part of the stream of phones making their way into 'recycling' flows.

Again, there are people who steal phones. New ones.

https://www.portageonline.com/articles/70000-iphone-theft-has-portage-rcmp-asking-for-publics-assistance