
Apple’s repair kill switch hasn’t been activated yet - ccnafr
https://ifixit.org/blog/11673/
======
bjoli
Apple is really undoubtedly the king of making their products impossible to
repair. This doesn't bother me much since I have long abandoned apple. What
bothers me is that everyone follows their bad example.

Not only is a modern phone impossible to open, everything is glued in. Even
laptops are like this. I have even seen other manufacturers stop using
underfill in their phones, just like apple. Probably to make broken phones
useful as refurbs. This is leads to phones where chips come off easier
(remember apples touch-ic issues and bend gate. That chip didn't have
underfill, no proper soldering materials) and an increase in flexion damage.

A right to repair doesn't mean much if everything is glued and soldered into
place anyway, and with everyone following apple I doubt anything will get
better in that regard.

~~~
BurningFrog
Well, if every manufacturer is doing it, there are probably good reasons for
it. I doubt they've all gone mad at the same time.

~~~
sh87
No removable batteries, no expandable memory, no headphone jack and now the
notch. All undeniable evidence on manufacturers copying(?) Apple's choices at
least in phones. As a user, I strongly feel these are not in my best
interests. And I realize I am not alone in this.

Apple being the magnitude that it is now, cannot afford to make choices to
attract folks like me with their 'reimagined' and 'breakthrough' innovations
(?!).

This opens up an interesting segment for products that can afford to make
design choices/offerings orthogonal to Apple.

Can you imagine a phone with 3000 mAh removable battery, an external memory
card support for upto 128 Gb, a proper 3.5mm headphone jack and a proper
rectangle screen capable of > 500ppi under 5 inches to fit your palm ? Let me
sweeten the deal and price it at about $499 USD for this 'dated' tech.

Now, look around and tell me there isn't a market for this phone.

~~~
brandonmenc
> no expandable memory

I always buy the max storage iPhone, and every time I fill up maybe a third of
it - after years of use.

The vast majority of people really don't care about this.

~~~
sh87
So you've now paid for more storage than you need. Upfront. You can't swap it
and if the phone dies, you've probably lost everything or it's going to cost
you dear to get that data out.

Apple's solution is to go sync those gigs on Apple's cloud and keep paying a
monthly fee for it.

No thanks.

I paid Apple for making choices for me and building products for my wants and
needs. Now, its made for the 'vast majority'.

I know more people like me and I see a niche market emerging that I hope
someone addresses.

~~~
brandonmenc
> So you've now paid for more storage than you need. Upfront.

It's like an extra $150. Stretched out over 24 monthly payments. Big whoop.

> Apple's solution is to go sync those gigs on Apple's cloud and keep paying a
> monthly fee for it.

This is exactly what I do. Totally worth it.

> You can't swap it and if the phone dies, you've probably lost everything or
> it's going to cost you dear to get that data out.

You can download and back up your cloud data onto physical drives. All of my
photos and music are stored on multiple redundant drives. And because it's
also on the cloud, when I get a new phone all of my data is available
instantly. It's seamless.

> I know more people like me and I see a niche market emerging that I hope
> someone addresses.

I see commercials for Android phones with SD card slots, so it's already being
addressed.

~~~
sh87
Did Apple have to kill the card slot to support iCloud ?

No. Why then? Lock-in, that's why.

Like someone else on this thread rightly said, Impracticality is the feature
here and clearly intentional.

Apple may have gained customers like yourself. They sure have lost customers
like me.

~~~
danaris
Apple didn't "kill" anything. No iPhone has ever had an SD card slot.

And to the best of my knowledge, the main reason wasn't lock-in or planned
obsolescence: it was Steve Jobs' desire for as little as possible to get in
the way of the aesthetic and design of the iPhone.

Sure, you may find that to be a dumb reason, but it's a far cry from the
cartoon villain a lot of people seem to enjoy making Apple out to be, rubbing
its hands together with a cackling laugh as it sits on its mountain of money.
(...Well, the mountain of money part is true, actually.)

------
petedoyle
Given Apple's strong stance on privacy and not making backdoors for
encryption, etc-- could they possibly be trying to prevent supply chain
interdictions from the likes of the NSA? [1]

Or be trying to detect things like we saw this week? [2]

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/18/the-nsa-cisco-and-the-
issu...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/18/the-nsa-cisco-and-the-issue-of-
interdiction/)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-
big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-
china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-
companies?srnd=businessweek-v2)

~~~
Yetanfou
No, they're trying to make sure they get their pound of flesh any time one of
'their' devices needs to be repaired. If the NSA (et al) are really serious
about having hooks into Apple products they'll make sure to get them [1],
glued screens and batteries and firmware kill-switches notwithstanding.

If it were about privacy and security Apple could have the device display a
warning when it detected tampering and leave it to the user how to act on
this, a bit like some Android devices react when the bootloader is unlocked.
They could also sell OEM spare parts which could be used by third-party repair
shops to repair devices and use a verification routine to re-certify the
device (which then would not display a 'tampered' warning, instead showing a
'repair log' in some hidden settings screen).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

~~~
greedo
Pound of flesh? They're offering battery replacements at $29. That's probably
a loss leader since it's 30 min of labor plus parts.

~~~
craftyguy
They only started offering it at that price after great public outcry when it
was exposed they were purposefully slowing down older devices..

~~~
danaris
...in order to allow them to continue to run.

C'mon, at least finish the damn sentence. They were slowing down older devices
to make sure that they wouldn't just literally shut down when the aging
battery could no longer supply enough power for spikes of usage.

~~~
acct1771
..by the new OS/kernel they forced you to install, without writing it to be
friendly to the old phones they're forcing it onto.

~~~
greedo
Forced you to install?? No one forced you to install the newest version of
iOS.

~~~
dwild
Do Apple keep security updates over the old versions? That could be an easy
way to be forced to update.

Theses 2 relatively recents vulnerabilities are pretty good reason to have to
update. [https://www.krackattacks.com/](https://www.krackattacks.com/)
[https://www.armis.com/blueborne/](https://www.armis.com/blueborne/)

------
Spivak
I mean this seems very reasonable from Apple's perspective. They're trying to
avoid their brand being tarnished by bad repair shops with questionable repair
skills cutting corners with cheap and unsupported parts. Given how large the
resale market is for Apple products I would even say that this is an extremely
positive policy because as long as the machine boots you can be pretty darn
sure your MacBook is just like you would get from an Apple store.

However, I think there's a happy middle ground here for people that _want_ to
use those cheap and unsupported parts. When the OS boots just make sure the
user is made aware that they're running on unsupported hardware and recommend
taking it to an authorized Apple repair shop if they want fix that.

~~~
chrsstrm
In your first paragraph, if you swap Apple for John Deere, do you still
believe what you wrote?

The general consensus around right to repair that was discussed during the
John Deere incident favored users. But now that Apple is (planning on) doing
the same thing, it's reasonable?

~~~
csydas
This is a tricky subject, imo, because even if Apple is just being money
grubbing, there is a positive outlook on this. Finding reliable 3rd party
parts for Apple products, even without Apple's meddling, is like cartwheeling
through a mine field. My first post-university job was a lot of end user
hardware support, and finding reliable parts that worked as advertised (for
all brands) was a nightmare. Even previously reliable sites would switch
inventory and suddenly get cheap knockoffs, which fit and looked like the real
thing, but did absolutely nothing.

With iPhones in particular, this is horrible -- replacing a battery is a
terrible experience just from a purchasing point of view. The actual process
itself is not bad (and well documented by sites like ifixit), but you don't
know about the issues until you have the part in hand and it sucks.

This is a mess for Apple since in a lot of places, third party shops do not
care about the parts they order. They put in a replacement part as asked, and
now the machine works even worse. As an individual, I'm willing to put out
money to a company like ifixit to ensure I've got a working part and I have
someone to point to when it doesn't work. For a lot of mom and pop shops that
have margins to worry about, suddenly the part actually working isn't that big
of a deal.

I don't want Apple to have this much power, to be clear. The right answer is
instead to open up the official supply chain to third party resellers and drop
the anti-competitive price fixing. But I do get their image concerns with
regards to the third party ecosystem -- it's not Apple locking out third
parties, it's third parties just making terrible products.

~~~
jplayer01
So Apple directly responsible for the state of the after-market of Apple
replacement parts, but you'd rather just blame everybody else instead?

~~~
csydas
Not in the slightest. For much of the older hardware, there either are trivial
or non-existent blocks from Apple in place, and the hardware market
surrounding things like iPhones is littered with fly-by-night shops
intentionally obscuring the truth of the products' origin. On Amazon, eBay,
aliexpress, etc, a good majority of iPhone batteries are simply mislabeled in
terms of their capacity, in some cases you can just peel the label they
attached to the battery off to find the real capacity -- so you get what you
paid for, but you were promise something with a much higher capacity or
different performance.

That is my complaint, and that isn't Apple's fault. Apple is not making these
poor knock-off manufacturers lie about their quality and capabilities of their
replacement parts. I've bought plenty of third-party parts for Apple products
(fans, reproduction heatsinks, panels, SSDs) that were just fine. But there is
still a large market for cheap parts advertised as being equivalent to the OEM
parts, but actually being significantly worse. I'm not sure how that is
Apple's fault that the third party manufacturers decide to lie about their
products. Apple is no saint in my mind, as much as I like their products, but
this just isn't a fair accusation.

------
TaylorGood
I dropped my iPhone X with a front and back cover yet glass still broke on
both sides. It happens, but thanks to the rear glass being welded to frame and
new front glass technology it costs $828 to replace. Repair shops are charging
more than Apple store.

$279 for Front glass

$549 for Rear glass

~~~
ericabiz
The good news is that the back glass price should change here in the next few
weeks. I run independent repair shops (not affiliated with Apple) and
literally today we did our first test on a new back glass removal tool we
bought. We successfully removed the back glass on an iPhone 8 housing we
purchased broken.

These devices just hit the US a few days ago, so give it a few weeks and I
would expect independent shops to offer back glass replacement in the $99-$149
range.

This is also why Right to Repair is so important. These tools are not built or
sanctioned by Apple, but the demand is there, so third parties build, test,
and verify them to help reduce prices for iPhone owners like you.

~~~
pentae
The issue is Apple are not going to start use this 3rd party tool and drop
their glass back repair price from $549 to $149. People will need to still
take their phones to 3rd parties to get a reasonable price. This is why we
need 3rd party repair options so badly

------
EugeneOZ
It's not a rent, it's purchase - I should be able to do whatever I want with
the purchased item. It's absolutely not Apple's right to tell me what to do
after they got the money.

Where's that "private property" rule, I thought it's kind of holy testament in
the USA.

~~~
castratikron
You mean "ownership is nine-tenths of the law"?

~~~
teddyh
That’s _possession_ , not ownership. That’s what I always understood to be the
meaning of the saying “possession is 9/10s of the law”: The person with
physical possession of an object has an enormous advantage, regardless of its
actual ownership.

------
lostlogin
The leader in making repairable equipment that I’ve messed with is Mazzer.
Their coffee grinders are fantastic and repairs consist of opening the unit
with standard tools, unplugging the broken bit then buying a new part off the
dealer or plugging in some other thing I want. Grinders 30 year old are
readily repaired and parts are interchangeable with new machines. Upgrades are
modular and plug on to the base chassis. Some units have a security screw but
it’s only ever been finger tight when I’ve found them. I’m some sort of Mazzer
evangelist now and live in fear of them ever changing.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
KitchenAid and Miele spring to mind also.

------
seltzered_
Let’s put a different take on this. What if the kill switch is presented as an
option to the customer upon purchase? So if your preference is security over
repairability you enable it, vice versa you don’t?

------
derefr
I understood the “kill switch” to be a “warranty (i.e. AppleCare) void” switch
more than a literal kill switch.

You can, with enough work, make _any_ computer—even one that’s not from
Apple—into a working Mac. But there’s no amount of effort you can go to that
will make Apple suddenly decide to offer warranty coverage on your Hackintosh.

I imagine the point here would be to effectively treat computers cobbled
together out of externally-sourced Apple compatible parts (i.e. parts where
the computer doesn’t “know” it’s not a Mac) as equivalent to Hackintoshes from
a warranty standpoint.

This is partially justified—as it stands, a repair shop can actually take 50%
of the parts from a Mac, replace them with compatible parts, then build a new
computer from the 50% of parts you took out and _other_ compatible parts, and
end up delivering _two_ Macs that would both be considered to be under
warranty. (Not that they have AppleCare registrations, but that they’re under
_legally madated_ first-year warranty coverage in many jurisdictions.) The
software Apple has developed circumvents this problem.

You might not agree with it, and it might have some other negative
consequences... but what other solution is there to this particular problem?
(I mean, besides eating the repair costs of—and even assuming legal liability
for!—these “faux” Macs.)

~~~
detaro
In which jurisdiction is this actually a thing that happens? I don't see how
Apple's scope of liability is extended to parts they (or an authorized
partner) haven't put into the machine. (and I'd suspect they'd generally not
be responsible for parts moved to a different machine either, since the
warranty to covers the device, not an extracted part)

And how would you a describe something that stops the system from being used
not as a "literal killswitch"?!

~~~
derefr
The thing is that you actually can't prove that Apple didn't put those parts
in there, if they're sourced from the same suppliers Apple sourced them from.
They're literally "the same" parts, so no regular inspection would find them.

That's what I meant by "the computer thinks it's a Mac": Apple already has
code in place to detect when you've used parts that don't _belong_ in Macs, in
your Mac. (That's DSMOS — "Don't Steal Mac OS X", a kernel extension that
verifies the hardware on boot.) But if Apple used some random IC from Samsung
or Broadcom, and then the repair shop replaced it with _the same random IC
from Samsung or Broadcom, but not sourced through Apple_ , then Apple can't
_tell_ —at least through any traditional means—that that computer has been
tampered with.

And it's important to tell, because Apple does QA (burn-in testing, etc.) on
the parts they install. So a random Samsung or Broadcom chip might be a lot
more flaky than the same Samsung or Broadcom chip _that has survived through
Apple 's testing gauntlet_. And if Apple can't _tell_ that the chip has been
replaced, then they can't void your warranty—which means the flakiness of the
replaced part becomes negative media coverage about Apple, rather than just
being a story about third-party repair shops using non-QAed parts.

(Remember when Apple used those GPUs in old 2011-era MBPs that would overheat
enough to de-solder themselves? Imagine if that wasn't Apple's fault, but
rather the fault of repair shops replacing Apple's shipped discrete GPU with
"the same" discrete GPU that hadn't been through Apple's QA.)

The verification software can detect this specific problem, by comparing lot
numbers for each part in the system to lot numbers Apple's factories have
actually received. Thus, even a lot of parts that Samsung created _exclusively
for Apple_ , but never shipped to Apple, and instead sold to some reseller,
would show up as "invalid" here. As it should—because Apple hasn't picked out
the bad parts from the lot.

Now that I think of it, a potentially-useful analogy is the 2007 mortgage
crisis. People were buying CDOs (income from mixtures of mortgages, that pay
out when people pay their mortgages) endorsed by respected institutions, who
gave them high ratings. But the mortgages that went into these CDOs _weren 't_
actually verified in the way that the institutions promised, and so they
failed a lot more often than they should have for the quality ratings they
were given.

In this analogy, Apple products are like highly-rated CDOs; and the
verification software being discussed here is what's required to actually
check that the parts in the computer (i.e. the mortgages in the CDO) belong
with that quality-rating slapped on them.

~~~
detaro
Approximately nobody is saying Apple isn't allowed to track and detect this
(although they might not be legally allowed to deny all service based on
this). Just that they shouldn't make a killswitch that bricks devices based on
it. If the "killswitch" isn't one, all is well, but the initial reports
claimed otherwise (citing Apple documents as saying "will result in an
inoperative system,")

------
grecy
I wonder if the kill switch will only be activated once you report the phone
stolen or lost with find my phone?

That would prevent chop-n-sell of parts...

------
ferongr
It's interesting, whenever it comes to Apple, the average HNer is willing to
go incredible lengths and suffers extreme cognitive dissonance in order to
defend practices they would blast other manufacturers for.

------
doombolt
I don't see how criminal law will not also be activated after them if they
try.

------
vezycash
Isn't this "kill switch" Apple's solution to the server attack that they claim
never happened?

~~~
SahAssar
No, it's two completely different stories.

~~~
vezycash
I know. I think the server event spurred this solution for their consumer
products.

------
wpdev_63
While macbook is top notch hardware and MacOs is the best *nix os out there,
this is the last straw. I will not being giving anymore money to apple with
its anti-consumer business practices.

Can some one recommend a good cloud MacOs vm solution for ios development? Or
better yet, a rock solid hackintosh build that won't go to shit every update?
I don't mind paying good money for a good product but this is ridiculous.

~~~
ru999gol
Your best bet with Mac OS X virtual machines is giving it a dedicated gpu
using pcie passthrough with linux as the host.

~~~
wpdev_63
I just tried running macos within vmware and I am excited to see it working
with some patches.

MacOs is a nice *nix OS but I am not willing to shell out for the apple tax
when ubuntu is a perfectly good workhorse.

