Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools | Repair advocates say Apple's move is beneficial, but also strategic

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 162 points –
Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools
arstechnica.com

Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools | Repair advocates say Apple's move is beneficial, but also strategic::Repair advocates say Apple's move is beneficial, but also strategic.

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Yeah, this isn't suspicious in any way. Totally on the up and up.

I can't think of any reason why Apple, which has historically been against the right to repair, wouldn't support this!

Probably marketing, and hoping California doesn't make it worse for them.

No, the right to repair apple supports is the one they can control. You have the rights, but you need to buy the parts from them, you need to buy the specialized tools from them, with their terms en conditions.

In other words: you’d be better to let Apple repair the stuf cheaper instead of repairing it yourselves.

"get your iScrewdriver for only $999"

  • iScrews sold separately for $99.99 each

iScrewdriver stands now available for only $799

Ars did the math (it's in that article), and they said that people with the know-how will be financially better-off renting the tools and doing the repairs themselves than getting them done at Apple. It's not a great deal, but it's probably enough to get California regulators off their backs. Which, again, is the goal.

I suspect that they have found a loophole in the current bill's wording and don't want it to be changed.

They charge an insane amount for you to rent a repair kit for a short time to also order parts and do it yourself with no training. It’ll be ‘available’ you can self repair, but not likely.

Plus, you will still need their software to enable a replacement chip due to serialization. From my understanding, this entire aspect isn't addressed in the current wording of the bill.