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The shareholder fight that forced Apple's hand on repair rights
Wednesday morning, Apple announced that the company will soon make parts and repair manuals available to the general public, reversing years of restrictive repair policies. The new policy represents a seismic shift for a company that has fought independent repair for years by restricting access to parts, manuals, and diagnostic tools, designing products that are difficult to fix, and lobbying against laws that would enshrine the right to repair.
But Apple didn't change its policy out of the goodness of its heart. The announcement follows months of growing pressure from repair activists and regulators — and its timing seems deliberate, considering a shareholder resolution environmental advocates filed with the company in September asking Apple to re-evaluate its stance on independent repair. Wednesday is a key deadline in the fight over the resolution, with advocates poised to bring the issue to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve.
Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy told The Verge that the program "has been in development for well over a year," describing it as "the next step in increasing customer access to Apple genuine parts, tools, and manuals." Leahy declined to say whether the timing of the announcement was influenced by shareholder pressure.
Apple makes parts and manuals available to all (15m35s Louis Rossmann video)
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Apple Exports Independent Repair Provider Program to Europe and Canada
Apple, Microsoft, and Google Team Up to Block Right to Repair Laws
Apple and John Deere Shareholder Resolutions Demand They Explain Their Bad Repair Policies
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Thursday November 18 2021, @07:46PM (5 children)
Hold the celebrations for a while. Wait until a few months have gone by and we can verify what Apple is really offering to do. The alleged gains only count for anything if independent shops are able to get any and all components and surface schematics. Even then, for that to do any good, the prices must not be unreasonable. Otherwise it is just a public relations maneuver to get people to let their guard down.
Until then, don't let up for one second on Apple. Keep holding their feet to the fire, because you know given past history they will regress the moment that attention lessens or pressure lets up.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @08:08PM
Indeed, Apple thinks it owns the equipment after the sale. Pretty much always has since the Macintosh first came into being, trying to ensure there could be no upgrade ports of any kind on the motherboard even then.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday November 18 2021, @08:55PM (2 children)
I think they'll do it. But it's not going to be all sunshine and unicorns. Best guess is that the replacement parts are going to be so expensive to buy from Apple it probably won't be worth it. Best case then there is a market for buying old devices to just grab components from them, if they are the same or similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @02:47PM (1 child)
Then they will just do the Elsevier thing and change the design just enough every couple years to tank the used market.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday November 19 2021, @03:10PM
That is always an option. That said a reason they keep cranking them out at the speed they do is probably that they keep reusing common designs and parts. It could be detrimental to themselves to keep doing to many changes just for the sake of changes. Better to just jack up the prices for the parts they resell. After all it's not like there is an infinite market for old usable devices, which they could also just kill if they have some kind of replacement program, as where you hand in your old device when you get a new device.
As I said I don't believe it will be sunshine and unicorns. I think they'll do all the annoying things they can. The order process will be annoying, the prices will be high, they'll do the special screwdriver (and other tools things) trick to make it even more annoying, they might add things to the devices that are just there to be as annoying as possible and you'll have to be some kind of tetris-robot-god to assemble it again if you manage to open it up etc. If it wasn't for the added weight they would probably just pot the entire device, I'm sure they could come up with some excuse for why they needed to do it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 18 2021, @09:52PM
I don't know what a "reasonable" price is, with Apple. People routinely go to Apple's sales pages or shops, and start with a basic computer, for a slightly exorbitant price. Looking at MacBook Pro 16" right now - $2499 for the basic, 10 core Apple CPU, 16 G memory, 512 G storage, no software installed. Upgrade to the M1 CPU 10/32/16 costs another $400, upgrade to 32G RAM is another $400, 1 TB storage adds $200, or 2 TB for $600. Maxing out with the best CPU, 64 gig of memory, and 8TB of storage will cost $6,099. Ridunculous - you can buy comparable hardware for roughly 2/3 the price any day of the week, and if you wait for a sale, such as Black Friday, you'll get down to about 1/2 the price. NOTE: I am not comparing prices with the cheapest low budget laptops found in WalMart and similar stores, I'm talking about top-of-the-line offerings from any major vendor.
So, given that their storefront prices are ridiculous, how do you determine what a reasonable price is for repair parts? Are they seriously going to charge $200+ per TB for storage? Drop by Newegg, and Samsung NVME PCIe storage is available, 2TB for $229. 1 TB is only $119. That's roughly half of what Apple charges.
I can see Apple selling their storage at $200/TB, through their own laptop storefront, but doubling up on that price when selling to repair shops and/or consumers. "But, we're using all available production in our own products, if you really want this item, you're setting our production back, so you'll have to pay a premium!" Which will undoubtably lead to more court cases.
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