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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
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(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.