I was completely blindsided by this. I do regular laptop and smartphone repairs for friends and family and getting original parts often is difficult or even impossible. There are many scammers around that will sell "original OEM" i.e. cheap knock-off trash.
Ebay is OK-ish for second hand parts but sometimes you are just out of luck.
I am pretty excited about this too, but it (somewhat understandably) targets latest iPhones only for now so any chance of servicing and resurrecting older devices with official parts is not a reality.
Will be interesting to see if they roll support backwards or only provide the ability to fix from current devices onwards.
Hopefully this means they'll either stop intentionally binding parts to its original device (so they can't be swapped) or provide official tools/software to bind them to the replacement device.
They can even still use the mechanism for theft-deterrence by checking whether the original phone is iCloud-locked before allowing you to associate the part with the target device.
> Hopefully this means they'll either stop intentionally binding parts to its original device (so they can't be swapped) or provide official tools/software to bind them to the replacement device.
Each piece will probably come with a unique QR-encoded serial code that will require activation online before it can be paired with the phone. Not really a rocket science.
Why not? There's no technical reason why the touch or face sensor needs to be trusted. The actual security processing happens in the secure element. The sensor is just an input device.
That doesn't prevent a malicious FaceID chip from recording and replaying sensor output, allowing a backdoor to unlock the phone, or a variety of other attacks.
If someone has physical access to your iPhone, it's game over. The US government holds your decryption keys, and there are third-parties that sell exploit kits that are a lot cheaper than spoofing some encrypted I2C interface (see: Greykey).
If someone has access to the inside of your phone, where they can micro-solder a custom chip in, they are capable enough that face-id was never going to slow them down.
If you believe that you are the target of such a threat actor, you probably aren't keeping much on your phone. I would assume that if you are under that kind of threat, you don't keep secrets on a device that isn't airgapped.
> provide official tools/software to bind them to the replacement device.
Via iFixIt:
> You’ll be able to buy parts and tools through the ‘Self Service Repair Online Store,’ where you’ll also have access to service manuals and some version of their repair-enabling software.
Wait until you see the price of parts. I am betting iPhone battery will be $30 to $50. i.e You save ~$20 compared to doing it at Apple Store.
Generally speaking Apple charge their repair parts at cost + their normal margin. Not saying this is bad, but people may have different perspective once they see it.
I dont mind paying a premium for genuine parts. Ive done lots of my own iphone repairs in the past and have been plagued by shitty batteries and screens.
We know Apple very well now, they'll be expensive af and will give them a reason to keep screwing over third party parts by introducing hardware locks.
Call me cynical all one wants, but I am not at all convinced this is motivated by some kind of altruism and the whole "inclusion" corporate propaganda tinge of the copy/images makes me even more suspicious of the manipulative corporate motivation of this move. I see what you are doing, Apple.
Unless I missed something, there is no talk of lowering the price by the cost of labor for, e.g., a $270 screen replacement. So my assumption is that you get to do an amateur screen replacement for the same price while also assuming the risk and liability of messing something up.
I even wonder if this is a kind of counter-punch against the right to repair movement so Apple, et al., can claim, "see, we allow repairs"; while it really just serves to take the wind out of the sails of the right to repair movement in the halls of Congress and the bureaucratic demons in DC.
No, because their intentions are clear enough. They want to keep their iron grip on their supply chain, which is why they'll only ship you complete assemblies that cost $500+ instead of the charging IC that costs $3 OEM.
It's certainly possible that that's the reason for it, but it's predicated on various assumptions.
It's also completely possible that the reason they're selling complete assemblies instead of individual ICs is because a) even they don't replace individual ICs, because it's fiddly, more likely to cause further problems, and requires keeping a stock of a lot of different individual chips, and b) they genuinely believe that there's not enough people who would be able to do that replacement (regardless of willingness) for it to be worthwhile.
Neither of those are really sufficient reasons though, if they didn't want to channel people through their expensive, first-party repairs then they wouldn't lock down their supply chain so hard.
It depends on what your interests are. Motivations are a higher order from intentions and can inform on future actions or reveal patterns of behavior. To the other reply; I would say that Apple retaining it's iron grip on exorbitant profit margins and the supply chain is the motivation, and the intention is to do so by the subject method that will undermine the threat to that not controlling the right-to-repair narrative would represent.
This is not something that Apple decided in a vacuum or even as it relates to the USA. Apple is surely looking at this with the lessons it has learned as it relates to how the EU has been behaving and its motivations too.
Not to belittle anyone, but the upper echelons of Apple and their servant army of attorneys operate from Mt Olympus and have a far wider aperture than most of us mere mortals have, regardless of how broadly we believe we understand a relatively narrow focus like how this relates to goings on in the USA alone.
This is great, but let's be honest here: They saw which way the legal winds were moving on right to repair, and saw how bad the PR for opposing it was.
Good for them for getting on board before a court ordered them to change their behavior, but let's not pretend Apple wanted to do this.
Wow. What a revolutionary new idea Apple has come up with! I can't believe that no other tech company has come up with the idea for consumers to repair their own devices before.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
They are offering this only for this year's Iphones and at some point this year's Macs. It doesn't seem like you can get a battery for 3-5 year laptops nor that you'd be still be able to get a battery for this year's laptop 3-5 years from now.
That probably remains to be seen. I imagine batteries are one of the most desired parts that they're going to make available, and assuming that they put a healthy Apple-sized margin on the prices, why stop selling them after a new product comes out?
It's possible but the reasons not to would be because the margins on a whole new device are larger and because carrying and producing old parts has costs.
Don't they still offer battery replacement services for those devices? If so they're already bearing the cost of producing/carrying these old parts. In fact, they could potentially make more profit selling these parts by themselves to end-users considering how much demand there is for things like batteries.
I just received mine for the MPB 2015 this week, original battery (which I doubt was genuine) is bloated, but still held up in terms of capacity to originals according to coconutBattery[0]. Will monitor the iFixit one closely as well. But I still trust them better than random China or local seller.
The degradation is the real problem. They hold up for the first tens of charges but quickly lose 20-50% of capacity. It might have to do with the lack of OEM charging circuitry on the replacements, or perhaps just shoddy quality
Would capping the max charge at 80% make any difference for this? Apple seems to do it with their latest phones and laptops. I don't plan on using the laptop on battery for long times. So my main concern is just keeping it at a 2-3 hour capacity for the upcoming years (mostly plugged in) and not having it bloat up like the previous one, making the laptop a fire hazard.
Correlates with my experience of late 2013 MBP batteries (it might be the same model actually). My original Apple battery lasted until 2019. Both of the iFixit replacements have lasted a year until not holding original charge, and just last night I noticed a cell starting to swell.
I doubt I'll ever find factory original cells again for the 2013 but if Apple sells them I'd consider buying a MBP again.
I wonder if this will have the same sort of markup that Apple tend to apply to lower end products (eg. cases, that cleaning cloth, watch bands). It seems hard to imagine Apple selling tools at the same sort of price as a DIY store. Definitely sounds like a great move though.
Obvious right-to-repair defense/play, and not a terrible one. Apple is a leader and if you can own the repair ecosystem while providing some semblance of 'choice'...
Louis Rossman has taught me to be welcoming of things like these but skeptical. Until this is in real consumers hands and reasonable rates and effort I will consider it a big maybe.
This is amazing. Not to be overly cynical, but I suspect this must be related to the global labor shortage. They must be happy to let people do their own labor whenever possible now, if the difference is providing bad service vs letting people get good service elsewhere or at home.
Either way, this appears to be great. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out!
Much more likely it’s related to increased antitrust and regulatory pressures. Vanishingly few customers likely to take advantage of this, its true value is in the PR.
A lot repair shops have been using screen and replacement part sourced randomly for common repairs.
You’ll see one in every shopping mall, and while franchised ones won’t be much affected, smaller shop should benefit from from wider access to parts (no need to get accepted as a repair shop for instance)
And getting in front of it means they get to dictate the pricing structure - you can bet your spare parts will be beautifully packaged and sold at a decent markup.
That said, anime-style doesn't look realistically human either, but I find it more pleasing than this, which seems to be the exact opposite in proportioning (tiny heads, huge bodies).
Don’t think this should be downvoted as it’s an observation tangential to the article: for a company that puts Design amongst its highest priorities, how can they casually roll out these tiny-headed monstrosities?
He's been working on a right to repair campaign in the US. I'd also discourage you from watching those videos; unless you want to see him complain for 45 minutes that the Genius Bar doesn't have microscopes and schematics and can't replace a tiny microchip on a circuit board. He's fighting for a good thing but the constant complaining, often way off base, just makes him look annoying.
100%. Apple is mostly doing this because they saw it coming anyway. Might as well bend now and position your brand in a better light. Right to repair is winning.
Makes me think of the changes they announced to how 3rd party repairs will be handled recently. Given this change, I am still wondering why independent repair shops aren't held to the same standard...
E.g, We'll allow this, but you must (without exception) follow our procedures to the letter. I mean, AASP exists so they already have a framework for the Independent Repair Providers to adhere to as a way of enforcing QC among shops in a uniform way.
Seems like an area where creating a closed system would be advantageous...
The procedure AASPs follow to the letter is "mail this device to repair depot, offer customer refurb or try to upsell them to a new device, here is a list of talking points"
What are you saying? Louis Rossmann is basically THE definition of semi-obscure. Marques Brownlee and Linus Tech Tips both have roughly 10 times the subscriber count compared to Louis, and even they could be considered semi-obscure to Apple's core user base (not HN crowd).
Wait for the next video from Louis. He will expose this as a scam. Yes, they are scared and trying to appease their customers. No, it is NOT in any way actual right-to-repair. They will not let you replace a charge port (for example) and the prices they are asking for parts are ludicrous.
TL;DR His is skeptical. For example he needs to replace just the keyboard (not the whole topcase) to make the repair economical. He needs to replace LCD panel only instead of the whole screen assembly. It may be still beneficial to be able to buy genuine Apple parts but there is high probability that those parts would just be too expensive. And let's see if Apple will at least release tools and instructions to program those recently-introduced chips and make it possible to re-use a genuine screen from another iPhone without disabling faceID or having to desolder and re-solder that tiny BGA chip...
My first question was: "Will Louis Rossmann be happy with this or is there some BS in the fine print that he'll find and make another video about?" Either way I'll be watching his YouTube feed for updates: https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup/videos
Given his prior record, he'll wind up giving credit where credit is due, and then having to eat his words a few days later when it turns out the program is far too restrictive to be useful to repair shops.
This doesn't target repair shops at all so doesn't improve the situation there. So my reading is it's going to be "this is better for consumers but they still need to do something for those users who aren't technical enough to carry out their own repairs".
Still waiting to see if Louis finds any problems though
Cynically, I wonder if what Apple will do here is make it difficult/impossible for independent repair shops to take advantage of this. Thus, Apple gets good press ("See! We support right to repair!"), but in the end, they know most consumers won't feel comfortable effecting these repairs themselves so it won't eat into Apple's bottom line much.
I don't see anything on this post about how they will warrant self-repair, so I imagine Louis will be bringing this up.
Years back I replaced the battery on my iPhone (I tried to have Apple replace it ... it's a long, infuriating story). But I took it in for a charge port recall due to the port losing connection to the cable. It was completely unrelated issue but they wouldn't replace it under recall due to prior third party repairs. It's similar to Ford not replacing your recalled alternator because you replaced your radiator with a third party. In any case I haven't bought an iPhone since because of the frustration this experience left me with.
So this is definitely a positive step in the right direction but hopefully it doesn't end without amendments to their warranty and recall policies.
I don’t see how they could possibly warrant self repair. There’s a hundred ways you can mess up your device while attempting a repair, and they’re not going to pay for your mistakes.
Unless, of course, a way to remotely verify no damage occurred to the device while repairing it existed, which isn’t the case.
Ok yeah I can budge on warranty, but recall? If the part is flawed from the get-go, who cares if it was "broken" during a repair? Under recall it was clearly broken or bound to break imminently (assuming Apple can verify that the part was OEM).
And if Apple doesn't want to do the repair themselves under recall due to 3rd party repairs, sure, just send me the part and I'll do it. One part per phone. Just don't tell me to pound sand and eat the full cost of part+repair. Sounds straightforward, though perhaps there's something I'm missing.
This isn't much of a victory though, it's just a shitty deflection. Sure, you can now buy (probably) overpriced screens and batteries from Apple when you're repairing your own phone, but 99% of people aren't going to repair their own phone.
So where do 99% of people go to get their phone repaired? The same places they were going before: Apple's overpriced and shitty repair shops, or independent repair shops that don't have access to genuine parts because Apple refuses to sell to them (and prevents suppliers from selling parts to anyone but them).
This announcement does nothing in the grand scheme of things, even if it is a marginal improvement over the previous situation. What I think is important to notice about this situation is that the only thing that caused Apple to take this (extremely tiny) pro-consumer and pro-environment step was regulatory pressure. They would not have done this on their own if it wasn't for the pressure put on by people like Louis Rossman.
The logical conclusion of course is that if we want Apple to stop destroying the planet and exploiting consumers while doing it, then we need to apply more pressure. Apple is going to do shit unless we force them to. (this can also be seen with their App store monopoly, where they reduced the fee a while back only after the pressure from lawmakers and Epic's lawsuit).
Likely the most parts will be extremely limited, i.e. to battery and screen for the phones - which is what their current program is.
So you'd be able order a battery or screen and go to some place and they'd swap it. Edit: just noticed Rossmann has released a video suspecting pretty much the same.
He's lied several times about various things and, while I can try to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe he misspoke or genuinely didn't know he was lying, my biggest issue is that he doesn't offer corrections for these things when he's called out by people and the videos with the lies and misinformation are still up and continue to get views.
A big one that comes to mind is his remarks on the PCKompaniet case where he continued to say that Apple was suing a mom and pop repair shop for doing third-party repairs that weren't authorized. Not only did Apple not sue them for doing repairs (they sued them for copyright infringement and counterfeiting) but people repeatedly showed Rossmann that the store owner had actually advertised the parts as "genuine OEM" parts on his website and had only changed that advertisement after his parts from China were seized (the page was archived by archive.org).
Another one was a story that was similar about parts being seized by Apple in the US (that actually, at one point, dealt with Rossmann directly as it was his order). Apple didn't seize anything, it was U.S. Customs that seized the parts because the import documentation didn't match and the batteries themselves had Apple logos on them and they contacted Apple to verify the authenticity of the parts. Rossmann continued to claim that Apple had seized the parts as retaliation and continued to claim that they were "original parts" despite actually coming from grey markets in China that refurbished and replaced components (which, legally, make them non-original parts).
Overall, the sad thing is that I agree with him on the general right to repair argument but I feel like he purposely misrepresents certain things to garner sympathy from the right to repair "movement" and I feel like that hurts the movement as a whole. I feel the same way about Linus Tech Tips and their mischaracterizations. If your argument is sound and your principle is strong, you shouldn't need to do that in order to make your argument.
Ooof, I am curious to know when he lied. I'm sure he mischaracterizes some things but that can be an understandable mistake and he has in the past followed up to correct himself.
But lying is a pretty big claim, and not that I've seen all his content but I've never had a reason to believe that he has intentionally deceived people on any of his public platforms.
I'd be happy to see an example where you believe he did.
Not in the least. If anything, this will HELP his business with people who purchase parts then discover that they're not actually capable of doing the work themselves and turn to him to do the work with official parts they've already purchased.
The vast majority of people might be able to do the repairs themselves - eventually after hours of frustration and fear ("I just killed my phone!") and after purchasing additional equipment they don't normally have, just as the vast majority of people could eventually learn to do the same technology-related work that many of us here make livings on.
The always-DIYers fraction of a percent are not the customers anyone's looking for. The vast majority that are willing to pay to have someone else do that hard part are the customers everyone's looking for. It's like plumbing - everyone CAN do it, few want to do it themselves (and take on the risks).
Just taking a look at his youtube channel. Why is he so hot on culture war issues now? It seems that right to repair has taken a back seat to his polemics about covid lockdowns, vaccine skepticism, and homeless people.
I wish Youtube had a "Culture War" button. It would be wonderful to have an easy way to steer clear of culture war bullshit. Not just for YouTube, the whole internet.
He is a business owner in New York City so Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, local government bureaucracy, and the real estate market are affecting him personally. He seems to view his channel as a platform for his varied interests that often overlap instead of an algorithm-maximizing focus on purely Macbook board repair.
Having access to legitimate Apple displays is huge. Basically the only way you can get a genuine one now is canibalizing another phone. Hard to even believe Apple is doing this.
I was assuming they have something equivalent to the Intel Management Engine. Do they not?
> Isn't any hardware a "potential" hardware backdoor?
I don't know. Is this true of open hardware? I mean, there could be a backdoor, but it would also be practically possible for qualified people to find it, right?
Apple have pulled too much bullshit for me to trust this right away. I’ll wait for the review of tech repairers. The chance is high that the are some outrageous provisions making this essentially worthless.
Spontaneous guess: The tools will only work with genuine parts and the genuine parts will be uneconomically expensive.
How is this service going to work with the fact that the display/battery are cryptographically bound to the phone itself? Will they also provide the tool to rebind the parts?
I suppose they've at least exposed themselves with the press release and some of the wording. So if that capability isn't provided, perhaps there's some leverage.
Simple. They will require you to mail bad part, wait 2 weeks while they receive it, verify, encode new one with same signature and finally mail it back to you.
This is how their "Independent Repair Program" works (or used to work, I dont keep current).
iOS 15.2 (currently in beta) disables the display authentication for Face ID that was added to the newer iPhones. If this program is going to be mostly screens and batteries (the easiest things to swap), that will be enough.
After years of disillusion and disappointment, I am so happy to see how things at Apple have apparently taken a turn for the better. With M1 and especially the new MacBooks Pro, they are in the process of fixing their hardware, with incredible results. Now they're taking concrete steps to make repairs more accessible, which was unthinkable just a year ago.
This is awesome! I've been doing my own repairs for friends and family since high school. Having access to genuine Apple parts and the tools used by their own technicians will be so helpful. Smart move, Apple.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 289 ms ] threadI was completely blindsided by this. I do regular laptop and smartphone repairs for friends and family and getting original parts often is difficult or even impossible. There are many scammers around that will sell "original OEM" i.e. cheap knock-off trash.
Ebay is OK-ish for second hand parts but sometimes you are just out of luck.
I'm pretty excited about this, to say the least.
Will be interesting to see if they roll support backwards or only provide the ability to fix from current devices onwards.
They can even still use the mechanism for theft-deterrence by checking whether the original phone is iCloud-locked before allowing you to associate the part with the target device.
Each piece will probably come with a unique QR-encoded serial code that will require activation online before it can be paired with the phone. Not really a rocket science.
This is never going to happen as long as touchid/faceid exist.
There's a security guide that talks more about what the threat model is and where exactly the encryption and trusted communications happen. https://support.apple.com/guide/security/touch-id-and-face-i...
If you believe that you are the target of such a threat actor, you probably aren't keeping much on your phone. I would assume that if you are under that kind of threat, you don't keep secrets on a device that isn't airgapped.
Via iFixIt:
> You’ll be able to buy parts and tools through the ‘Self Service Repair Online Store,’ where you’ll also have access to service manuals and some version of their repair-enabling software.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/55370/apple-diy-repair-program-p...
Wait until you see the price of parts. I am betting iPhone battery will be $30 to $50. i.e You save ~$20 compared to doing it at Apple Store.
Generally speaking Apple charge their repair parts at cost + their normal margin. Not saying this is bad, but people may have different perspective once they see it.
We know Apple very well now, they'll be expensive af and will give them a reason to keep screwing over third party parts by introducing hardware locks.
Unless I missed something, there is no talk of lowering the price by the cost of labor for, e.g., a $270 screen replacement. So my assumption is that you get to do an amateur screen replacement for the same price while also assuming the risk and liability of messing something up.
I even wonder if this is a kind of counter-punch against the right to repair movement so Apple, et al., can claim, "see, we allow repairs"; while it really just serves to take the wind out of the sails of the right to repair movement in the halls of Congress and the bureaucratic demons in DC.
It's also completely possible that the reason they're selling complete assemblies instead of individual ICs is because a) even they don't replace individual ICs, because it's fiddly, more likely to cause further problems, and requires keeping a stock of a lot of different individual chips, and b) they genuinely believe that there's not enough people who would be able to do that replacement (regardless of willingness) for it to be worthwhile.
Personally? I think it's some of both.
This is not something that Apple decided in a vacuum or even as it relates to the USA. Apple is surely looking at this with the lessons it has learned as it relates to how the EU has been behaving and its motivations too.
Not to belittle anyone, but the upper echelons of Apple and their servant army of attorneys operate from Mt Olympus and have a far wider aperture than most of us mere mortals have, regardless of how broadly we believe we understand a relatively narrow focus like how this relates to goings on in the USA alone.
Hell---I might even buy one of their new products now.
Was it that hard Apple.
Good for them for getting on board before a court ordered them to change their behavior, but let's not pretend Apple wanted to do this.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Very exited to get my hands on the OEM replacements and extend my laptop's life another 3-5 years
[0] https://coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
I doubt I'll ever find factory original cells again for the 2013 but if Apple sells them I'd consider buying a MBP again.
Either way, this appears to be great. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out!
You’ll see one in every shopping mall, and while franchised ones won’t be much affected, smaller shop should benefit from from wider access to parts (no need to get accepted as a repair shop for instance)
Is this supposed to be a human? Someone needs to go back to art school.
That said, anime-style doesn't look realistically human either, but I find it more pleasing than this, which seems to be the exact opposite in proportioning (tiny heads, huge bodies).
Will a consumer be able to buy a screen replacement and give it with the broken phone to a third party repair shop to have them do the repair?
Will Apple allow a mom and pop (not apple-authorized/certified) repair shop to buy these parts in bulk to offer repair service?
https://twitter.com/rossmannsupply
or you could link to just one video which explains his position. Not everyone has time to watch 1000 videos.
E.g, We'll allow this, but you must (without exception) follow our procedures to the letter. I mean, AASP exists so they already have a framework for the Independent Repair Providers to adhere to as a way of enforcing QC among shops in a uniform way.
Seems like an area where creating a closed system would be advantageous...
Still waiting to see if Louis finds any problems though
Years back I replaced the battery on my iPhone (I tried to have Apple replace it ... it's a long, infuriating story). But I took it in for a charge port recall due to the port losing connection to the cable. It was completely unrelated issue but they wouldn't replace it under recall due to prior third party repairs. It's similar to Ford not replacing your recalled alternator because you replaced your radiator with a third party. In any case I haven't bought an iPhone since because of the frustration this experience left me with.
So this is definitely a positive step in the right direction but hopefully it doesn't end without amendments to their warranty and recall policies.
Unless, of course, a way to remotely verify no damage occurred to the device while repairing it existed, which isn’t the case.
And if Apple doesn't want to do the repair themselves under recall due to 3rd party repairs, sure, just send me the part and I'll do it. One part per phone. Just don't tell me to pound sand and eat the full cost of part+repair. Sounds straightforward, though perhaps there's something I'm missing.
So where do 99% of people go to get their phone repaired? The same places they were going before: Apple's overpriced and shitty repair shops, or independent repair shops that don't have access to genuine parts because Apple refuses to sell to them (and prevents suppliers from selling parts to anyone but them).
This announcement does nothing in the grand scheme of things, even if it is a marginal improvement over the previous situation. What I think is important to notice about this situation is that the only thing that caused Apple to take this (extremely tiny) pro-consumer and pro-environment step was regulatory pressure. They would not have done this on their own if it wasn't for the pressure put on by people like Louis Rossman.
The logical conclusion of course is that if we want Apple to stop destroying the planet and exploiting consumers while doing it, then we need to apply more pressure. Apple is going to do shit unless we force them to. (this can also be seen with their App store monopoly, where they reduced the fee a while back only after the pressure from lawmakers and Epic's lawsuit).
So you'd be able order a battery or screen and go to some place and they'd swap it. Edit: just noticed Rossmann has released a video suspecting pretty much the same.
I fully support right-to-repair but I despise that he's become the face of it.
A big one that comes to mind is his remarks on the PCKompaniet case where he continued to say that Apple was suing a mom and pop repair shop for doing third-party repairs that weren't authorized. Not only did Apple not sue them for doing repairs (they sued them for copyright infringement and counterfeiting) but people repeatedly showed Rossmann that the store owner had actually advertised the parts as "genuine OEM" parts on his website and had only changed that advertisement after his parts from China were seized (the page was archived by archive.org).
Another one was a story that was similar about parts being seized by Apple in the US (that actually, at one point, dealt with Rossmann directly as it was his order). Apple didn't seize anything, it was U.S. Customs that seized the parts because the import documentation didn't match and the batteries themselves had Apple logos on them and they contacted Apple to verify the authenticity of the parts. Rossmann continued to claim that Apple had seized the parts as retaliation and continued to claim that they were "original parts" despite actually coming from grey markets in China that refurbished and replaced components (which, legally, make them non-original parts).
Overall, the sad thing is that I agree with him on the general right to repair argument but I feel like he purposely misrepresents certain things to garner sympathy from the right to repair "movement" and I feel like that hurts the movement as a whole. I feel the same way about Linus Tech Tips and their mischaracterizations. If your argument is sound and your principle is strong, you shouldn't need to do that in order to make your argument.
But lying is a pretty big claim, and not that I've seen all his content but I've never had a reason to believe that he has intentionally deceived people on any of his public platforms.
I'd be happy to see an example where you believe he did.
Like?
Not in the least. If anything, this will HELP his business with people who purchase parts then discover that they're not actually capable of doing the work themselves and turn to him to do the work with official parts they've already purchased.
The vast majority of people might be able to do the repairs themselves - eventually after hours of frustration and fear ("I just killed my phone!") and after purchasing additional equipment they don't normally have, just as the vast majority of people could eventually learn to do the same technology-related work that many of us here make livings on.
The always-DIYers fraction of a percent are not the customers anyone's looking for. The vast majority that are willing to pay to have someone else do that hard part are the customers everyone's looking for. It's like plumbing - everyone CAN do it, few want to do it themselves (and take on the risks).
So what is the hardware backdoor you are referring to?
> Isn't any hardware a "potential" hardware backdoor?
I don't know. Is this true of open hardware? I mean, there could be a backdoor, but it would also be practically possible for qualified people to find it, right?
Spontaneous guess: The tools will only work with genuine parts and the genuine parts will be uneconomically expensive.
This is how their "Independent Repair Program" works (or used to work, I dont keep current).
Now, time to fix software and documentation :)