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Planned obsolescence: Apple attacked for the “serialization” of its spare parts
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoInteresting bit (translated) : > A practice contrary to the principle of the anti-waste law > In France, serialization is theoretically prohibited, according to Alexandre Isaac. Since the entry into force of the anti-waste law in November 2021, the consumer code mentions that "any technique, including software, by which a marketer aims to make it impossible to repair or recondition a device or to limit the restoration of all the functionalities of such a device outside its approved circuits is prohibited”.
- netsharc 3y agoHuh, I wonder if a lawyer could win the argument that printer companies who restrict 3rd-party cartridges violate this law... Next on eBay: "Buy French ink for HP printers, use VPN to download the French drivers!". "PC CHARGER LA LETTRE?! WTF does that mean?"
- jMyles 3y agoPourquoi ça indique "bourrage de papier", alors qu'il n'y a pas de bourrage?
- LeanderK 3y agoI think it's possible and it would be a good thing. Although I wonder...I use a slightly older brother printer (prob. 4-5 years old) with 3rd-party cartridges without problems. Is it different with other printers?
- seszett 3y agoThere has already been a class action against HP[0] ending with a settlement and reimbursement of some customers, but that's not very conclusive. It seems clear to me though that they violate this law, we just lack enforcement. [0]https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/hp-will-pay-customers-for-blocking-non-hp-ink-cartridges-in-eu/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/hp-will-pay-c...
- throwaway290 3y agoAny technique with makes it impossible to repair or recondition by definition also makes it more difficult to pwn. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35954422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35954422 for one example.
- realusername 3y agoThat isn't a repaired product but a fake one. You can also buy fake iphones today which are near indistinguishable from the real thing unless you have a deep knowledge into the product, you can have a look on youtube. Preventing repairs did not help them on that aspect.
- brookst 3y agoBy "did not help", you meant "did not completely 100% solve the problem", right? In the same way that seat belts do not help traffic fatalities because there are still traffic fatalities?
- realusername 3y agoNo, I meant that it did not solve any issue in this area at all, fake iPhone are as easily available as other fake brands. It's 0% affecting fake products which have their own separate supply chain anyways.
- brookst 3y agoAgain, the existence of X does not mean that all efforts to reduce the incidence of X were completely useless and therefore should not have been undertaken. Binary thinking is full of such pitfalls.
- realusername 3y agoFake iphones don't and won't use any genuine parts. So locking said genuine parts achieves absolutely nothing against fakes, so yes that does means that if that's the goal, it's pointless. It's not an "effort", it's misdirection.
- lostmsu 3y agoSo hypothetically if I get an app into iPhone app store, that is later removed by Apple for "duplicating functionality of the OS" (obviously, incomplete), would the inability to sideload the app from a web site be a violation of this law?
- joseph_grobbles 3y agoSuch considerations must incorporate public safety/crime considerations as well. Smartphones are often the most expensive thing we have on our person and became a huge target for thieves. Locking/bricking went a long way towards reducing this, and then limiting the value of resale parts did again.
- throwaway290 3y agoNot only that but ensuring genuine parts also goes a long way against hardware-based attacks.
- circuit10 3y agoThat’s not a good reason to do this. If you really wanted to do it that much you could just modify the real parts and that isn’t really a thing that happens anyway. What’s a far bigger concern is giving one company complete control over whether you can repair your own phone or not, creating a monopoly where they can charge whatever they want, and they might not even do it at all because they’d prefer you to buy a new one. This is actually happening to the average person, these theoretical attacks that serialisation doesn’t really protect against aren’t
- throwaway290 3y ago> If you really wanted to do it that much you could just modify the real parts It seems like the phone would alert for any swapped part, no matter genuine or not. Maybe this is why. Makes sense to me now.
- circuit10 3y agoI don’t think that’s why, I’ve never heard of that ever happening
- throwaway290 3y agoMaybe you don't hear about it because it works and so no one attempts it By the way long ago I got a screen repaired at an unofficial place, on an old iphone, and camera started working incorrectly (focusing issues etc). I kinda suspect they swapped the camera for a different one, if the phone warned me immediately that would have been cool. I heard many similar stories by the way.
- wiredfool 3y agoWonder how Renault is handling it. All of their spare electronic parts have vin locks that only the dealer is supposed to be able to modify.
- beardyw 3y ago[flagged]
- Dah00n 3y agoApple is much worse than Renault.
- SuperShibe 3y agoDon't be so hard on Renault
- beardyw 3y agoSorry to the Renault folks - I was just trying to highlight an egregious bit of whataboutism. I failed!
- glitcher 3y agoIn this case I don't think the OP was attempting to use whataboutism for the purposes of distracting away from Apple, or explaining away Apple's behavior. It was more of a "and-also-whataboutism" to bring Renault under the same scrutiny.
- rahen 3y agoI don't mean to be the devil's advocate, but I'm pretty sure that disabling Face ID when replacing the camera with a generic one is primarily a measure to thwart potential hardware-based attacks...
- jeroenhd 3y agoWhen the camera fails you don't exactly have many options because you can't really order the official parts. Why would the camera be of consequence, though? Isn't authentication data stored in the proprietary TPM thing Apple includes in their devices?
- chaosite 3y agoBecause the camera represents the analog hole. If you can replace the camera, you can hook the phone up to a computer and feed it pictures of faces instead, until the phone unlocks.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoIf you find that attack vector so scary, I'm sorry to inform you that it is already possible to prop up an iphone against a pizza box and have it stare at a screen showing a feed of pictures. Admittedly you might have to put the iphone on its side so you can get the charging cable in there, which means you might have to figure out how to rotate the pictures too.
- cainxinth 3y agoFaceID uses 3D data as well. You can’t unlock it with just a 2D image of a face.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoThat's a good objection, go tell it to the guy I'm sarcastically replying to instead because it is they that are worried, not me.
- pibechorro 3y agoWhat a shitty company. Time and time again they shaft consumers yet people buy into the ecosystem. Marketing works unfortunately.
- nickpeterson 3y agoI love these complaints that are so obviously from a tech bubble. I see so many senior citizens with iPhones, they must be buying the hype…
- emptyfile 3y ago[dead]
- GoofballJones 3y agoPerhaps, but their policies and support for old hardware far exceeds anything you see in the Android world. But you point out THIS "shitty company" while not throwing your gaze towards all the other "shitty companies" like Samsung, or Google, or Sony, or Microsoft. Could it be that your disdain for the type of people that buy Apple products just rings through? The tried and true "them" vs "me" attitude. Personally, I just let strangers like what they want to like. WTF do I care if they like this phone instead of this other phone.
- circuit10 3y agoThey’re all doing things like this, yes. That doesn’t make Apple any less bad though, it just means we need to fix it everywhere Interestingly Microsoft actually seems to be supporting right to repair but it could be some kind of PR stunt, still though that’s a good step forward
- kaba0 3y ago> That doesn’t make Apple any less bad though It literally does - their devices easily reach 8-10 years of active usage, and we are talking about something that is used more than your shoes per day, actively charged-discharged each day, thrown around/fallen down, etc. Like that’s a great lifetime however we look at it, and it might need one or two battery replacements max for that.
- msoad 3y agoMy girlfriend's phone is stollen and last location is in China. I'm sure they are selling the parts and the motherboard is useless. If those parts wouldn't work with other phones this theft would be less incentivized. Serial lock is a good thing if the owner had the option to unlock their phone's parts on Apple's website to be usable for repairs etc.
- crote 3y agoWhy not give the owner the option to lock the parts instead? I bet a lot of people don't even consider potential reuse when they intentionally discard their phone.
- LeanderK 3y agojust tie it to the apple-id like the phone itself
- gchamonlive 3y agoScraping stolen goods for parts doesn't happen because it can be done. It is viable because manufacturers make access to spare parts artificially difficult or expensive. Locking a device to serial is adding insult to injury when companies like Apple decide to campaign against Right to Repair. It must be said that Apple made strides towards making repairing phones easier, but as long as counterfeit or stolen parts remain economically viable, this kind of market will exist.
- labcomputer 3y ago> but as long as counterfeit or stolen parts remain economically viable, this kind of market will exist. The point of serialization is precisely to make stolen parts unviable economically, so you’ve painted yourself into a bit of a corner there. > It is viable because manufacturers make access to spare parts artificially difficult or expensive. After paying a shop to repair an iPhone with a generic screen, I believe genuine parts cost more because they are better, not due to artificial scarcity. Not only were the colors off, the battery life was less with the new screen.
- Yizahi 3y agoI remember how Apple had been turning magnets in the iPad covers so that reversed polarity prevented them from being compatible with iPad of previous generation despite having exact same form factor and size. Such a pro consumer corpo. :)
- arein3 3y agopretty ingenious, they should do the same with the iphone magnetic accessories
- andsoitis 3y ago> Apple had been turning magnets in the iPad covers so that reversed polarity prevented them from being compatible with iPad of previous generation That's not actually what happened. See https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-case-of-the-mysterious-ipad-magnets/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-case-of-the-myst...
- yipbub 3y agoThat article doesn't confirm or deny whether that happened. It outlines the speculation and says that Belkin fixed something. Some users on ifixit said that switching the polarity worked for them: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/83099/Smart+Cover+Magnets+on+the+new+iPad https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/83099/Smart+Cover+Magnet...
- gaucheries 3y agoVideo discussion of this topic by Louis Rossmann: https://youtu.be/ki5jSAyS8tA https://youtu.be/ki5jSAyS8tA
- kjreact 3y agoRossmann mentioned using a user configurable password or encryption key to prevent theft. What did he mean? Did he mean to use a password or key to protect serialization information? But this would still require serialization of parts, which is what the regulators in France are against. I’m all for protecting a users’ right to repair, but I’d also like to disincentivize thieves from stealing my phone for parts. Both are important to me. Rossmann seems to think that Apple is just greedy and that the solution is simple, but I don’t see a viable solution in his video. Can someone with a better grasp on this subject enlighten me? Or did I just fall for clickbait?
- Kaibeezy 3y agoHypothetically speaking, if one had substantial data obtained through an atypical usage method that backed the hypothesis a manufacturer “soured the milk” on a widely used technology to pave the way for its removal, what would one do with such information, provided one desired to avoid imperial entanglements?
- Our_Benefactors 3y agoContact tech reporting outlets
- gigel82 3y agoReading this comment gave me a headache.
- Kaibeezy 3y agoGesundheit
- thewileyone 3y agoThe lack of backwards compatibility of older Mac hardware with newer MacOS operating systems and software effectively forces you to replace a perfectly functional computer if you need to upgrade the software.