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Apple is not a fan of third-party repairs. This attitude is partly the result of a corporate culture that prioritizes total control of the iDevice ecosystem and partly the economic one. The more Apple services you pay for, the more revenue Apple will make. Revenue from services has become a critical part of the company’s business and overall segment revenue has grown at a rapid pace.
According to a recent article by iFixit’s Kevin Purdy, Apple’s hostility toward repair law has reached new heights with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro. Purdy writes that iFixit’s repeated testing of the iPhone 12 has revealed that the assembly of the camera of one phone cannot be exchanged on a different identical device.
Initially, iFixit gave the iPhone 12a 6/10 the ability to repair, but further camera testing gave it reason to dig deeper. Purdy describes it as: “It refuses to switch to the ultra-wide camera, responds only to certain camera modes, and occasionally hangs and becomes completely unresponsive.” This problem appears to be unique to the iPhone 12; the iPhone 12 Pro doesn’t seem to have a problem. But since iFixit is not the only site to run into this problem, it is clearly more than a single bug.
The reason iFixit suspects this may be more than just a bug is because Apple has updated the iPhone 12 Repair Training Guides to require its system setup app to repair the battery, screen, or camera. Previous iPhones only required this software for battery changes:
Purdy then looks back at Apple’s long history of putting up roadblocks to make life harder for DIYers and small shops, noting that, unlike Face ID or Touch ID, locking the camera serves no useful security purpose. “Putting an authentication check on a simple camera change poisons the iPhone resale and repair market,” Purdy writes. “With no obvious benefit to iPhone buyers, it reeks of greed. Or worse: planned obsolescence. “
Apple has gone from trying to grow the addressable market for the iPhone to focusing on extracting the maximum amount of revenue per customer. This is not unusual: it is what all successful companies turn to in one form or another over time. Eventually everyone who’s going to buy your stuff has already done so, and it’s time to change business models. But Apple is not just looking to generate revenue by improving its services or creating better TV shows, it is blocking people’s ability to repair their own devices without paying Apple to do so.
Time and again, we see concrete and specific reasons why legislation on the right to repair is necessary. This may just be a bug on Apple’s part, but whether it is or not, Apple is currently under no obligation to fix it. The company has been playing on both sides of the field for years, protesting to DIYers that it doesn’t, it really cares, while pushing at every opportunity to limit the right of end users to repair their devices without receiving FUD at every opportunity.
Now read:
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