The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.
Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?
Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.
Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.
Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?
Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.
Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.
Now who has the ridiculous argument again?
Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.
Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?
Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.
Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.
Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?
Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.
Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.
Now who has the ridiculous argument again?
Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.
I do admit the point about Rossmann was made to shock those who somehow think the lack of Apple certification is an automatic sign of incompetence (though I'm sure he'd rank quite highly within Apple if he worked there).
Getting back to the point, though. How can the end user access these technicians so they'll, like Rossmann does, fix a fried voltage regulator for a couple hundred dollars, rather than over a thousand as Apple charges for say a logic board repair?
We can't? We have to pay full price (with markup, most likely) for a logic board from Apple which they'll turn around, refurbish and resell with even more markup?
Say I took a GM car to GM, out of warranty, to fix an issue which ultimately can be ascribed to a worn-out spark plug. GM tells me "we'll have to perform a full engine swap, and by the way, that'll be $5,000, please." Then GM turns around, replaces the spark plug (at a cost of a few dozens of dollars) and resells the engine for say $4,000. An engine which by the way probably costs $2,000 or $3,000 to make. Outraged by this, you thank GM and take this to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, and they tell you "sorry. I know it's just a worn-out spark plug, which by the way is quite similar to model XYZ1337 from NGK, but GM called up NGK and told them to use an english-unit screw thread rather than a metric-unit one for no good reason, and have an agreement in place that NGK is forbidden to sell the english-unit version. Maybe you can look for an identical car in the junkyard so we can take the spark plug out of it?"
I'm the last person in the world to demand the government step in. However, I can't help but rejoice when I see Apple being forced to do the right thing, as in this situation and also the most likely break up of the App Store 30% monopoly.
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.
Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?
Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.
Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.
Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?
Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.
Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.
Now who has the ridiculous argument again?
Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.
I do admit the point about Rossmann was made to shock those who somehow think the lack of Apple certification is an automatic sign of incompetence (though I'm sure he'd rank quite highly within Apple if he worked there).
Getting back to the point, though. How can the end user access these technicians so they'll, like Rossmann does, fix a fried voltage regulator for a couple hundred dollars, rather than over a thousand as Apple charges for say a logic board repair?
We can't? We have to pay full price (with markup, most likely) for a logic board from Apple which they'll turn around, refurbish and resell with even more markup?
Say I took a GM car to GM, out of warranty, to fix an issue which ultimately can be ascribed to a worn-out spark plug. GM tells me "we'll have to perform a full engine swap, and by the way, that'll be $5,000, please." Then GM turns around, replaces the spark plug (at a cost of a few dozens of dollars) and resells the engine for say $4,000. An engine which by the way probably costs $2,000 or $3,000 to make. Outraged by this, you thank GM and take this to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, and they tell you "sorry. I know it's just a worn-out spark plug, which by the way is quite similar to model XYZ1337 from NGK, but GM called up NGK and told them to use an english-unit screw thread rather than a metric-unit one for no good reason, and have an agreement in place that NGK is forbidden to sell the english-unit version. Maybe you can look for an identical car in the junkyard so we can take the spark plug out of it?"
I'm the last person in the world to demand the government step in. However, I can't help but rejoice when I see Apple being forced to do the right thing, as in this situation and also the most likely break up of the App Store 30% monopoly.
The analogy doesn't really work, because 1) A spark plug is a known consumable, like a battery in an iPhone.
And 2) We've spoken about Apple Store repair volumes at some length already. GM's annual repair volume is about 1/100's of Apple's. I'll summarize Apple's situation in a longer text here:
In the last five complete fiscal years, Apple has sold approximately 1.36 billion devices. It's hard to get solid data out of Apple regarding total failures, but the general consensus is that 4 percent of all installed devices on any platform, world-wide fail per year from forces outside of user abuse. This number does not include retirement or disposal, and can be as high as 10 times greater if you include user damage, or damage from disasters.
So, for the sake of this calculation in regards to conservatively estimating on the low-end how many devices need to be serviced per year per repair shop, if you conservatively assume that one in a hundred, not four in a hundred, of all Apple devices fail from reasons other than user-induced damage like a broken screen per annum, that leaves 13.6 million failures per year just from component age. Including user-induced damage like stoppage or spills, this grows to about 136 million devices per year -- about 26,000 per center, per year.
I'd like it if Apple did component-level repair in-store like I used to back in the day of the G4 tower and the like. I'd also like it if they did these kinds of repair in-store. But it's just not really feasible from a customer satisfaction standpoint when a motherboard diagnosis and repair is an hour or less of labor, or immediate with an on-the-spot replacement. A component-level diagnosis and repair is absolutely not that hour.
As a rule, AppleInsider readers have been around the block and understand that service is not immediate. Stand in line in a McDonalds even once, and you'll see how much patience folks have for waiting for anything. Again, Apple is doing what's right for nearly all of the existing user base -- just not for regular AppleInsider readers.
To be clear on my position on this: I am fine with third-parties getting screens, batteries, structural members, camera modules, and the like and Apple has taken moves to supply some of this to some folks -- but yes, that removes their ability to do component-level repairs as part of the terms of service of the program. I am not fine with them having anything to do with the Secure Enclave or anything related to data storage.
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.
Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?
Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.
Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.
Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?
Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.
Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.
Now who has the ridiculous argument again?
Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.
I do admit the point about Rossmann was made to shock those who somehow think the lack of Apple certification is an automatic sign of incompetence (though I'm sure he'd rank quite highly within Apple if he worked there).
Getting back to the point, though. How can the end user access these technicians so they'll, like Rossmann does, fix a fried voltage regulator for a couple hundred dollars, rather than over a thousand as Apple charges for say a logic board repair?
We can't? We have to pay full price (with markup, most likely) for a logic board from Apple which they'll turn around, refurbish and resell with even more markup?
Say I took a GM car to GM, out of warranty, to fix an issue which ultimately can be ascribed to a worn-out spark plug. GM tells me "we'll have to perform a full engine swap, and by the way, that'll be $5,000, please." Then GM turns around, replaces the spark plug (at a cost of a few dozens of dollars) and resells the engine for say $4,000. An engine which by the way probably costs $2,000 or $3,000 to make. Outraged by this, you thank GM and take this to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, and they tell you "sorry. I know it's just a worn-out spark plug, which by the way is quite similar to model XYZ1337 from NGK, but GM called up NGK and told them to use an english-unit screw thread rather than a metric-unit one for no good reason, and have an agreement in place that NGK is forbidden to sell the english-unit version. Maybe you can look for an identical car in the junkyard so we can take the spark plug out of it?"
I'm the last person in the world to demand the government step in. However, I can't help but rejoice when I see Apple being forced to do the right thing, as in this situation and also the most likely break up of the App Store 30% monopoly.
The analogy doesn't really work, because 1) A spark plug is a known consumable, like a battery in an iPhone.
And 2) We've spoken about Apple Store repair volumes at some length already. GM's annual repair volume is about 1/100's of Apple's. I'll summarize Apple's situation in a longer text here:
In the last five complete fiscal years, Apple has sold approximately 1.36 billion devices. It's hard to get solid data out of Apple regarding total failures, but the general consensus is that 4 percent of all installed devices on any platform, world-wide fail per year from forces outside of user abuse. This number does not include retirement or disposal, and can be as high as 10 times greater if you include user damage, or damage from disasters.
So, for the sake of this calculation in regards to conservatively estimating on the low-end how many devices need to be serviced per year per repair shop, if you conservatively assume that one in a hundred, not four in a hundred, of all Apple devices fail from reasons other than user-induced damage like a broken screen per annum, that leaves 13.6 million failures per year just from component age. Including user-induced damage like stoppage or spills, this grows to about 136 million devices per year -- about 26,000 per center, per year.
I'd like it if Apple did component-level repair in-store like I used to back in the day of the G4 tower and the like. I'd also like it if they did these kinds of repair in-store. But it's just not really feasible from a customer satisfaction standpoint when a motherboard diagnosis and repair is an hour or less with an on-the-spot replacement, and a component-level diagnosis and repair is not.
As a rule, AppleInsider readers have been around the block and understand that service is not immediate. Stand in line in a McDonalds even once, and you'll see how much patience folks have for waiting for anything. Again, Apple is doing what's right for nearly all of the existing user base -- just not for regular AppleInsider readers
The point stands that consumers should have a choice:
1) Immediate service (if they even have the part needed in store, otherwise come back some days later), pay full part swap prices 2) Delayed service, pay only for the technician's time and the cost of the parts (almost always much cheaper than a part swap)
Now I'm not even saying Apple should offer option 2 to its customers.
They just shouldn't go out of their way to make sure people like Louis Rossmann can't offer that option to the fraction of the user base that is quite clearly willing to trade repair time for a reduced cost (otherwise Rossmann's repair shop and many many others like it would have zero customers and would be forced to close.)
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.
Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?
Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.
Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.
Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?
Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.
Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.
Now who has the ridiculous argument again?
I don’t have a horse in this race, but your analogy doesn’t hold up. You’re claiming this one technician is better than ANY Apple tech. Such a claim requires substantial evidence for most people to accept it. You responded by making a circular argument and asking us to accept another claim (this time that your tech is the Rodger Federer of techs). Interesting tactic.
My suggestion would be to stick to personal testimonials and “I believe“ statements. But it’s up to you.
This just seems to be another case of government overreach in my view. It’s not the worst idea, and I’m not saying I agree with Apple‘s policy per se. but making a law that companies have to allow this and provide proprietary information? I’m not sure that will even hold up in court.
The other thing I can’t escape is the fact that this is what the New York legislature is spending its time on. Meanwhile, they have a horrendous business climate, extremely high taxes, a governor under multiple investigations, and had one of the worst coronavirus responses in the country (including the nursing home scanda). Maybe worry that your state is bleeding residents who are fleeing to Texas and Florida, to name a few?
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Agree... For the very few times I had to go with Apple support to diagnose potential hardware problems, I've been left unimpressed. People like Louis Rossman are prodigies and folks like him would demand a salary (and rightfully so) that few companies would pay for an employee. I too would choose Rossman to repair any of my Macs over Apple any day if I had to pay out of my own pocket.
Mike Wuerthele said: The analogy doesn't really work, because 1) A spark plug is a known consumable, like a battery in an iPhone.
…and it sounds more like Tesla…
(Yes, I watch Rich Rebuilds)
More seriously - this right to repair movement really started with companies like John Deere making it impossible for famers to repair their own tractors. This is about a lot more than Apple - the focus here is on a very narrow segment of a much larger problem!
There will be problems created by anybody. This legislation already exists for something a lot more complicated and dangerous than our stupid phones: Cars.
Would you like to be told that the only person who could fix a Ford is the Ford dealership. Then the dealership near you closes, and the next closest dealership is 75 miles away.
What happens to all those people that don't live near an Apple Store? Oh... go to Best Buy.. where they never have the appropriate parts in stock. And why should Best Buy be "blessed" any more than any other technician? They aren't trained by Apple Inc., they are trained by Best Buy (and having worked there I can give you first hand information of the uselessness of their training).
Right to repair legislation gives access to owners and repair centers for the documentation on how to fix something. It also gives access to purchase genuine parts. It doesn't make Apple "bless" the repair center as authorized, it just means that consumers have a choice. They have a choice now, but the problem is that the choices get limited because those repair people can ONLY purchase 3rd party, crap, parts.
For anyone that is against this, please explain how users would be harmed by having information and genuine parts access? Bearing in mind that users and repair centers can already access cheap, knockoff parts that make "your phone explode".
There will be problems created by anybody. This legislation already exists for something a lot more complicated and dangerous than our stupid phones: Cars.
Would you like to be told that the only person who could fix a Ford is the Ford dealership. Then the dealership near you closes, and the next closest dealership is 75 miles away.
What happens to all those people that don't live near an Apple Store? Oh... go to Best Buy.. where they never have the appropriate parts in stock. And why should Best Buy be "blessed" any more than any other technician? They aren't trained by Apple Inc., they are trained by Best Buy (and having worked there I can give you first hand information of the uselessness of their training).
Right to repair legislation gives access to owners and repair centers for the documentation on how to fix something. It also gives access to purchase genuine parts. It doesn't make Apple "bless" the repair center as authorized, it just means that consumers have a choice. They have a choice now, but the problem is that the choices get limited because those repair people can ONLY purchase 3rd party, crap, parts.
For anyone that is against this, please explain how users would be harmed by having information and genuine parts access? Bearing in mind that users and repair centers can already access cheap, knockoff parts that make "your phone explode".
It’s not clear that various state auto right to repair laws have had much effect. If I have a significant repair, I want the dealer to do it anyway, And in auto repair, third party parts are often preferable for older models, because they are less expensive.
I don’t necessarily agree with the electronics industry or Apple on this. My concern is about government stepping into yet another area in which it has no business. It’s not a question of being for or against the right to repair. It’s about being ok with government mandating the policy. I lean on the “no” side for that one.
Moreover, I do think Apple has a point here with regard to quality control. They want to make sure their products are repaired by certified techs with genuine parts. I’m certainly ok with pushing to change their policy to an access and certification system. But I don’t think getting a law passed is the way to do it.
Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff.
Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery. In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement. A third-party repair shop could never do that.
Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery. In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.
Great to see people chiming in with the anecdotal evidence that Apple techs are incompetent, as I knew all along.
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement.
They screwed up and had no other choice. Why are you impressed that they just did what they're legally obliged to do?
A third-party repair shop could never do that.
You mean that if, hypothetically, you were to take some devices of yours to repair somewhere, and the tech gave it back and said "Sorry, I broke it! Here's your broken device!", you'd just reply "fine, I don't mind that you screwed up, I'll just throw it in the trash and buy a new one out of pocket"? No, you're going to say "you're buying me a new one or I'll see you in court."
Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff.
Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery. In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement. A third-party repair shop could never do that.
On the other hand, before they would even take it into the back room, I was required to sign a document accepting that the phone could get damaged during battery replacement and that in such a case the (out of warranty) phone would be handed back to me 'as is' or I could pay $xxx for a refurbished unit.
Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff.
Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery. In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement. A third-party repair shop could never do that.
Another ridiculous fucking statement, absolute drivel. JFC a course in logic is definitely needed around here.
Is this really in the interest of consumers? And, Who’s pushing this ?
One would think the NY state legislature has a few more important issues to address.
In 2017, the HDMI port of a Macbook Pro of my company stopped functioning. I went the official Apple dealer and repair center in my region, and it costed me 169 Euro + 21% VAT to get it fixed. When 6 weeks later my company had to file its VAT declaration, I noticed that the shopkeeper had made an administrative error, as such that my company could not recuperate the VAT. I immediately informed the shop, requesting a corrective action. The response was not what I expected: they recognized that they made an error, but it was too late to make a correction because their IT system did not support it (which was, of course, BS).
So for the next repair of one my Macs I went to an unofficial repair center. The people there were very professional, and they lacked the arrogance of the staff at the Apple repair center. The repair went well and although I took a (relatively) small risk, I was a happy customer
So the right to repair is indeed in the interests of some customers.
If you don't want to go to an unofficial repair center or do the repairs yourself, that's fine, but give me at least the choice.
Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff.
Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery. In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement. A third-party repair shop could never do that.
Another ridiculous fucking statement, absolute drivel. JFC a course in logic is definitely needed around here.
@williamlondon, ridiculous in what way? Also, are you in favor of Right to repair or against it?
The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.
Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
It's not Bullshit! If you accidentally tip your glass of water into the keyboard of your MacBook you're screwed as Apple won't do anything and sell you a new device. Louis Rossmann an independent technician will be able to fix it for way less then what Apple will charge you to replace the entire logic board or the cost of a new Mac.
Comments
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.
Getting back to the point, though. How can the end user access these technicians so they'll, like Rossmann does, fix a fried voltage regulator for a couple hundred dollars, rather than over a thousand as Apple charges for say a logic board repair?
We can't? We have to pay full price (with markup, most likely) for a logic board from Apple which they'll turn around, refurbish and resell with even more markup?
Say I took a GM car to GM, out of warranty, to fix an issue which ultimately can be ascribed to a worn-out spark plug. GM tells me "we'll have to perform a full engine swap, and by the way, that'll be $5,000, please." Then GM turns around, replaces the spark plug (at a cost of a few dozens of dollars) and resells the engine for say $4,000. An engine which by the way probably costs $2,000 or $3,000 to make. Outraged by this, you thank GM and take this to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, and they tell you "sorry. I know it's just a worn-out spark plug, which by the way is quite similar to model XYZ1337 from NGK, but GM called up NGK and told them to use an english-unit screw thread rather than a metric-unit one for no good reason, and have an agreement in place that NGK is forbidden to sell the english-unit version. Maybe you can look for an identical car in the junkyard so we can take the spark plug out of it?"
I'm the last person in the world to demand the government step in. However, I can't help but rejoice when I see Apple being forced to do the right thing, as in this situation and also the most likely break up of the App Store 30% monopoly.
And 2) We've spoken about Apple Store repair volumes at some length already. GM's annual repair volume is about 1/100's of Apple's. I'll summarize Apple's situation in a longer text here:
In the last five complete fiscal years, Apple has sold approximately 1.36 billion devices. It's hard to get solid data out of Apple regarding total failures, but the general consensus is that 4 percent of all installed devices on any platform, world-wide fail per year from forces outside of user abuse. This number does not include retirement or disposal, and can be as high as 10 times greater if you include user damage, or damage from disasters.
So, for the sake of this calculation in regards to conservatively estimating on the low-end how many devices need to be serviced per year per repair shop, if you conservatively assume that one in a hundred, not four in a hundred, of all Apple devices fail from reasons other than user-induced damage like a broken screen per annum, that leaves 13.6 million failures per year just from component age. Including user-induced damage like stoppage or spills, this grows to about 136 million devices per year -- about 26,000 per center, per year.
I'd like it if Apple did component-level repair in-store like I used to back in the day of the G4 tower and the like. I'd also like it if they did these kinds of repair in-store. But it's just not really feasible from a customer satisfaction standpoint when a motherboard diagnosis and repair is an hour or less of labor, or immediate with an on-the-spot replacement. A component-level diagnosis and repair is absolutely not that hour.
As a rule, AppleInsider readers have been around the block and understand that service is not immediate. Stand in line in a McDonalds even once, and you'll see how much patience folks have for waiting for anything. Again, Apple is doing what's right for nearly all of the existing user base -- just not for regular AppleInsider readers.
To be clear on my position on this: I am fine with third-parties getting screens, batteries, structural members, camera modules, and the like and Apple has taken moves to supply some of this to some folks -- but yes, that removes their ability to do component-level repairs as part of the terms of service of the program. I am not fine with them having anything to do with the Secure Enclave or anything related to data storage.
1) Immediate service (if they even have the part needed in store, otherwise come back some days later), pay full part swap prices
2) Delayed service, pay only for the technician's time and the cost of the parts (almost always much cheaper than a part swap)
Now I'm not even saying Apple should offer option 2 to its customers.
They just shouldn't go out of their way to make sure people like Louis Rossmann can't offer that option to the fraction of the user base that is quite clearly willing to trade repair time for a reduced cost (otherwise Rossmann's repair shop and many many others like it would have zero customers and would be forced to close.)
(Yes, I watch Rich Rebuilds)
More seriously - this right to repair movement really started with companies like John Deere making it impossible for famers to repair their own tractors. This is about a lot more than Apple - the focus here is on a very narrow segment of a much larger problem!
Would you like to be told that the only person who could fix a Ford is the Ford dealership. Then the dealership near you closes, and the next closest dealership is 75 miles away.
What happens to all those people that don't live near an Apple Store? Oh... go to Best Buy.. where they never have the appropriate parts in stock. And why should Best Buy be "blessed" any more than any other technician? They aren't trained by Apple Inc., they are trained by Best Buy (and having worked there I can give you first hand information of the uselessness of their training).
Right to repair legislation gives access to owners and repair centers for the documentation on how to fix something. It also gives access to purchase genuine parts. It doesn't make Apple "bless" the repair center as authorized, it just means that consumers have a choice. They have a choice now, but the problem is that the choices get limited because those repair people can ONLY purchase 3rd party, crap, parts.
For anyone that is against this, please explain how users would be harmed by having information and genuine parts access? Bearing in mind that users and repair centers can already access cheap, knockoff parts that make "your phone explode".
I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement. A third-party repair shop could never do that.
@williamlondon, ridiculous in what way? Also, are you in favor of Right to repair or against it?