New York State Senate passes right to repair legislation
The New York State Senate has voted to pass right to repair legislation that could force Apple and other companies to make it easier for customers and repair shops to fix their devices.
Credit: Apple
On Thursday, the New York State Senate voted 51-12 to pass the Digital Fair Repair Act, becoming the country's first legislative body to approve a right to repair bill. The bill requires that original equipment manufacturers provide all the proprietary information and resources necessary for repairs available for sale to third-party repair providers and consumers.
To become law in New York, the bill still needs to pass the state's assembly. From there, it'll need to be signed by the governor. Currently, the New York State Assembly version of the bill is stalled, but lobbyists are working on getting it passed.
"Nothing prevents third party repairers from being technically competent to complete digital repairs other than the lack of information being withheld by manufacturers," the bill says.
Although it would compel companies to share detailed information about devices, the bill specifically does not include "trade secrets."
Apple opposes right to repair legislation, citing concerns about consumer safety and device security. The Cupertino tech giant has spent millions lobbying against similar bills across the country.
Internal communications revealed during a U.S. House investigation showed that there isn't a consensus about right to repair among Apple employees. Publicly, Apple has been expanding its independent repair provider program, which offers resources to approved third-party shops.
Currently, half of the states in the U.S. are set to consider similar right to repair bills in 2021.
Follow all of WWDC 2021 with comprehensive AppleInsider coverage of the week-long event from June 7 through June 11, including details on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, macOS Monterey and more.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider," and you'll get the latest AppleInsider Podcast. Or ask your HomePod mini for "AppleInsider Daily" instead and you'll hear a fast update direct from our news team. And, if you're interested in Apple-centric home automation, say "Hey, Siri, play HomeKit Insider," and you'll be listening to our newest specialized podcast in moments.
Credit: Apple
On Thursday, the New York State Senate voted 51-12 to pass the Digital Fair Repair Act, becoming the country's first legislative body to approve a right to repair bill. The bill requires that original equipment manufacturers provide all the proprietary information and resources necessary for repairs available for sale to third-party repair providers and consumers.
To become law in New York, the bill still needs to pass the state's assembly. From there, it'll need to be signed by the governor. Currently, the New York State Assembly version of the bill is stalled, but lobbyists are working on getting it passed.
"Nothing prevents third party repairers from being technically competent to complete digital repairs other than the lack of information being withheld by manufacturers," the bill says.
Although it would compel companies to share detailed information about devices, the bill specifically does not include "trade secrets."
Apple opposes right to repair legislation, citing concerns about consumer safety and device security. The Cupertino tech giant has spent millions lobbying against similar bills across the country.
Internal communications revealed during a U.S. House investigation showed that there isn't a consensus about right to repair among Apple employees. Publicly, Apple has been expanding its independent repair provider program, which offers resources to approved third-party shops.
Currently, half of the states in the U.S. are set to consider similar right to repair bills in 2021.
Follow all of WWDC 2021 with comprehensive AppleInsider coverage of the week-long event from June 7 through June 11, including details on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, macOS Monterey and more.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider," and you'll get the latest AppleInsider Podcast. Or ask your HomePod mini for "AppleInsider Daily" instead and you'll hear a fast update direct from our news team. And, if you're interested in Apple-centric home automation, say "Hey, Siri, play HomeKit Insider," and you'll be listening to our newest specialized podcast in moments.
Comments
but hey? Okay, at which point all claims against Apple for anything about that “repaired” device are voided.
One would think the NY state legislature has a few more important issues to address.
Wow. I mean... just... wow.
Right, like they don’t do that already. If Apple was really worried about the safety of its users, it would sell genuine batteries to their party techs, knowing that people would go to these techs regardless. But since Apple only cares about the bottom line, they’re fighting this. And look, they really should worry about the bottom line, that’s the point of s company. Just don’t be such hypocrites about it. Apple only cares about you as much as they can shake cash out of you. Sorry, that’s the truth, regardless of the touchy-feels rehearsed to death lines you see on keynotes,
BTW, anecdotes prove nothing
The problem of becoming a certified apple repair shop for Louis Rossmann and many others, is that they would lose the ability to offer the services they currently offer. He does data recovery for example, Apple does not. If he became certified he would not be able to offer that service anymore.
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.
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.
How many videos have you watched, or others which indicate Apple repair technicians have actually made 'unrepairable' devices harder to repair by breaking parts and not disclosing the breakage to the customer on returning the device?
Or how 'faults' like the screen ribbon on laptops wearing out and Apple quietly improving the design down the road and never admitting the original 'fault' existed in the first place.
Right to repair is important but what is more important IMO is 'design to repair' something the much loved /s EU is working on too.
Disposable electronics should be taxed out of existence.
Your Apple employees offering you refurbished devices is ONLY in warranty. You'd probably sing a different tune if you presented the same cases out of warranty!
Some people are easily bribed, as this shows, by some show of “great customer service” while under warranty — and by the way, that failed logic board of yours, do you think Apple just throws it in the trash? They’ll send it to an employee which will perform a component-level repair quite like what Louis does, and then sell it as refurbished. But they’ll sure charge the full cost of the replaced part out of warranty to you, even though they’ll fix your broken one and later resell it as refurbished.
Louis Rossmann will just do what’s nice and fair: charge you the actual cost of fixing the issue (and obviously his time to diagnose it, and supporting costs to keep his business alive — still much less than what Apple will charge you for a full part swap.)
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?