In 15 years of new iPhone announcements, Apple had never talked about repairability, until now.

For the first time, Apple discussed repairability during its iPhone launch event. An engineer mentioned the new iPhone 15 Pro models were designed with a structural frame that makes the back glass easier to replace. This comes after the iPhone 14 introduced a design that allows removal of the front or back. Repair advocates welcomed the acknowledgment but will still examine the devices for barriers like parts pairing. While praising initiatives to reduce emissions, critics argue the most sustainable option is not buying a new phone annually. The conversation on repairability is complex as commitments face scrutiny versus past actions restricting repair. Only time will tell if Apple’s claims translate to meaningful improvements or are more superficial than substantive.

    •  El_Rocha   ( @El_Rocha@lm.put.tf ) 
      8•8 months ago

      They say it’s to stop people from stealing iPhones to sell for parts.

      What they don’t say is that the only reason there is a market for that is that they aren’t willing to sell the parts directly at an affordable price…

      •  loki   ( @loki@lemmy.ml ) English
        5•8 months ago

        They say it’s to stop people from stealing iPhones to sell for parts.

        There’s an easy fix to this. Allow users to mark their devices as broken/dead in their (icloud?) system, so its parts can be extracted and used for genuine repair. Put it behind 2FA, email confirmation, and require purchase invoice, or whatever to make it happen. To counter edge cases, give a month for appeal, only then mark it safe for usage of its parts on other phones. A trillion dollar company should be able to implement this, but they’re trillion dollar company for a reason, so yea…

        Thiefs don’t have access to the accounts inside a locked phone, let alone the invoice of purchase.