Good. Non-replaceable batteries benefit no one but device manufacturers and miners of lithium, cobalt, etc.
I don’t think it would really benefit or harm the lithium miners and battery manufacturers - in fact it might benefit them more if they could sell their batteries directly to consumers and skip the middleman, keeping those profits for themselves.
EU doing all the heavy regulatory lifting that American politicians are too afraid to touch. As both an American and an avid Apple enthusiast, I sincerely appreciate it.
Apple will do something to ensure only batteries from them work right, mark my words.
Apple will do something to ensure only batteries from them work right, mark my words.
They tried doing this with the upcoming USB C cables but EU stepped in by making sure that every cable will work without any limitations on transfer and charging speeds.
I fully expect Apple claim that the EU is an environmental terrorist by having “disposable batteries being thrown out after their charge is depleted” and that somehow having batteries being certified by Apple prevents that.
Apple will do something to ensure only batteries from them work right, mark my words.
Still a slight win though!
Well if only official Apple batteries will work, then that means Apple will jack up the price to something ridiculous, because they’ll be the only option for a battery.
So hopefully third party batteries would work as well. I think third party batteries work in iPhones at the moment. So if we’re able to install them much more easily then that would be very good.
The EU is also working on Right To Repair legislation that iirc has something to say about reasonable prices for repair supplies and spare parts. In that case, even if only Apple-made batteries work, they’d still be affordable, or at least within a reasonable percentage of what they actually cost and not marked up enormously.
Thank you EU for actually having functional legal protections.
wonder how apple will react to this. lack of user repairability is a considerable source of revenue for them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to do the same thing as the printer companies. and install authentication chips in the battery modules so that only official apple batteries could be installed in Apple devices - then sell their batteries at marked up prices
“We made them easily available and replaceable, what more could you want?”
I don’t like Apple but battery is the one thing I wouldn’t mess around with and buy from a cheap 3rd party vendor. Batteries tend to go boom and if it’s a cheap knock-off you increase your chances. Since it will be law we will most likely get a bunch of 3rd party vendors, I would maybe see myself buying from an established battery manufacturer but not from a quick Amazon search or from the small repair shop on the corner.
While you have a point there, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had reputable third party battery companies sell phone batteries as well
- Especially if the smartphone battery size is standardized to a set of standards (I doubt that will happen, but it’s nice to dream) hell if this happened Energizer and Duracell might also jump on the lithium bandwagon.
They are already matching serial numbers in software to verify if a part is still the original one, so I guess the next logical step would be indeed to switch to authentication modules. With that they would allow users to change the parts on their own while still making lots of money
They need to hit the final nail on the head. All smart phones sold in Europe must have fully documented and open source hardware including the entire chipset, all peripherals, and the modem, with all registers and interfaces documented, the full API, and all programing documentation along with a public toolchain that can reproduce the software as shipped with the device and updated with any changes made to future iterations as soon as the updated software is made available.
This law would make these devices lifetime devices, if you choose; as in your lifetime. It would murder the disposable hardware culture, and it should happen now. Moore’s law is dead. The race is over.
I doubt manufacturers would want to put millions upon millions into research and development if they’d have to open source it all anyways.
They want to sell to every large market and will do what they are required to do in order to access this market. All of these companies have the ability to completely reverse engineer any competing hardware. There are no secrets. Proprietary is not about protecting business or IP. It only exists to exploit the end user. All of these tools and documentation already exist. In the past they were public. The only reason they are not public now is because corporations realized the can get away with it. Capitalism ruins everything you allow it to touch. The only way to stop it is by force. Corporations are the worthless sludge of humanity. You are what matters, not them. They have no rights.
Governments already have requirements like this for military and government hardware. All it takes is altering a few lines to existing requirements. Ultimately, you should expect more from both the manufacturer and the government. This is about ownership. You either buy what you pay for or you rent it. Anyone selling you anything should have no further ownership of any kind, digital rights included. Anything less is theft. This blind spot is leading to digital feudalism and it is criminal. Don’t allow anyone to steal from you. This is a fundamental human right.
I briefly worked in safety critical software, so adjacent to defence and aeronautical in the UK. I recall that when the UK was asking for the source code for windows running on the trident subs at the time (which is terrifying thought at the best of times. A whole new meaning to blue screen of death) that UK gov had asked to inspect the source code but was told to swivel. IIRC US and China were both allowed to look. That was all on the grapevine though, and I was still a kid so obv take with a pinch of salt, but I’m inclined to believe it.
I had more direct experience in my role validating software to run on military aircraft. We were contracted in to “prove” that the software was up to do-178b security stand and bug free via line by line inspection and some other techniques (which was a joy as you can imagine). I never got the impression that the source would be shared with the government, only that it had to meet the standard.
Interesting sidenote there, was that because it was for defence, being up to the standard was really marketing more than legal requirement. We’d find bugs that would trigger hard reboots of the hardware and the message was always “thanks for letting us know, but it’s too expensive to get the original contractors back to fix it so we’ll just ignore it”. I think they’d have been legally obliged to do something for civilian aircraft but military is a different game.
(Again should emphasise these are vague memories from working a gap year before my masters, so take with pinch of salt.)
