Summary
-
The California state assembly has unanimously passed a bill that would require electronics manufacturers to sell repair tools and parts to consumers and to make repair guides available to the general public.
-
The bill, known as the “Right to Repair” bill, previously passed the state Senate and now has the support of Apple, a longtime opponent of the legislation.
-
If the bill is signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it would be a victory not just for Californians but for consumers everywhere.
-
California would become the third state to pass right to repair legislation for consumer electronics, after New York and Minnesota passed laws earlier this year.
-
The bill is seen as a victory for consumers and environmentalists, who argue that it will allow people to repair their own devices and reduce electronic waste.
Additional Details
-
The bill was supported by a coalition of consumer groups, environmentalists, and small business owners.
-
The bill’s supporters argued that it would be better for the environments and save them money on repairs.
-
Apple supported bills after having spent millions of dollars against it.
I’m really interested in why apple was so much against it before but are for it now. Maybe there’s an obvious reason, maybe not.
But I’m too tired to google this and dive further in.
It’s actually a very soft bill, it has no requirements to make hardware that is actually pro-consumer.
Which is likely why they switched to supporting it. It was this or more strict requirements in the future.
That’s disheartening but I figured it had to be something like that. Ultimately then the danger will be thinking “great, now right to repair is fixed”, plus Apple gets to claim they were altruistic. Ugh.
Apple won’t be forced to change their current business practice if soldering everything to the logic board, security chips disabling devices after repairs unless unlocked with their proprietary software, etc, so it won’t affect their monopolizing of the Apple repair market. They’ll just have to offer logic boards for sale with a one pg PDF showing how to replace the board, and maybe they’ll make the security software fix more available (which would still be huge). But 99% of their users likely wouldn’t do it themselves anyway.
Either way, this is still a huge step in the right direction though!
When I worked at Apple, much of the repairing wasn’t modular. Simply device replacement at a high fixed cost. They’d then cannibalize the surrendered devices for parts or repair them cheap, then make them replacement devices for the next person to come in. It made huge money.
Apple was against it because if you have parts, you can build counterfit iPhones and stuff (read about that rationale years ago, take it with a grain of salt). Also, the repair market is quite lucrative forcing customers to buy new devices than actually fixing them. They were doing this with iPods way back in the day with irreplaceable batteries or batteries so pricey, “you may as well buy a new one”.
No idea why they changed their tune. I could only imagine their revenue streams have leaned more into software now but I’m just an idiot online, what do I know.
Does this mean that the ice cream machines at McDonald’s will be working? 😉
Seriously though, this is great news.
Apple probably figured away to make more money this way
Microsoft just started selling spare parts for an xbox controller.
Fixing a drifting thumbstick is 80% the cost of a new controller in parts alone. You can fix it for $5 if you go aftermarket and are happy desoldering over 10 points to remove it.
Which, as I understand it, is kinda the point of the bills too. As in, if there is documentation and it’s reasonably easy to dis- and re-assemble, there can be a (bigger) market for spare parts.
To diagnose the fault you need a MacBook Pro Engineer Edition $10,000, Diagnostic Software $10,000 and Diagnostic Cable $10,000.
Then there’s the annual subscription to be able to buy parts , guess how much?
Its probably some watered down right to repair bill and the only reason apple supported it is so they can claim that theres already a rtr bill when someone wants a proper one.
Does the bill have any provision mandating that parts and repairs be fairly priced (with some reasonable legal definition for “fairly”)? Or is apple going to charge $2000 for a replacement iphone screen part?
There might be:
The bill would define the following terms: “documentation,” “electronic or appliance product,” “product,” “fair and reasonable terms,” “service dealer,” and “trade secret.”
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sb-244-right-to-repair/
