California, the home to many of tech’s biggest companies and the nation’s most populous state, is pushing ahead with a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics and appliances. After unanimous votes in the state Assembly and Senate, the bill passed yesterday is expected to move through a concurrence vote and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Apparently Apple backed it… Color me confused.
Because it doesn’t state anywhere in the law what parts must be supplied and at what price.
Apple will simply sell the whole mainboard as one unit… and price it at $799 for an $850 phone. The phrasing is “fair and reasonable terms.” which Apple can simply say that the whole board is tied together as one item from the get go and therefore is not reasonable to separate for repairs. Further Apple gets the win of
So now there must be a mandatory letter when someone like Louis Rossmann repairs your phone… But Apple doesn’t have to do it, even while the first party repair people steal all your data and post your videos to porn sites.
You don’t have to guess or make stuff up. They already have a fully-compliant self-service parts store.
https://selfservicerepair.com/en-US/order
iPhone mainboards are not available for obvious reasons.
Fortunately, “fair and reasonable” is left to the courts, not the AG, so it should be harder for them to get away with pricing nonsense.
I’m more worried about software blocks (e.g. serialization of parts so many can’t just be dropped in), but hopefully there’s enough room in the law for a judge to set appropriate precedence.
They can see the wind turning. Instead of fighting the current, they’ll just try and steer the ship where they want it now.
They used to make their computers with components that could be upgraded. That stopped a decade ago. Hopefully we’ll get to see products like that again. It would be a refreshing change.
Then they either have some exemption or end up benefiting from the law in some indirect but significant way.