<
https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en>
"We need to have a serious chat about iPhone repairability. We judged the
phones of yesteryear by how easy they were to take apart—screws, glues, how
hard it was to change a battery. But repairs have gotten trickier, by design.
Software now limits many basic iPhone repairs. That’s why we’ve revised the
repairability score for the iPhone 14 from a
recommend 7 out of 10 to a
do-not-recommend 4.
Although we enthusiastically awarded it a solid score at launch last year,
thanks to its innovative repair-friendly architecture—of which we remain big
fans—the reality for folks trying to fix these things has been very different.
Most major repairs on modern iPhones require Apple approval. You have to buy
parts through their system, then have the repair validated via a chat system.
Otherwise, you’ll run into limited or missing functionality, with a side of
annoying warnings.
Lots of independent repair shops have business models that are threatened by
Apple’s parts pairing practice. Shops harvest parts from broken devices. They
use third-party parts. They shouldn’t have to send Apple their customers’
personal information, or agree to five years of audits just to do the repairs
they know how to do.
So when we gave the iPhone 14 a high score, the community pushed back. To be
honest, they were right—and we’d like to thank our critics for helping us hold
manufacturers accountable.
The situation has gotten so bad that several repair professionals have told us
they’re leaving the business entirely rather than navigate the labyrinthine
maze of obstacles that Apple has erected.
So we’ve gone back to the drawing board with our scoring system to make sure
that it reflects this significant new software limitation on repairs. And now
that we’ve run the iPhone 14 through our new scorecard, the picture isn’t as
rosy. The iPhone 14’s new 4 / 10 score reflects the fact that individuals and
independent repair shops encounter some atrocious limitations when trying to
fix it."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
