Why can’t I fix my own phone, toaster, or tractor?
Manufacturers in a broad range of industries have a monopoly on who repairs machines—and when devices are deemed unfixable
Why won’t Apple fix my phone? Can someone else do it?
Today’s mobile phone is a marvel of precision engineering—watertight seams, sealed batteries, and a lack of visible fasteners that would make most consumers unsure of how you would even go about opening it. To get inside requires detailed schematics, diagrams, and specialized tools.
Apple has all of those, of course, but in July 2019, Apple VP Kyle Andeertestified to Congressthat the company and its authorized service providers perform only four types of iPhone repair: display, battery, speaker, and camera. If your phone dies (when it is no longer covered by warranty or optional AppleCare coverage) and it can’t be fixed by one of those repairs, Apple may suggest you buy another phone.
Jessa Jones, founder of iPad Rehab, a mobile device repair shop in Honeoye Falls, N.Y., says that’s disingenuous.
“I think that my customers are largely unaware that what they’re being told by the manufacturer of the device, about the problem that they’re having and about the repairability of that problem, is false,” she told The Markup.
“We aim to avoid the need for repair in the first place,” Apple spokesperson Keri Fulton said in a statement to The Markup. “But when a repair is needed, there should be safe, dependable options available to bring a device back to its best possible performance.”
Jones runs a popularYouTube channelon which sheuses her soldering skillsunder a microscope to perform several repairs that Apple does not offer.
She particularly specializes in restoring data from dead phones—often helping people recover precious photos of loved ones.
“There’s a chip on the board that is soldered on there that contains all of your memories, and those memories are encrypted by default,” Jones said, and it’s time-consuming though entirely possible to retrieve.
“The only way to decrypt that and get them back out is you’ve got to get a multi-meter out and solve problems on that logic board,” she said.
Jones also noted that there are many relatively simple repairs that shouldn’t require a trip to the Apple Store or an authorized dealer.
Tips are easy to find online, and sites likeiFixitoffer detailed repair guides, tools, and replacement parts. Independent phone repair shops can be found in towns large and small, but they often operate without official manufacturer certifications to repair devices. These shops may use unofficial aftermarket parts from overseas, or replacement parts harvested from inoperable phones.
But like many other device manufacturers, Apple increasingly employs strict digital controls over the hardware that the device detects, making non-Apple repairs of some components impossible without Apple diagnostic tools.
“Our ability to just take something from the junkyard of iPhone parts and plug it into your new phone is becoming increasingly limited, because the parts are now serialized, meaning there’s a serial number in the part that the phone refuses to operate [without],” said Jones.
Fulton from Apple declined to comment but pointed The Markup to the company’s2020 Environment Report, which says products are becoming easier to repair.
“For our iPhone devices, we’ve utilized stretch release adhesives, which securely hold the battery during use yet can be swiftly debonded by service partners to install replacements,” the report says.
Apple is not alone in making devices that are hard to repair. Jones said manufacturers of Android devices employ manufacturing techniques that make repairs difficult. iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens told The Markup, though, that there are manufacturers who are voluntarily adoptingright-to-repair principles.
“Motorola is the first smartphone manufacturer that stepped up and is basically complying with right to repair,” he said. “They have worked with us.”
There’s a diverse, growing movement behind the right to repair — but it faces hurdles
Some of the earliest calls for right-to-repair legislation came from farmers, who’ve been struggling for the ability to fix their own John Deere tractors for years. John Deere equipment is sold with software restrictions that only authorized technicians can bypass,frustrating traditionally self-reliant farmers.
During their campaigns for president, both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanderscited the plight of these farmersunable to repairtheir own equipment and called for a national right-to-repair law as part of a host of proposals to help American farmers that ended up being adopted asa plank in the Democratic platformfor 2020.
A spokesperson for John Deere declined to comment.
The company has recently made an effort to smooth things over,offering a programwith diagnostics, training, and documentation for farmers wanting to do their own repairs, starting in 2021.
In 2018, analliance of right-to-repair advocateswon long-sought exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow farmers and other consumers tobreak software locks on the products they own—without breaking the law. Theselatest exemptions(which are considered every three years under the law) enable the legal “jailbreaking” of new phones, voice assistants, and software locks on tractors, cars, and home appliances—though not on video game consoles. Importantly, they also allow you to hire someone to do this breaking for you.
Massachusetts, where a voter-initiativeautomotive right-to-repair law passed in 2012with86 percent votingin favor, shows the potential popularity of expanding such laws.
This November, Massachusetts voters will consider anupdate to the automotive law, which would allow consumers to access and control the automobile diagnostic and telemetric data that’s increasingly sent directly to car manufacturers via cellular radios.
Massachusetts also has a consumer electronics right-to-repair bill that advocates say is the furthest along of any in the country, though it’s currently awaiting a vote by both chambers of the state legislature.
The Massachusetts bill has served as a template for proposed automotive and consumer electronic right-to-repair legislation around the country—some of which has come close to becoming law, only to be killed at the last minute bylobbying from electronics and automobile manufacturers. New York Statelobbying disclosuresfor 2018, for instance, show that Apple, Verizon, Facebook, AT&T, Toyota, Caterpillar, and others all successfully lobbied against a proposed “Fair Repair Act.”
Industry groups opposing right to repair include Consumer Technology Association,Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and TechNet (a large industry group whose members include Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Comcast).
In 2019, TechNet’s then Northeast executive director,Christina Fisher, testifiedbefore the Massachusetts state legislature’s Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure in opposition to the proposeddigital right-to-repair bill.
Fisher argued that the bill was “legislation in search of a problem”—that consumers already have plenty of choices for repairs and that such laws would hurt innovation.
TechNet declined to comment for this story, pointing The Markup to the group’s previous statements.
An all-star list of engineers and cyber security professionals foundedSecurepairsin 2018 to counter these arguments, which the group says arewithout merit.
What comes next?
If Massachusetts were to pass the nation’s first consumer electronic right-to-repair law, it could have national influence. When the Massachusetts Automotive Right to Repair bill passed in 2012, all major car manufacturers signed amemorandum of understandingvoluntarily adopting the requirements of the Massachusetts law nationwide.
Aside from legislation, Apple does appear to be moving forward with several efforts atincreasing the availability of parts and repairsfor its products, but recentinternalemails, disclosed as part of a U.S. House antitrust subcommittee hearing in July, show internal confusion surrounding these initiatives.
“What is our repair strategy? Are we comfortable releasing our repair manuals for all products moving forward?” read one email from Lori Lodes, Apple’s former director of corporate communications, from March 2019.
Apple declined to comment on these emails directly and referred The Markup back to its 2020 Environment Report, in which the company says it has “broadened the reach of Apple authorized service repair. Through a partnership with Best Buy, we added 1000 more AASP locations in 2019, tripling the number of U.S. AASP locations compared to three years ago.”
Meanwhile, prompted by the pandemic, there’s a bit of a guerrilla movement afoot, at least when it comes to medical devices.
When Wiens, CEO of repair websiteiFixit, heard about the crisis of the shortage of ventilators in Italy as that country struggled at the height of its first wave of COVID-19 cases, he wanted to help. Aside from selling replacement parts and repair tools, iFixit offersdetailed documentationfor repairing electronics—and Wiens decided they could do something similar for crucial medical equipment.
Wiens and his team collaboratedwith volunteers to collect and organize a free library of more than13,000 service and maintenance manualsfor lifesaving medical equipment. The move was potentiallylegally risky, butso far, the materials remain online.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupby Jon Keegan and was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
