Apple losing me as a customer

Screen repairs and battery replacements is on the easier side on iphones.

:man_shrugging:

Kinda. Screens are bonded to the glass so you need to replace the whole thing, and it’s very fiddly getting a modern iphone open as it’s all glued together for water resistance. But yeah, those are doable by mere mortals.

Not that I would ever try myself, for sure.

I should have said display.

Replacing the entire display is easy.

My thoughts almost exactly.

If Apple doesn’t care why do they actively lobby against it then?

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I expect because it increases their support costs when users get devices repaired at third parties that use non-original components.

That is pretty shady though. I wasn’t aware of their lobbying activities there, thanks for the link.

Considering you can walk into an apple store and have a genuine battery put in it as a replacement, yeah, its on the easier side.

Theres no option for android phones for example, they have to be shipped off somewhere…

I can see why they’d want the phones repaired by specific people.

On the other side, id probably put a tamper mechanism on the phone and void the warranty if its opened by unauthorised repair people. That way you get the best of both worlds.

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Those warranty void stickers (and presumably mechanisms) are technically illegal in the US. Not sure if it’ll matter much though, I don’t know of many people outside of online forums that get hardware repaired outside of the company they bought it from.

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Oh I don’t meant stickers. I would put a hardware repair kill switch in them.

Apple may also be taking a strict stance in part becuase of Chinas chop shop on iPhones.

A hardware killswitch?

No thanks!

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As compared to other OEMs apple is orders of magnitude more difficult to deal with.

Not to mention their recycling program is a cruel joke.

Their retail program for warranties, apple care, is also terrible when compared to third parties like square trade.

You want support? HPE will ship you a refurb switch next day air no questions asked, while Apple will still demand a service fee. Like wtf. I’m calling on behalf of some moron I don’t have time for this bullshit.

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Do apple to enterprise support?

Same can be said for Dell with the right money I can get everything tomorrow from the other side of the world, but I’m not sure its a good comparison.

When we are talking consumer phone. Where can I get a battery for my pixel? its not as easy to find the actual answer. there are repair places but I can’t get a cost from them off their site.

Not saying apples strategy is a good one.

Why don’t more people become an authorised repair centre? They have some in the UK.

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I was on board with your first response in that “you repair yourself, you assume the responsibility/void the warranty.”

But a hardware kill switch? I am trying to see where you are coming from here. How is this justified?

EDIT: @Ruffalo made a valid comment as this instance was a security concern. I believe the premise of my question is still valid though despite this being a poor example.

IPhone X are discounted to around ~$330 with a business account, at least with my employer. Just goes to show how much markup they tack onto their products. If one breaks or needs new battery, we just get a new one. As it’s cheaper and faster than dealing with their support. Whereas with other OEMs it litter just a quick email with the S/N and then a nice pre-paid FedEx label to boot.

That was the touchID thing I referred to earlier, they fixed that. It was a security issue, trying to avoid a hardware authentication bypass.

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Shoot, I only picked up the highlight real there.

You missed a word. hardware repair kill switch.

If your a big company trying to stop fraud, chop shops, and potentially trade of your parts generated from criminal organisations that’s costing you billions, things like hardware checks start making a lot of sense.

You could (not that its a realistically feasible idea) have a hardware (as in its hardware not that it will kill the hardware) kill switch that trips from unauthorised repairs to hardware.

When the phone is then brought in to an authorised apple repair place either because the user made a unauthorised repair thus putting the phone in an unknown state, or the user being part of a fraud ring is trying to conn the repair place, they have to pay up because the phone can’t be repaired from an unknown state.

Again, not saying its a great example, or feasible. just something that people will have thought of when they are trying to prevent these types of fraud they see overseas.

Is the apple repair program thing hard to get into? Does anyone know? It seems like if they made it more accessible without compromising its goal these issues (of repair, not fraud) would disappear.

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Ahhhh, so to sum up and over simplify your response: a super-warranty-void sticker.

My hot take on the OP. I was never in the Apple camp. The only Apple products I owned was an iPod nano 2nd gen and a 2nd hand iPhone 4. Needless to say there was never a “good ol’ days” of Apple for me.

My wife had a few more Apple goodies and used a 2012 15" MBP through college. When that thing croaked (more from rough handling IMHO) and she needed a computer to finish projects and graphic design work, we ended up with a 2017 13" MBP with function keys this year.

Apple gained me as a customer primarily because the wife was familiar with OSX, and any Windows equivalents of similar build quality (i.e. Dell XPS) were not that much cheaper or any performance gains were negligible for her use case. Slapped on a keyboard condom and haven’t looked back and she likes it enough, too.

Will Apple see me as a repeat customer? Perhaps in a few years? Just looking at their current offerings though, probably not. I am not their target customer.

iPhone: over my $300 phone budget (still satisfied with my Moto G3) and wife just paid off iPhone 7 and she already okayed Android if/when she needs a new phone.
Watch: useless without iPhone
iPad: would be a nice to have/“toy” so nope, realistically would go Chromebook
Macbook: already own, should be good for a while
iMac: meh, if I need computational horsepower I would revamp/build a PC
Macpro: see above (and jeez outdated hardware)

Perhaps I am a bit ambivalent when it comes to Apple. I tend to purchase what I need and can afford, and if the “want” just so happens to align, all the better. At the end of the day, you can only vote with your wallet. I can empathize, but I would recommend not holding your breath for Apple to change course.

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This is to do with protecting security, but … you know… have at it or whatever.