Apple has recently been lauded for the efforts it has made in the last year to make its own devices more easy to repair by users or third party repair centers, as well as for shifting its stance on right-to-repair laws. Last year’s iPhone 14, as well as the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro, have signaled a bold departure from Apple by making the back of the devices easy to remove, giving owners convenient access to the phone’s internal components. In turn, the cost to repair these devices is down to $169 or $199, while previous iterations of the phone cost a whopping $499 or $549 to repair. In addition, the company has made replacement parts readily available for purchase through its own self-repair program.
Not everything is as it seems, however, as iFixit has retroactively lowered its repairability score for the iPhone 14 in accordance with new information coming to light. The repair specialists, who recently praised Apple’s new right-to-repair direction, chopped the iPhone 14’s score of 7 out of 10 down to a 4 in an issued statement, citing the phone’s software’s “systematic pairing.”
It turns out that the phone’s software scans and checks that all parts were purchased directly from Apple, and if they weren’t, the software will lock the user out of some functions, as well as send endless notifications to the user. In its scathing rebuke, iFixit scolds Apple for creating a “labyrinthine maze of obstacles” for both users and third-party repair technicians to deal with in their efforts to repair devices.
“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.”
See also: Apple switches sides, publicly supports right-to-repair bill
