The Apple iFixit.com story on the Californian right to repair law and the fate of hardware in the Apple Macbook 15
Apple welded most of the solid state drives in its MacBooks to the logic board meaning that they cannot be removed and replaced without some serious soldering chops. The choice of design makes recovery of data or replacement of a dead drive more cumbersome, said Bumstead, the Apple restorer. E-waste recyclers, Bumstead said, used to be able to pull the drive off the board in order to securely destroy the data before selling the device to refurbishers. Now, in order to comply with the data destruction requirements set by private certifiers, recyclers will often shred the entire board, a much costlier and more resource-intensive component.
The five Macbooks were locked because the prior owner had forgotten to wipe the device and nobody else could. He couldn’t afford new screens from Apple and five of them had broken screens that would be lost True Tone if they weren’t replaced.
California’s new right to repair law is one of the most notable consequences of the shift in public and corporate attitudes towards repair. The laws want to start chipping away at the environmental toll of our culture by ensuring that it is theoretically possible to fix many devices.
As device detectives at repair guide site iFixit.com soon discovered, the iPhone 15 is riddled with software locks that cause warning messages to pop up or functionality to be lost if parts are replaced with new ones that weren’t purchased directly from Apple.
Source: The right-to-repair movement is just getting started
Putting the Californians on the Repair Front: The New Right-to-Repair Acts are Hidden by Technology’s Willpower
As long as repair is costly and complicated, it “will remain something only some people that are motivated by environmental reasons will choose,” Ugo Vallauri, a co-director of The Restart Project, a UK-based community repair organization, and founding member of Right to Repair Europe, said. Replacing broken devices with new ones will result in more destructive mining and carbon emissions, as well as more electronic waste piling up in landfills. The European Union estimates that prematurely discarded products cause 35 million metric tons of waste and 261 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year within its borders alone.
In the US, repair advocates want more ambitious rules and regulations after their recent legislative victories. Gordon-Byrne says she expects to see other states follow in California’s footsteps and pass their own right-to-repair bills in the years to come. “We’re trying to make sure every ‘me too’ includes something that pushes the envelope,” Gordon-Byrne said.
Shortly thereafter, device makers started changing their tune on the issue, announcing a slew of new initiatives aimed at promoting independent repair. In the spring of 2022, Apple launched its first self-repair program, Samsung and Google announced partnerships with iFixit aimed at promoting repair, and Microsoft, at the behest of its shareholders, released a study concluding that repair has significant environmental benefits. Tech giants made some concessions and were able to retain a seat at the negotiating table in order to shape future regulations, according to advocates.
The laws require manufacturers to give spare parts, tools and repair information to the public for a certain period of time after a device is no longer on the market. California requires three years of spare parts and information for devices that cost between $50 and 99, and seven years of support for devices costing $100 or more.
The passage of three electronics right-to-repair laws in a single year — in addition to new state laws covering farm equipment and wheelchairs — is “huge,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the repair advocacy organization Repair.org, said. She said that they’ve been waiting for the dam to burst.
Due to industry pressure, Gordon-Byrne said, the laws in California and Minnesota only apply to products sold from mid-2021 onward, while New York’s law applies to products sold starting in mid-2023. This means the laws won’t help consumers fix older devices, which are more likely to need repairs sooner. There are various categories of devices that can be excluded depending on the state.
Apple, Google, and the Future of Smartphones: How New Lithium-Ion Refurbation Regulation Makes Devices More Repairable
Apple has come under fire for other design choices. Many of it’s devices used hexagonal- shaped screws that were difficult to find screwdrivers for, and featured batteries that can be difficult to replace, if not impossible.
Another major barrier to maintaining older devices is software support. When a manufacturer does not provide software updates or issue security patches, the products themselves can become obsolete. The smart home devices are vulnerable to this because of the remote server function tied to it. Wiens pointed to Nest’s decision to disable the Revolv smart home hub in 2016 and the demise of the company that made the SmartDry laundry sensor last year as examples of how manufacturers can turn expensive pieces of hardware into useless bricks by dropping software support.
It’s against the rules of the business to harvest working components from dead devices and use them to restore other devices. The head of public affairs at the online refurbished device store Back Market said that the costs of repair in refurbishment are a very big threat.
Google spokesperson Matthew Flegal declined to say whether the company’s decision to extend software support as well as hardware support and replacement parts for its newest phones was influenced by this regulation but said that the main reason “is because it’s important to our customers.”
The EU just passed a new battery regulation that covers many aspects of battery longevity, including repair. Per the new rules, nearly all portable electronic batteries will have to be user-replaceable starting in 2027. While key details of the regulation are still being hammered out, including which devices will be exempt because they are routinely in contact with water, Vallauri expects the regulation will have “a big impact” on product design, making many devices “easier to disassemble.”
There will be a race to the top where manufacturers are just designing products to be more and more repairable if we have transparency in the marketplace. US PIRG is calling on the FTC to create voluntary repair score criteria that state and companies can use, similar to the Energy Star program that encourages manufacturers to improve device efficiency.
Mac Progenitor (Machines): What’s Happening in a Teen’s Basement and Why Does It Happen In My Basement?
Jones said that the MacBook is back in service. It is an insane level of effort that every teen has the ability to do in their basement.