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Once you buy the device why the hell should Apple prevent someone from putting a counterfeit battery/screen/whatever inside of it? Sure, people might be defrauding AppleCare, but that's their problem - there's no reasonable justification for why they should be able to regulate who fixes their devices.


I can understand the battery but admit the case is weaker for screen and other components.

If someone gets hurt using an Apple product it’s international news [1] and everyone ignores the reports 5 days later when it shown they were using a counterfeit. So I can understand why Apple would care. Keep in mind this article is about bringing repairs to Mac. The 16” MBP has a 100WHr Lithium-Polymer battery. That thing is no joke.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new...


> If someone gets hurt using an Apple product it’s international news

You can replace pretty much everything in your car which are literally killing machines and yet everything seems to be doing ok why give Apple this special treatment?


The question the parents asked, "why the hell should Apple prevent..." and the answer could be, so they don't get raked over the coals by the press when something goes wrong. I don't actually know the correct answer. Tim Cook never told me.

Note, whether or not Apple should sell, or be forced to sell, parts is a different question and conversation.


The injuries usually have different causes though.

For car accidents there is usually human action or inaction at fault. It is possible for parts to be at fault but that's the minority of cases.

For phone injuries it is usually a faulty part at fault.

If someone sharpened their iPhone and went on a killing spree I don't think anyone would be asking which parts are inside.

Note that I support the right to repair. I just don't think this particular analogy is a good one.


> For phone injuries it is usually a faulty part at fault.

Then Apple should have no issues selling good parts for repair but they are not doing that as well.


I fully agree. I support the right to repair, I just disagreed with the specific analogy.


Isn’t it the impact of Apple’s strict rules on repairs? People get used to thinks that they can’t replace any part by themselves. Thus any accident happened, people automatically thinks it caused by Apple itself. For car, it has been known we can replace anything. So most of the time when there is accident people don’t think it is related to manufacturer fault.


If Apple is so worried about people using crappy Chinese parts, they could sell original spare parts themselves, like proper hardware vendors do.

PS: Don't post AMP links, they cause cancer. De-AMP'ed link follows:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/iphone-5-owner-ma-a...


Eh...they don't really.

Dell doesn't sell most parts to the public.

HP and Lenovo theoretically do, but you've got probably 50%+ odds of the part you want either being perpetually unavailable/OOS or priced insanely if you try to buy direct.


I don't know about Dell but I put several original and not original parts inside my HP laptop and they worked well. HP's next business day service came to my home twice to replace the screen and the keyboard. I replaced the keyboard myself after the 3 years service period expired. I never bought from HP, just googled the part number and picked one of the results. Anyway I think HP sells through partners here.

I increased RAM twice, one rightaafter unboxing the laptop because buying an 8 GB laptop plus 16 GB from a third party was some hundreds Euros cheaper than buying a 16 GB laptop from HP. I bought two SSDs in different years and replaced the spinning disk and the DVD. I can't see myself having to depend from a single company for such things, and some of them being outright impossible.


> why the hell should Apple prevent someone from putting a counterfeit battery/screen/whatever inside of it?

You can definitely do whatever you want to the machine. And the audit prevents my parents got scammed by those individual shops. eg. Paid the price for a genius battery but got a counterfeit from China.


The scam is already included in the price of the phone itself in my opinion.

I am sick of arguments "for" consumer protection here. There is no chocolate pudding if someone shits on your plate. Sure there is QA, but not in the interest of consumers for any replaceable part.

As someone who has quite a lot of apple phones in my hands, the genuine Chinese batteries die as frequently as the not genuine Chinese batteries. They both smell nicely like bubblegum at least.


There's an argument here that the customer could end up the victim if they pay for a genuine part and end up with a knockoff. However, that should be something resolvable after-the-fact— if a device shows up at a Genius Bar with a counterfeit battery, ask the user where it came from, engage lawyers.


I remember when iOS started showing alert for non-genius battery for a while, some people hate it.


Looks like this started in 2019, so I guess it only affects more recent hardware? I put an iFixit battery in my 5S a year ago and I didn't hear any complaints (doubled the life of it compared to the tired old one in there, too).


Most efficient answer to "why the hell should Apple prevent someone from ...":

Control.


If control cost them money they would let control go. The answer is money.




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