[mmmBacon]

> Yes I do think that they would attempt to discourage unauthorized repairs in such a way for less-than-noble reasons.

Repairs are not really a revenue stream. Apple Care is a revenue stream but the incentive is to not repair. Since every repair logged against Apple Care is a cost, it doesn't make sense that Apple would want to do this themselves from a purely economic perspective.

I've been in HW all my working life. Any field return is expensive and resource intensive to handle and you cannot pass all those costs onto your customers. You do it to provide good service to your customers. You eat the repair cost as part of internal warranty cost which is built into the pricing of every unit sold.

What you are saying just doesn't make sense to me.

As a user I don't want any yahoo being able to replace my touch ID sensor. I have tons of sensitive information on my phone. I want that thing disabled if touch ID breaks or has been tampered with.

>If you think it was a mistake, then can you explain why Apple wasn't bothered to do anything until someone ran an article on it and publicized it?

How do you know that they didn't "bother to do anything" on this issue until someone ran an article?

[rasz_pl]

Precisely. Repairs are a cost. Turning people away because of pink dot, visible signs of 3rd party repair or Error 53 avoids that costs and provides opportunity for a new sale.