[kitsunesoba]

As far as I understand it, it’s not uncommon for third party parts to try to appear genuine. There’s usually imperfections in the faking that Apple hones in on, but it’s a bit of a cat and mouse game.

There’s also the possibility of repairs being performed with used or otherwise tampered with genuine parts, which are almost as much of a wildcard as third party parts.

Maybe things have improved with smartphones, but I remember third party replacements for MacBooks with swappable batteries being worse than a crapshoot — on top of bad capacity and faster degradation they also often caused kernel panics and power management issues. I can see why Apple might want to not be stuck with supporting that.

[jaclaz]

Yes, but the point still stands.

If an original (used) battery is installed, it should be recognized as original and graded accordingly to its state (let's say 80% of what it should be).

The current provision doesn't prevent the use of a defective or used or sub-standard battery, it only prevents non-Apple personnel from performing a repair without triggering the (possibly unjustified) alarm.

[intopieces]

I agree with your original assessment and support this move from Apple. I am glad there is a mechanism for determining whether work done on a device I might purchase (such as a used iPhone) was done by Apple certified technicians. I do not think Apple should spend time or money attempting to certify or measure every battery that a person could put in the phone.

This is a pro-consumer move, because it gives the consumer more information about the state of a product. They can ignore it if they want, it doesn’t impact the operation of the device.

[eesmith]

But there is no reason for Apple to "guarantee the performance of parts they can’t certify are genuine".

This is not pro-consumer any more than saying that only Ford-certified auto shops are able to disable the "check engine" light, because Ford can't guarantee the performance of auto parts they can't certify are genuine.