Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bubblethink 2503 days ago
Battery and other checks have existed forever. Even my ancient thinkpad does it, and lenovo/ibm are kings of whitelists. They've been nickle and diming people for a few decades now. Long before the iphone existed. That's not what is being discussed. This goes a step further and requires an apple store employee to sell and insert the battery. That's how your freedoms erode. Slowly, and in the name of safety/security.
1 comments

I have no use for conspiratorial ramblings. Again, how do you propose protecting consumers from faulty batteries? This goes beyond Apple to other devices, for example vaporizers, which have caused burns and even deaths from improper use of batteries not designed for end-user replacement.
You can implement genuineness checks for equipment without requiring a stooge to install the equipment for you. The car industry does it, and cars are much more likely to kill you. Other electronics with batteries do it too. Nothing about a phone is unique. Again, this is mostly a problem of education. If it takes me 5 comments on HN to explain that you are capabale of replacing a battery, it's a lost cause.
You're far less likely to find a cheap counterfeit aftermarket battery than you would Kirkland or Bosch or something, which comes with way more assurance than a random no-name lithium ion battery that has been hacked to appear new and healthy and which is capable of exploding while firmly placed near your waist.
It's literally cheaper to pay Apple to replace an iPhone XR battery than it is to buy a trustworthy replacement from iFixit, and a modest (~$25 at worst, though I'm not including shipping cost from iFixit, and labor would eat most of that margin IMO) premium for phones dating back to the iPhone 6.