[grumpycamel]

If Apple allows super easy salvage of another device for parts, I wonder if phones will start to be stolen again. Easy salvage might create an unacceptably wide-spread life-safety risk to ALL smartphone owners.

Tradeoffs, unintended consequences.

[webmobdev]

> Easy salvage might create an unacceptably wide-spread life-safety risk to ALL smartphone owners.

Yeah, it'll be the end of the world if an iPhone is disassembled and its parts sold worldwide! /s

If preventing theft was the real goal behind requiring software activation for repairs, then Apple can simply display a warning to the user that a replaced part is stolen and to inform the police. The real reason for this anti-repair feature is to ensure that iDevice users are forced to buy Apple care, are forced to buy parts from Apple at artificially inflated prices and to prevent them from sourcing cheaper parts from elsewhere. When I buy an iPhone, I own it. If I want to replace a part in it with a non-genuine non-apple spare part it is my right to do so, and Apple doesn't have any right to prevent me from doing so.

[reisse]

Life-safety? Seriously? It's gun control and law enforcement problem, not the one of easy salvaging. Y'know, it's hard to imagine that someone in Europe or most of the Asia would be robbing at gunpoint for the smartphone.

Risk/reward just does not match - it'll be most likely few years or even probation for simple robbery with good ol' bats, and tens of years for robbing at gunpoint, a good part of it from illegal firearms possession. Not to mention that actual murder for smartphone will move it much closer to life sentence.

[spideymans]

>Life-safety? Seriously? It's gun control and law enforcement problem, not the one of easy salvaging. Y'know, it's hard to imagine that someone in Europe or most of the Asia would be robbing at gunpoint for the smartphone.

Yeah, instead you’d be robbed at knifepoint. And if not at knifepoint, then by using any serious of improvised weapons.

[0x38B]

A knife scares me far more than a gun up close, as a sharp knife causes massive damage to tissue and internal organs, while many are shot by pistols and live.

[samatman]

Europe and Asia both have a fair amount of motorcycle robbery / purse snatching.

Victims can get dragged into traffic and killed, or stabbed if they resist. Robbery is robbery, a handgun is just one way to threaten someone in the process.

[jhickok]

Agreed, but in this example they specifically cite the glass. Does seem like you should be able to replace glass without phoning in to Apple in some manner.