[Someone]

> it's another to make components actually available to make repairs.

Everybody [1] can buy parts at https://selfservicerepair.com and download manuals

> only to find out they didn't work after the swap.

AFAIK, Apple ¿currently? doesn’t support cannibalizing systems (because they’re greedy or to prevent stealing of phones for parts. Your pick)

> So even if you can get a replacement component, do you have the management software to update the eeprom

Their manuals tell you how to do that.

[1] in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK or the USA and, by extension, in the entire EU (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in-eu/selling-...). I don’t know whether Apple honors the latter, though.

[pzo]

if you go to https://selfservicerepair.com you will find you can only get parts for iphone 12 or later. There is no parts for e.g. iphone 11, iphone XR, iphone XS.

For 'iPhone 12 mini TrueDepth Camera Bundle' you have to pay $280 in EU countries + shipping I guess. If your iphone 12 mini breaks in ~2 years from now probably will be cheaper to buy just working second hand iphone 12 mini.

[paulmd]

> If your iphone 12 mini breaks in ~2 years from now probably will be cheaper to buy just working second hand iphone 12 mini.

yes, this is a general problem with all repair. n=1 repairs are very expensive in terms of labor and logistics. making a million pixel phones in a factory is cheap, mailing someone a camera board and having a technician disassemble the phone and solder a part and re-seal the phone for waterproofing is very time-consuming.

if repairs are only financially viable by using knockoff parts with inferior quality, that's a problem, that's a market failure.

easy answer is tax new devices heavily so that repairing a device is relatively more attractive. but I think people won't like the idea of 50-100% tax on new devices.

there's always a price for your morals - nobody is buying a new phone at $100k tax per phone, and would not support such legislation. now we are just haggling over the price.

[pzo]

$300 for component that real price value is <10$ (there are many sources that show what's price of each component in iphone) is not market failure is just apple greed + their walled garden. I don't expect them to sell me this truedepth camera for 10$ but for $50-100 they still make a lot of profit. And I should be able to make repair myself or go to 3rd party shop give such component and tell please swap it - apple shouldn't force me to use authorized repair shop only because they signed NDA and have access to some artificial tool that just signs component even if this is already genuine delivered by apple.

Taxing is not solution I don't want to tax cars 100% so even though fixing cost the same supposed make me feel better because it's then just 10% of whole product instead of 30%. Car industry has right to repair and it's a solved problem - even though cars have bigger safety considerations.

[paulmd]

This has nothing to do with apple in particular, it’s cheaper to buy a new Samsung than to repair your old one too. Literally the entire point of the post was discussing the problems inherent to n=1 repair vs the economies of scale provided by mass manufacturing or board level repair.

[pzo]

I disagree, I repaired in the past my old iphone se cheaply (replacing battery) or samsung sg2 (broken usb) and sg4 (broken camera). I could buy components either locally or cheap from aliexpress. In south east asia many wizards can even fix your macbook and even upgrade ram, ssd as a bonus.

Repair can be cheap in the same way as car repair can be cheap. Currently iphone repair cannot be cheap because of their DRM.

You mentioned before that cheap repair cannot be done because of more expensive labour. But I mentioned that authorised repair shops quotes me ~300euro for repair and apple for just ordering single component wanna charge me ~280usd - it's obvious they just price component so expensive to make it not worth making repair yourself.