IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - 28

NOV 2017

NORTH AMERICAN

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

With a subsequent update or restore, additional security
checks result in an 'error 53' being displayed," an Apple
spokesperson told The Guardian.
But that explanation didn't fly with owners. Independent
repair shops didn't break these phones; Apple did. And the
aftermarket screens hadn't been faulty; they just hadn't been
made by the original equipment manufacturer-because Apple
refuses to sell OEM screens to independent repair shops.
Bowing to public pressure, Apple apologized and fixed the
broken phones with a new update. But a precedent had been
set. Previously, Apple had made it difficult for people to fix its
products by restricting access to parts and service information. Now, to those owners who dared to repair their equipment without the company's blessing, Apple could dole out
punishment-with software.

IN 2011, THE ENTREPRENEUR and venture capitalist
Marc Andreessen quipped in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that "software was eating the world"-meaning that it's
now in pretty much everything: phones, microwave ovens,
coffeemakers, sewing machines, even Barbies. And it's threatening to gobble up repair with it.

IFIXIT

Even if you happen to find repair NO SERVICEABLE
instructions on iFixit's website or else- PARTS: Or so
manufacturers would
where, you still have to locate replace- have people believe
ment parts. In some cases, parts are when it comes to
so difficult to get from the manufac- electronic devices
such as smart watches
turer that people instead extract them and mobile phones.
from junked equipment, as if they were But repair is often
harvesting organs from the recently possible, using
replacement parts
deceased. Things are even harder for and instructions from
small repair shops, which struggle to other sources.
find reliable sources of high- quality
replacement parts.
The lack of service parts is an especially big impediment when it comes
to repairing smartphones, tablets, and
gaming devices. Together, those products number in the billions, and yet
many models have no independent
sources for fragile items like glass.
That's crazy because glass, of course,
breaks frequently. Fixing it is a big
business for phone manufacturers like
Apple and Samsung, which are fighting
vigorously to protect their monopolies
on repair. As of September 2014, gadget insurance company SquareTrade
estimated that Americans had spent
US $10.7 billion on iPhone repairs since
the phone's 2007 introduction.
Apple may be the worst offender when
it comes to refusing to sell service parts or provide repair information to anyone but its authorized service providers. The
company doesn't even provide such information for equipment that Apple won't repair anymore (Apple has a long list
of "vintage and obsolete" devices it no longer supports) or
for repairs that its "Geniuses" aren't skilled enough to do,
like fixing a computer's motherboard.
In 2015, the company went even further-remotely disabling
iPhones whose screens had been repaired outside of Apple's
authorized network. One of those dead devices belonged to
Antonio Olmos, a photographer for The Guardian. He broke
his screen while covering the refugee crisis in the Balkans.
There's no Apple store in Macedonia, so Olmos had a local
repair shop replace the broken screen with an aftermarket
part. It worked great. Months later, though, after a routine
software update, Olmos's phone stopped working simply
because of that screen.
At first, Apple defended "error 53" (as the problem was
identified) as a security measure. The company blamed
unauthorized repair shops: "When an iPhone is serviced
by an unauthorised repair provider, faulty screens or other
invalid components that affect the touch ID sensor could
cause the check to fail if the pairing cannot be validated.

https://www.squaretrade.dk/press/new-study-shows-damaged-iphones-cost-americans-10.7billion-4.8b-in-the-last-two-years-alone https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/barbie-internet-connected-doll-conversations/story?id=29026245 http://SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2017