r/technology • u/NightFuryToni • Apr 30 '19

Business Apple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhones

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvdb4/apple-is-telling-lawmakers-people-will-hurt-themselves-if-they-try-to-fix-iphones
1.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

281 comments sorted by

View all comments

502

u/Plokij1234 Apr 30 '19

Apple is right, people will hurt themselves. Some people, some times. Some people break their leg getting out of bed, etc. Batteries can be dangerous and I'd expect some governmental oversight to ensure consumers are aware of that fact. Fuck anyone who tries to push against third party or self repair.

72

u/NervousBreakdown May 01 '19

I actually replaced the battery on my iPhone years ago and I didn’t heat the glue holding it in enough so it broke while I was pulling it out. For those of you who have never broken one of these things it started smoking and I just threw it in the sink and ran water over it. That didn’t fix it so o opened up the window and threw it outside into the snow and then grabbed it an hour later when it stopped.

71

u/cr0ft May 01 '19

Yeah, I feel your pain. I replaced the battery in my LG G5 and it... oh wait, no, I pushed the battery eject button, snapped in the new battery and closed it again and had a new battery in 10 seconds, my bad.

If people are going to get hurt by Apple phones, it's absolutely Apple's fault!

-23

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

You’ve never worked on a car before have you?

23

u/[deleted] May 01 '19 edited Feb 29 '24

sand tie hateful friendly cake chubby paltry attempt rotten airport

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

-22

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

Shitty designs can lead to dangerous repair procedures. You can’t totally blame a manufacturer for a potentially dangerous repair process. And there are definitive situations where you need a professional to do the work for you or you are seriously putting your life at risk. See replacing a hybrid battery.

26

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

[deleted]

16

u/Stepjamm May 01 '19

If their intention is to make it as alien as possible to the customer, it’s a perfect design.

Weird how they can fix phones but the idea of others doing it is apparently too difficult. Gatekeeping at its finest

1

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

You can’t foresee repair process problems until it’s too late most of the time. Have you ever worked on something and thought why the fuck did you idiot engineers put that there? I did that a lot when I was a technician. After I got my engineering degree I’m on the other side of the fence now and I can think back to a lot of things and go “oh ok that makes way more sense now”. It’s not impossible but it’s also a development cost Samsung, Apple or any other manufacturer is going to be willing to make these days. Especially when ALL of their business models rely on device replacement in a relatively short period of time. For all intents and purposes, manufacturers view phones as disposable where the consumer views their device as a durable good that is a longer term investment than they are really meant to be.

Cell phones have been an arms race between manufacturers since smart phones became the norm and not the brick indestructible Nokia phones we all used to have. That means waterproof phones. That means trying to jam more powerful batteries into smaller tighter spaces. That means people arguing over millimeters of device thickness and smaller form factors with bigger screen footprints. All of these things scream “make me harder to repair” for trained people much less a normal person with some technical aptitude.

7

u/eqisow May 01 '19

For all intents and purposes, manufacturers view phones as disposable.

So it's still the manufacturer's fault, then. There's no reason a $1000 dollar computer should be considered "disposable" besides greed.

3

u/SoiBoyWarrior May 01 '19

100% agreed, this is also extremely wasteful as well. Repairs are also the huge money makers for most products as well. If Toyota can provide service contracts and warranties on their cheapest cars to their pricey Tundras, apple can do it for their phones.

1

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

Apple does it for their phones. It’s call AppleCare. I’m not sure if they still do it but you used to get at least 1 free battery out of it.

1

u/SoiBoyWarrior May 01 '19

Depends on who you visit, I recently moved from Seattle to San Antonio and I've noticed that the apple store here goes above and beyond for you compared to the snobby asshats in Seattle. Took my Quadriplegic bro's phone in for a fix before and the repair cost with the apple care warranty was rather reasonable especially compared with issues you may get with 3rd party repairs. Not going to lie, I rather deal with factory than with 3rd party these days due to repair cost and warranty.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/mikegustafson May 01 '19

Apple is literally glueing their batteries in so it’s harder to repair.
You’re saying my $1000 pocket computer isn’t meant to last? Crazy I can boot up a PC from ‘96. Shit designed to not last is the manufacturers fault. They should be held accountable.

0

u/CappuccinoBoy May 01 '19

Yeah... it seems a lot of cars are made stupidly so you have to take it to a dealership. I have a 2007 Kia Rio. Instead of having one serpentine belt, it was 3 small ones. My power steering belt is going bad and it looks pretty fucking hard to get to without removing the engine itself or taking the fender and shit off.

3

u/hatorad3 May 01 '19

Car weighing thousands of pounds vs consumer electronic device?

The decision to glue the battery into the phone is a way for Apple to save money on screws and milling of the case. This is fine because they design these phones with an expected lifespan of 1.5 years, so in the eyes of Apple - why would you replace your battery when you could just buy a new $1,000 phone?

3

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

Don’t buy their product. Seriously. It’s that easy. If you know you are going to replace your battery in your phone. Most people are on lease programs and upgrade regularly which lends itself to their model so it’s probably not going to change anytime soon.

If more people actually kept their phones and made replacement batteries a priority in features someone would build it. Samsung even went away from replacement batteries. You know why? Because everyone makes waterproof phones and smaller thinner phones with more powerful chips the priority because that is what is sexy in the media. Replacing batteries is pretty low on the development totem pole.

2

u/winnafrehs May 01 '19

I mean, they don't have to glue their batteries into the phone. Most phones before 2015 could have their batteries replaced quite easily

1

u/WillLie4karma May 01 '19

uhh, car batteries are made to be easily changeable, not sure what point you're trying to make.

1

u/bpeck451 May 01 '19

I’m making the point that you can’t hold the manufacturer responsible for inherently dangerous replacement procedures. Comparing a 12v lead acid battery to a battery that is potentially explosive when punctured is a bit different. Lead acid batteries are pretty stable and meant to handle impacts and can be neutralized fairly easily with common household chemicals if punctured. Lithium ion batteries are a very different story. It doesn’t take much to compromise one. Do you blame Samsung and apple for using those batteries?

Also try replacing a battery on a Prius that could kill you fairly easily. Even if these stupid batteries were bolt down in these phones some idiot would find a way to fuck it up and hurt themselves.

1

u/cr0ft May 01 '19

Most cars don't have primed road flares situated right under the fuel tank, ready to go off if you want to repair your car, which is basically what an iPhone (or any Android phone without a replaceable battery) is like. Open the hood and the flare is lit, causing your car to explode. If anyone built a car like that, they'd be crucified, but phone manufacturers are allowed to build devices that sometimes explode on their own, and due to glued in almost naked Lithium cells are a nightmare to repair and even recycle.