Is Apple pro-repair, or against it?
Now, Oregon is on the bandwagon,with one crucial difference.
It wants to ban the practice of parts pairing, and Apple doesn’t like that at all.
Phone Repair.Kilian Seiler / Unsplash
“Parts pairing makes some repairs impossible to complete outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
Parts Pairing
So, what is parts pairing?
Parts pairing, though, requires that you use software to ‘bless’ this replacement part.
Shattered iPhone Landing on Sidewalk.Ali Abdul Rahman / Unsplash
Without this software handshake, the replacement screen won’t work properly.
The FaceID camera might not operate, and the automatic true-tone ambient light sensor won’t do its job.
And this isn’t just about stopping third-party knockoff parts from working in iPhones.
But this happenseven if you give a shot to use a genuine Apple part.
This might sound like an annoying problem, but it’s pretty niche, right?
After all, who repairs their own phone?
There are two answers here.
One, it’s easier than you might think to do many repairs yourself.
And two, the main victim of this practice is not the gadget owner, but the independent repairer.
And also, as we shall see, the environment.
So why is Apple doing this?The most likely answer is control.
Appleinfamously likes to controlevery part of its products, from hardware to software, and from production to repair.
We’ve seen it in the App Store, and now we’re seeing it in the courts.
