The right-to-repair movement is starting

Accurately Refusing MacBooks Almost Everyday: John Bumstead’s Problem with Apple Turns It Into a Reality

John Bumstead got about 20 MacBooks from an e-waste recycler. Bumstead, who routinely refurbishes MacBooks that are more than 10 years old, shouldn’t have had a problem salvaging these computers, the oldest of which were from 2018. But only half of them were fully restorable.

Five of the MacBooks were “activation locked,” meaning the prior owner had forgotten to wipe the device and nobody else could reactivate it. Another five had broken screens that would lose True Tone unless Bumstead replaced them with expensive new screens from Apple, something he couldn’t afford to do.

But if independent repair professionals were hopeful that Apple’s dramatic about-face would signal a change in how it designs its products, that hope was short-lived. In September, Apple rolled out a new iPhone that appears impossible to fully repair without the manufacturer’s blessing — and without paying Apple money.

As device detectives at repair guide site iFixit.com soon discovered, the iPhone 15 is riddled with software locks that cause warning messages to pop up or functionality to be lost if parts are replaced with new ones that weren’t purchased directly from Apple.

Source: The right-to-repair movement is just getting started

How Successful Are Electronics Right to Repair Legislations? Explaining the Story of Apple, Google, SAMSUNG and Other Inclusive Initiatives

The right-to-repair movement has a long way to go. But while pushing the world’s most powerful companies to change their business practices is never easy, right to repair has one advantage over other environmental causes, which often feel a step removed from daily life: it promises to help eliminate the needless repair ordeals that are a joyless fact of modern existence.

Meanwhile, there are a host of repair roadblocks that rules focused on fostering market competition aren’t built to address. Products are difficult to open, take apart, and put back together because of design choices.

Soon after, device makers began to change their tune on the issue, with a bunch of new initiatives aimed at promoting independent repair. Apple launched its self-repair program in the spring of 2022, joined by partners like iFixit, Microsoft released a study stating that repair has a significant environmental benefit, and Google and SAMSUNG joined forces to promote repair. Advocates believe that tech giants realized they were on the losing side of the repair fight and that by making some concessions, they could keep a seat at the negotiating table in order to shape future regulations.

It is required that manufacturers give spare parts, tools and repair information to the public and independent shops for a period after a device is gone from the market. It requires a minimum of 3 years of spare parts and 7 years of support for devices that cost less than $50 and more than $100.

Gay Gordon- Byrne, executive director of repair advocacy organization Repair.org, said that the passing of three electronics right to repair laws in a single year is huge. She said that they had been waiting for the dam to burst.

Due to industry pressure, Gordon-Byrne said, the laws in California and Minnesota only apply to products sold from mid-2021 onward, while New York’s law applies to products sold starting in mid-2023. Consumers will not be helped by the laws if they want to fix older devices. Depending on the state, each bill excludes various devices, including gaming consoles, medical devices, and business computers.

The Cost of Hardware Repair in Refurbished PCs: Apple vs.. Smart Home Devices: How Manufacturers Can Fail to Preserve Their Hardware and Maintain Software Support

Apple has come under fire for other repair-hostile design choices. It used to be very challenging to find screwdrivers for its devices and featured hard to replace batteries that were difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

Another major barrier to maintaining older devices is software support. Our products can become obsolete when a manufacturer stops releasing software updates, issuing security patches or powering the server that we use. Smart home devices, whose functionality is tied to remote servers beyond the customer’s control, are particularly vulnerable in this regard. The demise of SmartDry and the disabling of the Revolv smart home hub are two examples of how manufacturers can make useless hardware by abandoning software support.

Parts pairing flies in the face of how refurbishers do business: by harvesting working components from dead devices and using them to restore other devices to good-as-new condition. “It’s a very big threat on refurbishment, and the cost of repair in refurbishment, that we need to address,” Marie Castelli, head of public affairs at the online refurbished device store Back Market, said.

The EU launched a first of its kind regulation for ecodesign for phones and tablets. By June 2025, manufacturers of these devices will be required to meet strict durability and repairability requirements, including furnishing spare parts and repair information for at least seven years. There must be software updates for five years after a device’s last sold in the EU, and parts should be easy to replace. Vallauri, of The Restart Project, noted that shortly after the new rules went into effect, Google announced it would be providing an industry-leading seven years of software updates for its latest Pixel smartphones, demonstrating that this level of support “was possible” all along.

The EU just passed a battery regulation that covers repair and other aspects of the battery. Per the new rules, nearly all portable electronic batteries will have to be user-replaceable starting in 2027. Vallauri thinks the regulation will have a big impact on product design because it will make many devices easier to disassemble.

“If we just have transparency in the marketplace… we’ll have a race to the top where manufacturers are just designing products to be more and more repairable,” Gutterman said. US PIRG is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to develop voluntary repair score criteria that states or companies can use, similar to the federal Energy Star labeling program that encourages manufacturers to improve device efficiency.

What a screwdriver can do in the basement of a teen: How much work does it take to screw up a computer?

“That MacBook is currently back in service,” Jones said. “But that is the insane level of effort now required to do something every teen with a screwdriver has been able to do in their basement.”