I think it's important to recognize that morality does not apply to any corporation. Corporations respond to incentives and disincentives, that's it. If we want to change the way a corporation behaves we need to arrange things so that its incentives align with our own.
People like to ascribe malice to Apple's history of making difficult-to-repair devices. I think that's wrong-headed. It's more appropriate to say that Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
Now that the right to repair movement has been gaining steam and regulations are being drafted, Apple has been given the incentive to prioritize repairability. Thus they are responding to that incentive with the iPhone 16 (with its new battery adhesive), the repair kits, and the documentation they've provided. They likely also see the opportunity to get ahead of their competitors and tout repairability as a competitive advantage. I would not be surprised at all to see future models have even higher repairability scores with Apple aiming to become the market leader.
As for the serial numbering and activation of replacement parts: that also has a simple explanation that doesn't involve a nefarious lock-in plot. Witness the recent attacks in Lebanon. How were they carried out? By a supply-chain attack! This sort of capability represents more than a physical danger from explosives or chemical weapons, it's also a major cyber security and privacy threat. Supply-chain attacks via counterfeit, backdoored parts is a huge area of concern for Apple. The potential is there for the company to suffer severe reputational damage should a large-scale attack occur.
~80% of publicly listed multinationals are roughly as greedy as each other, and Apple belongs to that 80%. Then there's 10% in each opposite direction. Pretty standard 80/10/10.
Apple could easily be even greedier if they'd wish, and get away with it. Even accounting for their intentional obstruction to repairs, I bet the active lifespan of the average iPhone and M-series Macbook are longer than the average Samsung flagship, and certainly comparable laptops.
I have no particular attachment to Apple, I currently use only one of their products. But they're just one among the grey cloud of awfulness, nothing special about them when it comes to greed.
Apple historically haven't been great, but they're getting better now. I know people don't want to give credit for that because it didn't happen of their own volition, only when they were incentivised.
Me personally, I've never gotten to the 3 year mark on a smartphone and remained happy with it before my current iPhone 12. They would break, or stop receiving updates or have abysmal battery life or become too slow - literally none of these are issues I'm facing. I'll probably keep this for another year before replacing it with the iPhone 17.
They give money away, and they actually reduced their fees for the apps with almost no transactions, so obviously they have a fair bit of wiggle-room on what is an acceptable quantity of profit.
Haha, can't wait for "Repairability. That's iPhone" ads. I won't even be mad when it happens. Go for it Tim!
Best part is that when their devices are repairable, they'll turn their lobbying might towards supporting repairability legislation. That way they ensure they're not paying a cost in terms of manufacturing ease, or thickness that their competitors aren't. Again, fine by me. As long as all our devices become repairable over time, that's a win for all of us.
I really don't see why we should refrain from judging a corporation on its values. Morality applies to people, and corporations are (still) entirely driven by people. If Apple's C-suite and a couple activist shareholders wanted to make it an eco-friendly company, they surely could. Instead, Apple has spend many years lobbying against any kind of regulations around repairability.
> Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
> By focusing on recycled and renewable materials, clean electricity, and low-carbon shipping, we’re working to bring our net emissions to zero across our entire carbon footprint.
I agree that repairability is another avenue to help with eco-friendliness, but I also see the argument on some decisions (not all) that make Apple devices less attractive to theft if they can’t be used for parts. That bit is also partially consumer facing.
I don’t want to defend Apple too much, there’s a lot I dislike about Tim Cook’s tenure. But they deserve some credit (or at least moral incentive) for attempting an environmentally friendly future. The fact they’re being vocal about it means we can call them out when they do wrong too.
Microsoft, in comparison, blew its environmental goals with AI and just said “fuck it”. They pledged in 2020 to be carbon negative by 2030, and by 2024 they’re emitting 30% more than when they made the pledge. That shows how much their promises are worth: less than nothing.
I really don't see why we should refrain from judging a corporation on its values
We can judge them all we like for any reason we like. We just can’t expect a corporation to change its behaviour until it is incentivized to do so. Whether that’s through market forces or regulation, it does not matter. It’s all about incentives and disincentives.
I’m glad you brought up eco-friendly companies. Many people think this is an example of businesses behaving morally. It is not. Advertising your own morality is not a moral act. Eco-friendliness is just a marketing strategy aimed at eco-conscious consumers.
As for Apple’s lobbying efforts: they were a response to an incentive. We can’t expect the response from a corporation to always be exactly what we want. We should expect them to follow the path of least resistance. Apple likely calculated that it would be cheaper to lobby against and attempt to delay the regulation rather re-tool immediately. Perhaps they were even carrying out the R&D that enabled the iPhone 16’s repair scores at that time, and it wasn’t ready at the time.
Honestly you can only judge private companies based on values, when the power is in the hands of shareholders a company become more a phisical phenomena than a human construct
I am pretty confident that Apple chose special security screws specifically to prevent users from opening their phones at home for a lark. The last thing they want is a user bringing in a device that has been damaged due to a broken seal, caused by a curious kid who found the Torx driver set at home.
This is just defending anti-R2R. It's more costly to buy and swap different screwdrivers for all the Apple repair, manufacturing centres, etc. Apple doesn't care about customers opening up their devices - they'll outright reject the claim. This is a bad take.
Of course they do. Apple is constantly putting more guard rails around their devices. When uninformed users mess up their devices they make a public stink about it and damage Apple’s reputation. Apple does not want this. This is the entire reason behind all the gatekeeper stuff in macOS.
What Apple does not care about is power users who want to crack open their devices and void the warranty. Those users can go out of their way to buy security screwdrivers. Apple has always done this, going at least as far back as the original Macintosh.
If that was how Apple behaved, it would actually excusable but it did oh so many things which make absolutely no sense other than "business sense". Why did they have to use some super strong glue for their batteries when a tape or a set of screws did the job in the past? Why use some screws from hell which take 1 wrong twist to mess up? Why require 10 pressure points to be pressed at the same time with thin clamps normally not available to anyone?
Nobody really complains about parts having to be changed completely because they are too minuterized: that's the price of having a tiny form factor, we get that. But it's all the BS around it, which often was shown to work just fine in the past, that irks many about Apple's practices.
Exactly,it's the same tactic that people keep falling for.
Find a legitimate argument like security, abuse it to make everything unrepairable and glued together, so that when people ask it's all about keeping their phone safe. Couldn't do otherwise.
That's also why they are supposedly pushing for the right to repair, and in the same time lobbies politicians to keep the current status quo.
You'll have right to repair, in an extremely convoluted way and not cheaper. And you'll be happy about that !
In a relationship it would be considered an abusive partner, manipulative and lier. I just don't get why people defend it.
Almost every battery is done this way, and literally every repair shop can easily replace them. Maybe find something actually worth getting angry over.
> Why did they have to use some super strong glue for their batteries when a tape or a set of screws did the job in the past
Because these are soft batteries, unlike the previous generation batteries? Like, again, there are way more thought going into stuff like this than “I hate the Earth”.
What you are describing would be totally fine, if corporations would not be able to spend money on branding and/or humans were not susceptible to that.
I’m really curious to know how a world where branding was illegal could possibly work. Branding, when it comes down to it, is reputation management. If you don’t allow anyone to manage their own reputation then you don’t really have a free society at all. Heck, even people in prison are able to manage their own reputations within the prison population.
If you suppose, by wishful thinking, that no one could know the reputation of anyone else then you would have a chaotic and unpredictable society. You’d be unable to trust anyone to act fairly in even the most trivial circumstances. It would look like an unmoderated forum where everyone is anonymous and no one can pin anything on anyone else. Quite dystopian.
From a European perspective, I would never suggest making information about individuals public, not even criminals. Even though where I am from, we seem to swing to far in the other direction when it comes to protecting the rights of perpetrators vs. the victim's rights, I think registries of any kind in that regard are a big mistake.
Nevertheless, it should be possible to set higher standards for corporate communication than for individuals. I am thinking about this more in terms of markets and information asymmetry than personal liberties. I think it is fine when corporations are required to publish what they are doing. There is room to improve how mandatory disclaimers work and for what they are required.
I'm still unclear about what you mean by not allowing "branding." Consider the following two scenarios, the first one with branding and the second one without:
1. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"
"It sounds interesting, I heard they made it easier to repair."
2. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"
"What is an Apple iPhone? I have never heard of such a thing!"
Clearly this is a rather extreme example, but I hope it illustrates what I am talking about. Branding, for Apple, involves putting their logo everywhere they can and advertising on TV, in magazines, on billboards, etc. If you disallow all of those things then it becomes much more reasonable to imagine a world in which scenario 2 is possible.
So maybe we don't want to go that far. But then where do we draw the line? Is it okay for Apple to put their logo on their stores? Is it okay for them to advertise a new iPhone on TV or in magazines? Or not? Or do you take a finer-grained approach and allow some kinds of ads but not others? Must an ad be purely informational with no music or flashy graphics/video?
I'm honestly not even clear on what the goal is with such a regime. How do you know when the law is working as intended or when it is failing to do so? Apple has succeeded in marketing themselves as an iconic fashion brand (right up there with LVMH, a European brand). Do you think such fashion brands should cease to exist? Why or why not?
The original topic of this thread was environmentalism and Apple having a greener image than they deserve, while they are just a corporation (like all others), which is following its incentives. Now, I never said I wanted to outlaw branding. I am just stating that corporations can escape the fair competition of the market by playing a meta game doing things like advertising or lobbying.
What I am suggesting is to keep the markets and let corporations follow incentives to make the best products, while trying to limit these meta games. This thread shows an example where this is arguably already working. I am suggesting to do more of it, e.g. make corporations publish reports of how they are actually doing in that regard, maybe even as a sort of disclaimer next to their own branding efforts.
I just want our rules to be a little stricter when it comes to false advertising and fraud. Why should a corporation be allowed to say: "We care for communities in America." This is not true. They care for shareholder value. There should be a disclaimer like: "We care for our community. We have no independent proof to back that up. Our main objective as a for-profit is to maximize profits. We are making XX $ / year and have in the past moved our production facilities to the cheapest location."
I am exaggerating here and am not providing a finished solution, just trying to illustrate what I mean.
> But then where do we draw the line?
That is in fact tricky, but I think our society as whole should move a little closer to facts.
This is much needed nuance that is sorely missing from these discussions. I'm sure it will fall on mostly deaf ears, but thank you for that.
There's a lot of criticism against Apple for not doing things in the right order. Repairability is one of them. Would it have been better for their devices to be easier to repair from the original iPhone? Sure. Would it have been better for you, me, or Apple to focus on repairability above all else? Absolutely not.
In the meantime, Apple have built a device service model that looks like this for the average consumer:
Having a high degree of confidence that the product will be serviceable with OEM parts, which do not impact the resale value by causing buyer confusion, guarantees of these replacement parts working, having these parts available for years and years, and that the company is not going to disappear, through a network of nearby first and third party repair shops, at a transparent and reasonable price.
Like most criticism of Apple, there is a concentrated yelling at one particular tree, while missing the forest around. It can be valid criticism and missing the bigger picture at the same time.
they could and should have totally focused on repairability above everything else.
Why? They almost certainly would have spent extra money on R&D and seen lower sales (due to sacrificing performance, battery life, durability, water resistance, etc) as a result. What would have been the incentive for them to do so?
Apples main objective is to make tech jewelry. Thats what made their company successful, and they have no reason to switch from that. With every iPhone or Mac release, their software is still is absolute trash compared to Android or Linux (My S24 can be plugged into a display and used as a computer with Samsung Dex for example), and thats by design - people who buy these devices don't make
Exclusivity is a big part of that. They want to keep things in house to make sure that their devices are seen as "the best". If you can buy a used iPhone and get it repaired for cheap, that means that people of lower income can have these devices, which decreases their standing. Preventing this is a well known marketing strategy with luxury items, from watches, to cars, to clothes. That is why they have serial numbers/activation, not because of supply chain attacks, which are not an issue for any developed country due to mechanisms in place.
Swappie is a popular service that refurbishes and sells used iPhones. They are doing very well, and expanding. They have sold over a million phones so far. Apple do not prevent this.
I guess that most of these are to "people of lower income". I have purchased devices there for my children.
As someone who has switched from Android to IOS and pretty happy with it. I do not want to connect my phone with an external display. I have my laptop or desktop at home for that. I do not want to work or think about work when these devices are not accesible for me.
The moment you spread fud, to keep on doing the bad behaviour you are showing and try to political destroy the mechanisms that prevent your bad behaviour, it is intentional behaviour. DOT.ENTER.SEND.
People like to ascribe malice to Apple's history of making difficult-to-repair devices. I think that's wrong-headed. It's more appropriate to say that Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
Now that the right to repair movement has been gaining steam and regulations are being drafted, Apple has been given the incentive to prioritize repairability. Thus they are responding to that incentive with the iPhone 16 (with its new battery adhesive), the repair kits, and the documentation they've provided. They likely also see the opportunity to get ahead of their competitors and tout repairability as a competitive advantage. I would not be surprised at all to see future models have even higher repairability scores with Apple aiming to become the market leader.
As for the serial numbering and activation of replacement parts: that also has a simple explanation that doesn't involve a nefarious lock-in plot. Witness the recent attacks in Lebanon. How were they carried out? By a supply-chain attack! This sort of capability represents more than a physical danger from explosives or chemical weapons, it's also a major cyber security and privacy threat. Supply-chain attacks via counterfeit, backdoored parts is a huge area of concern for Apple. The potential is there for the company to suffer severe reputational damage should a large-scale attack occur.