~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.

Steam is not publicly traded, though. Apple can’t really say no to “more profit”, otherwise they will be immediately made to resign.

> If Apple's C-suite and a couple activist shareholders wanted to make it an eco-friendly company, they surely could.

They’re trying.

https://www.apple.com/environment/

> 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.

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.

> 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”.

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.

To be absolutely fair, after the iPhone 4, they could and should have totally focused on repairability above everything else.

Sure we got some more pixels out of cameras but that's not much when you've got to throw them away after X years.

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.

https://swappie.com/us/

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.

None of your "points" are in response to the parent comment.

> their software is still is absolute trash compared to Android or Linux

2024. The year of Linux on the desktop.

EU regulation primarily governs European companies and the European subsidiaries of foreign companies; at most, you generally only see leakage outside Europe (eg RoHS has kind of spread; rather than produce separate non-toxic products for Europe and toxic for RoW, a lot of companies have gone non-toxic everywhere; Apple was a leader there). If your only window into EU regulation is Hackernews, I can _kind_ of see how you'd come to this conclusion, but regulation of tech multinationals is very much a drop in the bucket.

But also I mean I think you're confused about the purpose of these rules. While certain EU rules are protectionist, these ones aren't; the purpose of forcing manufacturers to make things repairable isn't to promote European manufacturers over foreign ones, it's to protect the consumer.

Schrodingers EU. Can't make any products or services but is rich enough to attract foreign companies to massively invest in to gain access and compete in said markets. Where do you think the EU gets the wealth if not making and selling products and services?

For some Europeans, certainly, but, well, see Brexit. For instance, remember the outrage about the reintroduction of roaming charges within the EU by British mobile providers? Or the current scandal in the UK over the pesticide residue limits on imported fruit and vegetables being, in some cases, _hundreds_ of times higher than they were under Europe.

A lot of people seem to have been genuinely surprised that these things didn't just happen by magic, they happened due to EU regulation.

> People really need to use their brain more.

You included, perhaps

> Swapping to a unpaired display makes the display still work plenty fine with some limitations.

Apple has to walk a tight rope here. Every change they make is risky and you could end up bricking legitimate devices.

It's undeniable that the limitation they've applied makes stealing the parts less desirable. You can't easily pass off a device made with stolen parts as completely genuine which reduces the resale value in the most lucrative second hand markets. Every generation they're slowly moving more in this direction, while also balancing these restrictions against repair-ability and risk of unintended bricking.

This effort is creating a lot of work for Apple. I seriously doubt it's worth the trouble just to make repairing the devices harder. The money they make from that is peanuts. What they gain from customers being happy that their phones are less worth stealing, and the price they get for a fully genuine phone in the second hand market when they upgrade, is probably much more important for driving the sale of new phones.

> EVERY SINGLE DECISION that Apple makes is for revenue gathering

Of course. Why do you say that as if it's news, or as if it's something not every single person here knows already?

Yet the fact is that sometimes these decisions overlap with the genuine interests of the customers, either because of customer feedback, increase/decrease in sales, or from competition, or due to regulations.

And I personally think this effort is something that heavily overlaps with consumer interests. Especially now that they're putting more effort into making pairing/calibration of swapped parts easier.

You are yelling about Apple making every single decision about revenue. This is demonstrably and famously not true - not every decision.

Apple was challenged by shareholders to only commit to environmental or accessibility projects if they increased ROI. Tim Cook rejected that out of hand [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...

Theft isn’t about the data protection. It’s about the parts scavenging.

The data security part is on the flip side when someone might receive a phone with a counterfeit part that may reduce security (faking authentication etc).

Parts pairing solves for both, but the two aren’t related beyond that.

Down by 25-50% within the first year after introduction

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iphone-thefts-down-thanks-to-ap...

There’ll always be theft but the incentive has been greatly reduced.

They are, https://selfservicerepair.com/home

Are you upset that you won't be able to buy stolen parts anymore?

The fact that Apple will make it impossible to use stolen parts is a great feature for me as a customer. I want potential thieves to get nothing when they steal my phone.

If I buy a phone from someone else, asking them to remove it from their account before the transaction is already a good idea, and trivial to do. Beyond the physical parts, I don't want any of their data or account info on my new phone.

You can buy a third party battery it’ll just say “you have a third party battery” in the settings