Is Apple Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair? Also: Foldable iPads! By Vector

Sponsored by curiosity stream get over 2400 documentaries for free for 31 days. Link in the description. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Renee Richey and this is vector, and yet I'm, just going to lean right into bed ruses law with that video title right on in, so the story is this: a couple of days ago, Justin from the art of repair YouTube channel discovered that all of a sudden swapping out the battery on an iPhone resulted in the Jewish battery health monitoring system. Turning off and popping up important battery message unable to verify this iPhone as a genuine Apple battery health information not available for this battery.

Since then, we've seen headlines like vices Apple is locking batteries to specific iPhones, a nightmare for DIY repair and, of course, I fix it. Apple is locking iPhone batteries to discourage repair and just a ton more like them. Now I'm gonna push back kind of hard on using the term locking for any of this, not because I'm an evil, Apple, apologist or defender, even though I can feel some of you just itching it to start typing exactly that into the comments right now already, but wait. It's because I think it's just dumb and lets Apple off the hook. Far too easily.

First, it's listed publicly on Apple's iPhone battery and performance page as applicable to iPhone 10s, iPhone, 10s, Macs and iPhone 10 are, and that page is last marked as updated back on March, 1st and archive. org confirms the information was there at least that far back second Joe Monsignor has also shown an internal document from back in April that tells technicians to run repair Cal to make sure it doesn't happen with Apple repairs, repair, cow, being repair and calibration system that authenticates the hardware for the software in this case. There's a chip on the battery that has to be paired with the board, something that only Apple's tools can do, and if it's not, you get that warning again, the potential has been there for a while, but it's now active and while I'm not expert I'm guessing the same process could be used to not just disable the monitoring but disable the battery, which there's no sign Apple is doing, but if and when they do, that would be a legitimate lockout. Now, according to I fix it, it can be worked around by swapping the original chip on to the new battery. But that's a much tougher and more onerous job Apple has been investing heavily in making iPhones last longer everything from devoting most of the iOS 12 engineering resources to performance enhancement for older phones to putting in chipsets with years of overhead, to providing updates longer than pretty much everyone else in the industry.

So why make third part of your pairs harder? Wouldn't they benefit the same strategy? Some coverage has focused on this being a move designed to deliberately hurt third-party repair shops and that it will make Apple look really, really bad. The first part is about as silly as saying write to repair is deliberately pushed to make a buck off, selling high-priced DUI kits. It's just nonsense. Hurting third parties really sucks, it really sucks, but it's collateral damage here, and it's why the second part is bunk as well. Apple doesn't really care about looking bad in this particular instance.

What Apple cares about is the words iPhone and burn. Catastrophic battery failures is what Apple cares about. It may seem like people didn't really care about Galaxy Note, 7 having a failure rate, so high people were literally instructed over the intercom not to have them on any flights. But that's the nightmare scenario here ever notice that when Samsung was going through the whole Galaxy, Note 7 thing Apple didn't take any shots at them at all like zero, because it's not a company thing. It's a technology thing lithium-ion is the best mainstream battery.

We have right now, but it's far from perfect and having lithium-ion batteries. Explode or catch fire get further restricted in terms of carry-on or shipping, damaged property or worst of all, hurt real people. That's it that's the end and if you just can't bring yourself to believe that Apple or any other company really cares about property damage or personal injury console yourself with this, they absolutely have to care about the legal exposure that comes with it and will do an awful lot to limit it as much as possible. And while some third-party in the repair shops are among the very best and most highly skilled in the world, the marked and those tend to be the ones that cause problems and again that totally sucks for the many great shops out there. But beyond the sensationalism and the victim Enos.

That's the real issue here that needs to be negotiated, I, say negotiated for a reason: Apple didn't just lock out third-party battery repairs, but they sure, as hell heaped a ton of stigma onto them and at the expense of a super useful feature for customers, and that's why? Ultimately, my thinking on all of this hasn't changed. I fully support the right to repair, but please don't make me quote spider-man here. It has to come with the responsibility as well. That includes provisions for the handling of potentially dangerous materials like lithium-ion batteries, quality standards for parts where failure just isn't an option, and that includes batteries, but also authentication. So bad actors can't just swap their way into your data with severe penalties for shoddy work and security and privacy violations like fixing your phone, but stealing your needs and sex, which yes has happened a bunch of times already as well, because if you're going to regulate write to repair, you need to regulate repair as well.

Otherwise, this is just about moving money and going from Apple who's, a big easy target to a bunch of much smaller, much less accountable targets with unknown benefits for consumers, and it should always be the consumer who benefits in the meantime, I'm gonna hard agree with my colleague Laurie Gill. Instead of turning off battery monitoring, which is a hell, a passive-aggressive move, Apple should just steal a page from my thigh and pop up. An annoyed that says pretty much the same thing then each and every time you dismiss it. You get an estimation of battery health anyway, even in another color, if they really have to at least that's aggressive, aggressive ass covered customer impacted, but I'd love to hear your take on this. How do you think we should balance cost and availability of repair with safety and privacy? Let me know in the comments quick thing: ? rumors are again making the rounds about foldable Apple devices, but it's probably better to call these speculations rather than rumors, because there are no leaks from supply chains as far as I can tell or Apple sources being quoted just yet more financial analysts making yet more reports to move yet more markets for yet more clients who are not use.

So big grain assault huge, but I'll once again go back to. Of course, Apple is working on foldable Apple has enough resources to prototype anything and everything that makes any sense at all to prototype and certainly anything any financial analyst can pull from there. Fever dreams. In fact, I first heard about Apple investigating folding devices back around the time of the very first iPad Mini they just weren't technologically feasible back then I've also said multiple times already, that the history of human technology is filled with foldable and that foldable devices are a part of the future. For the same reason, they're part of the past even made a whole video on it, but big, but also huge they're, still not feasible.

Well, we still haven't shipped there make 10 and Samsung didn't even mention the Galaxy fold that they're unpacked event this week did not even mention it. Foldable devices are still kindergarten tech, and we're really going to have to wait until they graduate high school before they're usable, maybe college, before they're, even enjoyable issues with hinges screens software, so much still needs to be solved and solved well, and I do think. Apple is uniquely positioned by virtue of its full-stack capabilities to solve it. Well, if not best in class I, just don't know how long it will take, and I know, I absolutely want it to take as much time as it absolutely needs to. But maybe that's just me jump into the comments and let me know what you think fold later or fold now now now, so you know you could watch chocolate on curiosity stream, chocolate perfection, oh yeah, you heard me right.

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Source : Vector