{"id":110534,"date":"2021-04-07T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=529355"},"modified":"2021-04-07T10:45:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T10:45:00","slug":"apple-finally-admits-its-products-are-difficult-to-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/07\/apple-finally-admits-its-products-are-difficult-to-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple finally admits its products are difficult to repair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the start of the year, the French government began requiring makers of smartphones and laptops to assign their products a \u201crepairability\u201d score based on how easy they are to fix \u2014 a first-of-its-kind governmental requirement with potentially global implications<\/a>. Now, leading consumer technology brands including Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft have started to comply with the law by grading<\/a> their products in French. And you don\u2019t have to be a Francophone to see that the grades are, well, pretty lackluster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple, the world\u2019s most valuable<\/a> consumer tech company, was unable<\/a> to give any of its iPhones or MacBooks a repair score higher than 7 out of 10, making it a C student at best by the company\u2019s own math. Competitor Microsoft, meanwhile, failed to crack 5 out of 10 for any of the products it scored<\/a>, a list that includes the dual-screen Surface Duo<\/a> and several Surface laptops. Samsung, the No. 1 smartphone seller in France<\/a> and globally<\/a> last year, also gave many of its phones failing marks. But it scored better on several devices for which it has recently made repair documentation available, highlighting companies\u2019 ability to make their products easier to fix if they choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together, these initial repairability scores offer a unique window into information that companies don\u2019t tend to highlight in their yearly sustainability reports, but which has major environmental implications<\/a>. The harder our devices are to repair and maintain over time, the more often we have to buy new ones that require additional energy and resources<\/a> to make \u2014 and the more toxic e-waste we generate along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to overstate the impact of seeing a device\u2019s repair index score \u2014 a measure of how easy or hard it will be to keep the thing running well for a long time \u2014 right next to the price,\u201d said Kevin Purdy, a writer at the repair guide site iFixit who has been following<\/a> the rollout of the new French regulation closely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

France\u2019s repairability index<\/a> is a score out of 10 that manufacturers of certain consumer devices must assign to their products based on five criteria, including the availability of repair documentation, product disassembly information, and the availability of spare parts. A rating for each of the five criteria is calculated based on a worksheet<\/a> that integrates numerous factors. For example, within the disassembly criterion, companies give their products a subscore for \u201cease of disassembly,\u201d or how many steps it takes to remove commonly broken parts like the screen and battery, and a subscore for \u201caccessibility,\u201d which reflects whether proprietary manufacturer tools are needed for the repair. The criterion related to the availability of spare parts, meanwhile, includes subscores that reflect how many years screens, batteries, speakers, and other components are available to manufacturers, repair professionals, and consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies are self-reporting these scores, a fact that has been met with some skepticism<\/a> by repair advocates. But the initial trickle of repairability indexes from the consumer tech realm suggests it\u2019s going to be hard for corporations to game the worksheet in their favor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple, for instance, is generally loath to describe its products in anything less than glowing terms. But so far, Apple\u2019s self-reported repair scores are uninspiring. The 16 iPhone models Apple has graded, from the iPhone 7 onward, received 5.5 out of 10 points on average. Generally speaking, Apple\u2019s competitors aren\u2019t doing much better: Google assigned its Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 smartphones a repair score of 6.3 out of 10, while Microsoft gave its Surface Duo \u2014 a kind of double smartphone sandwich \u2014 just 3.7 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking more closely at performance in the individual criteria areas, it\u2019s possible to see where devices are losing points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, iPhones scored very poorly on \u201cease of disassembly,\u201d with many models receiving fewer than 2 out of 10 points in this area. Two models, the iPhone XR and the iPhone 11 ProMax, actually got zeros here, suggesting that none of the commonly broken parts, including the screen and the battery, can be taken apart in 16 or fewer steps. MacBooks also fared poorly on ease of disassembly, averaging 2.9 out of 10 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft laptops, by contrast, cleaned up on ease of disassembly with an average subscore of 7.5 out of 10. But the company\u2019s overall repair scores were tanked by the fact that its laptops received zeros for spare parts availability and pricing, indicating that out of a list of 10 parts, including the RAM and the keyboard, none are available for five or more years after the product is discontinued by the company. (Companies must give themselves a zero for spare parts pricing if any commonly broken part is unavailable.) Overall, Microsoft assigned its Surface laptops an average repair index of 3.8, compared with Apple\u2019s 6.3 for MacBooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In emailed statements provided to Grist, both Apple and Microsoft emphasized their commitment to designing high-quality, long-lasting products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Microsoft spokesperson said that the company \u201cis committed to designing products that deliver what customers need and want in a premium device, including versatility, performance, cutting-edge design, and build quality along with repairability.\u201d Apple, meanwhile, touted the energy efficiency of its devices and its use of recycled materials in recent models. The company provides \u201cmany convenient options for safe and reliable repairs,\u201d an Apple spokesperson added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[T]hese scores do not reflect the actions we are taking to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy,\u201d the spokesperson went on, referring to an economic system that minimizes waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While neither Apple nor Microsoft would say whether they are taking any steps to boost their products\u2019 repair scores, smartphone titan Samsung seems to be doing so. As Purdy of iFixit noted<\/a> in a recent article, a free-to-download repair manual<\/a> for the Galaxy S21+ recently appeared on Samsung\u2019s website. The release of this manual, which includes detailed instructions explaining (in French) how to repair the device, appears to have helped Samsung boost its flagship smartphone\u2019s repair score to a respectable 8.2 out of 10<\/a>. By contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S20, for which Samsung has not released an online repair manual, received a 5.7<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samsung didn\u2019t respond to Grist\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathan Proctor, who heads the U.S. Public Research Interest Group\u2019s right to repair campaign, called Samsung\u2019s release of a smartphone repair manual \u201cunprecedented\u201d for a major cell phone maker. Tech industry lobbyists contesting consumers\u2019 right to repair their devices, Proctor says, will often claim that making technical documentation public means giving up proprietary company information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese claims are totally debunked \u2014 shown to be ridiculous \u2014 by the fact that as soon as there was a reason to publish these documents, namely to improve the repairability score, concerns over the sensitivity vanished and the materials were online,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of repair advocacy group The Repair Association, says that because France won\u2019t be enforcing the repairability index\u2019s use with fines until next year, she expects some of the numbers coming out right now are \u201ca wee bit inflated.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the potential,\u201d she said, \u201cis terrific.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, if companies make their devices even a little bit more repairable as a result of this regulation, that could mean millions of customers choosing not to upgrade and instead sticking with the greenest phone or laptop out there \u2014 the one they already own.<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Apple finally admits its products are difficult to repair<\/a> on Apr 7, 2021.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major tech brands like Apple and Microsoft must now give their smartphones and laptops “repairability” scores in France \u2014 and the initial results don\u2019t look good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,15348,369],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121557,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110534\/revisions\/121557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}