For a while it looked like Apple was really getting behind the right-to-repair movement, but now it’s back to supporting anti-repair laws in state governments. What’s going on?
Apple Store vs. Repair Shop: What the Right to Repair Is All About | WSJ
Last October, California signed the Right to Repair Act, forcing companies to provide parts, documentation, and other repair-friendly resources for many years after the purchase. Apple supported this legislation. Now Oregon is on board, with one major difference. It wants to ban the practice of part-pairing, and Apple isn’t happy about it.
“Part matching makes it impossible to perform repairs outside of Apple’s ecosystem, leads to more expensive repairs, and creates a lot of unnecessary waste by forcing refurbishers and independent repair shops to throw away mostly good devices instead of being able to reclaim parts from them,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, told me via direct message.
So, what is parts pairing? It’s a practice that uses software to pair spare parts with a single device, preventing you, the owner, or independent repair shops from having to replace parts. For example, if you crack the screen on your iPhone, you might think you can simply buy a spare part and—with a steady hand and a good online manual—swap in the replacement part. Parts pairing, however, requires you to use software to “bless” that replacement part.
