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Manufacturers argued that their restrictions were necessary to safeguard trade secrets and to protect people from hurting themselves by messing with their machines. “Apple told Nebraska lawmakers that the bill would turn the state into a ‘Mecca for bad actors,’ predicting that hackers and other nefarious figures would flock to the state to exploit consumers,” writes Perzanowski. “And in California, it warned that consumers were at risk of physical injury if they attempted to swap out their iPhone batteries. Wahl cautioned that repair of its hair clippers could cause fires, while Dyson and LG issued unfounded warnings that the right to repair could put consumers’ personal safety at risk by allowing repair personnel in their homes who had not cleared background checks.” 

Apple CEO Tim Cook all but admitted the real reason behind his company’s opposition to these laws in a 2019 letter to investors. The previous year, it had come to light that Apple had been deliberately slowing down the performance of some older iPhones. Customers were furious. In a bid to placate them, Apple temporarily reduced the price of an authorized battery replacement from $79 to $29. Some eleven million iPhone owners took the deal, giving their old phones a new lease on life. Result: Sales of new phones dropped. That was a big problem for the company, since iPhone sales provide the bulk of Apple’s revenue. “iPhone upgrades…were not as strong as we thought they would be,” Cook wrote, blaming, in part, “customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements.” The cut-rate replacement program was soon scrapped. As of 2023, Apple was charging $135 to replace an iPhone’s battery. 

But years of pressure from Wiens and others finally helped achieve a breakthrough. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission published a landmark report that scrutinized all of the tech industry’s objections to repair laws. Its authors concluded that device makers’ concerns could either be addressed with some modifications or simply had no merit in the first place. “There is scant evidence to support manufacturers’ justifications for repair restrictions,” the report concludes tartly. “Although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record.” President Biden soon followed up with an executive order that encouraged the FTC “to limit powerful equipment manufacturers from restricting people’s ability to use independent repair shops or do DIY repairs.” The following year, the FTC put some bite into its bark, fining Harley-Davidson and Westinghouse for illegally restricting customers’ ability to repair their products. 

By then, the European Union had already adopted rules designed to make it easier to repair home appliances, including requiring manufacturers to make spare parts available and ensure that they can be replaced with common tools. The UK also rolled out regulations obliging electrical appliance manufacturers to make spare parts available to consumers. 

Manufacturers have started to get the message. Since 2021, Motorola, Samsung, and others have made a complete 180, allowing independent repair shops access to parts and tools and even partnering with iFixit to help customers repair their products. “They’ve shifted from being antagonists to business partners,” says Wiens. “They are not coming of their own free will,” he is quick to add. “It took getting to the point where it was clear that legislation was inevitable for the companies to come on board.” 

Not that all of them did so with the best of grace. In 2022, Apple rolled out a self-service repair program. It posted online manuals for some of its products and offered to send users the same set of tools used in the company’s repair facilities. That sounded good. But when a New York Times reporter tried out the service, he found that “it involved first placing a $1,210 hold on my credit card to rent 75 pounds of repair equipment, which arrived at my door in hard plastic cases. The process was then so unforgiving that I destroyed my iPhone screen in a split second with an irreversible error.” Critics called it “malicious compliance,” an effort designed to fail.

Excerpted from Chp 10 of Power Metal: The Race for the Resources that will shape the future by Vince Beiser.