I don’t like apple but are you aware that around the iphone 16 they’ve shifted to batteries that can easily be removed with a 9v battery and now allow for software pairing when parts are replaced?
There’s still a long way to go (eg the parts pairing only works with oem parts, which can be expensive) but iphones are quickly shifting to one of the more repairable phones. They also offer service manuals and will rent or sell tools for a proper repair. Many android models are just as hard to repair fwiw with glass backs and obnoxious adhesive, though they generally don’t have parts pairing thankfully
Even the new $600 macbook is remarkably more repairable than any laptop they’ve released.
This isn’t a “oh apple is amazing” post at all but it should underscore the importance of putting social and legal pressure on companies to make products repairable.
That said apple made these very positive changes because they likely evaluated the possibility of stronger regulations occurring in key markets and it was simply cheaper to make the changes rather than maintain different hardware revisions for the EU or Colorado. Anyone looking to adopt their hardware should strongly consider that this is also likely because hardware sales are becoming less and less meaningful in favor of service delivery. Hardware is still their top earner by a somewhat wide margin but this is shifting fairly rapidly. Q3 25 saw iphone hardware sales increase by 2-3% whereas services jumped 11% to a point where they make almost 3/4 the revenue of phone sales, with a much higher profit margin over hardware.
When you combine this with the significant effort towards vertical integration (apple silicon, cpu/gpu/modem) increasing hardware margins it makes far more sense to increase longevity of the hardware. This increases consumer trust, makes for great pr, and far more importantly it simply makes more fiscal sense to sell a $700 phone every 5 years with 20-60/mo in subscriptions over a $700 every 2 without that. Add in that this locks people much deeper into their “ecosystem” (now it’s not just losing your apps, but you playlists, news provider, gaming, workout history, and cloud data) and is more likely to pull new users into said ecosystem (now in 5 years when you upgrade and realize the old phone is only worth $50 you’re more likely to gift it to a family member, thus bringing them into and potentially changing your subscription to an even more costly family plan)
So basically I guess the takeaway is when a company does something seemingly altruistic remember they’re a company that’s always got profit over everything. There is no altruism in capitalism and repair will only be granted when it’s fiscally beneficial to do so or legislation forces their hand. The focus should not simply be on right to repair (though that is tremendously important) but also on enforcing open standards and interoperability. If a user has their data on icloud there should be a regulation that enforces some kind of open standard so that migrating data to another cloud provider is painless and simple, etc. this is a much more difficult fight though that has been a losing battle since like 1991