Apple Finally Promises to Enable Third-Party Parts (Mostly)

Apple just announced that they’re caving on a key parts pairing problem: They’ve promised to stop artificially hamstringing the performance of third-party parts. Mostly.

For the last eight years of iPhones, if you installed a third-party or secondhand battery, battery health metrics wouldn’t be visible in your settings. Similarly, if you replaced a broken screen with a used or third-party screen, the True Tone feature, which adjusts the color temperature of your screen based on ambient light, would be removed entirely. 

Apple just promised to enable battery health and True Tone for third-party batteries and screens—assuming, of course, that the part can handle it. Better yet, they’ve announced that you’ll no longer need a serial number of a device to buy a part from their Self Service Repair marketplace. Finally, repair shops and repair cafes will be able to stock original Apple parts without having to submit to the onerous terms of an IRP contract (though they’ll still need to send old parts back to get good prices).

This announcement is big news for independent and DIY repair. It’s not everything we’ve been asking for—we’d still like a path to re-enabling Face ID and Touch ID—but it’s pretty close.

In April, They Didn’t Go Far Enough. This Is Better

When headlines sang about Apple “reversing” their parts pairing policy in April by allowing the pairing of secondhand Apple parts, we said they didn’t go far enough. 

We cautioned people not to forget about how important third-party parts are to device longevity. Manufacturers don’t make all parts available. They often don’t make them for as long as customers want to keep their things around. And competition in the parts market helps keep parts prices reasonable.

Finally, Apple seems to have gotten on board.

Apple’s Getting Ready to Comply with Right to Repair Laws

Why would Apple do this now? They’re not just feeling generous—laws that recently passed in Oregon, Colorado, and the EU demand that Apple goes further. 

We’ve been fighting hard over the last couple years, along with our advocacy partners in the US and EU, to pass laws that curtail the uses of parts pairing that most hurt independent repair shops. And earlier this year, we had three big wins in fighting parts pairing.

Oregon’s law says that a “manufacturer may not use parts pairing to prevent or inhibit an independent repair provider or an owner from installing or enabling the function of an otherwise functional replacement part.” Colorado’s law has an almost identical line. The EU Right to Repair directive that passed in April has similar language. Removing True Tone and battery health metrics seems pretty clearly to be disabling the function of those parts. 

Colorado’s parts pairing provision kicks in in 2026 and Oregon’s in 2027, but they’re both retroactive to devices made in 2021 and later. So we knew Apple’s engineers were on notice to come up with a way to enable third-party parts fully. 

Apple’s report says their changes will go into effect “later in 2024.” We’ll be waiting. And knowing that the reality hasn’t always lived up to their repair promises, we’ll be watching closely.

Longevity by Design Includes Repairability

This announcement came on page 16 of a 24-page report they just released called “Longevity by Design,” where Apple lays out their core repairability principles. This is an astounding, landmark document from Apple.

Honestly, we’re pretty hard on Apple’s approach to repair. They’ve released 2.3 billion iPhones into the world. They ship 6 million Macs per quarter. The world is full of their devices, and when they limit repair it hurts their customers everywhere. We’re hard on them in part because Apple is the market leader, and they set the standards for the industry. But even with our nitpicking hats on, we found more to celebrate than criticize in this report.

They said, “We’re committed to designing all products with serviceable batteries.” Hear, hear! We appreciated how they redesigned the iPhone to make it openable from the front and the back. Could batteries be even easier to replace? Of course they could, says anyone who’s snapped a brittle stretch-release adhesive strip under an iPhone battery. 

Critically, many Apple products have batteries that are virtually impossible to remove without destroying the product: AirPods are the most popular example, but Apple’s Pencil, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard also have unreplaceable batteries. And even the products with relatively serviceable batteries are sealed with proprietary pentalobe screws.

We hope to see evidence of this commitment to serviceable batteries throughout their product lines.  

Apple’s paper goes on, “We’re also committed to continuing to support customers who choose to use third-party repair services, parts, and repair tools so that their repair is completed to the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) standards and with the highest post-repair reliability possible.” We love to see it! Promising to remove limitations on True Tone and battery health goes a long way in service of that goal.

They said, “We will not actively disable a third-party part designed to be manufactured to the same specifications of our products unless it impacts customer security and privacy, which is currently limited to biometric parts.” Also great! Mostly–there’s a lot of wiggle room in that statement.

What does “designed to the same specifications” mean? Are they willing to release their exacting specs and designs? Likely they will not release their proprietary chipsets—in which case this statement leaves them still potentially denying parts that should otherwise work. Who gets to decide if a battery is compatible enough?

Plus, we’re used to seeing “customer security and privacy” trotted out as a catch-all exemption to Right to Repair protections. We worry that Apple might lean too hard on this phrase.

Independent Repair Still Needs a Path to Re-enabling Face ID

Nobody wants a criminal to be able to steal an iPhone, replace its camera, and gain access to all of the original owner’s bank accounts and emails and other personal data. Obviously, software limitations on enabling Face ID and Touch ID serve some important security purposes.

Yet Apple authorized repair shops are fully capable of installing a new screen and reenabling Face ID as part of the repair. That means there must be a software process for doing so—and by restricting that process to their own repair centers, Apple is continuing to undercut third-party independent repair. 

The Face ID limits hurt independent repair and people who want to use it but don’t stop phone theft. Most iPhone theft rings today have no problem resetting a stolen phone, because they use social engineering to get the device passcode at the same time.

Apple has a fantastic security team. So do we: the SecuRepairs network of leading cybersecurity experts would love to consult with Apple on approaches for building a secure mechanism to enable third party Face ID replacements.

The Future Will Be Repairable

More than anything else, this report signals that Apple intends to comply with the Right to Repair legislation that has passed. They introduced Self Service Repair to comply with the law that went into effect in New York in January, and now we know they are also getting ready to comply with the anti-parts pairing provisions that passed in Oregon and Colorado. 

This announcement comes just in time for the effective date of two more US Right to Repair laws: California and Minnesota’s bills go into effect on Monday, July 1, 2024. With those laws in effect, 20% of the US population will be covered by an electronics Right to Repair bill. 

We’re declaring July 1 Repair Independence Day, to celebrate the bills going into effect—and we’ll throw this report on the “worth celebrating” pile. We encourage you to celebrate with us, with your beverage of choice and a repair you couldn’t do before (just maybe save the sparklers until you’ve put your screwdrivers away).