On Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:21:21 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 14/03/2021 21:20, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 12/03/2021 19:58, Theo wrote:
John Rumm wrote:
Component level SMD repair is pretty commonly done stuff...

For example, go have a look at Louis Rossmann or Jessa Jones
(iPad Rehab) on youtube, they routinely fix stuff that apple
claim can't be fixed. They have posted tons of detailed
walk-throughs of many repairs.

There's a board/component level repair tradeoff.

If it's a washing machine and the board is simple, it might only
cost £50. Not worth doing component level fault diagnosis when you
could just swap it out.

If it's a laptop and they soldered the CPU, the RAM and the SSD to
the motherboard, the board might be £2000 to replace. That's a
very strong motivation to go in at component level, especially if
the fix is something at the simpler end of things (dead charging
chips and similar).


In both cases, if the manufacturer refuses to supply parts (that
charging chip is often custom, in the case of Apple) all you're
left with is getting one from scrap. And then you might find you
can't pair it because they fitted DRM, even though there was no
actual reason to need to pair it in the first place.

While certain brands are notorious for this, it's only a matter of
time before their competitors jump on the same bandwagon. Hence
needing laws to prevent this behaviour.

I don't really want to defend Apple, but we have a problem here that
none of our legislators will understand.

Company X spends millions of dollars developing some software. That
software is unique to their devices, gives them a sales advantage,
and so it's worth them continuing to spend all that money.

Company Y comes along and makes a device that runs the same software.
They aren't spending anything on software development, so their
devices are much cheaper.

We then have two scenarios: X goes bust X prevents their software
from running on Y's devices.

Your challenge is to find a way to allow a repaired device, which may
have had the HW containing the serial number replaced, to run the
software, but not allow Company Y's devices to run it.

There are ways to make this a non issue though. Firstly their hardware
design is still their intellectual property, so they can take legal
action against other makers cloning it.

Secondly, if they are single source custom chips, then they just make
them available as spares at a price that is not compatible with someone
building a whole phone/laptop/whatever. These things are very sensitive
to the bill of materials (although one could argue that apple has more
to worry about since they work on higher profit margins)

So a power management controller that costs apple 25c, they could sell
as a spare for $50, and it would still be economically viable as a
repair part, but not in the BoM for a whole phone build. (much as
building a car from parts would cost way more than the car bought outright)

.....unless you were to do it one piece at a time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb9F2DT8iEQ

Nick