Talk:Apple's anti-repair and anti-refurbishment practices

Building this article up

Our article on Apple is EXTREMELY disorganized, so this is part of a cleanup effort to reorganize the page by grouping incidents together since a lot of them are under the same banner as contributing to e-waste. I have already taken a few notes of what to add here from the existing article, but I will be adding extra information to here as well. Do at least try to give this the same amount of respect that a theme article gets, since this feels like it could be in the same boat. JamesTDG (talk) 14:34, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

I wonder whether this might be better reframed - as the practices that lead to e-waste are often anti-consumer, we should be framing them from an anti-consumer perspective rather than an environmental one. maybe 'Apple's anti-repair and anti-refurbishment practices', or something similar? Keith (talk) 15:58, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Its focus from the start has been from a consumer perspective, but it was just difficult coming up with a good name for the article lol JamesTDG (talk) 08:32, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Question

I am unable to see how "Blocking 3rd-party apps" falls under anti-repair and anti-refurbishment (if we are talking about general Jailbreaking/Cydia or alternative app stores). I feel like it should stay on the main Apple article. Mr Pollo (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Agree. The original title of this page was 'apple's e-waste [something]', but I don't think it would have fit there either. Keith (talk) 16:27, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Well, 3rd-party apps include diagnostic tools as well... JamesTDG (talk) 16:29, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

To my knowledge, repair shops use external devices to diagnose iPhones, like here. Correct me if i'm wrong though, as I really know of that one example. Mr Pollo (talk) 16:32, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

External hardware can be a little costly for people though, it's generally why I use Homebrewed diagnostic software for my jailbroken hardware. Additionally, the diagnostic software that is being distributed by Apple is likely only going to work on specific versions of iPhone, so someone trying to fix an iPhone 6 that has a bunch of delisted games on it could be SOL JamesTDG (talk) 02:13, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

True, though regarding the iPhone 6, (while being a good phone besides bendgate) it hasn’t been supported through software updates for 6 years. Granted with my experience delisted apps can be redownloaded through the App Store account page, though if your device is already jail broken, you can just sideload the IPAs (if the device isn’t jailbroken, sideloadly can work also). I guess it would depend on the region if they still support 3G and 2G cell signals, but not many people in North America use iPhones older than the 11, with that number apparently increasing with the 17. The diagnostic feature is for iPhones 12 and up, so maybe we can make a case for the 11 lineup as it’s still supported in iOS 26, but I would like to hear what other users think about this topic as well. Mr Pollo (talk) 13:58, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

You can only redownload apps, not download new ones, and only on devices where Apple still hasn't borked the App Store entirely yet. Moreover, you need to figure out how to enter the multifactor codes on Apple IDs on devices that don't know how to handle them.

Sideloading IPAs only works if you have archived IPAs licensed to your account, which is not within what a normal user can do.

I don't think whatever possibilities are opened by Jailbreaking can be considered relevant for the purposes of the discussion since it's not something Apple officially allows, nor is it something that can be done on all devices.

I can still launch any software I want on my dad's Atari ST. MS Office 97 with Clippy still installs on a fresh copy of Windows 95. That should be our standard.

I'll try to get a draft for the relevant sections into the page, then you guys can see what you think and edit or discard as you see fit. MrTuttle (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Just looking at your contribution on this page, I think you might be better off putting the greenwashing stuff on apple's main page, and then linking to this page when you discuss how apple's anti-repair practices undermine its claims of being eco-friendly. (and also there's some question about how anti-consumer greenwashing is in the first place. I think it does fix the wiki, but should be approached from a 'misleading marketing' angle rather than an 'environmental damage' angle) Keith (talk) 21:23, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Fit*, not fix. Keith (talk) 22:46, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought about the same thing. Maybe at some point a dedicated page might even make sense.

I'll move those parts over to the Apple page for now.

How relevant ecological aspects are with regards to consumer rights is indeed an interesting question. I'd say disposable an non-repairable design of electronic devices, greenwashing, emissions and pollution are ultimately part of the same problem. It's just that the ecological problems simply affect a larger range of people than just the buyer of a particular model or product. MrTuttle (talk) 15:34, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I'm starting to move towards framing the wiki's scope in terms of the seller-consumer relationship, and that it should be possible to directly link incidents/practices to that relationship.

Unrepairability? Needlessly makes the device a consumer has purchased worse, causes the consumer to have less control of their device, and can cause the user to experience unnecessary costs when the device needs to be repaired.

Greenwashing? Misleads a consumer into buying something when they otherwise wouldn't by giving them a false impression of a company's ecological credentials. Notably this means that under this definition greenwashing can be done in a non-anti-consumer way (maybe depends on your definition of greenwashing). E.g. a scheme where a company planted a tree for every phone they sold and advertised this fact would only be anti-consumer if the tree planting scheme being used was one of those dodgy ones that doesn't actually plant trees, or claims to be 'panting' trees by just owning land and not cutting down as many trees as they say they would otherwise. If things are properly represented and above board, then in my mind it's probably not anti-consumer.

Emissions and pollution I feel like are a bit out of scope, unless lied about in a way that falls under misleading marketing. Like employee rights, they're very important, but not directly related to consumer protection. I don't think we should be making an article every time a factory is built in China. I think an exception can be made where the ones doing the polluting are those directly responsible for delivering a service of clean water or similar to consumers (mostly thinking about water companies when saying this). Keith (talk) 11:01, 17 September 2025 (UTC)