As of Tuesday, Apple’s Self Service Repair program is now available in eight European countries. It launched in the United States in April, with promises from the company to expand to other countries by the end of the year.
The countries involved in this rollout are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The program allows individual customers to purchase the same repair manuals, parts, and tools that Apple uses to make repairs. Two hundred individual parts and tools are available through Apple’s Self Service Repair Store. In addition to buying the parts, customers can rent repair kits for 54.90 euros with free shipping.
Apple claims that each part is “designed and developed for each product and has been rigorously tested to ensure the highest quality, safety and reliability” and is offered to users for the same price paid by Apple’s authorized repair shops.
That said, the parts are not available for every product. To take advantage of this, you should try to repair a phone from the iPhone 12 or 13 lineups or a MacBook with an M1 or M2 based chip. iPhone 14 models and Intel Macs are not yet supported.
The European launch almost seems more important to this program (which is a step forward but has still received criticism) than the US one. That’s because while US lawmakers have occasionally flirted with right-to-reparation laws, the EU has been much more aggressive in debating and addressing the issue.
Historically, Apple only supported repairs made at an Apple Store or repair shop that was part of the company’s network of highly-regulated authorized repair shops. The company argued that this was in part to protect customers from poor repairs or other problems caused by unauthorized repair technicians. It was also to avoid the company footing the bill if any of those unauthorized repairs made it harder or more expensive to respond to a future support request for a device.
That said, it also enabled the company to ensure that it could reduce spending on most repairs on its devices.
The Self Service Repair program puts repairs in the hands of savvy customers, while retaining Apple’s advantage. Some commentators see that as a win-win situation; for others it is still not enough.
