One every time new iPhone comes out, a team of technicians in the French city of Toulouse begins to disassemble it. In the three years they’ve been doing this, they’ve found a device that gradually transforms into a fortress. Today’s iPhones are packed with parts that can’t be repaired or replaced by anyone other than an expensive Apple-authorized repair shop. And France doesn’t like that.
It’s a problem that’s getting worse, says Alexandre Isaac, CEO of The Repair Academy, the renowned research and training group that runs the Toulouse workshop. Every time a new iPhone is released, his team finds another part that is locked to only work with a specific Apple device. At first it was just a chip on the motherboard, he says. Then the parts list with repair limitations extended to Touch ID, Face ID, and finally the battery, screen, and camera.
By forcing people to pay a licensed technician more than the value of a second-hand iPhone for a simple repair, Apple is encouraging people to throw away their devices rather than repair them, says Isaac. The Repair Academy estimates that an Apple-accredited technician charges customers twice as much as an independent repair shop. “A lot of people think of Apple as being super green,” says Isaac, referring to the solar panels at the company’s California headquarters and the recycled aluminum used to build MacBooks. The Repair Academy has gathered evidence to prove this is not the case. Instead, Apple engineers are proactively trying to make iPhones more difficult to repair, he argues.
It’s a problem Isaac has been following for years. And now a Parisian prosecutor has decided to take action. On May 15, the prosecution announced an official investigation into allegations that Apple is pursuing a planned obsolescence business model — a term that refers to designing a product in a way that intentionally limits its lifespan.
The prosecutor, who has delegated the investigation to the French Ministry of Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF), will be given the power to fine the company and also to prove whether Apple’s iPhone repair restrictions violate with French law, as campaigners claim. France has been at the forefront of right-to-move repair for years, introducing Europe’s first repairability scoring system. But this case confirms the country’s willingness to take on Apple and the way it builds its products.
“France is pushing for the right to repair in ways no one else has,” said Elizabeth Chamberlain, director of sustainability at iFixit, a US group campaigning for the right to repair. “This is the first time we’re seeing action on a national level against planned obsolescence through component linking.” Apple did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. The company recently released its 2023 Environmental Progress Report.
Parts pairing, also known as “serialization,” works by matching a phone’s serial number to the serial number of an internal part, so that the phone can tell if the screen, battery, or sensor has been replaced. “In the iPhone, the most damaging way is if you try to swap two screens on two working iPhones,” says Chamberlain. are bombarded with alerts from their iPhone telling them their screen is not verified.
