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Right-to-repair victory: Apple will sell parts and tools for DIY repairs
It's a great day for Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, the second-largest retailer of Apple parts after Cupertino itself.
Wiens is a leading "right-to-repair" activist, and for almost two decades, he's been pressuring Apple to support DIY repairs. Today he got his wish.
"Apple is releasing repair information and parts to consumers," he tweeted. "This is huge—what we've been working towards for nearly 20 years."
Wiens noted that, although Apple's move may seem like a small change, it signals a huge shift in mindset. He also noted that it took many years of pressure from activists, consumers, politicians and investors to get Cupertino to change its stance.
"Change doesn't come from a vacuum," he wrote. "Regulatory involvement in three continents, dozens of proposed bills, investor proposals, and Apple blinked."
Now he hopes that many more companies will join the tech giant.
-- Leander Kahney, EIC.
Apple today revealed its new Self Service Program, which will provide customers with the parts and tools they need to repair their own devices. It marks a major shift in the company’s approach to hardware fixes.
Earlier versions of the firmware inexplicably disabled Face ID when a display was replaced by anyone other than Apple. But that’s no longer the case.
The beta makes it easier to quickly locate tracks, which should make it quicker to keep your favorite playlists in order. This was one of the most requested features for Apple Music playlists.
Anyone with AirPods Pro will want the just-released firmware update for these in-ear headphones.
If you want to be a helpful elf after the holidays — always ready to help charge up people’s devices and open their bottled beverages — you can be. Just carry the nifty little Vonmählen High Six 6-in-1 keychain charging cable in your pocket, with or without keys.
Instead of trying random apps haphazardly, this unique and inexpensive subscription service lets you use more than 200 popular and well-regarded Mac apps. And right now, you can save 36% on a one-year subscription to Setapp.
In the latest betas, Shortcuts now knows which storage folders to use automatically, depending on your device.
Apple released the update Wednesday to take care of problems with dropped calls on iPhone 13 and iPhone 12.
I wrote recently about the shameful squalor of my previous “setup” — basically a borrowed PC laptop perched on a pile of junk — and my effort to build something worthwhile around a gleaming new 14-inch MacBook Pro. Well, like a lot of people in the throes of building a computer setup, I found that second-guessing haunted me into buying a whole lot of alternative gear. You know, for testing purposes. Trial and error. Not because of my apparent shopping addiction. Or not much, anyway.
Tweet o' the day
One more thing ...
"The journey is the reward. It’s not just the accomplishment of something incredible. It’s the actual doing of something incredible, day in and day out, getting the chance to participate in something really incredible. I mean that’s the feeling we’ve had. I think everyone on the Mac team would have paid to come to work every day." — Steve Jobs on why he went to work each morning
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