Apple expands its independent reform program

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Repairing an Apple product often involves going straight to the source an Apple store or a large outside company, and if you live somewhere with limited options, that might change the recently announced expansion by Apple of the Independent Repair Provider program, as the company plans to expand Its repair program includes nearly every country where Apple products are sold, according to The Verege.

At the moment, the program is only available in the United States, Canada, and Europe, but according to Apple's announcement, repair providers from countries like Australia, Japan and Korea will be able to join this week, with suppliers from more countries including China joining the program later this year. .

Service providers have to apply to participate, but once approved, they can only purchase a limited set of first-party materials such as batteries, displays, and diagnostic tools, so while your local repair person will be able to fix the most common issues with official parts, any Something more exotic will have to go through Apple, or an authorized service provider, or risk void or become unsupported.

If you really do the hard work fixing hardware, there are other things you should also be aware of. Joining the program comes with a contract that is said to give Apple the right to inspect repair shops and charge them if you find something wrong. Apple can charge $ 1,000 per transaction. For any store you hunt with knock-off parts in more than 2% of repairs, according to Motherboard.

And Apple generally appears to only support third-party fixes if they can find a way to make money from them, and that fix doesn't seem to be any different. This is the company that routinely tries to kill the right repair bills and has devised ways to render iPhones non-functional if they use third-party batteries, after all.