As part of Apple’s new iOS 18, it appears that they are beta testing a feature called “Activation Lock.”  The feature, as previously described by Apple, links your Apple Account not only to your iPhone, but also to components such as the battery, cameras and display based on their individual serial numbers. The goal is to put Read more…

Our friends at iFixIt (link below) tell us that “Apple just announced that they’re caving on a key parts pairing problem: They’ve promised to stop artificially hamstringing the performance of third-party parts. Mostly.” For the past eight years, iPhones with third-party or secondhand batteries couldn’t display battery health metrics. Similarly, replacing a broken screen with a used or Read more…

Our friends at Repair.org tell us that Governor Polis of Colorado has officially signed the state’s third Right to Repair bill into law, setting a new standard for consumer and independent business repair rights. This marks another major step for Colorado towards comprehensive repair freedoms, following significant wins for powered wheelchairs in 2022 and farm equipment in Read more…

iFixit has announced they are ending their collaboration with Samsung. The program was launched 2 years ago, and according to the post on their website (link at end), they have not been able to deliver on the promise of “building an incredible, repair-friendly ecosystem.” Apparently, Samsung was not on-board with making repair more accessible: As we tried Read more…

with a h/t to friend of NWIDA – Kyle Wiens of iFixit and Repair.org, today we find out that Apple is planning to extend support for (select) iPhones to outside the Apple internal repair process. On Apple’s website (link below) it goes into a bit more details and Kyle has summarized:  Beginning with select iPhone models this Read more…

As we mentioned a few weeks ago the Oregon Senate had passed a R2R bill. Now the state House has passed the bill (SB 1596) by a 42 to 13 margin. Now, it goes to Gov. Tina Kotek, who has five days after it gets to her desk to sign it into law. NWIDA has written to Read more…

NY Assemblymember Patricia Fahy introduced Assembly Bill 8955 on Jan. 30, which would amend New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act. The bill would modify the definition of an OEM, backdate the manufacture date when hardware must comply with the right to repair law by two more years and repeal some product exclusions. The current law, passed in Read more…

On Thursday, US PIRG (led by NWIDA friend Nathan Proctor) delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to the FTC in Washington, DC. We want to thank all of you who signed the petition on repair.org and the PIRG website. As the only trade and advocacy association for the wireless shop, we will continue to push for fair repair Read more…