Apple Is Making Bigger Moves Into The Tech Repair Space - Is Apple Disrupting The Tech Repair Industry Now?
The warning signs appeared in late September 2021 when Apple stunned the tech repair industry with a small piece of software that would disable Face ID if you were to replace the front screen assembly on an iPhone 13 -- even if you used a screen from another iPhone. This is a process known as part serialization that requires the tech working on a device to sync the serial number of the part to the device. A process that can only be done by the OEM (in this case Apple). This wasn't Apples first move to disrupt the tech repair industry. FIRST MOVE: PART SERIALIZATION Part serialization is not new to Apple or to other OEMs. The tech repair industry first saw it with Apple battery replacements back in August 2019 . Here again the tech needs to sync the part to the device -- a process that can only be completed by authorized representatives of the OEM. If the part is not properly authenticated then the user would get an error message followed by certain features not working. In this c...