TL;DR: a repair shop owner from Germany managed to create a tool to calibrate the display angle sensor (used to trigger sleeping on Macs when the lid is closed)
TL;DR: a repair shop owner from Germany managed to create a tool to calibrate the display angle sensor (used to trigger sleeping on Macs when the lid is closed)
Good for them, but this whole clickbait nonsense about Apple “locking” things is just that, nonsense.
Hector Martin, creator of Asahi Linux said it best so instead of repeating his words I’ll just leave a link to his comments on the matter: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110803356645502548
I agree with Martin on this, but I’m not sure that this is the right response to this specific video. Martin makes clear that he thinks Apple’s decision to withhold calibration tools from anyone who isn’t an authorized service partner is shitty and anti-repair, and that’s what this video is focused on.
The other point Martin makes is (in my opinion) correct, but not directly relevant here.
It just seems to me that Martin is arguing on technicalities. Ultimately for the end user, regardless of the why behind parts not working when swapped, the parts are not replaceable, and Apple does not make the required tools available (such as calibration software) so that third party repair can be done properly. It’s still anti repair for the end user.
For one it’s just technicalities for another it’s the distinction between a company going out of their way to block repairs or a company just not caring and mainly focussing on their own repair process.
What a condescending childish uninformed piece of writing in this link.
Dude has reverse engineered pretty much the entire hardware stack of Macs to be able to provide the global community with Asahi, but because he says something you disagree with he’s supposedly “uninformed”.
Talk about childish…
Actually… no. The author is right in the cases he mentioned. Not releasing calibration tools and such is not “Anti repair” that’s just “not pro repair” which is not the same thing. Apple is anti-repair. A 100%. Just not in the cases the text mentions. If they really wanted to be anti repair in their components, they could lock shit down far more than they do. Design wise, Apple is not trying to hold you back, they just do not give a fuck if you can repair anything they build.
Not pro repair is anti repair. Making it hard to fix the shit you own by obfuscating what you have to do to fix it is anti repair.
If they didn’t obfuscate it there would be many tools out there already to let it be done. Also, basically every other laptop doesn’t have these random calibration issues. Why would Apple be so unique?
They literally serial lock almost half of their parts.
Obfuscating what you have to do ≠ not providing you with a roadmap on what you have to do.
This is a non sequitur.
It doesn’t automatically follow that a lack of tools means there is obfuscation. The simple fact that there can be many reasons why tools aren’t widely available alone breaks that logic.
But I’d say the fact that we already know exactly why difficulties arise when replacing parts, definitely proves that there’s no obfuscation.
Which again circles back to the difference between anti-repair and not pro-repair.
Just because Apple doesn’t go out of their way to provide a roadmap and hold your hand and as a result you are having difficulties when you’re trying to do it yourself, doesn’t mean they are actively thwarting you.
Apple doesn’t even think about you and me, their concern is to facilitate their own repair processes.
They don’t.
Aside from biometrics none of the parts are serial locked.
What you’re thinking about is parts based factory calibrated data loaded into the parts from a central database.
Just because the system ignores the calibration data once the part doesn’t match the one the calibration was intended for, doesn’t mean it’s “locked”, it just means that you’re trying to use calibration data for the wrong part.
So, I do agree on anti repair vs not-pro-repair, and assuming you’re right about the calibration stuff (which seems possibly true by my understanding)…
Why do they serialize the biometric scanners? The only way that’d make sense was if the bio scanner was scanning, comparing to a registered scan, and then just giving the rest of the phone a thumbs up to unlock.
But as I understand, the biometrics are stored on the Secure Enclave within the cpu and the scanner is just a sensing device.
For your device to be compromised would require an attacker to reverse engineer the sensors output, have a model of your face to spoof, and for the device to be accepting biometric unlocking, which iPhones only do after having been unlocked via passcode.
There are a couple of concerns with biometrics.
The big one is, as you already mentioned, spoofing biometrics.
The FaceID or TouchID sensor essentially saying “I got that face/fingerprint that you have in your Secure Enclave”. Granted it is a sophisticated attack, but nevertheless one you’d want to prevent if only because it’s good practice to maintain a secure chain in which the individual links can trust each other.
For similar reasons the lockdown mode exists, which is mainly useful in limited scenarios (e.g. journalists, dissidents, etc).
On the other hand, if ever there was a potential attacker, it would be a government because they unlimited funds in theory and it isn’t hard to imagine the FBI trying to utilize this in the San Bernardino case if it was available.
A different risk, which would make the above quite a bit easier to accomplish, would be an altered biometrics scanner that, in addition to working the way it’s supposed to work, stores and sends off your biometrics or simply facilitates a replay attack.
If we say “not pro repair” is “anti-repair”, we lose the meaning of what being anti-repair is.
Both are not helping the consumer, but one much more than the other.
Then yell at the people trying to redefine apple as “not pro repair”. They’re the ones twisting the definition.