Cory Doctorow is an activist I admire. One of the things he has his sights set on is ‘Right to repair’.

Me iPhone 8 was still fine but the battery went dead within a day. Especially on vacation that sucks. We take long walks and I have several apps open then: AllTrails, GPX Tracker and Relive or Polarsteps. Sometimes Google maps or a local hiking app, too. Each of them don’t use a whole lot of battery power, but enough to drain a faltering battery quickly.

I looked up the cost of a new battery. It’s 55 euros at Apple, 40 euros at someone around the corner, and 20 euros for the battery itself. That was not too bad.

But couldn’t I do it myself? The company ifixit.com accurately documents what you need to do and tells you what parts you need.

Now, the iPhone’s battery appears to have been secured in the device with glue. I immediately understand what Cory Doctorow means. That is an engineering sin. There is no way that is a qualitative reason for that. Apple just wants to make it difficult for you to repair the device yourself.

I ordered the set from iFixit, which, including the tools I didn’t already have, cost me 61 euros, including shipping. That sounds a lot, but I can also use those tools to repair a MacBook Pro 2021, which Apple says should cost 700 euros to repair a screen cable.

I will report how I fared.

I am continuing my search for a repairable laptop. And found it: https://frame.work/nl/en.