How Parts Pairing Kills Independent Repair - iFixit

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The biggest threat to repair is no longer hostile hardware. Today, many independent repair shop owners are most worried about the trend in electronics manufacturing known as “parts pairing.” This term refers to the software barriers used by electronics manufacturers to prevent consumers, fixers, and repair pros from replacing parts the way we have for decades. Harvesting spare parts from defunct devices for use in other, salvageable devices is an integral part of the repair landscape—one that is endangered by the growing prevalence of parts pairing. And parts pairing is encroaching on our devices quickly.

What Parts Pairing Looks Like in Practice

Let’s say you have an iPhone, and your battery is getting old. Your friend has a phone of the same model with a shattered screen and malfunctioning buttons. Great! They give you their old phone so you can harvest the battery. You swap batteries flawlessly but, lo and behold, when you turn the phone on there’s a strange new notification. “Important Battery Message,” it reads, “Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery.”

That may seem strange, considering the battery you just installed is an identical, Apple-branded battery. Even more galling, the notification sticks around for days, popping up again and again, even after you dismiss it. In the “Settings” menu, where you used to see available capacity and charging settings, lives an ominous warning: “Health information not available for this battery.”

The "Important Battery Message" found in Settings, flanked by similar messages for the display and camera

The initial "Important Battery Message" that greets you after a battery replacement

No matter how expertly you may install that battery, you lose features and you’re stuck with dubious warnings. Of course, when Apple does the same procedure, they have access to the button that makes those problems go away. And therein lies the core issue of parts pairing.

Imagine for a moment that another piece of technology, say, your car, behaved this way. Imagine that all oil changes needed dealership attention and an in-house brand of oil. Imagine that your DIY weekend oil change, or your usual mechanic’s handiwork, resulted in dashboard warnings about unauthorized oil. Oh, and your manufacturer remotely disabled the “check oil” light so you can’t tell when you’ll need another change—all to discourage you from going anywhere but the dealer for oil changes again.

The Keurig model that attempted to monopolize your breakfast beverages

It sounds ridiculous, I know. A “check oil” light is integral to the use and maintenance of a car. Why should a manufacturer dictate the use of a product someone else owns? Well, it turns out that the hypothetical car nightmare is a reality for many other devices.

Just a few years ago HP was caught discouraging use of non-HP brands of printer ink with fake error messages. GE fridge owners have had to come up with workarounds to avoid error messages when using off-brand water filters. Even Keurig once tried to police what brand of coffee you put in your own coffee maker.

Now let’s expand the idea of these digital locks outside of consumer appliances and ask: what happens when they’re put into devices necessary for the supply chain? Well, it’s been happening for a while now in the agricultural sector and it can wreak havoc on farmers. In the farming equipment manufactured by John Deere, for example, there are a variety of possible malfunctions that can trigger the machines’ dreaded "limp mode". Limp mode renders the machine unable to operate normally; until the error message is fixed most functions beyond basic movement are disabled. It wouldn’t be a bad safety measure on its own, but the necessary software Deere uses to diagnose and clear the errors isn’t publicly available. By limiting the use of their repair software Deere has created an artificially high demand that leaves farmers on long waiting lists to get necessary gear fixed. What might be a simple fix otherwise can then set farmers’ planting schedules behind or leave their crops to rot in the field while they wait for repairs to be done on Deere’s timetable. Meanwhile, Deere gets the opportunity to set high prices to fix the problem because they don’t have any competition. Deere is far from the only one guilty of using this strategy. You’ll notice OEMs holding necessary software hostage as a recurring theme here.

So why do manufacturers gatekeep repair and replacements if it annoys customers, violates laws, and gets them sued? The same reason they make most anti-repair choices: profit. What do we all lose as a consequence? Freedom of...