I don’t think Apple ever thought this would last for ever (their anti-repair practices) but they are riding it as long as they can. They are still going to make money on parts, and I bet their “hardware serial pairing” stuff will be a key for them to getting OEM parts from them and using their tools or you can properly pair the components.
Legacly speaking there is no “serial pairing on device” apple have crafted this to infact be calibration profiles and then have put the job on apples servers to not let a phone download calibration info for part SN that have already been paired to another SOC.
This was a change with the iPhone 12 (and M1 Macs). Moving it server side means they could (and might well) change this to let you download the profile but only if the donwer device is not iCloud locked (otherwise it might be stolen…)
Should they provide documentation on how third parties can create thier own calibration profiles and provide them along side parts? Yes but getting a law past that would require apple to write stuff would be hard in the US… the entire “you can compel speech” legal defence that apple used successfully to not be forced to make a custom version of iOS that would let the FBI crack into phones.
I don’t think Apple ever thought this would last for ever (their anti-repair practices) but they are riding it as long as they can. They are still going to make money on parts, and I bet their “hardware serial pairing” stuff will be a key for them to getting OEM parts from them and using their tools or you can properly pair the components.
Legacly speaking there is no “serial pairing on device” apple have crafted this to infact be calibration profiles and then have put the job on apples servers to not let a phone download calibration info for part SN that have already been paired to another SOC.
This was a change with the iPhone 12 (and M1 Macs). Moving it server side means they could (and might well) change this to let you download the profile but only if the donwer device is not iCloud locked (otherwise it might be stolen…)
Should they provide documentation on how third parties can create thier own calibration profiles and provide them along side parts? Yes but getting a law past that would require apple to write stuff would be hard in the US… the entire “you can compel speech” legal defence that apple used successfully to not be forced to make a custom version of iOS that would let the FBI crack into phones.