Back in July, President Joe Biden issued an executive order for the right to repair. For those unfamiliar, basically what this means is that the US government is essentially backing the right for consumers to choose where and how they want to repair their products, whether it be at official repair stores or independent repair shops.
Now according to a new video and report from the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern highlights the importance for a right to repair legislation. In the video, it shows just how much it costs to repair a MacBook Pro, where taking it back to Apple would cost $999, which could buy you a brand new MacBook Air already, or at an independent repair shop where it costs $325 to fix a water-damaged laptop.
The report also highlights how despite some independent shops being willing to repair MacBook laptops, the lack of access to the parts or information needed to repair it made it impossible. This is one of the things that the right to repair movement have been fighting for, which is access to components, manuals, and information that would help users repair their gadgets from third-party sources.
An Apple spokesperson has since commented that the company still believes that repairs should be handled by a “trained technician”, but at the same time, Apple has also opened up its repair program to more third-party providers and provided them with more documentation and access to genuine components.