Many of the same anti-repair practices are common in the consumer electronics and appliance industry. Consider the practices of Apple. In recent years the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer has systematically disabled iPhones that had their home buttons replaced by independent repair shops (imagine if Ford remotely disabled your car engine because your power locks were fixed at a local garage, not a dealership);3 sued an independent Norwegian repair shop for using secondhand iPhone repair parts;4 and sealed up its phones and computers with unusual screws that—for a while at
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