Teenager championing right to repair


Motherboard has a feature on A 17-year-old in Surya Raghavendran from Ann Arbor and his push to bring right to repair legislation to Michigan.

Raghavendran’s journey to advocacy began when he took a jog one day back in ninth grade and his iPhone 5C tumbled from his pocket and onto the ground. The screen was busted. He got money from his parents to repair the screen and paid Apple $120 for the service. He hadn’t had the phone long before it started to malfunction again. As it turned out, Apple’s techs had given him a bad screen.

"I went to the Apple store and they wanted [another] $120 to repair it," he told me over the phone. "So I started watching YouTube videos and said, ‘Let me see if I can do this myself.’" He bought a third party replacement screen for his phone off of Amazon and replaced his screen himself in under two hours. "It was easy," he said

The article notes he ran into problems when an iOS update caused screens to malfunction. Ideally, consumers should be able to have access to authorized parts and information to repair the hardware on their purchases. I understand, however, things can get complicated when you factor in security features and also how long companies are expected to support devices. I try to always fix before replacing, so I'm definitely on board with making it easier to buy parts and technical documentation.