Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone ‘bricking’ – Reuters (Apr 6, 2017)
This piece is sadly short on details and on comment from Apple, so we have to read between the lines a little bit to see what’s happening here. My guess is that this lawsuit from the Australian competition commission concerns Apple’s practice of disabling phones which have had their screens tampered with when that process involves the Touch ID sensor and its associated secure enclave. Apple does this in order to preserve the security of that system, but to an end user or repair shop it just looks like Apple is trying to keep the repair business to itself. Some US states have been pushing right-to-repair laws to deal with this kind of situation, and Apple has been pushing back, arguing that there are security issues at stake. The problem is that Apple often charges a lot more for either AppleCare or the repair itself than third parties, so the optics are bad even if the reasoning is sound. I suspect Apple is going to be dealing with a lot more of this kind of thing, and this Australian case will be an important test of how effectively Apple is able to fight its corner.
via Reuters
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