Apple throws weight behind Calif. bill after fighting it for years

Apple, against all odds, is supporting a California bill that may cut into some of its profits.

The “right to repair” bill, which would force hardware manufacturers to make the necessary tools and documentation to fix their devices broadly available, passed a state Senate vote in May and is now before the state Assembly. On Tuesday, the Cupertino-based tech giant delivered a letter in favor of passage to the bill’s sponsor, Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman.

“We support SB 244 because it includes requirements that protect individual users’ safety and security, as well as product manufacturers’ intellectual property,” Apple’s director of state and local government affairs, D. Michael Foulkes, wrote in the letter, which SFGATE reviewed.

The letter urges the legislature to pass the bill as it’s drafted. In its current form, the bill absolves manufacturers of liability for any damage to the devices in the course of self-repair and says that manufacturers don’t need to sell service parts that would disable anti-theft technology. It also sets up thousands of dollars in fines for companies that don’t start providing repair gear and manuals for their own products.

Proponents of the “right to repair” movement, which spans several industries where companies hold power over users’ ability to fix their own damaged products, argue that regulations like the California bill help users find ways to fix their hardware more easily and cheaply, which slows device turnover and waste. But there’s a large, business-led opposition, which has foiled Eggman’s attempts with this bill before.

“I’m so appreciative that @Apple has stepped up to support this important consumer and environmental protection policy,” Eggman wrote in a Wednesday post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “This is an historic day for the movement!”

The Silicon Valley tech giant, like farm equipment maker John Deere, is infamous for its reticence to allow people to take repairs into their own hands. The Verge reported that a company lobbyist got a version of this California bill delayed in 2019, citing potential fire risks. In 2017, a Nebraska state senator said she’d been visited by an Apple lobbyist who told her that her state would turn into a “mecca for bad actors” if it passed a “right to repair” bill.

But Apple has softened its stance more recently, including with a 2022 program that offers authenticated parts for certain repairs on a few iPhone and MacBook models. And the letter of support didn’t arrive out of the blue: Eggman’s chief of staff, David Stammerjohan, told SFGATE that Apple had started working with the office “very early in the legislative process with this bill.” He added that his staff has also taken input from other companies.

The firm, which sold $205 billion of iPhones last fiscal year, did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.

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