>well if what you're telling them to do is buy a hot stereo out of the back of a truck, that's illegal
You're dodging the question.
If I buy a replacement Home button, I expect the fingerprint sensor within to work. The fact is, that expectation is objectively right; it neither breaks your arm or picks your pocket.
That's the entire reason why we're getting right to repair laws, for that matter; society agrees with me, and not you (and so you're wrong, by your own rules).
The fingerprint sensor is tricky, it’s not clear if it’s actually is Apple’s call or not as it’s part of secure payment flow which would make it quite problematic vis-à-vis the certification requirements that the payment card industry enforces.
FaceID devices don’t have that problem since the front camera including the FaceID IR camera simply move from the old device to the new one.
It also was technically possible to move the old Touch ID sensor just a tad harder.
Apple doesn’t lock down screens and battery replacements (currently at least) as I’ve done both on 6-7 devices for F&F in the past decade or so.
Apple has by far some of the cheapest 1st party replacement services of the major brands, and also the cheapest OEM parts now Samsung charges far more at least in the UK.
3rd party parts are also much more readily available.
I’ve just recently replaced an XS screen with a £30 kit from Amazon for a Galaxy S10 which came out about the same time IIRC the cheapest replacement screen kit on Amazon is more than £200 and Samsung does no longer offer repair services despite the fact that this device isn’t even 5 years old.
Apple does a lot of shitty stuff and whilst it’s about as far from being a right to repair champion as one can imagine in reality the long term support they offer for their devices and the fact that they release only a limited number of SKUs each year whilst moving extremely large volumes of them makes that in practice their devices are the easiest to repair whether you are using 1st party, 3rd party or doing it yourself.
The fingerprint sensor is the important one, because thats where the secure enclave is, that's where your fingerprint is stored, it's the lynchpin to Apple's entire security system. The more access to any parts of that system, the more it needs, the more software it has, the more likely that software is to have bugs, the more likely bugs there are, the more likely it is that there will be an exploit, and the more likely exploits are, the more likely it is that your fingerprint will get leaked, or that the security will be broken.
It pains me that TouchID sensors can't be reused/it's harder, because of the waste, but as a protection measure, I don't see any way around it.
You're dodging the question.
If I buy a replacement Home button, I expect the fingerprint sensor within to work. The fact is, that expectation is objectively right; it neither breaks your arm or picks your pocket.
That's the entire reason why we're getting right to repair laws, for that matter; society agrees with me, and not you (and so you're wrong, by your own rules).