f you’ve tried to open any iDevice—iPad, iPhone, iMac, any of them—within the last four years, you've come face-to-face with Apple’s very small, five-pointed Do Not Enter sign. It's an overt declaration that your phone, or your computer, or your tablet is not really yours to tamper with, a public statement that you are not qualified to fix your own things.

Manufacturers have attempted to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to claim that they own the software that makes an electronic an electronic, and tampering with that software is a copyright violation. There's the fact that Apple quietly stopped accepting applications for "Authorized Service Provider" designations in 2010. There are the seizures of "counterfeit" parts being imported from China that may be legally legitimate. There are the lease programs carriers and Apple have started that ensure you won't ever actually "own" a phone ever again.