According to data published by the non-profit American group U.S. Public Research Interest Group (U.S. PIRG), Apple, Microsoft, and Google laptops and/or smartphones were found to be the least repairable compared to competitors like Asus, Dell, and Motorola. At the same time, information was mainly provided by the companies themselves.

Based on the U.S. PIRG took data from French sources - last year in France, for the first time in the world, a law came into force requiring manufacturing companies to assign a maintainability index to each device. In the USA, they decided to supplement it with their own data by connecting the well-known iFixit portal to cooperation.

U.S. PIRG compiled French data on 187 laptops and smartphones from the 10 most popular US manufacturers, adding an assessment of the activities of companies that obstruct self-repair laws. The "hybrid" rating showed not only how ready to repair the products, but also how actively businesses oppose the rights of consumers to repair them themselves.

The French index is a ten-point scale that ranks products on five criteria: ease of disassembly, availability of repair manuals, availability of parts, price of parts, and a criterion specific to each category. The law requires that the total score and the scoring table itself be published for French clients.

Of the 10 companies included in the U.S. PIRG, Apple got the worst score, with relatively recent MacBook Airs and Pros averaging 3.16 out of 10, and 20 iPhones up to and including the iPhone 7 averaging 2.75 out of 10. In the notebook segment, Microsoft scored 4.6. for nine recent Surface models, and Google scores 4.64 for an odd selection of the Pixel 4a, 6, and 6 Pro. For comparison, 36 Dell laptops and 22 Asus laptops scored 7.81 and 7.61 points respectively, while Motorola, in the smartphone market, scored 7.77 points out of 18 smartphones.

In terms of "pure" repairability without a lobbying score, Apple laptops scored 3.24 points for the complexity of disassembly, and Dell - 9.55 points. "Controversial" is Microsoft's policy - its models scored 7.34 points for ease of disassembly, but in the French rating, the company's models are rated extremely low due to the low availability of repair manuals and spare parts. In addition, Microsoft has a long history of resisting self-repair at all levels.