It feels very close to “right to repair”. The coffee grinder you bought came as a single package but it has burrs, gears, machine screws, a motor, etc. If one of those components fails, we should be able to replace it ourselves and as such they should be documented.

The laptop has various pieces of hardware in it and corresponding drivers in macOS to make them tick. Did we buy the hardware and the drivers as an inseparable package, or should we be provided with the manual to make one component work when the other breaks, be that either third party trackpads or third party (Linux) drivers.

Apple might argue that drivers, unlike gears or motors, will never wear down and fail. They won’t need repairing so you don’t get to know how they work. Does right to repair only apply to products that could ever need repairing? Does it also extend to knowing how your purchased product is built so that you could repair it?

Maybe we’ll see a test case some day when a cosmic ray blows out /System/Trackpad.kext and a litigant applies to a court for the documentation to repair their laptop — to write their own driver!

(Or vice versa: a manufacturer of coffee grinders arguing in court that they are exempt from right-to-repair because they repair their machines for free at their Genius Espresso Bar.)

Hmmm, both my grinder and espresso machine are quite reparable with parts you can order from the manufacturer. Very much unlike my iphone…

This is an interesting thought exercise. I immediately thought of the counter argument that Apple's driver quality is worse, especially for laptops nearing end of life (for the sake of argument assume this were true).

Could I then submit a warranty claim and demand Apple replace my aging laptop with their latest model?