> What your asking is for Apple to support third party knock off chips in their firmware
They're already doing that for some other things.
For instance, some (mostly cheap) Wifi access points are known to have buggy implementations of 802.11 that require firmware workarounds in phones and laptops. Manufacturers have to support these devices for the benefit of the consumer and to maintain their own reputation. Customers aren't expected to understand that it's some other piece of tech that's at fault.
Granted, it's a bit different since this is a separate device. But this is still one example of Apple (and every other phone manufacturer) supporting other's people buggy code for the benefit of the users.
My previous life was network hardware validation, so I have some perspective on this.
What your describing is "interoperability testing", and it's ubiquitous in the communication standards world.
Standards sometimes aren't clear, sometimes there are multiple implementations of a feature before a standard is ratified (and a big user base with the now non-standard implementation), and sometimes bugs end up in silicon and firmware.
One company I worked with had a very large lab with hundreds of ethernet cards. A column of robots would cycle through each one and plug a network cable in, make sure the link was up and solid, then move on to the next.
I think this is fundamentally different than Apple supporting third party hardware.
Communication standards are designed to allow chipset a to talk to chipset b. Both have an obligation to get a link up. A failure to get a link up is a failure for both, from the customer perspective.
A closed, proprietary, custom hardware system has no such obligation. Unlike the communication channel, the risk is completely unbalanced. A failure for the knock off hardware design is just directed to Apple (as you see in the comment section here).
Sure, you can't really blame the customer since the knock off parts aren't easily detected or may have been installed by the previous owner. You also can't blame Apple since you've made a custom iPhone with mystery parts, and I think it's unfair to make them stop updating firmware/software so they don't break these mystery parts.
They're already doing that for some other things.
For instance, some (mostly cheap) Wifi access points are known to have buggy implementations of 802.11 that require firmware workarounds in phones and laptops. Manufacturers have to support these devices for the benefit of the consumer and to maintain their own reputation. Customers aren't expected to understand that it's some other piece of tech that's at fault.
Granted, it's a bit different since this is a separate device. But this is still one example of Apple (and every other phone manufacturer) supporting other's people buggy code for the benefit of the users.