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Comment by mitchty | Hacker News Reader

I voted you down, your comment seems to think that the engineers couldn't possibly have a reason for custom screws.

Without knowing the requirements, you'll never know if they had a good reason for custom screws. As such this comment is not constructive at best, and just standard "apple is bad cause no standards" drivel at worst.

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It's a consumer grade computer. We're not talking about a high performance aircraft, safety critical application, medical accessory, being in hazardous or corrosive environment, something that needs solvent resistance, or vibration resistance. It sits on a desk, that's it. There are tons of screws they could choose from.

Not to mention Apple's non-standard-compliance is a notable exception, not the rule. The 30-pin connector and Lightning are basically the only proprietary connectors they've had in recent history, and one is phased out while the other is being phased out as we speak (for the standard USB-C, I might add).

Firewire, USB-C, Bluetooth, POSIX, etc... Apple doesn't do as much non-standard stuff as people on the Internet would have you think.

I agree with all your points, but have you ever disassembled an iPhone or an aluminum Intel Mac? Everyone has them now, but when they started producing them, no one had triwing, pentawing or those microscopic torx bits. And let's not even start on bricking items repaired by non-"apple-approved" shops months later.

I would differentiate between "standards" vs "easy to repair". You're not going to find too many standard parts inside of a cell phone no matter who the vendor is. Even if Apple supported replacing the battery yourself, you'd still need an Apple-compatible battery that's not compatible with a Samsung.

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