Hacker News Reader

Comment by Exmoor | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't get the joke, Apple's engineers are apparently using an iFixit toolkit in their lab, while continuing to make Apple devices harder for companies like iFixit to repair. https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/Manta-Driver-Kit--112-Bit...

View on HN

Obviously, they have the tool to make sure it doesn’t work! How else could they test its ineffectiveness to work on their products? :)

You jest but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they did this.

Apple engineers don’t have specific mandate to make devices harder to repair, the are tasked to make devices cheaper to produce. It so happens that it also affects ease of repair.

For extreme example of this look at the Kindle - obviously it’s glued so it’s cheaper to make, but it makes it completely unrepairable.

Apple made it so that you need their blessing to swap out the battery, display, or camera on their phones[1]. And they can't replace the battery on my MBP but have to replace the whole top case, nor replace the little rubber feet without replacing the whole bottom case.

At this point ascribing any sort of "it's just the economics" reasoning to Apple is wishful thinking. They're doing this on purpose.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/45921/is-this-the-end-of-the-rep...

People always assume that every 3rd party repair shop has Louis Rossmann-levels of skill and integrity. Some do. Some don't.

Apple is trying to protect people (and their public image) from the scammy people who swap the cheapest shit on your phone and still charge a premium.

Then when the phone explodes and takes someones buttock with it, it's WAY too late for Apple to say "but it was a 3rd party battery, which was dodgy and installed carelessly" - the Court of Twitter has already decided that Apple is evil and their phones are crap and here come the class action suits.

So the only sane way is to make sure people can't get dodgy components installed on their devices.

Also, if every Apple Genius was Rossmann-good with similar tools, they could solder out single components and fix pretty much anything on site.

But they're not, so they are instructed on how to swap the smallest viable part when one section fails. That might mean swapping a whole case when one rubber foot falls of, but that's still easier and more cost-effective than training everyone to be a soldering and electrical engineering genius.

If it were about dodgy parts, it would be enough to use genuine parts. It's not. If it were about dodgy parts they'd make it easy for third-party shops to get genuine parts. They don't. Why do parts through their independent repair program cost more (to the point of being uneconomical) if the shop is replacing a non-OEM part or (god forbid) they want to stock up so they can actually replace parts when their customer walks in and not have to wait for Apple's approval[1]? How does charging more for replacing a non-OEM part protect people?

I've done things Apple's way, and my reward was losing access to my work tools for two weeks. They can pay for prime real estate but they can't pay to train their Geniuses to actually fix things? To change a battery? They can't keep parts in stock? Doing things their way is miserable---they are capricious, they deny they ever make any design errors, it is inconvenient. This drives people to third-party providers where they can actually get better service for the products they paid a premium for. How does this protect people?

I'm not even talking about component-level repair. I'm not talking about changing a bad chip.

These are the feet[2]. They stick on. No soldering required. But apparently that's too hard for their Geniuses to do.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rCUF-V1esM

[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-and-MacBook-Pro-Uni...

That's simply what they want you to think.

1) Half the stuff won't work if you solder them properly anyway.

2) Apple should not be worrying about the shoddy job repair shops might do. It's not their business. What they could do is ask for every 3rd party repair shop to declare that they are not Apple certified clearly in their website/storefront.

Many third party repair shops are pretty bad and Apple goes out of their way to make sure those shops stay bad. It's very hard to get good when you cannot access parts or schematics. Apple does everything they can to sabotage the repair community so they can keep up this excuse.

Is that why they invent new and totally unnecessary driver bits? And make it so that you can't even replace a component from one iphone with a 100% apple made component from another identical iphone?

It's obvious that apple has spent a lot of money on intentionally making their devices harder to repair.

Most likely it was other way around - they wanted a machine which can reliably drive tiny screws. They invented the machine, but it required pentalobe screws, so they went with that.

The only reason ifixit sells its own tools is because Apple decided to invent a non standard screw over a decade ago. One that is functionally the same as every screw but required a screwdriver that could not be purchased off the shelf at the time.

And they absolutely knew and expected that professional repair shops would be able to get one of those screwdrivers... as has happened with every other security screw designed for just about forever.

The purpose is to deter people who have no business being inside of it to begin with.

How do you know that amazon or 'apple engineers don't have specific mandate to make devices harder to repair'? Do you mean NO Apple product development employee have said mandate?

> companies like iFixit to repair

iFixit itself doesn't perform the repairs. They simply make and sell tools to facilitate unofficial repairs, and they had a good reputation on doing that - which, as you said, is becoming increasingly difficult.

It's an interesting business model I think.

They produce IP (researching and producing very clear instructions for fixes) and manage supply chain (trusted replacement parts & tools, worth more vs aliexpress equivalents because they endorse them).

The things they make money off are largely substitutable. Their value add (well deserved IMHO) is trust.

The network effect is also at play here. It's a community-oriented operation, in a sense it's similar to GitHub or Wikipedia - their repair guides are actually on an open wiki that everyone can edit, and users have contributed a lot of guide as well, and nearly everything is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Don't underestimate the value of consistency. If I buy an iFixit toolkit I can be fairly confident that there won't be wobbly bits, oddly creaking plastic, the grip will be the same across the board and that the steel will be of reasonable quality.

> It's an interesting business model I think.

Don't look for gold yourself: sell the camping supplies and pickaxes to the prospectors looking for gold.

* https://www.flexport.com/blog/trade-merchants-rich-californi...

Sounds analogous to youtube-dl...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com