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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Just today I got one 6s and one iPhone 7 screen repaired(6s got the glass replaced, the 7 got full assembly replaced) and battery of the 6s replaced at a shop that is not authorized by Apple. It cost me 110$ in total.

Previously I got 2017 Macbook Air SSD upgraded using an SSD and an adapter that I ordered from Amazon.

What’s that narrative that Apple devices are not upgradable or repairable?

It simply not true. If anything, Apple devices are the easiest to get serviced since there are not many models and pretty much all repair shops can deal with all devices that are still usable. Because of this, even broken Apple devices are sold and bought all the time.

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>Just today I got one 6s and one iPhone 7 screen repaired

Nice, except doing a screen replacement on a modern iPhone like the 13 series will disable your FaceID making your iPhone pretty much worthless.

>Previously I got 2017 Macbook Air SSD upgraded using an SSD and an adapter that I ordered from Amazon

Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or replace them if they break, so you just have to throw away the whole laptop.

So yea, parent was right, Apple devices are the worst for reparability period since the ones you're talking about are not manufactured anymore therefore don't represent the current state of affairs and the ones that are manufactured today are built to not be repaired.

Hardware people are crafty, they find ways to transfer and combine working parts. The glass replacement(keeping the original LCD) I got for the 6S is not a procedure provided by Apple. Guess who doesn’t care? The repair shop that bought a machine from China for separating and re-assembly of the Glass and LCD.

Screen replacement is 50$, glass replacement is 30$.

iPhone 13 is very new, give it a few years and the hardware people will leverage the desire of not spending 1000$ on a new phone when the current one works fine except for that broken part.

Only if Apple wants to let them as far as I have seen. The software won't even let you swap screens between iPhone 13s. Maybe people will find a work around, but it seems like Apple is trying its hardest to prevent it.

And yet they authorize shops to perform these repairs. They’re not trying to prevent repairs, they’re trying to ensure repairs use Apple-supplied parts. Which, sure, you may object to that… but it’s very different from saying they’re preventing repairs full stop. And there’s very little chance such an effort would do anything other than destroy good will.

And how will the crafty HW people replace the SSD storage on my 2020 Macbok if it bites the dust?

By changing chips. There are already procedures for fun stuff like upgrading the RAM on the non-retina MacBook Airs to 16GB. Apple never offered 16GB version off that laptop but you can have it[0].

if there’s a demand there would be a response.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgEfMzMxX5E

You clearly don't have a clue how modern Apple HW is built and why stuff that you're talking about on old Apple HW just won't work anymore on the machines build today.

I'm talking about 2020 devices where you can't just "change the chips" and hope it works like in the 2015 model from the video you posted.

Modern Apple devices aren't repairable anymore.

I would love to be enlightened about the new physics that Apple is using which is out of reach to the other engineers.

Anyway, people are crafty and engineering is not an Apple-exclusive trade. believe it or not, Apple can’t do anything about the laws of physics.

> I would love to be enlightened about the new physics that Apple is using which is out of reach to the other engineers.

That’s known as private-public key crypto with keys burnt into efuses on-die on the SoC.

You can’t get around that (except for that one dude in Shenzhen who just drills into the SoC and solders wires by hand which happen to hit the right spots). But generally, no regular third party repair shop will find a way around this.

I know about it, it simply means that someone will build a device that automates the thing that the dude in Shenzhen does or they will mix and match devices that have different kind of damage. I.e. if a phone that has destroyed screen(irreparable) will donate its parts to phones that have the face id lens broken.

You know, these encryption authentications work between ICs and not between lenses and motors. Keep the coded IC, change the coil. Things also have different breaking modes, for example a screen might break down due to the glass failure(which cannot be coded) and the repair shop can replace the broken assembly part when keeping the IC that ensures the communication with the mainboard. Too complicated for a street shop? Someone will build a service that does it B2B, shops will ship it ti them, they will ship it back leaving only the installation to the street shop.

Possibilities are endless. Some easier some harder but we are talking about talent that makes all kind of replicas of all kind of devices. With billions of iPhones out there, it's actually very lucrative market to be able to salvage 1000USD device, their margins could be even better than the margins of Apple when they charge 100USD to change the glass of the LCD assembly.

Compared to a thinkpad where I can replace the parts with a screwdriver myself, this is still an incredibly wasteful effort.

>I would love to be enlightened about the new physics that Apple is using but is out of reach for the other engineers.

Watch Luis Rosmann on youtube.

I know Luis, he made a career of complaining that it's impossible to repair Apple devices when repairing Apple devices.

Instead of watching videos and getting angry about Apple devices being impossible to repair, I get my Apple devices repaired when something breaks. Significantly more productive approach, you should try it.

>I get my Apple devices repaired when something breaks

Your old Apple devices, that are known to be vert easy to repair. You wouldn't be so confident with the latest gear.

But why spoil it for you? Let's talk in a few year when you find it out the hard way on your own skin.

Louis makes "Apple impossible to repair" videos since ever. It's not an iPhone 13 thing, give it a few year and you can claim that iPhone 17 impossible to repair, unlike the prehistoric iPhone 13.

Here is a video from 2013, him complaining that Apple doesn't let people repair their products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdlZ1HgFvxI

He recently moved to a new larger shop in attempt to grew his Apple repair operations. Then had to move back to a smaller shop because as it turns out, it wasn't Apple who is ruining his repair business.

Apple is using SOCs now where CPU and RAM are one chip package. How are you going to upgrade RAM here even with the mother of all reflowing stations?

You don't. It's a technological progress similar to one where we lost our ability to repair transistors with introduction of chips. If this doesn't work for you you should stick with the old tech, I think the Russians did something like that on their soviet era plane electronics. There are also audiophiles who don't even switch to transistor and use vacuum tubes. Also the Amish who stick to the horses and candles who choose to preserve their way of doing things and avoid the problems of electricity and powered machinery.

You will need to make a choice sometimes. Often you can't have small efficient and repairable all the time.

Nice, except doing a screen replacement on a modern iPhone like the 13 series will disable your FaceID making your iPhone pretty much worthless.

Only if you go to someone who isn't an authorised Apple repairer.

> Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or replace them if they break, so you just have to throw away the whole laptop.

I mean, you can replace the logic board. Wasteful, sure, but there's no need to throw out the whole thing.

People also replace IC’s all the time. Heat it, remove the broken SSD chip, put the new one, re-heat.

I know, but I can understand people preferring socketed parts.

In modern Apple laptops (2018 and later), the storage is soldered as the memory has been since 2015. Contrast this with a Dell XPS 15 you can buy today within which you can upgrade/replace both the memory and the storage. This is the case with most Windows laptops. The exception is usually the super thin ones that solder in RAM Apple-style, but there are some others that do as well.

There's also the fact that Apple does things like integrate the display connector into the panel part. So, if it fails - like when Apple made it too short with the 2016 and 2017 Macbook Pros causing the flexgate controversy - it requires replacing a $600 part instead of a $6 one.

True, but you are talking about devices that are 4-6 years old. Storage is now soldered. Ram has been soldered for a while now, and with Apple Silicon its part of the SoC.

For context, Apple started soldering RAM in 2015 and soldering storage in 2018.

Perhaps leading to fewer failures and longer device lifespans.

As far as I understand, the less components and heat, the longer the electronics keep working.

That isn't "less components", that's same components but soldered so customers can't replace it.

It removes connectors and may remove buffers. It is hard to pop a memory SIMM out over time using a laptop if everything is soldered in.

not that I've heard of anyone popping out a DIMM over time, but I'd rather pop it back in rather than having to ship it to a repair shop with BGA workstation to replace if a DRAM chip develops fault over time.

newer MacBooks have both the SSD and RAM soldered on board, it's no longer user upgradable, unless you have a BGA rework station and knows how to operate it.

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