Comment by wiseleo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wiseleo | Hacker News Reader

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I own microsoldering electronics repair tools and fixtures. The price is competitive, especially for factory-quality fixtures. Having the right tools drastically reduces the difficulty of repair. Interestingly, Apple offers the adhesive gasket for $1.80. When used with their display press, this makes restoring watertight factory fit of the replacement display much easier.

Renting the tools is a nice option to have. Torque drivers appear to be priced at obscene level, but not really. Based on handle pattern, these appear to be customized Wera screwdrivers and they cost more to buy direct than through this program from Apple. That just feels like Snapon pricing for specialty tools. By the way, Snapon sells individual torque screwdrivers for $256. Really.

This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware. They will have the option to avoid making a trip to the Apple store and losing custody of their hardware. One of the companies where I work has such a department. They order Lenovo parts and fix the laptops on-site instead of relying on on-site field service from Lenovo.

Yes, agreed, those fixtures would absolutely help with a large-scale repair operation. But if you're only doing it occasionally for your own device, the time taken to receive, unpack, pack and send back the fixtures would probably take more than just using lower-cost tooling that you own.

A big reason why I do my own repairs is because it allows me to optimize the logistics of it by removing the time-sensitive component of shipping; I order common parts & tooling (multiples so I have spares if I fuck up) well in advance of any breakage so that the actual repair no longer depends on the shipping service or my ability to receive packages. Putting the shipping service back in the critical path would negate all those advantages for me, making it no better than just shipping the entire device to Apple/AASP to begin with.

The only major advantage I see here is that the display press would likely guarantee the water-tightness of the repaired phone, though personally I've always just done without and accepted that my device is not watertight, especially considering I don't trust the factory one either after months of heavy use, thermal cycles and minor mechanical shocks & damage.

> This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware.

Hopefully in the future, yes. As it stands though this is unusable for large-scale in-house repair operations as you can't stock parts and have to order them as needed since you need to return the old part in a timely manner.

I will probably order 2-3 sets of parts just to have on-site using some random serial numbers of issued equipment. That should give me the flexibility you mention.

This is still not enough, but for large companies with strict security policies it is a welcome development. Basically, having ability to achieve factory seal on a display assembly in-house for approximately $1000 in equipment is a huge win.

Considering there's still a "system configuration" step that relies on Apple Support, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll just deny it for you because they don't approve of you working around their restrictions.

Similarly, for the tooling, is it actually available to purchase or is it a rental only? If it's a rental they might still retaliate (beyond just keeping your deposit) by banning your account and/or devices and/or denying future "system configuration" on any parts ordered on it to prevent people from "purchasing" the tooling that way.

The tools are available for purchase as well.

Apple does already have a program for corporations (https://support.apple.com/self-servicing-account-program), though it requires at least 25 repairs per year.

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