Apple expands Self Service Repair to Mac notebooks
apple.com
apple.com
Also adding to the anecdotes with my own: I have never needed a case for my phones or computers, and have barely even scratched the shell. I go on adventures for a good portion of the year and still manage to keep it intact, so i scratch my head when people say they break easily or that they always shatter their screen, it really seems to go beyond accidental damage and stray into carelessness.
[0] https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2074/en_US/iph...
While you may be in good health, it's important to remember not everyone is the same and some people are dealing with a variety of issues.
The anecdote seems true from my experience as well; people tend to either break their phones often or very rarely/not at all. Of course it could be that you are far more likely to take notice of someone breaking their phone if it happens often.
And the one ipad I've broken, I broke one time when I took it out of a case for a bit and ended up taking a few weeks to put it back in...
Honestly though I think size made a difference. The non-plus felt right for her but it was just more "droppable" for her hands.
It was my Droid Turbo, which was known for having a shatter-proof screen. One of the things that helped achieve its durability was that the bezel actually had a lip around the screen, so if it got dropped, then the screen glass never took the impact.
That changed once the battery had reached nearly 4 years of age and had started to swell, pushing the screen outside the bezel. Dropped it onto concrete and it got one crack across it.
I replaced it with a Pixel 3, and then later a Pixel 6 Pro. I put cases on them, but they're thin TPU, and I use them mostly for being able to have a better grip, since the trend for phones now is a slick glass back which offers zero grip in your hand.
I might just opt for a pop-socket on my next phone. To be honest, I rolled my eyes at them at first, but I realized it was just cynicism for hating popular things. They're actually quite nice for using your phone one-handed, and almost a must-have considering how big phones have gotten.
That's the only time I've come close to damaging a smartphone or tablet screen.
Parts availability and pricing wouldn't be so much of a problem if Apple would stop getting in the way of third parties replacing broken parts with with genuine OEM parts from donor devices, selling those parts themselves, and sharing schematics for component-level repairs. The vitality of the classic car community is an excellent example of how valuable the used parts market is to independent repair.
It's a start and Apple deserves credit for taking a few steps in the right direction. But the limitations of this program highlight how it is obviously nothing more than ammunition for their lobbying efforts against the right-to-repair movement.
This is effectively malicious compliance.
Who is to make the call about what specialized equipment and level of expense is ok enough by you? If people are buying the phones for the features they offer and the way they're constructed, and they offer a repair path, what do you suggest we do now, to satisfy your criteria?
Seriously there is enough space to make it just 0.1mm thicker
Apple know better than random people on hacker news about what makes their phones sell, they don’t make them thinner for no reason.
So are you proposing that you simply tell companies to use "good design principles and sane decisions" and leave it at that? It's up to their interpretation? How does that get us something different from what we have today, and how could you say they didn't follow that regulation then? "We did use good and sane design principles that are repairable."
If you can't say what rules (words and details) govern what you want to happen, how can you pass a law that gets people to do what you want?
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/P2-Pentalobe-Screwdriver-...
Also - it might be nice if Apple allowed competitors to manufacture pentalobe screwdrivers themselves.
And maybe check Amazon before saying Apple is preventing third party screwdrivers. There are hundreds there.
Do I think that Apple shouldn't use some proprietary thermal paste to mount their heatsinks? I don't really care and I don't think anyone here does either - but the tools to get general access to the device body are a different matter... they're necessary for a wide range of relatively simple repair operations.
The most awkward was a plastic pizza cutter designed to cut the adhesive backing of the screen.
It’s really not that hard, but very happy to see it getting easier.
A product like this would not be popular because it would be thicker, heavier, and have worse specs.
So I take it that you immediately returned the MacBook Air and bought something which did have removable batteries?
People are acting like they didn't have a choice but to choose a laptop with a battery glued in. No, the poster chose that machine at the time. There were laptops on the market with replaceable batteries, it just wasn't really their priority as they claim. If it was their priority, you'd think they would have bothered checking.
If I claim having a lot of RAM is important for my machine, and then I buy a laptop with 2GB, I can't really go about arguing I didn't have a choice but to buy the 2GB machine. I just didn't bother investigating the specs and figure out there are machines much more suited for my demands.
There were teardown reviews of the MBA almost instantly when it came out. The knowledge was there, if it was a priority they could have easily known. I'm arguing it wasn't really a priority, I'm sure they were plenty satisfied with that device the day they bought it. They went and choose a machine without bothering to consider if the battery was user serviceable. They might say now it's a priority, but when they paid for the machine it clearly wasn't.
Having seen a MacBook air, I’d be shocked if the battery weren’t remarkably difficult to replace. What was it about the almost paper thin form factor back than that lead you to believe you could just pop the battery out?
Apple could also provide affordable batteries for sale in the event that a person wants a 3rd party professional to replace them.
Id claim that this was somewhat of a turning point when computers started becoming more disposable and that competing companies followed suit. At the time I owned a flat phone with replaceable battery.
Too little glue and a perfectly working battery might start to jiggle around.
Too much glue and it's a bit harder to replace a non-working battery.
I'm guessing that a good 99% of laptops never have their battery replaced. Thus they've optimised for the first case.
Apple's popularity is largely due to its marketing power.
I've used perhaps hundreds of computers in my life and possible evaluated thousands. Many were OK. Some were pretty good. A few were great.
Apple's products aren't perfect, but they were "better" enough.
Mind you, I don't worry about repairability as much as "Is this computer functional and useful to me?"
I think people will survive the terrifying hardship of phones with slightly less sex appeal...
The problem is that today, the incentives are all fucked up. Everyone's just trying to make phones with increasingly greater sex appeal every year so that they can convince consumers to throw out their perfectly working phones. Granted, there was obviously rapid progress for quite a while, but it has slowed down a considerable amount; it's hard to argue that this year's phone line ups offers something significantly game changing versus last year's. People have been saying this for a while, but it just gets truer every year. At best, real meaningful differences occur around every three years or so now.
I really don't think corporations will magically decide to all agree to stop this completely unsustainable and pointless madness. It seems like the perfect place for regulation, because it puts everyone on a level playing field.
I also think people are imagining that the result will be phones that all look and feel like the PinePhone (which, BTW, feels pretty nice in my opinion) but honestly, I seriously doubt that's the case. The degree of corner cutting going on today to get the smallest possible footprint is insane (and yes, I've opened up a reasonably modern phone; the latest being an iPhone XS.) We were perfectly happy with significantly more repairable phones that were not much bulkier...
In my opinion, the concerns are much ado about nothing.
I'm strongly biased in favor of fixing stuff versus replacing stuff--I don't like our consumerist, disposability culture. But "making phones repairable" has virtually nothing to do with this, because "my phone broke" is not a major driver behind replacing phones. Rather, people replace phones because new models offer compelling features, because new software runs slowly on their older phone, or because their old phone is no longer supported by the software they want/need.
Making phones repairable isn't going to fix this problem.
A easy to repair phone isn't just repairable by end-users, but also by your neighbourhood repair shop.
And repairable devices aren't necessarily bulkier. Look at the Framework laptop vs a MacBook, for example.
This is not a statement you can just make with no evidence and expect people to take at face value.
At least for laptops this is a myth. The Framework laptop has the same dimensions and weight as a Macbook air (give or take a few tenths of an inch on width/height but same thickness - I believe they kinda did this intentionally to call out Apple) and is fully repairable with individually replaceable parts.
Many (most?) of the decisions that Apple make that make their systems less repairable are not things that meaningfully impact weight or size, it's just an excuse that they've been very successful in seeding in the minds of consumers.
Something that always felt strange upon seeing critiques of Apple's execution of guaranteed self-repair rights is that those critics are complaining about cost, about money.
To whom I say: Bitch, you asked/demanded Right To Repair and y'all finally got Right To Repair. Money shouldn't be a concern, because that was never part of the demands. If you are going to forsake self-repair because it's (relatively) cheaper to get Apple to do it instead, you never truly cared about Right To Repair.
Right To Repair was never about fixing something for cheaper than the OEM, it has always been about having a practical and realistic option to effect repairs yourself. How much it ends up costing you is an unrelated matter.
This is good.
People can keep arguing for more. That’s fair. But how is this a bad development in any way?
How often/ how much alcohol do you drink?
...and installing the battery requires a special tool? It reminds me of German engineering, or some parody thereof.
How have you found the switch? Still enjoy riding as much? I had to sell my One Wheel because I moved and the new area the roads were too annoying to cruise on. I've been considering it since the bigger wheels might make it easier to ride on the rougher roads.
It definitely doesn't feel as cool, though, and doesn't start conversations.
I have been considering the EUC as an alternative.
Edit: I just checked and amazingly, yes. Unless you have a mac from a specific time with specific software to maybe help you out. If it's a song available on itunes you might be able to buy it as a ringtone but if it's something like your own recording, and you don't have a mac, basically go die in a ditch. Embarrassing.
I had a custom ring tone on my first iPhone, and probably the Android after that. Since then, it’s never been worth the effort. I’m rarely in a situation where I need to hear my phone ring.
So how to actually prove that they do care and protects user privacy instead of just use the word to make their ads more appearing?
I think it's also reasonable to trust Apple to actually implement the security and privacy features they claim to, because those features are a part of their product, which means their incentives are clearly aligned, and there is some professional auditing being done.
I think it's even more reasonable to have a relative preference for Apple products, when compared to Google products, because Google's incentives are clearly perversely aligned against user privacy.
Even so, the fact that AOSP can be readily audited by literally anyone does create a more provable reason to trust devices running Android. This does, unfortunately, have some serious limitations, like the fact that most Android devices can only run whatever closed-source AOSP fork the manufacturer flashes on it, and Android is considered generally incomplete without the closed-source Google Play store and its associated apps.
Siri works mostly on-device and any queries are anonymised. This is one of the reasons why it's not as good as Google's Assistant. Assistant on the other hand is 100% cloud-based, but has been moving more to on-device.
Same with Apple Maps, they cut any fetched route to multiple legs and fetch each individually so they won't accidentally know where you are going. All suggestions on possible destinations are based on on-device ML. Google's version just happily uploads every place you've ever been to the cloud and uses that to calculate possible destinations.
Ok. I can imagine a world where I could bring in an Apple II from 1980 and get it serviced at a shiny glass Apple store. That would be pretty cool in fact, leaving aside the small but entirely real population of enthusiasts who would lose income, livelihood in some cases.
But it doesn't seem like a reasonable demand. At some point the specialist aftermarket takes over. Clearly stating when that will be in advance is the most one can ask for.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
The relevant quote "Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago".
"More than 5 and less than 7" means some time in the sixth year. It couldn't be more clear than it is without them putting a retirement party on the calendar.
Maybe they should?
Edit to add: of course you don't want to know how long the device will be supported, to the day, because this policy gives a minimum of the sixth year after the date of purchase, and if they sell it for longer, they'll repair it for longer as well.
I’m impressed Apple supports iPhones for 7 years from when they went on sale, but 5 years from when they stopped selling them varies by product line.
On the Watch, it’s 3 years. It’s unfortunate because you could have bought a Series 3 this year and learned you will not get a software update for it ever again.
Where this 5-7 year legacy thing gets annoying is computer hardware - it used to be that you could bring in an Intel MacBook of any year and get it serviced, but at some point they cut costs and instituted this 5-7 year “legacy” policy, without actually specifically telling anyone any dates as to when their devices would or would not be serviced. The rule of thumb for computers is that if you can’t get OS updates, you’re probably not going to get spare parts, but that isn’t always the case either.
On top of that, some repairs are really cheap but require electrical work. For these, you could visit a specialist, just as not every shop or dealer will service every car.
The gotcha is that with Apple, you can only service it at Apple & friends, with Apple parts. While they enforce this, yes, they could indeed offer such a program, and it wouldn’t cost 25% more.
Training people every year on the newest models costs more than having folks who repaired the 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2016 models continue to do so, etc.
1) You're citing the 2014 Mac mini because it's an outlier, and also old enough that some things which are integrated into the motherboard now (RAM, storage), weren't then. Coincidentally, these are the two most common reasons you'd ever want to open up and service or upgrade a Mac.
2) This isn't the auto industry; it's not as easy for third parties to make and stock these parts, and also, computers become obsolete long before cars do, for reasons that have nothing to do with repairability.
3) You cite Apple's security measures, but as you know, those only apply to a very small minority of the chips (and other parts) that are in the computer. And those security measures do provide a real benefit, much as right-to-repair advocates like to ignore or obscure or downplay this point. (Not saying you are doing this.)
Nowhere near as simple as repairs on the old non-Retina, unibody machines but easier than an iPad.
Keyboard on the M2 air is outstanding though, so the 2018 MBP is now collecting dust. I should probably find a way to turn it into a headless vm host with built-in battery backup but something about putting a closed laptop in the rack feels trashy.
I've done a fair share of self-repair on various laptops and smartphones I owned and this was by far the scariest one. It didn't seem like something an average person can pull off easily.
I'm more cynical of Apple since they started doing things like soldering in RAM connections on the Mini totally unnecessarily.
1. Although I will note that it’s been many years since I used a browser which couldn’t suspend unused tabs.
I’d also be curious how many people ever did this - one interesting question is what percentage of users need to actually use an option for it to be expected. I haven’t looked for data in years but at one point heard that it was something under 20% of people ever upgrading their Mac.
Now you can argue that you wouldn't make this trade-off but for others including myself it is the right decision. For most people, including professionals, RAM is no longer the bottleneck for system performance.
And what support do you have on your claim that any EU rule has mandated an approach to make something easier to repair that has made Apple (or any other company) change the way they design their hardware?
The competition for oil changes has become so intense that there's basically no profit margin on it. People can have their oil changed "professionally" for so little cost over doing it themselves that it's just not worth bothering. Professionals do oil changes to get customers in the door and hopefully upsell them.
Meanwhile, consumer electronics repair has so many barriers to entry that it's usually just easier to cut your losses and buy a replacement or pay the exorbitant prices demanded by manufacturers.
On the face of it, it would appear a big change from a PR perspective. Still though, you can't upgrade or change the RAM, CPU, SSD, or anything else. The parts are insanely expensive and it's designed for manufacturing (DfM), not repair or durability. Just ask any tech who has ever worked on a Thinkpad T-series vs. a MBP. Although it seems like they're going through the motions of R2R to quiet down the shrieks, only time will tell if they really mean to return to almost serviceable computers.
Is Apple doing as much as they can to make this as unviable as possible? Yes, but it's a first step in the right direction :D
It is important to know that while this new repair site now offers parts and instructions for repairing MacBooks for example, there is also a special activation/configuration requirement on M1 MacBooks now after certain kinds of repairs, like screens, webcams, boards, etc. Otherwise they will not work fully (disabled webcam, screen brightness/Trutone not working, etc). I don't know the specifics but it's some kind of calibration codes, secure component tying or something similar.
The thing is that this repair site will not assist you if you do not buy the part from the site. I asked them about it because I was thinking of repairing mine with this new site. So even if you take a genuine original Apple part from another computer (not even ordering some 3rd party part, but a real Apple component) and use it in your own repair, you may not be able to activate it.
That sucks.
No M2 support? Also, no support for Intel based Macs? Seems like lip service to me.
Although on the bright side, at least Apple is making an effort in the past 1-2 years towards repairability. Would be better if they pull their opposition for "right to repair".
> Would be better if they pull their opposition for "right to repair".
But then you'd be in the same position you are now with Apple where you'd just get the individual parts and fuck your computer up.
Though maybe they should pull their opposition (if indeed they are opposed to this for no good reason) so then companies would have to support the right to repair products like dSLR cameras, TVs and computer monitors, Nintendo Switches, and Samsung mobile phones. I think this would be a nice little market advantage for Apple since these companies are fucking terrible at support for products beyond "send it in". Can you imagine Google trying to support repairing a Chromebook? Though I think what you'd find is just more throw-away electronics because a screen for a Chromebook individually purchased and sent to you will probably cost half as much as a new one. Good for the environment there.
Another thing I wonder about is should we treat personal electronics differently? There's a lot of focus on them but most are cheap and disposable. I think there's significant issues with manufacturing or industrial scale products like the infamous John Deere tractors that you can't fix yourself.
iFixit has Chromebook guides. Hobbyist communities and niche boutique repair shops arise to fit the needs.
The Lenovo Chromebook 3 seems to be similar. I bought one during the recent $79 sale. Was curious if I could DIY an upgrade to an IPS screen. Found some screens that looked like a good fit for around $40 and the screen is easily user serviceable. There's many videos on how to fix various aspects of this ultra cheap laptop, and Lenovo has an easily downloaded service manual.
No you see the world is black or white.
So either you can repair it yourself or it has to be thrown out.
Definitely no way to take it to Apple or a third party repairer to have it fixed.
But we don't have right to repair across the board. Would be nice if manufacturers took this into account.
Now I do not have a lot of experience fixing devices, I tend to use and then either gift old devices to family members or recycle them, but I am curious about how much more repairable one of these devices is compared to, say, a new Macbook Pro. Also I wonder if current state is indicative of future state. For all we know Apple might make repair and upgrade of devices a top priority. Certainly they're showing some serious movement here in my opinion.
It is just a screwdriver and a replacement battery. And they do it themselves for a large fee, so they have the supply of batteries.
I think that would invalidate the warranty. You need to use your hands.
A M2 Mac isn't out of warranty yet, making self-repair more costly for all but a few non-covered instances (e.g. liquid damage, screen drop). For this reason, I would expect newer Intel Macs to be supported before the M2.
In other words, democratizing the Apple-grade repairs is not enough, we need individual components to be replaceable, like with a car. Apple quite literally HUNT anyone selling those right now.
This new stunt is an amazingly smart way of confusing legislators for a few years. It's even confusing tech enthusiasts. But apple is very much against proper repairability (like a car), no matter who does it.
Cars are extremely hard to repair for an increasing number of tasks.
Sometimes the whole right to repair movement seems to be populated with luddites who just want to live with 1980's technology so they can enjoy turning a wrench.
Apple preventing computer repair folks from sharing blueprints and hardware locking some components are two examples.
There's a definite sense of pride and ownership in being able to understand and work on your own car. Sadly, that's all been replaced with subservience to the corporatocracy and the accompanying erosion of the concept of ownership.
(I say this as a happy Framework laptop owner)
Most people are far too busy these days to be trying to fix their own device.
And as someone who tried to fix a MacBook it requires a level of care, skill and confidence that is a step beyond most people.
This is just objectively not true. Apple only goes after people claiming to sell OEM parts because that's a trademark issue. You can sell 3rd party parts without any issues and Apple can't do anything about it.
By that logic, Apple also has no reason to offer Self Service Repair for their Macbooks.
Edit: FYI, self-service repair isn't through Apple at all. It's been outsourced to a different company, same as they did with iPhone repairs.
The OP's complaint was that people can't go to Texas Instruments and get parts. That's not the same and what I was pointing out.
Are you referring to flexgate, ie MBP 2016-2017? Those are fused with the display assembly. Even if I had one, I'd basically need a lab to extend it, even independent shops usually don't do that repair.
It's unsurprising that fixing an apple product with official apple tools with official apple parts costs something more than apple, given the claim.
Probably preempting this to avoid stricter regulations that would force them to do it regardless, along with other things they don't want. "See, we're already giving our customers the right to repair!"
I hope I’ll be able to purchase a new battery for my wife’s M1 Air (without buying the whole top case).
The page says it applies for "4 years after the first retail sale", but in practice they seem willing to replace covered models older than the cutoff. If you've got broken keys, might as well take it in to see if they'll replace the keyboard for free.
> Self Service Repair for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro offers more than a dozen different repair types for each model, including the display, top case with battery, and trackpad, with more to come
So you can purchase the whole display assembly, top case (so basically the whole computer except the display assembly) and trackpads separately. Buying these parts in most cases will not be cost-effective and it's just pure waste to offer them instead offering components more granularly. So yeah, I fully expect Louis to roast this and he will be right.
Doesn't help that you can't easily get a 1TB MBA either, that BTO, but you can pay an extra $1000 and get a 1TB 14" MBP right now.
Apple also requires a serial number when purchasing these parts and the parts are paired to the device. So even if you wanted to start a repair shop that just replaces those parts you can't stock or even install them.
As the saying goes, "reuse comes before recycle".
I'll need to re-watch and update this comment.
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3kggpE9W8A
I was wrong, parent comment is correct. Program is priced to be more expensive and less convenient than taking it to an Apple Store or buying/upgrading to a new phone.
this is why right to repair needs to exist. apple is just paying a lip service right now.
This "service" is how Apple is trying to fight right to repair.
I reckon that's what Apple is going to do here, too. Of course they don't have the gall to sell consumers their Texas Instruments ICs for board repairs, it's likely they're only going to sell piecemeal topcases, Logic Boards, and if we're lucky, batteries too.
Custom ICs (and at Apple's volume why wouldn't they be custom?) will be ordered and delivered straight to the manufacturing line. They'll know exactly how many to buy to minimize waste. A few leftovers may end up on AliExpress, but Apple is pretty tight so they probably go into the trash.
In no situation would we expect either Apple or TI to keep a stockpile of out-of-production custom voltage regulators around, unless a hardware engineer happened to have some in a desk drawer somewhere.
Let's destroy our spare parts to make sure that Louis Rossmann can't get his hands on them and use them for board-level repair!
If they have freaky strict disposal controls over leftover components, it is because they are trying to prevent China's famous "midnight run" of the assembly line to produce counterfeit assemblies.
This isn't anything limited to Apple, or even computers. For just about any OEM repair process for nearly any product, there's someone who will do a repair with a higher labor cost and lower parts cost. That doesn't mean it's a reasonable process for a business at scale.
I went to a third party, 250 EUR, they just repaired the motherboard, works like a charm, and did it in 1 day. It's been 2 years. Fuck apple.
For some people, that measure or metric doesn't matter, and that's fine, but it by no means is a universal "see this is better" approach. And I say this as someone who does board level repairs. On iPhones. (and that mostly came about because people tried to replace the screens on their phones with the power on, blowing the backlight circuit)
Doing something as a one-off is nothing compared to doing something world-scale.
They go after third parties who are using counterfeit or non-OEM parts.
This program, like the iPhone program, is not that program. This is for adventurous people who want to do the repair themselves because they don’t value their own time highly enough.
One can complain about how Apple deals with repair shops. One can complain about how Apple deals with self-service repair. One should not confuse the two situations as if they were in any way equivalent.
Now these service centers are so much afraid of Apple and its policy that she started parroting that its a cosmetic damage and Apple policy doesn't allow to replace it for that. I asked her I am not invoking my warranty, the scratch is done by you and you have to fix it.
Days pass and they divert me to the seller, who refused to replace the laptop due to the scratch.
The Apple Support in India is equally pathetic with no authority at all. Had it been the U.S. and someone at Genius store would have done that, it would have been much easier to get a new machine (it was just 10 day old) or atleast the display case replaced but welcome to India where consumer laws take the second seat and Apple's policy take the first.
After all this, I had to call the police and when the police came the service center gave me in writing that they would replace the display.
Filing consumer case now against Apple for the harassment, preparing the docs. If you are from India and want to join in - drop me a mail.
Edit: forgot to mention the popping sound on my older macbook from 2017 with touchbar. Will apple do anything about that? Seems it is also clueless.
After Googling around, it seems this issue hits a lot of people and dates back to the first M1 Macs being released (nearly 2 years now) and has still not been properly addressed (and I never found a workaround other than plugging headphones and just not using the speakers). And as you said, Apple seems clueless about it.
My issue might be a different one, it comes when I touch the display back side (and sometimes just randomly). I did some research and it seems to be caused by expansion and contraction of some kind of metal inside the body.
It's sad because I was satisfied by my two previous MacBook Air (non retina / non M1) and I was satisfied by my Mac Mini.
But now the Apple love story at home is done. Now recommending Chromebooks to the 65 years+ around us (where we used to recommend Apple).
In case there's any class action lawsuit in Europe over this new M1 bend-gate I'll be sure to join and donate to the cause.
Typing this from my MIL-SPEC LG Gram, which is an actual proper, sturdy and lighter than any Mac laptop.
This comment is what you reap for screwing people over.
If you buy a car, hit a kurb and destroy a wheel, wouldn't you be annoyed if it was only the manufacturer that could fix it, and they would charge you 70% of the price of a full car?
There are myriad factors that affect repair place, especially for something as technologically advanced as the newest laptops. Labor prices, design of the laptop, parts supplies, etc.
Of course, the ability for only one entity to source and supply those will tilt the scales towards a higher price, but that is unrelated to the “small”-ness of the damage.
Edited words...
It's not a mere assumption. There do exist people who do many repairs better than Apple for hundreds of dollars less, in the US.
As a hypothetical, suppose the camera glass or lens was made with materials or a technique that caused it to be 90% of a phone’s cost to produce. Then replacing this item would cost >90% of the phone’s price, even though it is “small”.
Or you have a huge transport ship that has an issue with a propeller or a small part of the ship on the bottom, but it needs a dry dock to repair, and there are only a couple dry docks in the world that can handle it. Then the price could be a very high percentage of original price due to the extreme supply and demand curves involved.
Repair costs are not a simple a function of the “size” of the damage.
When I say there are people who do the repair for much cheaper I mean including the price they pay for the part, not merely their labor. Your hypothetical is not the case here.
>Of course, the ability for only one entity to source and supply those will tilt the scales towards a higher price
In general, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the manufacturer to make parts available more granularly than they do to their own repair centers.
The outrage is justified if the screen cracked due to a manufacturing defect. Otherwise, get over it and be careful with your stuff if you can’t afford the repair.
And before you send something off, ask questions. The shipping costs I’m sure would have been disclosed.
I don't know if you're an engineer, but if you are you probably don't take the same approach to errors in your software. Being careful is only part of the solution to reducing risk. Another is adopting practices and patterns that are less error-prone. And another is to reduce the impact of errors when they do happen.
With a software service, we might have redundancy, and a watchdog or orchestration system that restarts any instances that crash. With a laptop, we might purchase accidental damage insurance, or just decide to buy a brand that is cheaper to repair.
When humans are involved, "be more careful" is rarely a successful strategy on its own.
Europeans generally knows their rights on warranty and warranty period.
At work, we looked across the body of devices we had and tracked the AppleCare incidents (times when insurance "paid off") and concluded that it wasn't worth buying across the fleet. (This is aligned with the general principle of "don't insure against losses you can afford".)
If you can't reasonably afford the loss, insurance can make sense and you should consider AppleCare. If you can (or if you can self-insure across a large install base), you probably shouldn't.
I did initially not buy it with my current laptop. Something broke during the standard warranty. Got the motherboard replaced... With a faulty one. So they replaced it again.
Got a feeling that buying extended warranty would be a good idea. And indeed, 3 months past the standard warranty end, it refused to boot at all. And once again, got replaced with a (less) faulty motherboard (some faulty USB ports).
I'd have preferred not being given broken motherboards by the warranty service, but since I have no ultimate proofs, had I not bought it, I would most likely have been refused service.
There's probably a better case to be made for laptops and phones you use outside the house than there is with other things. Sure, a TV can die young. However, as the parent said, if you can afford to self-insure you'll probably come out ahead on average.
I don't know if this holds when the issue occurs more than one year after the repair, and has, at first sight, has nothing to do with it (Won't get into the details as it's not that interesting. The most important part being that the company's logs did not acknowledge a potentially-related issue reported while the servicing technician was still there).
> if you can afford to self-insure you'll probably come out ahead on average.
Yes. But if two parts of my TV broke in its first year and it needed to be serviced a second time just after because the replacement parts sent the first time randomly shut down with the company refusing to acknowledge it because "Yeah, the first technician said this, but the second time a technician came, it was not having issues" or missing logs, my guess is that buying the extended warranty at that point would probably cost less on average for that TV as I would not put any trust in it surviving long without needing another repair.
You should also check to make sure you aren't already covered by an existing policy. My home insurance covers accidental damage with only a £100 excess, so AppleCare isn't so useful for me (although I've yet to test it!).
It's insurance, on average the underwriter is still coming out ahead, that's the premise of the industry.
A practical example of this, my insurance company told me to cut down a tree they thought was too close to my house for example (and I agree, it was a pine which tend to blow down, and it was too close), or else it would have affected my rates, and if you have particular high-risk breeds of dogs (dog attacks are covered by insurance) you will pay more as well.
In this case - if you keep making claims against your homeowner's for accidental damage to contents, even via a separate high-value-property rider, that is going to be accounted for the next time your renewals come around. And the next underwriter will be able to see those claims as well, those claims data are shared.
I had a high-value-property policy on a laptop (through USAA) and made a claim, they actually tried to come through to my parent's homeowners' insurance as well (which my parents didn't like and they backed them down lol). USAA is great in general, great about paying up when the bill comes due but, insurance is insurance.
So if you want to be nitpicky - no, they do come out ahead on any specific policy, on average - that is the point of diligence in underwriting, to account for those individual-specific factors. Even if you are "riskier than average", they will eventually account for that too. What is true that once written, they either win or they don't - and some policies they will lose. But the expected net value is biased to the house, on every single policy, given the best information they have.
In economic terms: perhaps there is some alpha that you as an individual can extract with your precise knowledge vs an unaware underwriter - but over time as you exploit that, the alpha will decrease to zero, because it will show up in your claim data. Just like any other market, alpha decreases to zero.
The house always wins in insurance, on average. You're not special, you aren't going to beat the house in the long term. Insurance is a "smoothing" tool, it lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments, it's not free money.
This is called a loan. Insurance "smooths" across the population, because not everybody breaks their laptop.
Of course you pay more after renewal when you make a claim (because you've shown yourself to be at risk for breaking laptops), but if you are able to make an insurance claim for something you generally do better in the long run making that claim than not - that's the entire point of insurance, nobody would get it if it was a net negative when you had to use it.
nobody has ever disputed that, but if you read my comment again, you'll see that I was discussing expected value of writing/taking a policy.
> that's the entire point of insurance, nobody would get it if it was a net negative when you had to use it.
in fact, on the topic I was discussing - everyone takes insurance policies even when they expect it to have negative net expected value - which all homeowners insurance policies are underwritten to have. Yes, if you make a claim you come out ahead, but on average you are expected to come out behind.
The fact that you also remembered some other thing that also works by the same method, is not particularly interesting or insightful. See:
> This is called a loan
Yes, indeed, loans also have neutral or negative expected return, so do lotteries, and that doesn't mean that insurance doesn't too. A is a member of S doesn't mean that the cardinality of S is 1.
You're trying to be cute and contrarian, in the finest HN spirit (it's also not cute or funny when anyone else does it, fyi) but you're going off on irrelevant tangents. Please, you're not furthering the discourse here, you're just being tangential and contrarian.
Please re-read the rules, it is very explicit that you need to take the most generous interpretation of a comment, and the reason that rule exists is because it's tiresome dealing with this contrarian nitpicking mindset. It's pretty clear that this statement does not imply in any way that you shouldn't make a claim if you have an event, only that taking a rider generally has a net-negative expected value - as does all insurance. Your entire comment chain here is the least-generous interpretation and should not have been posted.
> Generally speaking equipment riders are generally not worth it except for during a larger event (home burns down, etc) because of this - they get you on premiums if you don't make a claim (generally it ends up zeroing out after a couple years) and they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim.
By only mentioning the time-series of payments, it took me more than a single read to understand and I could easily see someone genuinely misunderstanding your point.
Of course any particular policy may end up being a win or a loss for the insurer - but - the policy is written so the insurer wins on average, and that's also true of any particular rider or supplemental coverage. The expected value of all particular policies and all particular supplementals/riders is, from the insurer's data, negative for the buyer, otherwise they won't write it.
I did not address it in that comment in particular, but in the specific case of when you already have an accidental damage rider or it's generally included in your policy, whether you should take it... the answer is probably yes, but, you should also expect it to impact your rates down the road, especially if you do it more than once. You'll have to weigh that, and sometimes it's not worth it unless it's part of a larger claim. Yeah, sometimes you do win on a particular insurance policy but... the insurer can still win on the backside too, with higher premiums in the long term. And even if you pick up and move insurers, the next insurer will see that claim too and it will affect the quotes you get. Again, not a money fountain, it's just risk smoothing.
What I was more going for was, in general the net expected value is negative so you shouldn't take the rider, because it will come back in your rates if you actually need to use it. The rider premium isn't the total cost here, there's additional long-term costs if you end up being a claims pest. Homeowners is not designed for every time you drop your laptop, and if you use it in that way you'll end up with substantially higher premiums in the long term to account for it.
> Insurance is a "smoothing" tool, it lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments, it's not free money.
If you believe insurance is only spreading payments for losses over time, you don’t have a grasp of how it works. If you believe insurance is spreading payments for losses over multiple policyholders, you know how it works but didn’t express yourself very clearly and then objected when someone read your words and got misdirected by them.
> the "insurance industry comes out ahead on average" is true both of individual policies and on average
What would the former mean as distinct from the latter?
Your original post strongly implies that making a claim against the policy is net negative: "they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim". I am disputing that implication.
> Yes, indeed, loans also have neutral or negative expected return, so do lotteries, and that doesn't mean that insurance doesn't too. A is a member of S doesn't mean that the cardinality of S is 1.
The point is that you said that insurance "lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments", this is not true. That is what a loan does. There is a meaningful difference. Insurance allows you to pay to guard against risk by spreading payments out over multiple people, not spread out a large payment over a period of time.
> You're trying to be cute and contrarian, in the finest HN spirit (it's also not cute or funny when anyone else does it, fyi) but you're going off on irrelevant tangents. Please, you're not furthering the discourse here, you're just being tangential and contrarian.
Please read the HN guidelines before commenting, in particular this section:
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
You can find a link to the guidelines at the bottom of the page, or here's a direct link: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Generally speaking equipment riders are generally not worth it except for during a larger event (home burns down, etc) because of this - they get you on premiums if you don't make a claim (generally it ends up zeroing out after a couple years) and they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim.
This in no way implies that you should not make a claim if you have a covered event. It simply says that the expected value of any given policy or clause within a policy is net-negative - because that's how insurance operates.
You took that comment and cleaved off the bits you didn't like, until you had a sufficiently narrow statement that you could come up with some contrarian bullshit to look pithy on HN.
Again, have you finally accepted that just because loans also operate in this way, that it doesn't mean insurance can't too?
> Please read the HN guidelines before commenting, in particular this section:
Haha, this from the person who didn't even read the "please follow the most generous interpretation" clause?
Your entire comment chain has sprung from a least-generous interpretation of the rules, which is explicitly against the HN rules. Don't cite rules to me while you're breaking them yourself. And again, you should read the rules about not being snarky or making shallow dismissals.
You wanted to make a cute contrarian comeback post and you made a very in-generous reading of the comment in order to do it, and then if I point that out I'm the bad guy. Again, a very HN phenomenon - too much coddling here. You broke the rules trying to look cool on a social-media site and when called out you tried to rules-lawyer to make yourself look like the good guy.
Take it up with @dang if you want, I don't really care. But I'm not going to be scolded by the wrongdoer for pointing out that someone is cleaving apart substantive comments to make little gotchas. It's a real problem on this site, as is the hiding behind rules-lawyering when people call it out.
Your reply is a low-value comment that doesn't belong on this site and it's gone downhill from there on both sides. This is why we have a rule about that, your comments set the downhill direction here.
(You also get the additional benefit of not having to deal with an insurance company over a claim. :) )
Brutal!
I expect Apple (or the resellers since there is no Apple Store in Slovakia) to deal with anything that is supposed to be covered by warranty. Both of our countries have strong consumer-protection laws.
AppleCare is basically insurance, and I would much rather take a 10% chance of having to pay $900 than a 100% chance of having to pay $100. Insurance makes sense for stuff you can't afford to replace, such as a house, not for consumer electronics.
That is, unless Apple sells AppleCare at a loss, but I somehow doubt that.
I am like this too. I will flip my lid over something like this, but about half the time upon further reflection I will come to the conclusion that I was being irrational, and simply upset at how much things objectively cost or how long things take, or whatever.
That seems like a pretty normal price for recent MacBook screens: https://www.ifixit.com/Parts/MacBook_Pro_13%22/Screens
Where are you getting this number from? Why not $50, or $300?
The screens arrive at the factory by boat, in an optimally-packed container. Replacement screens are individually packaged and delivered in low volume by courier.
Apple must first examine the laptop, which isn't free, then put in the replacement, and do acceptance testing, because they warranty repairs, and even if they didn't, not repairing something and claiming it's a repair is bad press.
Maybe they make profit as well who knows, but it's easy for me to believe that the assembly-line price of a screen triples by the time a repair is installed and the user gets the laptop back.
Starting to look like some of the M1 Airs got a bad batch of screen glass, which is a separate matter. If so, here's my prediction: Apple will do the same thing they did for the butterfly keyboards and eat the replacement cost, and people will be complaining about it ten years later.
Unlike the butterfly fiasco, I'm not betting on this being a design flaw, it's either the law of large numbers or a badly-tempered batch of glass.
None of that is relevant to the cost to replace an uninsured screen which broke under user-error conditions.
Similarly, the average pay of Genius Bar employees and Apple repair techs is semi-public knowledge that can be found on the internet.
Nobody is believing that it costs Apple $400-500 in additional expenses _per screen_ to repair MacBooks.
Like it or not, in a lovely city called Shenzhen, it costs you $200 to get your macbook pro's screen replaced in a regular roadside repair shop just next building to your fancy apple shop.
As a low skill job, you get to master the procedure by watching online video tutorials, interestingly, that is also a viable business in Shenzhen, they have such "online schools" to get people trained for such jobs and some of their videos are free -
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLCQRIZLWDzzzhgKwSWBoRg/vid...
And locals can import those screens right? Little bit of markup. Anyway let me know what the actual price is where you are, from someone who will actually do it, and isn't Apple, all of this is legal and the service is available. That will give us a point of comparison.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Laptop-Apple-Scre...
How do you know if it is even a remotely comparable screen qualitatively?
Could they be dead-pixel factory rejects that aren't even like-for-like? "Touchscreen" seems suspect.
Is Apple Fleecing you?
https://medium.com/macoclock/is-apple-fleecing-you-a682c851a...
The macbook air m1 here is 1100 euros, the mac mini is 800 euros.
So the keyboard, trackpad, battery, screen and form factor are worth 300 euro according to Apple. So that LCD screen they put there even though has a high res, is definitely not worth half the price of the laptop.
No, LCD screens are pretty affordable these days. You can buy yourself a portable external display with a 4k samsung panel for about $200-250 depending on where are you. Such portable displays have extra batteries included, so extra $ costs included.
?
Have you attempted to get it repaired by a third party? What do they quote? Is it possible that the part + labor is worth around $680? It does sound like an absurd price, but I would expect the display to be a relatively expensive part (a replacement is $600 at iFixit[0]) to replace depending on the extent of the damage. It might also be labor intensive considering how unrepairable Apple products are.
> I still need to pay 50 EUR to get the computer back.
Presumably this is for shipping? $50 is expensive sure (unless you're talking expedited shipping), but I suspect you'd be mad even if this was a more reasonable price.
---
It sounds like you're just being vindictive because you feel slighted by a company. If you actually want a solution it seems that tomorrow you can buy the part yourself and replace it.
[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-14-Inch-2021-A2...
Similar screens from other manufacturers can be found for retail at $100-$200, and Apple pays less given they manufacture in bulk.
So unless you think the labor is worth $400-$500...
Even if two thirds of the price of the laptop is a reasonable reflection of the cost of repair, poor repairability is a choice Apple made. It seems fair to criticise the cost, and to factor it in to future buying decisions.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for Apple to do better, or try to get changes made. But, I do think it's completely ridiculous to rage about repair-ability like the parent did.
What would obviously be even better than anecdotes is some statistical data on the likelihood of failure, average cost & convenience of repairs etc. I don't know if such a thing exists - in its absence we have to make do with anecdotes.
I think sharing stories is fine, but the poster seemed to be going much further than that by seemingly trying to get revenge on Apple, which is a strange thing to do.
Statistical ownership data would be awesome. Like a graph saying that if you expect the device to last x years you should expect y costs in repairs. That could even be a selling point for tech protection plans like Apple Care.
[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-A2337-L...
Plenty of other big PC manufacturers have decent repair programs. Often you can even do the repairs yourself (as Apple is finally allowing again).
I'm about to buy another spare keyboard for when it will wear out again. It's 62.99 Euro.
Repairable hardware is vital.
Once while traveling a kid stomped on the chromebook while it was on the ground. I was able to drive to the nearest walmart and buy a new one for $150*. Within 10 minutes of signing in it had restored everything and was ready to go.
* I normally spend a little more to get a chromebook with higher specs, and I recommend everyone do that. The point here was that I was in a pinch but was able to get out of it quickly and cheaply. I suggest absolute minimum of 4GB of RAM (8GB preferred).
Thankfully New Jersey (I'm in California) consumer fraud laws kicked in and I was able to get a full refund for my refrigerator.
https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases09/20090804-Samsung-Ameri...
Laptops: I either pay for HP's next business day support (they come to my home) or, for old unsupported models, I replace parts myself. As I wrote in another commend, I replaced this keyboard less than half an hour ago.
You throw it away (or better, sell for $20 "for parts only" on craiglist/ebay), then buy a new one. They are 3-5 times cheaper than a regular laptop, and aren't all that much more prone to breakage. And all the important stuff is in the cloud anyway. "Backup" and "restore" aren't even distinct operations there.
Don't expect to run Adobe Premiere on one of those, but hey, you get what you pay for.
https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/mac-english.ht...
I've bought Dells, Macs, Lenovos, System76s, whatever. I found (find?) it hard to believe that anyone offers on-site support for a reasonable price.
1. $50
2. $100
3. $250
4. $400
1. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/serviceselection/xn9520cto03...
I highly doubt such service is provided in Malta or Cyprus, for example, considering Lenovo only has a single authorized service center per each island, IIRC.
In the past, I've had come Lenovo to remote parts of Switzerland and Germany, as well.
There is no such thing. These are some of the most densely populated countries in the middle of the most densely populated regions of the world.
Chromebook: if in warranty fix, if out of warranty, buy two more Chromebooks for the price of one M1 Macbook Air screen.
LG Gram: LG has a pretty good repair network. My team (5) has been using LG Gram 17" laptops running Ubuntu for about a year, and one person managed to chip the paint (it's anodized black on a metal body), but that was about it. They've been surprisingly sturdy despite weighing a few ounces more than a 13" macbook air. Also, battery life is on par with the M1 air I carry for occasionally dealing with App Store issues.
That’s incredibly wasteful.
OTOH Apple's are notoriously unrepairable, or way too expensive to repair (case in point; this entire thread). They become trash when they break.
LG has a first class repair network, so if they do break... same as any other global PC manufacturer. Also, standard procedure is to buy at least one machine and put it on the shelf so if one fails... we have an replacement.
> Everything breaks.
Yep.
Dell, HP or Lenovo would send a technician to your office (or home office). For simple repairs (e.g. battery), they can also send the replacement part and you can swap it yourself -- two of my colleagues chose this during Covid lockdown, and changed the batteries in their work laptops.
And "a matter of days" is a low bar. These companies offer next-business-day on-site support.
Here's an example for a Dell Chromebook, although I'm not familiar with buying individually from a reseller:
> Keep your 2-in-1 laptop protected with the 1-Year Mail-In to 3-Year Next Business Day Warranty Upgrade for Chromebooks from Dell. Providing 3 years of coverage, this manufacturer warranty upgrade features next business day onsite hardware support following remote diagnosis. Plus, get technical support via phone or online during business hours and self-service case management and parts dispatch. $63.50.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1692748-REG/dell_848_...
I don't think they support devices during holiday/business trips, but I could be wrong. (I don't handle the laptop/desktop support myself, only the servers, and they rarely move.)
https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Legal_Docs/en/us/prosup...
Just a recap: Bought 4 year old MBP off Craigslist for $500 within a week had almost a completely refreshed laptop for free (minus the time on the phone ~45 minutes and me constantly refreshing the repair status).
This isn’t the first time. Another time I dropped my Pixel and messed up the screen real bad. Pulled out my wife’s old iPhone 7 and used that until I decided which new phone I was going to get. About a week into using the 7 it wouldn’t detect the SIM card. Phone is out of warranty, no apple care, nothing. Book an appointment at the apple store. Show the genius my issue. They offered to provide a loaner (iPhone 6) and send it off to be repaired for free. Within a couple days I get an email that the phone is ready to be picked up. Pick up the phone and depot replaced EVERYTHING minus the metal back on the phone. New logic board, new screen, new battery. Completely refreshed iPhone 7 in 2019.
Just these two events along would make me stick with Apple. Either their customer service is top notch or I’m a really really good talker.
Ps. Still rocking the 15” MBP and the iPhone 7 sits back in a drawer until it’s needed again (I ended up getting a 2020 SE and now a 2022 SE.)
Also, it makes sense that it would cost that much. Most of the product is that luxury display, with an M1 hanging off it. You could probably open up the case, rip out the logic board, and pay less in repairs.
AppleCare+ is pretty fairly priced and generous with their services, and would have made your display repair substantially cheaper, most likely free unless you tell them straight up that you dropped your MacBook or punched the screen.
The machine caught fire in my bed. I woke up to it burning and melting.
I took it to apple SF... they had the machine for nearly 2 months while they "investigated" -- then they returned it to me and said that at one point in the machines life, the moisture sensor had been triggered.
Apple "offered" me an opportunity to buy a replacement at full price. even though the machine was under recall for battery fires. I had a battery fire. But because they claimed the moisture sensor had been hit - they wouldnt honor the recall and didnt replace my machine.
Fuck that.
Have you ever had a refrigerator break? A stove? Have you seen the repair costs for those? Not much difference than the above.
From 2010, "That [Home Appliance] Repair Bill Is Huge, but There Are Reasons":
* https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/your-money/household-budg...
It's cheaper to initially make something because economies of scale in low(er)-wage countries where most of our stuff is built. Repairs are 'artisans' working at high(er) wages (and sometimes parts that need to be ordered and shipped over long distances).
Someone at Foxconn can make "x" devices in an hour in their sleep because that's all they do. A repair technician has to spend an hour tearing something apart and poking around just to figure out what's wrong and only then start fixing it.
If you involve yourself and in a minor automobile collision and damage one of your front headlights on your Lexus with adaptive lighting, your total repair cost for the headlight itself will exceed $1000. A new headlight will require removal the front bumper and calibration of the adaptive sensors, both of which add labor costs. It's not just headlights; if you have lane-keeping technology in your vehicle and this is achieved via a forward facing camera, then a windshield replacement exceeds $1000 as well. If you smash your rear bumper into a mailbox and need to replace the whole bumper, you need your parking sensors re-calibrated. And this is with a maintainable car make like Lexus. For the more ostentatious luxury makes, the costs will be significantly more.
You might think, I'll buy a truck then. But trucks also have windshield-integrated forward-facing cameras, backup/parking sensors, and adaptive headlights. You wouldn't save much versus the Lexus.
I get your point but my MacBook Pro's screen cracked a few years ago. This happened in India, they quoted $700 (around 55k rupees) for a Mac that cost $1100 (around 90k rupees)
Swapping the battery on a Dell laptop takes a few minutes for someone unfamiliar with the process -- unscrew 6 normal screws, swap the battery, replace the cover and screws.
Replacing the battery in a MacBook takes an hour for someone familiar with the process, and several hours for someone unfamiliar. It also requires special tools.
So many users here have had obviously bad experiences with Apple Care and Apple Repair Services, why is it so hard to believe them? Also, why is it so hard to imagine that Apple is making some mistakes in their repair model?
Commenters defending Apple here - they dont care about you at all, they dont need the assistance from you in defending them, and you dont get a discount for doing so, so what is your motivation for doing it? It is clear this 'Self Service Repair' model is designed to prevent independent repair shops from making money, therefore eliminating them. In what way is this good for the consumer?
how is this clear? do you think everyone will simply start fixing their own devices? from my experience a tiny tiny minority of people have both the necessary experience and the time to do this, thus leaving the independent shops mostly unaffected.
LTT runs the numbers to demonstrate it. Apple is making you pay more to do it yourself, and you have to wait days for the parts to arrive, when you could just go down to the Apple Store. The pricing completely nullifies any real-world benefit of this program, making the program seem like it is entirely performative.
If an individual can't even save money doing it this way, the program is worse than useless for repair shops since they won't be able to compete with Apple Store repair services. That's also without even addressing the inability for repair shops to buy parts before a customer shows up with a problem. Repair shops want to be able to provide same day service, which this program makes impossible... unless your name is Apple.
I'm also not seeing where you got that "$500-600" number "upthread", which presumably refers to the rest of this HN discussion, since I don't see any numbers like that. It could make the prices somewhat more reasonable than they were for iPhone, but I definitely haven't had time to do the research myself, and I don't appreciate how Apple hides the OOW repair cost for laptops, which makes this analysis harder.
Linus's numbers are sensationalized on top of that - he drops the equipment return and salvage credit at some point, considers equipment rental as part of the part cost, as well as running numbers for his person's time (who I'm not sure is a trained technician, just that they value their time more than minimum wage). I personally would have looked for an AASP source for a cost comparison.
Mac numbers will lend themselves quite a bit more to an apples-to-apples comparison.
Repair shops have only been able to compete on pricing when they use non-OEM replacement parts or repair the OEM parts. Both these approaches are both getting much more difficult.
Independent repair shops also have the sales disadvantage when they don't have a relationship set up to cover warranty repairs - so they often would be quoting OEM replacement parts for gear with years of depreciation, as well as upgrade benefits when the customer does a cost analysis.
I'll go so far as to say if a repair place _ever_ quotes a cheaper price on a repair than Apple does themselves, they are doing a different repair. They are repairing the OEM part rather than replacing it, they are replacing a OEM part with a part salvaged from another device, or they are putting non-OEM parts in. For screen and battery replacements, the majority of phone repairs, it's almost always non-OEM parts.
Apple testified to Congress that their repair services lose them money [1]. If they have not focused on their own repair services profitability, then they likely also have not focused on profitability of independent repair services.
1: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG... , response 21
For many of them, they identify with Apple. That is, part of their self identity is tied to Apple. To them Apple isn't just a for-profit company that makes good products, it's a philosophy, a way of life, a team, an identity.
If someone challenges or says something negative about Apple, it's a negative about their identity and they take it very personally.
To be clear, this tendency is not limited to Apple. Humans do it regarding all manner of companies/things. But Apple does have a particularly large and passionate following.
Assuming BOTH Apple has surrogates AND rabid fans is one more assumption than just there being rabid fans.
That's the null hypothesis.
Of course to do this properly you also have to realize and account for the idea that others are just as incentivized to fund artificial critiques as Apple is to artificially defend themselves.
There are reasons to not like Apple products, but there are also quite a few great qualities about them as well. For example, the ARM processors they're making right now are excellent (best in class by a lot, as far as I can tell) - for battery life. While they may certainly have lower benchmarks than some i7s, they are doing fantastic for only using 15W. In today's age, few developers use their laptop for more than ssh and firefox, so it makes more sense for a good Linux dev to be on asahi Linux with an M2, while the 'typical business user' or 'creative type' would be more likely to use a Falcon Northwest TLX with a nice dGPU for their heavier workload.
So, again - there are plenty of reasons to not like Apple such as all the lock-in associated problems - but you can certainly use a device and it not be 'your identity'.
I am often an Apple critic because of their lock-in/closed/proprietary nature, but i think this is a good move. Personally I think it's a cave to pressure from the right to repair movement, and they won't be sad about killing independent shops, but that doesn't make it a bad move. I'm happy to see it.
I can't tell you how many times fanboys told me that neither of those features made any sense, and I was silly for even wanting them. Yet within a few years Apple added both features.
That's not clear at all. See for yourself the actual user experience of using it: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/technology/personaltech/a...
From reading that a while ago, it seems to be designed so that Apple score some marketing points and plan ahead for regulations making that mandatory, while not actually delivering a credible service on that front. Virtually no one is going to use that service if it is indeed what's described in the article.
The quality can be highly questionable. One shop first put an old battery in my MacBook, and after I complained they put in a new one from a bad manufacturer which ended up breaking touchpad and keyboard. On my iMac a different store installed the wrong screen (from the previous model that had ghosting issues and wasn’t as bright) - I ended up changing it myself for around EUR250 instead of 700 the store charged or 1100 Apple wanted. Also the screws were loose on the MacBook and the camera and microphone weren’t aligned on the iMac. I obviously went to different stores and checked the reviews before, but it didn’t help.
Ideally it should be simple enough to make these repairs- on the same MacBook I replaced a broken fan which worked perfectly fine for four years. You really don’t know what happens in the store.
That being said, I don’t think apple is seriously interested in helping users with this, it starts with the design of products. My old MacBook Pro retina was so much more robust than the new m1 pro I had to replace it with. The iMac screen is just silly with the easily breaking glass front that makes you replace the whole thing and also with the inaccessible drives.
Is this not due entirely to how hard Apple makes it to get OEM parts?
Sometimes the manufacturers do run extra production runs so you get new OEM parts. Or there is cross compatibility.
I’ve covered a fair bit of the expense of my new Mac units by parting out my old ones.
For the battery: probably. I didn’t bother searching replacing that one though and gave away the laptop. I would have changed it myself but at that time my government was subsidizing small shops with half price coupons so it was actually cheaper to go to a store than to change it myself (looking back I should have just registered as a repair shop and taken the subsidy myself)
Note that importing these items might work out for an individual, but Apple has a very recent history of seizing "counterfeit parts" at the border: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3ppvj/dhs-seized-aftermarke...
The panel I bought doesn’t have any apple references, just the LG part number. Funnily enough, the previous model panel from the store falsely had the same part number after I opened it.
This is an issue with reviews in general: most people critique the wrong things.
They have no idea how to review the finished product, but feel compelled to review anyway and beyond “it turns on now and it didn’t before” (which I guess is a great minimum bar), focus on the cleanliness of the shop, politeness of the staff or their hours. All of which I consider less important than fixing the issue properly.
I was in a European country at that time, so all of this was pretty much standard for this tier of shop (reasonably clean, not very polite, bad hours), anything higher would have cost as much as the Apple Store, so it would have almost been worth replacing the whole device
Share a differing point of view, and someone thinks your one, someone else might think you're another. Even from the same comment.
Apple users are always convinced that people experiencing problems with the product are intentionally complaining to damage Apple, rather than honestly having an issue
There's those extremes I'm talking about. No such user could possibly be anything else right?
I've also noticed that the quality of the customer support around returns has gone south. I've seen cases where basic information about the context of the return seems missing and customers are put in long loops dealing with simple problems.
I've seen the miserly behavior myself. I've put a lot of cash toward Apple SW, HW and services but that loyalty is not recognized or rewarded in how you're treated by the company.
Between this lack of awareness of who their sophisticated customers are and their loyalty and cost cutting measure, I suspect some people have been shocked at how bad the repair / returns experience can be today.
Why? This is quite literally every thread involving Apple. It doesn't matter the topic of the thread, it will eventually devolve into the same shit.
Because this is reflexive, it's not really a response to the story at hand—such comments are more self-referential than on topic. That is not intellectually interesting—we're not learning much from them. It's satisfying, though, to those who have similar pre-existing associations and feelings, so inevitably it brings up a lot of me-too reactions and similar posts. But again, those aren't particularly related to the original story—they're just prompted by it, sort of like tapping on a knee—so they aren't interesting to people who don't personally have the same associations with that topic tuple.
Eventually, users who have opposite associations get tired of seeing these generic, not-particularly-on-topic comments, and respond by complaining about the complaints. Of course that's a reflexive and generic response in its own right. I sometimes call this the contrarian dynamic of internet forums (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
The only two things I know of to counteract this trend are (1) for users to consciously post more substantive, on-topic, curious comments, which provide nuclei for better discussion to organize around; and (2) for moderators to downweight generic and offtopic subthreads, which counteracts their unfortunate tendency to stick at the top of the page.
p.s. Another way of describing this is that curious conversation needs reflective comments rather than reflexive ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
I would really love to see an ARM64 ecosystem similar to what exists for PC hardware with motherboards and chips and other parts available. The chip for that would probably be the Graviton or something similar, and apparently that chip is being sold to other vendors including high-end router vendors like Mikrotik.
Unfortunately I do think the M1 beats the crap out of the graviton in at least single core performance, but I think that's because the M1 is optimized for fewer beefier cores for desktop work loads where single threaded performance matters more. Graviton is mostly for cloud and other applications where most work loads are highly multithreaded or multi-tenant.
Although you might have to go into debt trying to procure one - it's probably a low volume product with debug interfaces that isn't cost-engineered in the slightest.
Considering the secure enclave is also used for data encryption, anti-theft and machine identification to APIs like iMessage, it's probably not a good idea to have them available on the open market in manufacturing mode anyway (unless someone comes up with a smart way to have PKI while also having free-for-all).
there are plenty of videos of Louis Rossmann on this issue last years, if one of those 1$ chip burn the whole motherboard is good for the bin. the "good" news is that there will be a supply of M1 chips from these boards, if BGA (un)soldering is your thing.
Shipping isn't free. It's just included in the cost. Wish it was possible to force companies to stop using bullshit marketing tactics.
Typo: s/has/hasn’t/
After Steve Jobs left Apple the first time, Apple became much more like the other hardware companies of the time, including opening up things that they had previously held tightly closed. When Jobs returned, they clamped back down. Now, Jobs has left Apple permanently and Apple is once again opening up.
So here's a question: Is this a good thing, or is it a sign that Apple is returning to the mediocrity of the earlier non-Jobs era? Is Apple losing what made it great?