Why Apple Uses Pentalobe Screws In Its Devices
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
From Apple's perspective, amateur repairs are potentially a source of serious damage to their brand. The effects of inept repair are likely to reflect at least as badly on Apple as they do on the repairer. One bad third-party battery could be enough to trigger a global media shitstorm, in spite of it being nothing to do with Apple. Their customers don't expect iDevices to be user-serviceable, so raising the barriers to entry for repairers is a clear win for Apple.
Apple is a hardware company who likes full control of things. It seems naive to think that they will make a big effort to be hacker or DIY friendly.
Using weird screw heads isn't "not making a big effort to be hacker friendly", it is "making a big effort to be hacker unfriendly".
The entire article rests on one person's speculation. Yeah, the source is credible when it comes to DIY Apple repairs but he's still in no position to say definitively that "Yes, this is the reason they're doing this".
I don't take issue with the premise of the article. Like I said, its quite likely to be true. What I take issue with is how misleading the article is. It tried to spin speculation into fact with a few lines spritzed throughout that they can point back at and say "well, we didn't actually say it was a fact". I just think its pretty lame to do this sort of thing. If it was called "Why Does Apple Use Pentalobe Screws in its Devices?" and pose it as a question, and make it clear that the article is pure speculation, that would be a much better start.
EDIT: As of right now, every single reply to my comment has missed the point entirely. Quit getting hung up on the screws or my half assed counter suggestion that they're using it for another reason. The point I'm trying to make is that this post is misleading people to believe something that is speculation is fact. No matter how much sense it makes for Apple to use these screws to keep people out there is still no reliable evidence or any sources to support that. Only speculation. Its very possible that there are other explanations but the big idea here is that its upsetting to see speculation passed off as fact and people falling all over themselves to believe it.
I am having a hard time imagining a way this could be true.
But I digress. The point isn't why Apple uses new screws. Its about making it clear that this article is putting forth the suggestion that it does but that there are no facts to back this up. Just speculation.
How is this even possible? They undoubtedly manufacture their own screws and it would cost the same regardless of the design of the screw.
Weird screw heads always translate to people wanting to keep you out. You don't even need to write an article about that.
I've often heard the same kind of judgement when people see a Torx for the first time.
Thing is, a curiosity about Torx born from their prevalence on cars I've worked on led me to learn that Torx were designed with the intent of preventing cam-out [1] as opposed to the intentional, damaging, torque-limiting cam-out of Philips screws.
This makes Torx attractive for all kinds of applications, particularly automated ones where fit and finish are important.
The use of something other than the most common fastener, connector, whatever is not necessarily a matter of "making things difficult".
Torx, just like Philips were both originally licensed designs, it's just that the patents have expired.
When Torx showed up in 1967, Phillips were surely considered "standard" as the patent had been gone for 18 years. Today, the Torx patent has been up for 22 years.
I expect that when encountering Torx for the first time in 1967 people ignorantly made the same assumption, that it was non-standard for the sake of being non-standard.
If they're cheaper, then how come they only use them on the outside?
So either they're doing it to keep owners out -- and most people would agree that they have readily explainable motives for that -- or they're doing it for some mystical reason that makes it "easier" for them, a reason that nobody so far has been able to imagine.
I think I'll bet on "keeping the owners out" as an explanation.
Of course, you're completely right insofar as that doesn't make it news. But it's still worthy of fussing about, as far as I'm concerned ;)
Perhaps they wanted mechanical benefits similar to, not precisely the same as those of some existing, patented fastener and to have total control of both the screws and bits end to end (no chance of someone causing damage by using a wrong size bit)?
By rolling their own fasteners the knock all of those potential questions at the same time.
I object to the parent use of "likely", but some reasoning beyond simply "keeping owners out" is possible and even logical, in my opinion.
Remember how I said "most people would agree that they have readily explainable motives for" keeping owners out? Some of those motives are "total control of both the screws and bits end to end" and "no chance of someone causing damage by using a wrong size bit".
The reason why people are complaining about this is not because they think Apple has no reasons for this, but because they think Apple's reasons are wrong, as in (for example) "it's my device, I paid for it, so I should be able to change the battery and if I damage it, it's my fault."
Of course, other people are free to disagree. I'm not arguing that, either ;)
If I'd meant that to be in response to all of your points, I'd have quoted them all.
Apple has been building in obstacles to casual hacking for decades (the original Mac case required some weird custom tool and a screwdriver). They've never gone on record as to why, but I don't see much room for doubt.
If you were speaking of the manufacturing line, and of a fact that iDevice v1.1 had phillips off the line, while later iDevice v1.2 had pentalobe off the line, I would agree. (i.e., maybe pentalobe is more amenable to robotic insertion, etc.)
But, there is no "cheaper for them" argument for exchanging the screws on existing devices brought in for repair work. Unless the old screws are damaged beyond reuse by being removed, exchanging the screws is an additional, unnecessary, expense.
Which leaves one to speculate, why exchange the screws for repair items? There must be some reason?
I would think by now there would be at least _one_ vendor in a country with fewer qualms around intellectual property who would be willing to violate whatever licenses/patents/copyrights there are on this pentalobe screwdriver form, and make them available at a very healthy markup to the many, many iphone/ipad repair shops out there (not to mention those interested hobbyists who would like to open up their own phone)
Particularly if that vendor was already manufacturing an assortment of other screwdriver bits, I would have to believe the marginal additional cost of analyzing these new screws, and creating a screw driver that could map to it properly, shouldn't be that great a challenge.
Are there any mechanical engineers with more knowledge than me who might be able to explain why this hasn't happened?
BTW, this article is a submarine (see Paul Graham's submarine PR essay) for iFixit, at least partially.
[1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/13-macbook-pro-teardown...
"iFixit is doing what it can to source screwdrivers to work with the new screws, though it notes that there doesn't appear to be a single reputable supplier that carries the same tools Apple technicians use."
"Wiens notes that the pentalobe driver isn't perfect—"the tip is more star-shaped than "flowery"—but it can remove Apple's pesky replacements and "liberate" your iPhone."
"Why use this design, and why use it only on the outside?"
It is plausible that it reduces the cost of final assembly on the device.
1: By using rounded "lobes", rather than sharp-profiled edges, they can use a driver with a soft plastic lobes that have no sharp surfaces on them. The lobes are large enough that the connecting material to the main shaft of the tool will provide a desired level of strength. In fact, I would bet that the lobe connecting material thickness was specifically designed to exceed the required torque rating of the screw.* A square receptacle would not be sufficient, as the 90' edges of the tool would quickly wear down, the tool has to present all round surfaces for this to work.
2: By using a driver with no sharp surfaces, and made of a material softer than the enclosure of the device, they reduce the number of scratches made in the surface of the enclosure by workers who will, and I promise you this, miss the screw quite regularly if they don't get it properly torqued before removing the tool.
As the device enclosures are often one-piece, milled and surfaced aluminum, the custom tool and screws would likely have less overall cost than a common miss-rate or miss-error level with a metal tool.
I would also posit why so many are having difficulty manufacturing the tool, is because they're trying to make them out of metal.
If the above happens to be true, I would think the choice of screw design is an act of manufacturing efficiency genius.
* - Having had the misfortune of using plastic versions of all of torx, flat, and phillips head screw-drivers, yes, I can say they don't last long.
Also, though I'm not sure about the Macbook Airs in 2011, the current Macbook Air doesn't even have a replaceable SSD--the storage is directly on the motherboard.
It's really very old.
I've got no data on it, but my gut tells me it's a tiny, tiny percentage. I would also bet that switching the entire massive operation over to using pentalobe screws (not to mention the presumably higher cost of the screws themselves) cost more than the revenue they're "losing" to people who would repair old phones themselves.
Isn't it more likely that the pentalobe screws, with higher internal surface area than a phillips screw, offer some other benefit? Looking at them I would bet that they stay on automatic screw drivers better than a phillips-head screw.
If they really wanted to make it impossible to un-screw them they'd make a screw whose head was in the shape of an Apple logo or something that nobody makes a driver for. It's not really hard to find a pentalobe screwdriver so if they were trying to keep people out it's not working. (Actually, using an Apple logo as the screw-head shape would be kind of interesting, because they might be able to sue anyone who made a matching driver for using their trademark...)
> Isn't it more likely that the pentalobe screws, with higher internal surface area than a phillips screw, offer some other benefit?
The article refutes this with the argument "then why don't they use the same screw on the inside of the phone?"
Rather people suggest they use the screws to raise the barrier to entry.
Whether or not it effectively does this is another issue.
Not enough, and that's the problem. iFixit's purpose for existing is to get people repairing their things (electronic or otherwise); this is why we make guides and sell tools and parts, why we make all our guides freely available under a Creative Commons license, and why we spend a lot of time and effort convincing people that yes, they can repair things.
So when a corporation makes a visible effort to discourage these same people, we get frustrated. Yes, most Apple consumers don't want to repair their iDevices. But they never will if Apple continues discouraging them.