(1) Component level repair is done daily by multiple repair shops. Apple not doing something doesn't make it impossible or uneconomical.
(2) Competition and availability of parts/tools/manuals will bring down costs. Apple forces suppliers to not sell parts to repair shops driving up acquisition costs for parts.
(3) If someone still doesn't want to use a third party repair shop, they can take it to Apple.
(4) Labor prices vary throughout the world. Smart people exist everywhere.
Lets focus on the real issue - reducing e-waste and promoting longer device lifetimes via repair.
This is such a bad article, I half suspect it's astroturfing and food intended for Apple apologists. It's focused on a single small part of the problem and unnecessarily misrepresented it.
As a reminder of the broader picture: Apple has a strong anti-repair stance, they have lobbied for this [1], have engaged in broad, deceptive strategies to remove 3rd party repair options, by confiscating legally refurbished hardware under the guise of "counterfeits" [2], attempting to confiscate grey market parts under the guise of "trademark violation" and threatening the 3rd party repair shops [3]. They profit from this continued attack by deceiving customers into expensive unnecessary part replacements, suggesting repair is not possible and generally coercing customers into buying new products instead [4].
Apple doesn't actually repair anything. Apple outsources this to shops with wildly varying qualifications. Often incurring unnecessary cost. And no, they wouldn't repair them for free.
iFixit, the site that did the teardown, measures the repairability of equipment according to objective criteria and rates it. Apple does not typically score well at all.
iFixit and the other "right to repair" advocates are talking their own book. Apple products are uniformly the same across the entire installed base so it's easy to keep parts in stock and meet expected demand for repairs. They also have higher residual values so people are much wore willing to spend money on repairs for them.
The problem is that companies (especially Apple) are explicitly trying to make their devices harder to repair -- which is the reason for the whole Right-to-Repair movement[1]. If you want to see how much dodgy stuff repair shops have to go through to figure out how to fix Apple products, check out the channels of Louis Rossman[2] and Jessa Jones[3].
Access to specialized equipment by repair shops is not a problem.
The problem is lack of genuine replacement parts, lack of (legally available) schematics and other technical documentation, and software/firmware that prevents repairs by bricking devices [1].
Many third party repair shops are pretty bad and Apple goes out of their way to make sure those shops stay bad. It's very hard to get good when you cannot access parts or schematics. Apple does everything they can to sabotage the repair community so they can keep up this excuse.
> Or does it provide all the information necessary for someone to correctly perform repair or maintenance
Well, that's the problem. Apple doesn't provide all of the necessary information to safely perform board repairs or fix mechanical failure. If you break your car's window, you can go get it replaced in an afternoon. If you break your Macbook's display, your options are to take it to an Apple Store and let them quote you a repair, or buy their $500 topcase "do it yourself" replacement kit. All roads lead back to Apple, and Apple deliberately destroys all roads to repairing your computer. This is clearly evidenced by their unbelievably coarse selection of replacement parts, forcing their customers to buy replacements for components they don't need.
In other words, it's like breaking your windshield and being told to get a new car or replace the entire chassis. Apple can fix this, and quite easily at that, but why would they? They have a direct financial incentive to keep letting Macbooks break in unfortunate ways. The most common damage (screen/display, logic board) also happens to be the most expensive, and their price is entirely artificial.
a few problems with your argument:
Apple technicians are often worse at repairing devices.
Apple policies are often the root cause of this, as they prevent technicians from doing reasonable repair work in order to justify replacing entire parts which do not actually need replacing in order to repair the issue.
The the problem is folks inexperienced with repairing devices like yourself have been convinced by apple that "many (most likely the majority) ... will make mistakes".
That's like saying every 3rd party auto repair shop should be shut down in favor of dealer mechanic shops. When in reality, the corporate greed policy based on making money - not repair electronics or cars - are often the driving decision makers in repair work. That is to say, they actually do worse work at authorized shops. A lack of competition tends to do that.
This kind of stuff shouldn't really theoretically have to affect repairability, but Apple seems to go out of their way to make sure that as much as possible gets bricked when you replace things.
It is worth pointing out that this guy is biased. His business, iFixit, is based on third party repairs. If this trend towards un-repairability continues it will threaten his business.
For the rest of us, who cares if third parties can't repair our MacBooks, just take them to Apple. I'd rather have thinner and more integrated hardware.
>We don't need any "repair procedures" from Apple.
Who is we? Experts? Or consumers repairing their own devices? For the latter, people absolutely do need repair procedures. The first stop for most people is a site like iFixit -- a site founded on the need for documentation to repair an Apple laptop.
While we certainly need to be mindful of e-waste, I'm not convinced that component-level repairs are unquestionably a net benefit to society vs module-level repairs. Process efficiency, shipping, warehousing, packaging, materials-used, and the environmental controls in place have huge environmental impacts as well. The total environmental impact is much more complicated than the board itself.
Repairability is orthogonal to reliability and I've only brought up complaints about the former. This dichotomy you're trying to establish doesn't have any grounding in reality.
All that repair shops can do is provide commentary and inform consumers about whether the OEM is serious about repair or whether they're just greenwashing their image and by all accounts, Apple's self-service repair program is about as anemic as their Apple authorized service provider program.
This is FALSE again, they go against people or sites that publish schematics or instructions on how to fix things, they go against people that want to buy replacement parts, they say is for keeping the brand standards but is for the money.
Imagine your side mirror of your car is broken(say a Ford).
Now imagine Ford is not allowing you to buy any other brand of mirror to replace it, you can't even buy the Ford mirror to replace it yourself either, you must go to a Ford shop pay 10x more for the mirror replacement but in some cases the guys there say that is to expensive to try replace only the mirror and they will change the entire car body but all is fine if you bought the extra insurgence package, if not you will pay 25%-50% the original full car price to have it fixed.
Again, inform yourself, this thread has many references and be honest with yourself, you can like Apple for the things that they do right and don't try to excuse them for the things they do wrong.
If it's self-service repair; then Apple's name is not on the quality of the repair, that's 100% clear. Apple's name is, however, on the quality and availability of the parts, instructions, and repairability.
1) Apple offers repair service on all their products.
2) I can go on ifixit.com and buy parts for almost any Apple product from the last 10 years.
3) ifixit is chock full of instructions on how to install those parts. Apple software does not brick devices that are repaired.
4) True; I guess 1 out of 4 ain't bad?
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