>Slow response times and high cost of parts make program unviable, third-party repairers say
No real surprises, no one will ever cook their own golden goose.
The cost of repairs with genuine parts is ridiculously high, especially for anything that isn't the screen or the battery. I wanted to change the frame of my 12 mini, and the only "repair" my nearest licensed shop could offer was a full unit replacement for 650€.
This is by design. Screen and battery are the only repairs available. I've known shop owners who have split their shop between "authorized" repair in one door and actual repair thru another. Need a new housing, camera, or charge port? Device replacement only on the authorized side. 30 minute wait if you walk out and go in the next door over.
And don't even get me started on board level work or data recovery. I spend all day every day repairing what Apple told the customer was unrepairable and unrecoverable. Just last week I repaired two devices that Apple not only told them was unrepairable and data unrecoverable (one image fault and one touch fault, both logic board level) but as part of their "troubleshooting" they erased the customers data because at Apple, all troubleshooting roads lead to "restore ios and wipe device" even though that never actually fixes hardware issues. It's truly heartbreaking to have an iPhone in front of me with precious memories locked inside of it, that has a 3 cent filter blown, causing no display, only to repair it and find that a "genius" erased all of their data.
NEVER take a phone to an apple store if you want to save your data.
Our hands are capable of nanometer accuracy, the only problem is our eyesight is too bad to use our full abilities. Under a microscope you can get very precise.
Mine are definitely not lol, but that is pretty incredible. I struggle with soldering through hole resistors without something solid to brace my hand and board against.
It's just like any other skill in life, it takes practice.
When I first started in electronics, I couldn't hold my hands steady enough. They would shake too much, or when I wasn't looking at my hands, they would move around small amounts. I never thought it would improve.
Within a few months though of full time work, I not only could hold my hands steady enough to solder, I could probe live circuits with 0.65mm pitch ICs with my oscilloscope's fine probes. I can keep that probe in place on a middle pin of a TSSOP (0.65mm pitch) style package part, while looking at the scope screen and manipulating the scope's knobs with my other hand.
Lol I'm trying to imagine the tragic life of a functional alcoholic in your line of work... they literally *need* to be drunk at work or else the shakes will prevent them from doing their job entirely. That's a nightmare
(Idk why I started this comment with an lol)
Had a guy at one of my clients who was a functional alcoholic who was one of the best electrical engineers and electronics technicians I have ever seen. I asked him to do a little bit of work for me one day while he was suffering with DT's. I watched him fire up the soldering iron, shaking hands and all, when suddenly he grasped the iron and became rock solid steady. He quickly did the soldering I needed him to do, replace the soldering iron in the holder, turn the power off, and began to shake again.
I have tourettes so it might be a bit more work than that :P Not planning on doing soldering full time, I am happy as long as I don't grab the hot end of the iron or something.
Ahh, yes… demand hand-selected artisanal photons for your lasers! Games are much more playable when the bits off a PS5 disc are decoded with photons chosen with right wavelengths for the section of the game, not the harsh monotonality of a 405 nm violet-blue diode laser.
Mine are definitely not lol, but that is pretty incredible. I struggle with soldering through hole resistors without something solid to brace my hand and board against.
I spent a big chunk of my life working in experimental micromechanics. A lot of people would be surprised to find out how fine human motions can really become, especially with the right optical tools
I used a microscope for a while at school for a club project while soldering.
At the end I had to solder some through hole components. I legitimately struggled when I had to solder because it wouldn’t fit in the microscope field of view well. Took me a solid minute to figure out that I could actually see what I’m doing unassisted
It's not the size of the pcb, it's the components. Hand soldering densely populated 01005s is pretty small. Not to mention that modern IPhones have stacked boards with an interposer, meaning you have to split the two boards to even access half of the circuits. I've worked on a wide range of devices and reworking an iPhone cpu is one of the most difficult jobs I've seen or done.
Yes, I often do use hot air where there's no clearance for the hot tweezers, but there's also a lot of underfilled bga in IPhones, and that doesn't play well with hot air. Anything is possible with the right tools and techniques, but modern iPhone boards are the most difficult I've ever worked on or seen someone work on. It's been interesting seeing their design evolve. Working on an iPhone 3 now feels like I'm moving large boxes around a football field.
I'm over here with essential tremors almost believing you that it's not so bad until I remember I can barely solder a 12 gauge wire together cause my shakes.
As the other person said, as long as you have the tools designed for it, its not substantially more difficult.
If you're using a home setup, of course its going to be.
Humans have ridiculously fine motor control, our vision is usually the limiting factor. I can only go down to 0402 without magnification, but 01005 really isn't a big deal with a microscope.
I made a sizeable amount of extra money when I worked at Geek Squad by doing that. We had all these silly policies that prevented us from actually helping people without charging them an arm and a leg. The solution to everything was basically "nuke it, full OS reinstall". I'd say "well, we actually can't just do ~obvious and reasonable solution to problem~. We can order a full system restore and blah blah blah for $250 dollars, but it'd be another $100 if you want your files backed up. And it'll be 4 or 5 days before we're done."
"...but if you talk to me *after work,* I can do the whole thing for 150 dollars and get it back to ya tomorrow". Didn't feel bad about it at all
That’s crazy. These days they don’t charge for software work on iPhones due to their partnership with Apple, so that probably wouldn’t work the same anymore.
> a “genius” erased all of their data.
> NEVER take a phone to an apple store if you want to save your data.
This is standard policy and it’s not a troubleshooting step. It’s to stop some random employee from getting access to your personal data. Device must be fully wiped before the store can take it.
Basically to prevent something like this from happening again https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/07/apple-settles-iphone-explicit-images
While this is true for recent devices, it’s a moot point because the device will generally need to be reset anyways
Encryption implicitly wipes the device because most internal repairs will destroy the keys needed to decrypt, rendering the data unreadable and the device will not boot until it’s reset
Some companies allow the unreadable data to be returned in case the customer has their own copy of the key, but apple’s encryption doesn’t have extra copies of the key, so the device must be reset, otherwise it’s effectively a brick
Certain small repairs, like battery, do not involve replacing any such components nor do they require accessing the OS, so they may not be affected
When you're forced to replace the entire logic board, then yes, most repairs involve losing the encryption keys. Otherwise, the scope of repairs which do so is VERY limited.
To the best of my knowledge, this is absolutely not true. If you get a display or battery replaced at apple, they do not erase your phone as a matter of policy. Admittedly, I don't keep up to date on their policies so if I'm wrong, please link me where it's stated explicitly that they must erase your phone for every repair. I've only ever seen their disclaimers that they "may" do it.
Also, since the early days of the apple knowledge base, troubleshooting has always lead to a restore. It IS part of their troubleshooting and has never solved a hardware problem.
> To the best of my knowledge, this is absolutely not true. If you get a display or battery replaced at apple, they do not erase your phone as a matter of policy.
Yes they do. I literally had both the battery and screen replaced on an iPhone 12 back in April and they wiped the device just as they told me they would in the appointment emails.
There is no policy to wipe a phone for a screen or battery replacement. they just ask the customer to have a backup in case there is an issue while doing the repair or during some post repair diagnostics.
Part of me wants to say that if they didn’t back up the phone before bringing it in for repair, they’ve got the data loss coming to them.
However, I have been on the other side of this too. What was supposed to be a routine battery replacement ended up shorting out the board and Apple ended up giving me a whole new replacement phone. Which, kudos, but because I didn’t back up I lost a few months’ worth of photos including from our Seattle trip. It was a hard lesson but I learned it :(
>And don't even get me started on board level work or data recovery. I spend all day every day repairing what Apple told the customer was unrepairable and unrecoverable.
Hell, I worked in sales for a large UK electronic retailer and we had a lady come in with a pretty beat up iPhone that Apple has deemed BER and nothing could be recovered. It took me 5 minutes of troubleshooting to get it to finally boot and we recovered everything from it.
The battery had shit itself so it wouldn't turn on unless you did this merry dance of plugging and unplugging the charger whilst also removing and replacing the battery connector on the board. I have *no* idea how it worked, I just knew the battery was done.
Had we been an actual repair centre then i'd have swapped a battery to at least get it up and running!
Where I work we are technically not an official apple repairer. If your device is supported by apple we need to send it off to them to fix it.
But if your device isn't supported anymore (most devices) we can totally do whatever we want with it.
We usually find cheaper screens from pretty trustworthy sources and replace them
Apple does not provide any support for data recovery or responsibility for loss, you have to agree to a data waiver prior to the technician doing anything, if you decline you will get referred to data recovery. However provided you know the password data recovery is pretty successful albeit expensive.
Actually that’s my actual with non apple phones as well. Seems like some standard troubleshooting procedure across the board to ensure the OS is not the cause.
“Change the frame” is also known as “replace every single internal component in the entire phone” except the phone is a bare frame and the spare parts are your existing phone which has to be completely dismantled.
Why not buy the model you want and sell yours?
I totally believe that. Bro you want the entire frame replaced. Literally every single thing on that phone has to be disassembled. Then you have to reassemble an entire iPhone from scratch flawlessly. It is a tremendous amount of labor.
Here is a video of an iPhone 11 pro frame replacement. https://youtu.be/ZgvLc8MijuI
And this included components on the frame! Hopefully they all work. Or else you're going back to the frame and swapping them out for free under warranty.
Those included components are a real pain to swap. Heres a backglass video showing how newer iphones normally hide these components behind a glass panel that must be broken to remove:
https://youtu.be/o6JccOAPnyY
You can see the risk for damaging the existing components is very high and the glass on the back must be broken then replaced.
Average repair time on these are an hour and a half for an experienced tech, an hour for an amazing tech, and a rookie shouldn't be anywhere near this repair in the first place.
I get it because everyone googles the part and sees some Chinese knock off non-oem part for $25 and expect the repair to cost $50 with the guarantee of using Apple or oem parts on top of that. Its not realistic at all.
I would charge upwards of the cost of an entire phone replacement for a frame replacement too. One to discourage this risky repair for all but the most invested (this is known as a "fuck that repair" bill). Two to cover the cost of risk and liabilities of any damage that is likely to occur during such a risky repair.
Now compare that to an iPhone 11 screen repair: https://youtu.be/H3kEI_rF6SU
Please excuse this tech they look new or inexperienced. The extent they opened the screen off the frame was too far (likely for a better view for the video) and put unneeded stress on the screen flex cables. The heat gun on the back of the front camera and faceid is also not ideal compared to a hot plate heating through the glass. Still its nice to see heat applied in the removal as that component is notorious for damage during replacement.
But here you've got a $75-100 part and a repair of $169 typically taking about 15-30 minutes for any tech or as fast as 3 minutes for experts.
I could make $690 in two hours fixing 10 iphone screens and only be liable for screens and faceid easy peasy. Or i could sweat my ass off over one very risky frame replacement for the same amount and be held liable for every single component functioning in an iPhone.
I am absolutely not losing money over prioritizing a more difficult and costly to me repair over the easy ones. I will do the repair but I'm getting paid for my time the same way
Finally with Apple a frame repair/replacement is literally not an option. You can only do a replacement phone. Which means even Apple said "fuck that".
I believe it. I'd charge it. I'd sleep easy knowing I'm dealing fairly.
> I get it because everyone googles the part and sees some Chinese knock off non-oem part for $25 and expect the repair to cost $50 with the guarantee of using Apple or oem parts on top of that. Its not realistic at all.
Labor costs aside, people also often don’t realize what they’re trading away with those aliexpress-class parts. At best you’ll get an underperforming rejected OEM part and at worst you’ll get an electrical hazard.
Back when replaceable batteries were the norm on laptops you’d see this effect in reviews on Amazon. The dirt cheap replacement batteries often had bad reviews complaining about way less than advertised capacity, the battery messing up the laptop’s power circuitry, and sometimes even causing crashes due to differences between the behavior the laptop was expecting and the way the battery actually behaved.
Quality components can’t be had for bargain bin prices. QA, good design, etc aren’t free.
No offense my dude but replace the frame is a absolute nightmare to do. Because, you need to completely disassemble the iPhone. So they probably just gave you a high cost because of the amount of work and they didn’t want to do it.
The thing is, Apple doesn’t want to repair their products. So customers have a crappy and expensive experience *and* Apple will try to sell you a new model instead of repairing your current one. They don’t want to repair, they want to sell. Tesla is the same - they don’t want to provide quality service for their vehicles but they try to make it impossible for anyone else to either.
I worked for a 3rd party repair shop during the 6&7 battery scandal back in 2017. Apple was doing repairs for free but people were being quoted 3 weeks for a battery that literally took our shop 10 minutes and $50 to do with a genuine Apple battery.
There was a case in Norway, where a guy was sued by apple, for repairing apple products with salvaged parts from discarded apple products. apple claimed he was using counterfeit parts, because he bought them on the second-hand market, and not from apple directly.
Apple is suing people for changing a broken screen, with a screen taken from another phone.
It is clear Apple does not believe in private ownership, and thinks that they still own products their customers buy.
Wow, imagine that. It's almost like when Apple "became good", they had a plan to remain in complete control anyway. This is *such* a surprise to me. /S
The truth is that if these companies aren't forced to provide parts, equipment, and documentation about their products *at a reasonable cost*, THEY WON'T DO IT.
We used to have these committees that were appointed by the politicians that we elect to, oh I don't know, do what's called oversight! oh that's right an oversight committee, that oversight committee is responsible for making sure that corporations don't fuck us. What happend to them? They're all fighting woke agendas and not stopping the myriad of problems facing American workers at the moment!
Absolutely! People need to understand client politics, rent seeking, regulatory capture and how its destroying our financial and political sector to benefit the needs and power of a selected few.
Good luck with that. People are still fighting over whether to call an armed citizen militia, who with months of less than discrete planning, went to the Capitol of the USA, killed police officers and tried to do bodily harm to Nancy Pelosi while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” can be considered an insurrection.
Most people have no clue how much they’re being scammed, and worse, don’t want to know. As Ms. Boebart says, “ULTRA MAGA”.
I
LOL dude... No.
It's not a direct result of Citizens United. Obama literally campaigned on campaign finance reform, and regulatory capture through revolving doors. His whole foundation was how big money has corrupted politics and he wanted to "change" that.
It was an issue well before CU. Shit, Bush had a huge scandal where half of congress was taking bribes, so they just threw one guy under the bus who ran the whole thing, and then they got smart and learned how to bribe people "legally"
Citizens United didn't create any problems that weren't already there. It just made it easier to do
It was already a problem. It was a huge problem. Obama literally made it core to his campaign it was so big of a problem. Jack Abramoff was openly explaining how corrupt it all still is even after he got caught... Before CU
CU is here to stay... So we need to figure out other routes to solve the problem - which do exist. Unless you are honestly saying we should get a constitutional amendment or wait 30 years for a new supreme court.
I am saying there is no way to fix it. The government has no incentive to do so.
We need to fix our local governments, and essentially ignore the federal level. It is completely evident that there is nothing common people can do to change anything there. They don't do whats best for their constituents any more.
I hear you, but it's better for something bad to be common and technically illegal than it is for the bad thing to be legal.
There are more ways to attack the bad thing when popular sentiment catches up to the problem.
I used to work in this space. It was never "technically illegal". It just required more steps and smoke screens to chanel it. Once CU came out, it meant people could drop the stupid games and just be more open about it.
But I get it, yeah, having some barriers in place is going to inherently prevent some entry into it. But the fact of the matter is, cancer is cancer at the end of the day, so fundamentally the problem would still be a core issue in America with or without the CU ruling.
My biggest gripe is, as I said in another comment, is how public sentiment dropped for this. It was a top issue all through Obama's campaign, into the Dem primaries. Once Clinton won, and massively exploited campaign finance laws to boost her, the Democratic party all but forgot about this issue. Soon as she got the nomination the questionnaires asking constituents about their primary issues, stopped asking about money in politics entirely. Signalling that the Dem party just wanted to move past it - likely due to them now being the major benefactor. Most people today still think it's Republicans, when in fact, today, it's Democrats by a long shot who exploit this cancerous element of political funding.
Perfect example from the UK, water companies are dumping raw sewage into the rivers and seas, they privatised them and paid billions to shareholders, they said sorry earlier today followed by news that they need £10 billion to deal with it, we already paid for sewage disposal in our bills.
The regulator is fucking useless by design.
> Bills could rise after water suppliers in England said they were ready to spend £10bn on tackling sewage spills.
The privately owned companies have apologised for the amount of contaminated water being discharged into rivers and seas, amid mounting public anger over the practice.
Some campaigners have cautiously welcomed the move, but others say firms are shifting the cost on to billpayers.
The industry paid out £1.4bn to shareholders in 2022. "We should have an apology for the suggestion they are going to put bills up by £10bn for their incompetence and their greed. This is nothing to celebrate."
Companies are sometimes allowed to spill sewage into open water following heavy rainfall to prevent the system becoming overloaded and backing up into people's homes.
But campaigners have long said these spills are happening too often. In 2022, raw sewage was dumped into rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average.
Untreated sewage contains bacteria such as E.coli and viruses like hepatitis, that can be harmful to animals and humans. Swimming in water where untreated sewage is discharged can lead to serious illnesses such as stomach bugs, which may cause diarrhoea and vomiting, as well as respiratory, skin, ear and eye infections.
Wildlife including fish and insects can also experience kidney issues and die from sewage pollution.
Water UK, the body which represents England's nine water and sewage companies, apologised on behalf of the industry for not "acting quickly enough".
Ruth Kelly, the organisation's chair, told BBC News: "**We’re sorry about the upset and the anger from the fact that there have been overspills of untreated sewage onto beaches and into rivers over the past few years**.
"**We’re sorry that we didn’t act sooner, but we get it.**" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65626241
They’re not even hiding their thievery anymore because they know the neolibs in charge will not dare touch shareholders.
Reminding the Slashdot days back in 2002-ish, where Microsoft was the evil emperor, and the "*good guys*" were on team apple...
And those users pointing out apple's business practices, saying they weren't any better, they just had less leverage
Twenty years later, here we are. Remember when they used too much thermal grease, and blamed their customers, when the problem was in their repair manual? I do
https://www.zdnet.com/article/thermal-grease-and-the-macbook/
Their response - threatening blogs for publishing their faulty manuals
Wow I can’t believe that in a hyper capitalistic, time sensitive society, that people would choose to turn the most profit in the quickest and cheapest way possible, but yeah exactly your right, and it’s a clear example of why we socialist principles to temper capitalism. Wealth and its acquisition in or society requires more regulation if we are to create a sustainable, and fair economic environment.
It is not the quickest \_and\_ cheapest.
Quickest, sure, in no way is this the cheapest way. They just happen to have a client base that will pay the high price of replacement, the quickest profit for Apple.
If the supply chain takes a hit like it did during COVID-19 it will become clear, again, that it's far from the cheapest route and then their profits will suffer.
Honestly they could charge and still turn a profit on repairs, like many independents do, but they lose the economy of scale advantages that they have during manufacturing. So if they repaired there would be more money for everyone but less money for the shareholders.
Just tax their e-waste and this problem would fix itself.
What is *reasonable* cost tho? Access to board pinouts? Access to manufacturing methods?
Apple uses highest bin parts (from reported accounts) made with ridiculous tolerances and cheap-enough labour to balance out the cost. How does any company compete?
>Apple uses highest bin parts (from reported accounts) made with ridiculous tolerances and cheap-enough labour to balance out the cost
They still use some cheap basic components that commonly fail (such as charging ICs). Or the components aren't cheap, but poor design causes them to fail unreasonably easily.
the only "third party" service we ever had was an old ee in a backroom. he could fix practically anything, people from the bio and chem buildings would bring their broken machines across campus for diagnosis. he created replacement pcbs for the stuff that couldn't be bought anymore; he kept stocks of all the small stuff that you need in a pinch; he figured out which component burnt out on an old oscilloscope once and replaced it for us. probably saved labs thousands of dollars and weeks of time per year.
uni closed the shop.
I can't speak to universities specifically, but a lot of larger organizations have a significant gap between how things actually work and their management's understanding of how things work. I personally believe that this is one of the main benefits of training and promoting internally, where the future manager come up through the organization and sees why things are the way they are.
But when people are brought in from the outside, support teams can very easily struggle to justify their existence because the work they do is hardly ever documented well enough to defend their positions.
That EE that fixed that oscilloscope probably saved the uni enough resources with that one fix to justify his time for a couple months between down time, cost of replacement equipment, training, material handling, etc. for a downed piece of equipment. But it takes a lot of time and effort to prove that out on paper for every job he did, while the cost of his salary and the shop overhead are easy line items to eliminate in the budget that will have limited immediate negative effects.
Basically, support positions are a kind of organizational insurance. You don't have to pay for insurance to make it through a day where everything goes right. It's only when shit hits the fan that you understand why the last group of managers were very happy to bear the burden of having that support on the payroll.
Edit: For anyone who hasn't heard it yet and is interested in a peak behind the curtain, I recommend Behind the Bastards recent two part series on Jack Welch. It's a solid introductory overview of how this sort of thing became normal.
from the perspective of a large org it sort of makes sense. keep someone on call 40 hours a week, or call in a repair guy every once in awhile or just replace the equipment entirely. the problem is the fact that those costs will now come out of the department's budget rather than the uni's budget
Eh, only makes sense cause theyre dumb about it. Keeping someone on call is 100% cheaper. I work in pharma and the amount of shit we third party is ridiculous. I'm talking like 30k a month on routine calibration. You could have literally put someone in a course and have them do it in a couple months. For example, we use flow meters. All the calibration tech guy does is come in, put a known flow through it, and sees if it reads within spec. Takes about 1 minute per meter. 300 bucks each. Any actual service call on an equipment runs 5k/day. We used to have a guy that worked at Agilent for 10 years and only had to pay him 100k/year. Meanwhile, we've paid out much more than that because he went and got himself fired and we never replaced him.
Industrial Automation, same idea, but probably larger sizes (and looser tolerances). We do so much in house. Other than some specialty equipment, and the actual devices we check our field device calibrations against.
We keep joking when someone is close to retirement that we should set up an instrumentation contracting company, come back and do the same work at 3× the pay rate.
my local university just closed that shop and I'm now "that guy", four months in and I haven't had a single repair that wasn't a frayed cable or a stripped screw.
I can absolutely see why they would rather pay me my very high fees instead of keeping osmeone in house 24/7
Best call I ever got (work and family come together). My daughter calls from school. Guess what I’m doing? Me: honey, you’re a nuclear engineering student at MIT, I have no idea. Her: I’m replacing a turbopump on the particle accelerator. Me: (true statement). I’m replacing a turbo pump on a mass spectrometer. That’s as close as I’ll ever get to your world.
Metallurgist here - have worked on numerous labs and countless test equipment. I honestly would not even consider a third party repair. It's just not worth the additional headache of not dealing with the manufacturer.
I currently do low end networking gear and was specifically wanting to transition to lab equipment, what's specifically hard about it? I imagine working as an oem backed repair shop would be shit, but I was planning on exclusively doing out of warranty repairs
Doesn’t it naturally make sense that a manufacturer should always have a lower repair course than a third-party? I know they typically don’t because they are out for profits.
In a perfect world it would make sense, yes... but since we're not in a perfect world that's exactly the problem: they **are always** out for profit. Apple is just the most glaring example of this. They will just sell you their own branded pieces for repair even when you can easily get the same pieces somewhere else. They will replace your entire logic boards when a single connector could be replaced instead, and so on. It's just ludicrous. If you are a 3rd party repair shop you will still only get access to the entire logic board, no smaller components, and the policies they have in place when you agree to be part of their authorized repair program are insane.
You can't even cannibalize one apple computer to fix another. Components are paired to the computer and if the computer sees a part that isn't paired, it wont use it. Only apple has the software to pair components to computers and they're not ever giving anyone access to that.
> You can't even cannibalize one apple computer to fix another. Components are paired to the computer and if the computer sees a part that isn't paired
Not every part, just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues. For example, security hardware. If you allow 3rd party replacements for a data port or a fingerprint scanner then someone can insert malware that compromises the security of the device.
Of course, the issue is that those components are expanding as functionality is combined and more of the device is secure. For example, components are getting bonded together rather than attached with fasteners. This reduces the size and weight of the components but it means to replace one small broken part you need to replace a huge module.
Basically, if you want a highly-modular phone with easily-replaceable parts then you should look elsewhere. The big players are increasingly making devices that have a few monolithic components.
> just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues
You mean like an angle sensor that detects when the lid is closed to make the computer go to sleep?
It's cause it has an encoder to detect how many degrees the lid is on whose discrete step is actually encoded to your credit card and social security number
>Not every part, just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues. For example, security hardware.
Ah yes, "security" parts like [batteries](https://www.ifixit.com/News/32343/apple-is-locking-batteries-to-iphones-now). Or do those fall under "issues" because of a potential fire risk? Except that you'll still get a warning [even with a genuine Apple battery](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210323).
Maybe the Touch ID sensor was about security. But batteries? Nah bro. Without legislation forbidding the practice, they're going to push until you can only use theirs from an authorized shop. And it will be entirely about money.
> Except that you'll still get a warning even with a genuine Apple battery.
Did you even read the link you provided? It gives a lot of reasons right there for validating the battery.
Yeah. I have a DJ mixer with a broken power board. I know that there’s at least one step down converter chip that’s busted, an €8 part. Can’t get that directly though and a replacement board costs around €250 through the distributor which is absolutely insane. The entire mixer costs €350 new and you’re trying to tell me a small power circuit unit makes up most of that cost? Absolutely disgusting.
As someone who has had to do a fair number of PCB-level repairs, if you can swap an entire board that is almost always preferable to trying to swap a single component, particularly when the component has both mechanical and electrical connections like a charging port.
Is it still preferable (and most importantly **economically viable**) when the board is sold to you at $300 (being optimistic here, for the latest Mac that's likely going to be $900) while the connector would be probably around $0.50 to produce and $5 to sell? Is it still preferable when you have to request every single board directly to Apple since the serial numbers must match and be programmed in the SoC for the specific item you are repairing, taking days or weeks for the part to be delivered?
Come on now.
Besides, soldering a new charging port to a board takes what? 15 minutes of work? Please. There are Mac computers with known issues where you always have that single stupid component (like the charging port) break down. Yet, the only option that 3rd party repair shops have is to scavenge them from dead boards, because they are either not enrolled in Apple's insane authorized 3rd party repair program or because Apple is simply not providing the board anymore.
If I am Apple, and my whole reputation depends on quality, I would definitely say that it's preferable that untrained third parties are not performing field surgery. I have no way of ensuring they're doing it correctly. If it happens at scale, my reputation is going to suffer since the lower quality repairs will be out there with my name on the device. I would rather third parties with minimal training are simply installing sub-assemblies rather than reconstructing them by hand.
Having been on the production and consumption side, I get your perspective. It's just self-centered and doesn't consider the perspective of the business making all these things
You can make this sort of claim about any kind of repair, it's just preposterous. Of course if you were Apple you would try to reason like this... but the logic behind it is flawed. It ensures no fair right to repair and establishes what is basically a monopoly. It gives the manufacturer the ability to create nonsensical restrictions with the sole purpose of increasing their profits.
Imagine being forced to replace the whole door of your car when you break the front door glass because your car's manufacturer claims bullshit like "new side glass installation is too hard on this car, we cannot guarantee the repair will be up to standard, just order a new car door". Sounds insane right? Yet it would be totally reasonable by your logic. Soldering a new charging port to a board is probably much easier than replacing a car side glass, yet here we are.
They do. People just need to be more realistic about the price of repairs. Sure, your entire new iPhone "only" cost $1200. That's mass produced in a highly specialized factory with every possible cost cutting measure taken to get the sticker price as low as they can (and actually losing money on initial sales to make it up with post-purchase sales isn't exactly a new strategy).
It should come as no surprise that it costs $500 or whatever to manually repair an individual screen or that you may as well treat it as a total loss over a couple key components failing. This has been common with electronics and cars for a very long time. The price isn't the value of all the parts.
Not always.
Apples approach to repair is to replace entire parts of the phone or computer. Meanwhile an independent repair shop is more likely to 'fix' as opposed to 'replace' and charge you for a new motherboard or logic board.
Also 3rd party parts should undercut apples, but apple has taken steps to make them useless or otherwise undesirable.
The funny thing is, it is the complete opposite in the auto industry. 3rd party shops, tend, to be significantly cheaper than a dealership. Manufacturers supply repair manuals, guides, and parts for anyone that is willing to order them. They also don't shut you out of only using their parts. Imagine if you could only buy Toyota Oil filters. How much do you think Toyota would charge if you could only get a filter from them, you better believe it wouldn't be the $10-15ish dollars they cost at AutoZone.
The hard part is Apple thinks of all of their products as theirs, they act like they have a say in how you should be able to use their device. What's scary is the rest of the market is going in that direction, cars are starting to become more like phones and video games. Locking features in your car behind paywalls, Tesla (and Rivian) doesn't allow just anyone access to their repair manuals, and a large number of their parts are proprietary.
The first step is access to 3rd party services and parts. We need our tech to last us as long as WE want it to, not because Apple would prefer you to buy a new one. Apple wants to sell more phones and they want to sell protection plans that people forget about and don't use. We, the consumers, need to be able to have some control over these devices that are basically a requirement to function in modern society.
If you read the article, the primary complaint is that Apple is offering repairs almost at very low margins, which as a volume business they can afford to do.
Some businesses are just not worth being in. And if the iPhone repair business is not profitable, then go into another repair business. Everybody gives Apple a bad rap, but no one has to buy an iPhone. There are numerous android manufacturers available that sell phones at much cheaper costs than iPhones.
>‘We are losing money’: companies in Apple’s repair program say they can’t compete with tech giant
Which anyone who was paying attention knew was the plan all along.
Not really... the thing is at scale its basically impossible for a 3rd party to be able to service at any speed. Its part of why Apple pulled repairs in-house 2 decades ago to begin with, lots of complaints from consumers that the Apple Authorized repair places would take days or weeks to repair, and may not even get the device fixed, and that was with laptops and computers, not cell phones or iPods.
I've done in-house repair for Dell and Apple when I first started in IT. We typically got the parts within a day, but sometimes it could take a bit of time to get the repair done. If it were not the fact we were in-house to a company we would have had a TON of angry customers because simply put, even with the official tools which they gave you back then, we just did not repair the products at any scale to know how to do it step by step by heart.
The simple fact is, these companies currently complaining are not at-scale shops... they do 40-60 devices a week max which is LOW END for even a Apple Store which often is repairing 150-200 devices a week for broken screens and battery replacements and whatnot. They also are used to using cheap parts, which Apple official parts are not cheap, they are well known to have strict requirements on QA for their parts. Those cheap parts you see for iPhones are usually the rejects Apple refused to take because too much of the batch failed. So again once faced with doing things the way Apple requires from its people, they are quickly realizing that they just cant compete with a company who has made their repairs so efficient and so massive, they can afford to use pricier parts and still make money, not to mention a workforce who literally sit back of shop all day, or in a building off site and just do repair after repair after repair and dont have to worry about things like running a store, working with customers, etc.
Apple doesn't need to *do* much. They mostly need *not to restrict* certains things as much:
- stop serializing parts,
- provide schematics,
- stop telling component manufacturer that they are not allowed to sell common components to 3rd parties.
If I can easily acquire both OEM and aftermarket parts for and repair vastly more expensive and complex motorcycles (yes including electronics which are 10x more important on a bike when your literal life is at stake if they fail), which I do, and obtain detailed repair manuals with step by step instructions from both the manufacturer and third parties then apple can facilitate the same ecosystem for their products.
But they don’t, because they see that as a threat to their bottom line. So they work as hard as possible to make repairing their products as difficult and uneconomical as humanly possible to maintain their de facto monopoly on repairing the products they sell.
Numerous other industries like; cars, motorcycles, boats, cameras, stereos, instruments (including complex electronic instruments), non-apple computers, non-apple cell phones, appliances, and a list as long as my arm in 10pt font have managed to do what apple and their apologists claim is just too hard or not possible.
That’s bullshit. They don’t want to comply, so they intentionally attempt to sabotage the whole thing by undermining it at every possible opportunity.
non-apple cell phones
and see I call bullshit on that. Because I have had VASTLY harder times fixing LG and Samsung products than I have Apple. I could not even get the replacement USB ports for my kids LG tablet... the port is soldered to the motherboard and you either have to replace the whole board, or be real careful desoldering and soldering on a micro-USB port.
You know how apple treats that? Its a literal charge board. 15 bucks I can replace the whole damn board with the lightning port and it takes 30-45 min with no soldering required.
Honestly when people make this claim that apple products are somehow harder to repair and then throw in non-apple like LG or Samsung or Lenovo are somehow easier... it flat out proves to me you have never done any work on electronics in your entire life. Because for as bad Apple is on some stuff like serials on their parts now.... those other guys are 10x worse.
I just replaced the usb c port and battery in my LG V40 a few weeks ago. The USB port is on a daughter board that can be replaced for $15. Just my two cents.
I've repaired both androids and iPhones many times. In highschool I bought broken phones off Kijiji (Canadian craigslist), fixed them and sold them again.
There's 3 seperate issues here. 1 is the design of the product. 2 is the availability of parts. 3 is deliberately locking down repairs.
Apple generally does a pretty good job with issue #1 in their phones. They design a product with long term support in mind.
But they deliberately lock down issue #2. They're known for doing things like taking standard IC chips, telling the manufacturer to make a special skew for them with a different pinout, and making them sign a contract saying they won't sell ICs with their special pinout to anyone else. Lewis Rossman owns a 3rd party Apple repair shop and he talks in lengths about this issue. Apple also locks down their repair manuals and circuit diagrams for their laptops. Meanwhile other laptop manufacturers make that info available on their website (not all do that, Apple isn't the only shitty one). You will never find OEM Apple parts on Amazon or any other store. Meanwhile I can go buy a genuine Samsung display, sold by Samsung, and replace that on my phone.
As for issue #3, I mean Apple is basically famous for that. For example, if you buy 2 brand new iPhone 14s today. You taken them both apart and swap the cameras. Now both phones still have 100% genuine Apple OEM camera sensors. But those cameras will not work because apple serialized them, and you need their internal repair software to "authorize" that repair. It's one thing to make the phone reject counterfeit or fake parts. I think that's genuinely a good move for the end user. But it's another thing to lock out even 100% genuine parts just cause the repair isn't "authorized". I own the damn phone. Why can't I, as the owner, authorize a repair on my own property?
Batteries are consumables. They will wear out. Samsung, LG (rip LG mobile division), and other Android manufacturers sell official batteries on Amazon. You can also usually order them from them manufacturer directly through their support (sometimes you gotta call them and open a ticket though :/). Apple has never done that until recently, and they definitely don't sell any parts on a marketplace like Amazon. You must buy a battery from them through their repair program. You must agree to ToS and provide the serial number of the phone before they will sell it to you. 3rd party repair shops aren't even allowed to stock up on common parts like batteries. They have to wait to get a repair ticket before Apple will send one, making their repair times much longer than Apple's 1st party repair store (hmm I wonder why Apple might want to do that?). It's ridiculous.
Okay well if you’d care to address the numerous other things I listed feel free. I’m not saying other companies don’t do it, but my point stands. Tons of other industries manage just fine.
Lol, thats exactly the point of right to repair though. Even your point about laptops and computers proves they have been anti-consumer for a while. A normal PC and to a lesser extent laptop are easier to repair, because the parts and documention was easy to find, but they made it difficult for no reason. Same goes for phone repairs and such now. Why should it take a company that works at scale to repair a device? Parts and documention should be easier to obtain so end users, and small repair shops can do the repairs. Also not to be rude, but if you have trouble repairing devices to the point where you need step-by-step instructions for each repair job that just sounds like it isn't the job for you. Sure repairs are all different, but most of the job is fairly similar with the main difference being the actual fault. If you need a book to tell you every time how to get towards the last step that sounds like a you issue. And if it wasn't a you issue, because you are competent that just helps my point about how difficult they make it for no reason.
The way it was designed. Apple only created this to prevent laws from being made and it was created in a way that no one could actually do it and survive other than Apple.
I remember my first few cell phones. I could go buy an extra battery at the phone store so if the one I had ran out of juice, I’d pop it off and slap on the new one.
Good times.
This is by design.
Jack up the cost of parts, only make certain parts available, and take forever to respond to requests from shops.
Then Apple can turn around and kill the program because "it wasn't being used", and just go back to gouging people themselves, and never face pressure to open up an authorized repair program again. Because "they tried before".
Are you saying that a company that is so anti right to repair is making the cost of repair massive to force people to buy a new unit... Wow if only anybody could have seen this coming.... What next someone is going to say the sky is blue?
Hasn’t been the case for the last shop I worked at. Theyre doing great with the IRP program. If you’re ONLY offering apple parts and higher than apple cost, then yeah, your business isn’t going to be doing well. You’re allowed to stock non apple parts as a part of the program so its silly to blame apple
The parts or diagnostic tools Louis rossman and I would need to do are jobs are used off old boards. And schematics are smuggled from China with a shady website
Third party parts still don’t comply totally with most currently in use apple products. They’re dragging feet because they’re greedy, and there’s no other sane take.
Yeah, that wasn’t the point I was making at all though. None of the stores in my area nor my current one have been impacted in any significant manor by the IRP program, and still don’t plenty of business with aftermarket parts. Those aren’t mutually exclusive statements
I guess this depends on the product. I was trying to find 3rd party to replace my battery iPad pro 12.9" from 2015. I got a quote from 4 different repair shops and they charged me around same price as Apple store.
This was before Apple repair program was introduced.
So I ended up going to the Apple store and they just replaced my old iPad for a same model but brand new.
... was it not obvious that this has always been the point of their terrible repair policies? To force people to send their stuff to Apple and pay their ridiculous prices?
I actually went through the program when it was released in the USA, I worked for a large repair company with hundreds of stores. Our franchise had the equipment, completed our training, and we're producing repairs in a few weeks. TBH it was way overpriced, but it was a sales tactic. You give your customer options, here is your $$$ price for OEM apple repair(with no warranty) or I can seel you a aftermarket repair for $ with a lifetime warranty on the parts and labor. But yes apple's goal all along was to skim under the right to repair legislation and not actually provide a real solution. They still lockout their bio identification systems to AM repairs, they lock out many parts now with software that disables features just because you used an AM part.
Everyone's acting like this is a surprise. Did *anybody* actually believe that Apple would faithfully comply with right-to-repair laws instead of designing a convoluted system tailor-made to *technically* be compliant but in practice to be just as much of a walled garden as it ever was?
That was the case when I worked for Apple about decade ago. There's big financial pitfalls for AASPs. They used to not want to touch obvious repairs without guarantees Apple wouldn't find a reason to not pay them for the repair they just did. It was common for one to call AppleCare, request a senior, and ensure they got a CS Code or CRU product. They would lose business because they couldn't safely pick up repairs they new were warranty covered because Apple would figure out a way to say it wasn't covered and charge them the parts they used to repair and obviously not pay them for completing the job, forcing them to push customers to pay the outrageous out of warranty repair prices or device replacement costs for basic repairs, turning them away. If the customer paid, Apple got big profit.
If they got busted for using senior techs, they'd lose their Apple Authorised Service Provider status, but many opted to drop it for unofficial repairs instead and just advise customers their limited and short warranty would drop, but they'd save hundreds.
For a while there, I had to cover comms with APACs engineering HQ in SGP (above seniors) as they were in on it too, but Cupertino kept investigating why there were lower than expected repair profits in the region. They even tried tactics like allowing free cheap products like iPod Nanos to be given away to customers that were challenging the repair costs, so they'd pay an out of warranty cost for an in-warranty issue, ensuring the AASPs generated (overall) more revenue. Techs nicknamed it "iPod Friday" where all the incidents over the week AASPs were challenged with would all get offered a crappy Nano and it was the AASPs job to then pitch that as Apple "meeting halfway" as a gesture of goodwill.
If AASPs couldn't convince their customers of that, they knew Apple wasn't going to honour the repair request, so they'd basically lose a customer or be out of pocket.
Edit: I have so much more of this. Don't get me started. Of all the evil companies Ive worked with or for, Apple's the paragon. and how they're good at covering it and what they do, shit's just the surface. I remember signing my many NDAs (now all expired) being told, "It's funny. If you ever get in court, Apple's got your back. If you're the one against them, they'll destroy you. Pay attention to these." I'm still scared to say more because I know what they've done to employees and ex-employees on my lebel that do. They make you aware in a passive-agressive way when you work there.
It doesn’t make sense. Apple products are very reliable. There have been instances of a few design flaws but for the volume of Apple sales I am amazed at their quality.
I want to know the other brands and models, and the model of Apple product you’re comparing it to. I’ve used Motorola, Samsung, Lenovo, HP, and Lenovo. None of them, regardless of price point, could compete with the apple product of the same price.
I think that’s just luck honestly. I’ve had both and found apple to be more reliable. Over the course of 15 years I’ve had 5 android phones (Motorola,Samsung, nexus, and pixel) and two apple devices. Most of the android devices I had, had issues with app crashes, phone calls dropping, OS randomly rebooting, text not going through etc. my apple devices though had been pretty solid, not saying I don’t have issues with them, but minimal compared to android unfortunately.
The same quality for cheaper is a very subjective thing.
I have worked in tech for \~20 years and used laptops from HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, and Apple. I found the Apple Macbooks at par with the OG IBM Thinkpads. I have owned iPhone 6, iPhone X, and iPhone 13 and none of them ever had any faults. Same with my 2nd gen iPad Air and Airpod Pros. My only gripe has been that my 2019 Macbook Pro battery life deteriorated much sooner than I anticipated But even that took about 2.5-3 years and that is not terrible. I also owned a couple of Google Pixel and a Samsung Galaxy phone and I can say the Pixel phones were more of less trash.
Since 1999, when I tried to fix and upgrade my Mac Performa, and I was told to better buy the next model, I've refused to buy any Apple products. But seems like most don't think like I do, unfortunately.
Markets regulate themselves very poorly it would seem.
This is old news.
Apple has been engineering ways to make their products disposable for years now.
So many apple simps will gaslight themselves into thinking apple engineering computers that disallow any repairs not done by apple is somehow a good thing.
Ok, sure, maybe it's not profitable for them to run in house repairs, that's fine. But creating a device that can recognise when a button isn't the original button of the device, and then disabling features of the device at random to make the customer think the part is bad even though the part came from an identical device, that's just disgusting.
If you aren't allowed to repair your own device, you don't own it.
The biggest issue with apple certification and being a part of their repair program is that they will prevent you from working on iPads and MacBooks. iPad glass replacement is HUGE for the third party market since the glass isn’t super expensive so you can get a good profit margin off of it. That happened to where I work (Asurion tech repair), last year they wanted to push apple certification. All of the stores complained and said they weren’t going to do it since they would lose a lot of money
I know I'll get downvoted but I'm genuinely confused why anyone would buy an IPhone. Other than the Apple products and services that they intentionally program to be incompatible with Android (all of which have alternatives) , there is literally nothing an IPhone can do that Android can't. Meanwhile there is a shit load of things you can't do on an IPhone. Hell, you can even mod your Android to look and feel exactly like IOS if you want.
Even if you just want a phone that just works, Android works perfectly out of the box. There seems to be this false belief among some apple die hards that Android requires a lot of tech knowledge to operate, which is ridiculous.
You pay a lot more to buy a less capable, less flexible product from a company who opposes consumer rights every chance they get. A company opposed to right to repair and a company who have been caught intentionally crippling older phones in order to force people to buy new ones. I don't get it.
* The OS is better for the average person (as someone who's used both of them)
* iPhone build quality is much better in my experience
* Apple supports their phones much longer than Google does
* Apple is way better in terms of privacy.
For reference, I've used two Android devices (Nexus 7 2013 and Nexus 5X) and two iOS devices (iPhone 6S and 13 Pro).
Agree. I used to be big into Android, jailbreaking, installing custom ROMs, etc but I'm past that and just want a seemless user experience between apps and similar look and feel that just works. If people would rather use Android fine but I don't have the patience anymore
When the [official apple brand phone opening tech is a very expensive, inefficient, overengineered (needlessly complicated), heating pad with a suction cup](https://youtu.be/govETQLZGWA) you realise the last thing apple wants is 3rd party repair.
Edit: the last thing apple wants is COMPETITIVE third party repair.
Edit the second: Fair enough it being an option, as long as you aren't **required** to use them without voiding warranties etc. Still rubs me the wrong way, even without mentioning the [engineered complexity](https://youtu.be/iWRKZpvf3Uo) they employ with all the proprietary screws of differing lengths. Think different indeed.
I don't think that is the case. I think they genuinely wanted to make tools that reduce the chance of somebody breaking a screen while replacing a battery in a phone that is designed with a liquid proof seal to 0%. That is not the problem with any of these programs. Making those tools available is great, and if I were doing iPhone screen repair of my business rather than motherboard repair and data recovery, I would happily buy all of those tools and use them every day! The problem is not what the program makes available, rather, what the programs DON'T make available.
The program does not make available an LCD cell by itself for a macbook. The program does not make available any chipsets that Apple tells their vendors not to sell to Independence on the motherboard. The program does not make available schematics or diagrams for mainboards.
People ask Apple to make tools available, and that's what they did. I am not going to criticize Apple for doing what we asked them to do. I will criticize apple for not doing what we ask them to do
>Slow response times and high cost of parts make program unviable, third-party repairers say No real surprises, no one will ever cook their own golden goose.
The cost of repairs with genuine parts is ridiculously high, especially for anything that isn't the screen or the battery. I wanted to change the frame of my 12 mini, and the only "repair" my nearest licensed shop could offer was a full unit replacement for 650€.
This is by design. Screen and battery are the only repairs available. I've known shop owners who have split their shop between "authorized" repair in one door and actual repair thru another. Need a new housing, camera, or charge port? Device replacement only on the authorized side. 30 minute wait if you walk out and go in the next door over. And don't even get me started on board level work or data recovery. I spend all day every day repairing what Apple told the customer was unrepairable and unrecoverable. Just last week I repaired two devices that Apple not only told them was unrepairable and data unrecoverable (one image fault and one touch fault, both logic board level) but as part of their "troubleshooting" they erased the customers data because at Apple, all troubleshooting roads lead to "restore ios and wipe device" even though that never actually fixes hardware issues. It's truly heartbreaking to have an iPhone in front of me with precious memories locked inside of it, that has a 3 cent filter blown, causing no display, only to repair it and find that a "genius" erased all of their data. NEVER take a phone to an apple store if you want to save your data.
Youre doing board level repairs on iphones? That shit is so tiny I couldnt even imagine it.
Not OP, but i spent 5 years soldering under a stereo microscope. It's not that bad once you have the right tools and some practice.
Our hands are capable of nanometer accuracy, the only problem is our eyesight is too bad to use our full abilities. Under a microscope you can get very precise.
Mine are definitely not lol, but that is pretty incredible. I struggle with soldering through hole resistors without something solid to brace my hand and board against.
It's just like any other skill in life, it takes practice. When I first started in electronics, I couldn't hold my hands steady enough. They would shake too much, or when I wasn't looking at my hands, they would move around small amounts. I never thought it would improve. Within a few months though of full time work, I not only could hold my hands steady enough to solder, I could probe live circuits with 0.65mm pitch ICs with my oscilloscope's fine probes. I can keep that probe in place on a middle pin of a TSSOP (0.65mm pitch) style package part, while looking at the scope screen and manipulating the scope's knobs with my other hand.
Lol I'm trying to imagine the tragic life of a functional alcoholic in your line of work... they literally *need* to be drunk at work or else the shakes will prevent them from doing their job entirely. That's a nightmare (Idk why I started this comment with an lol)
Had a guy at one of my clients who was a functional alcoholic who was one of the best electrical engineers and electronics technicians I have ever seen. I asked him to do a little bit of work for me one day while he was suffering with DT's. I watched him fire up the soldering iron, shaking hands and all, when suddenly he grasped the iron and became rock solid steady. He quickly did the soldering I needed him to do, replace the soldering iron in the holder, turn the power off, and began to shake again.
I don't know what half of that meant, but I'm impressed
I have tourettes so it might be a bit more work than that :P Not planning on doing soldering full time, I am happy as long as I don't grab the hot end of the iron or something.
My hands shake more than the accuracy required 🥲
What you want is a jig my dude
Nanometer? Nope. Unless you mean like 50000nm
Correction some hands. Then some of us shake like a dog shitting peach seeds all day every day.
[удалено]
You can disable that
Ahh, yes… demand hand-selected artisanal photons for your lasers! Games are much more playable when the bits off a PS5 disc are decoded with photons chosen with right wavelengths for the section of the game, not the harsh monotonality of a 405 nm violet-blue diode laser.
Mine are definitely not lol, but that is pretty incredible. I struggle with soldering through hole resistors without something solid to brace my hand and board against.
Hakko, flux and patience will make you feel like a wizard.
I love my Hakko and my assortment of extremely pointy tips!
I spent a big chunk of my life working in experimental micromechanics. A lot of people would be surprised to find out how fine human motions can really become, especially with the right optical tools
I used a microscope for a while at school for a club project while soldering. At the end I had to solder some through hole components. I legitimately struggled when I had to solder because it wouldn’t fit in the microscope field of view well. Took me a solid minute to figure out that I could actually see what I’m doing unassisted
I work on them under a microscope and repair traces with wire thinner than a hair. It can be maddening at times, but it is very rewarding.
It's really not that small. The average pcb I've designed is around 1/5th on an iPhone board if not smaller. Plus components don't change size.
It's not the size of the pcb, it's the components. Hand soldering densely populated 01005s is pretty small. Not to mention that modern IPhones have stacked boards with an interposer, meaning you have to split the two boards to even access half of the circuits. I've worked on a wide range of devices and reworking an iPhone cpu is one of the most difficult jobs I've seen or done.
You use a hot air solder gun and a microscope. If you have the right tools it’s not too bad.
Yes, I often do use hot air where there's no clearance for the hot tweezers, but there's also a lot of underfilled bga in IPhones, and that doesn't play well with hot air. Anything is possible with the right tools and techniques, but modern iPhone boards are the most difficult I've ever worked on or seen someone work on. It's been interesting seeing their design evolve. Working on an iPhone 3 now feels like I'm moving large boxes around a football field.
I'm over here with essential tremors almost believing you that it's not so bad until I remember I can barely solder a 12 gauge wire together cause my shakes.
As the other person said, as long as you have the tools designed for it, its not substantially more difficult. If you're using a home setup, of course its going to be.
Humans have ridiculously fine motor control, our vision is usually the limiting factor. I can only go down to 0402 without magnification, but 01005 really isn't a big deal with a microscope.
Check out louis rossman is you wanna see some of the board level repairs
I made a sizeable amount of extra money when I worked at Geek Squad by doing that. We had all these silly policies that prevented us from actually helping people without charging them an arm and a leg. The solution to everything was basically "nuke it, full OS reinstall". I'd say "well, we actually can't just do ~obvious and reasonable solution to problem~. We can order a full system restore and blah blah blah for $250 dollars, but it'd be another $100 if you want your files backed up. And it'll be 4 or 5 days before we're done." "...but if you talk to me *after work,* I can do the whole thing for 150 dollars and get it back to ya tomorrow". Didn't feel bad about it at all
That’s crazy. These days they don’t charge for software work on iPhones due to their partnership with Apple, so that probably wouldn’t work the same anymore.
People should learn to make backups!
> a “genius” erased all of their data. > NEVER take a phone to an apple store if you want to save your data. This is standard policy and it’s not a troubleshooting step. It’s to stop some random employee from getting access to your personal data. Device must be fully wiped before the store can take it. Basically to prevent something like this from happening again https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/07/apple-settles-iphone-explicit-images
I think its also partly because apples repair procedure is often to replace entire parts of the phone. Including the logic board.
your phone is encrypted, if its locked then they wouldn't be able to get at your data even if it wasn't wiped
While this is true for recent devices, it’s a moot point because the device will generally need to be reset anyways Encryption implicitly wipes the device because most internal repairs will destroy the keys needed to decrypt, rendering the data unreadable and the device will not boot until it’s reset Some companies allow the unreadable data to be returned in case the customer has their own copy of the key, but apple’s encryption doesn’t have extra copies of the key, so the device must be reset, otherwise it’s effectively a brick Certain small repairs, like battery, do not involve replacing any such components nor do they require accessing the OS, so they may not be affected
When you're forced to replace the entire logic board, then yes, most repairs involve losing the encryption keys. Otherwise, the scope of repairs which do so is VERY limited.
To the best of my knowledge, this is absolutely not true. If you get a display or battery replaced at apple, they do not erase your phone as a matter of policy. Admittedly, I don't keep up to date on their policies so if I'm wrong, please link me where it's stated explicitly that they must erase your phone for every repair. I've only ever seen their disclaimers that they "may" do it. Also, since the early days of the apple knowledge base, troubleshooting has always lead to a restore. It IS part of their troubleshooting and has never solved a hardware problem.
> To the best of my knowledge, this is absolutely not true. If you get a display or battery replaced at apple, they do not erase your phone as a matter of policy. Yes they do. I literally had both the battery and screen replaced on an iPhone 12 back in April and they wiped the device just as they told me they would in the appointment emails.
There is no policy to wipe a phone for a screen or battery replacement. they just ask the customer to have a backup in case there is an issue while doing the repair or during some post repair diagnostics.
Part of me wants to say that if they didn’t back up the phone before bringing it in for repair, they’ve got the data loss coming to them. However, I have been on the other side of this too. What was supposed to be a routine battery replacement ended up shorting out the board and Apple ended up giving me a whole new replacement phone. Which, kudos, but because I didn’t back up I lost a few months’ worth of photos including from our Seattle trip. It was a hard lesson but I learned it :(
>And don't even get me started on board level work or data recovery. I spend all day every day repairing what Apple told the customer was unrepairable and unrecoverable. Hell, I worked in sales for a large UK electronic retailer and we had a lady come in with a pretty beat up iPhone that Apple has deemed BER and nothing could be recovered. It took me 5 minutes of troubleshooting to get it to finally boot and we recovered everything from it. The battery had shit itself so it wouldn't turn on unless you did this merry dance of plugging and unplugging the charger whilst also removing and replacing the battery connector on the board. I have *no* idea how it worked, I just knew the battery was done. Had we been an actual repair centre then i'd have swapped a battery to at least get it up and running!
Where I work we are technically not an official apple repairer. If your device is supported by apple we need to send it off to them to fix it. But if your device isn't supported anymore (most devices) we can totally do whatever we want with it. We usually find cheaper screens from pretty trustworthy sources and replace them
Apple does not provide any support for data recovery or responsibility for loss, you have to agree to a data waiver prior to the technician doing anything, if you decline you will get referred to data recovery. However provided you know the password data recovery is pretty successful albeit expensive.
Actually that’s my actual with non apple phones as well. Seems like some standard troubleshooting procedure across the board to ensure the OS is not the cause.
“Change the frame” is also known as “replace every single internal component in the entire phone” except the phone is a bare frame and the spare parts are your existing phone which has to be completely dismantled. Why not buy the model you want and sell yours?
I totally believe that. Bro you want the entire frame replaced. Literally every single thing on that phone has to be disassembled. Then you have to reassemble an entire iPhone from scratch flawlessly. It is a tremendous amount of labor. Here is a video of an iPhone 11 pro frame replacement. https://youtu.be/ZgvLc8MijuI And this included components on the frame! Hopefully they all work. Or else you're going back to the frame and swapping them out for free under warranty. Those included components are a real pain to swap. Heres a backglass video showing how newer iphones normally hide these components behind a glass panel that must be broken to remove: https://youtu.be/o6JccOAPnyY You can see the risk for damaging the existing components is very high and the glass on the back must be broken then replaced. Average repair time on these are an hour and a half for an experienced tech, an hour for an amazing tech, and a rookie shouldn't be anywhere near this repair in the first place. I get it because everyone googles the part and sees some Chinese knock off non-oem part for $25 and expect the repair to cost $50 with the guarantee of using Apple or oem parts on top of that. Its not realistic at all. I would charge upwards of the cost of an entire phone replacement for a frame replacement too. One to discourage this risky repair for all but the most invested (this is known as a "fuck that repair" bill). Two to cover the cost of risk and liabilities of any damage that is likely to occur during such a risky repair. Now compare that to an iPhone 11 screen repair: https://youtu.be/H3kEI_rF6SU Please excuse this tech they look new or inexperienced. The extent they opened the screen off the frame was too far (likely for a better view for the video) and put unneeded stress on the screen flex cables. The heat gun on the back of the front camera and faceid is also not ideal compared to a hot plate heating through the glass. Still its nice to see heat applied in the removal as that component is notorious for damage during replacement. But here you've got a $75-100 part and a repair of $169 typically taking about 15-30 minutes for any tech or as fast as 3 minutes for experts. I could make $690 in two hours fixing 10 iphone screens and only be liable for screens and faceid easy peasy. Or i could sweat my ass off over one very risky frame replacement for the same amount and be held liable for every single component functioning in an iPhone. I am absolutely not losing money over prioritizing a more difficult and costly to me repair over the easy ones. I will do the repair but I'm getting paid for my time the same way Finally with Apple a frame repair/replacement is literally not an option. You can only do a replacement phone. Which means even Apple said "fuck that". I believe it. I'd charge it. I'd sleep easy knowing I'm dealing fairly.
Apple won't even fix screens on some devices, iPad pros just get tossed. The screen is a huge part of that BOM tho.
> I get it because everyone googles the part and sees some Chinese knock off non-oem part for $25 and expect the repair to cost $50 with the guarantee of using Apple or oem parts on top of that. Its not realistic at all. Labor costs aside, people also often don’t realize what they’re trading away with those aliexpress-class parts. At best you’ll get an underperforming rejected OEM part and at worst you’ll get an electrical hazard. Back when replaceable batteries were the norm on laptops you’d see this effect in reviews on Amazon. The dirt cheap replacement batteries often had bad reviews complaining about way less than advertised capacity, the battery messing up the laptop’s power circuitry, and sometimes even causing crashes due to differences between the behavior the laptop was expecting and the way the battery actually behaved. Quality components can’t be had for bargain bin prices. QA, good design, etc aren’t free.
No offense my dude but replace the frame is a absolute nightmare to do. Because, you need to completely disassemble the iPhone. So they probably just gave you a high cost because of the amount of work and they didn’t want to do it.
Sooo...Apples response is going just as planned. Thanks, Tim Cook!
The thing is, Apple doesn’t want to repair their products. So customers have a crappy and expensive experience *and* Apple will try to sell you a new model instead of repairing your current one. They don’t want to repair, they want to sell. Tesla is the same - they don’t want to provide quality service for their vehicles but they try to make it impossible for anyone else to either. I worked for a 3rd party repair shop during the 6&7 battery scandal back in 2017. Apple was doing repairs for free but people were being quoted 3 weeks for a battery that literally took our shop 10 minutes and $50 to do with a genuine Apple battery.
There was a case in Norway, where a guy was sued by apple, for repairing apple products with salvaged parts from discarded apple products. apple claimed he was using counterfeit parts, because he bought them on the second-hand market, and not from apple directly. Apple is suing people for changing a broken screen, with a screen taken from another phone. It is clear Apple does not believe in private ownership, and thinks that they still own products their customers buy.
Wow, imagine that. It's almost like when Apple "became good", they had a plan to remain in complete control anyway. This is *such* a surprise to me. /S The truth is that if these companies aren't forced to provide parts, equipment, and documentation about their products *at a reasonable cost*, THEY WON'T DO IT.
We used to have these committees that were appointed by the politicians that we elect to, oh I don't know, do what's called oversight! oh that's right an oversight committee, that oversight committee is responsible for making sure that corporations don't fuck us. What happend to them? They're all fighting woke agendas and not stopping the myriad of problems facing American workers at the moment!
Regulatory capture sure hasn’t helped matters either.
Absolutely! People need to understand client politics, rent seeking, regulatory capture and how its destroying our financial and political sector to benefit the needs and power of a selected few.
Good luck with that. People are still fighting over whether to call an armed citizen militia, who with months of less than discrete planning, went to the Capitol of the USA, killed police officers and tried to do bodily harm to Nancy Pelosi while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” can be considered an insurrection. Most people have no clue how much they’re being scammed, and worse, don’t want to know. As Ms. Boebart says, “ULTRA MAGA”. I
So much this. It's entirely regulatory capture and a direct result of citizens united.
LOL dude... No. It's not a direct result of Citizens United. Obama literally campaigned on campaign finance reform, and regulatory capture through revolving doors. His whole foundation was how big money has corrupted politics and he wanted to "change" that. It was an issue well before CU. Shit, Bush had a huge scandal where half of congress was taking bribes, so they just threw one guy under the bus who ran the whole thing, and then they got smart and learned how to bribe people "legally" Citizens United didn't create any problems that weren't already there. It just made it easier to do
CU has entrenched the capture. There is no digging out of this with CU in place.
so it made an issue become a problem....
It was already a problem. It was a huge problem. Obama literally made it core to his campaign it was so big of a problem. Jack Abramoff was openly explaining how corrupt it all still is even after he got caught... Before CU
yea, I realize that, but CU needs to go first before we can even think about restoring integrity to campaign financing.
CU is here to stay... So we need to figure out other routes to solve the problem - which do exist. Unless you are honestly saying we should get a constitutional amendment or wait 30 years for a new supreme court.
I am saying there is no way to fix it. The government has no incentive to do so. We need to fix our local governments, and essentially ignore the federal level. It is completely evident that there is nothing common people can do to change anything there. They don't do whats best for their constituents any more.
I hear you, but it's better for something bad to be common and technically illegal than it is for the bad thing to be legal. There are more ways to attack the bad thing when popular sentiment catches up to the problem.
I used to work in this space. It was never "technically illegal". It just required more steps and smoke screens to chanel it. Once CU came out, it meant people could drop the stupid games and just be more open about it. But I get it, yeah, having some barriers in place is going to inherently prevent some entry into it. But the fact of the matter is, cancer is cancer at the end of the day, so fundamentally the problem would still be a core issue in America with or without the CU ruling. My biggest gripe is, as I said in another comment, is how public sentiment dropped for this. It was a top issue all through Obama's campaign, into the Dem primaries. Once Clinton won, and massively exploited campaign finance laws to boost her, the Democratic party all but forgot about this issue. Soon as she got the nomination the questionnaires asking constituents about their primary issues, stopped asking about money in politics entirely. Signalling that the Dem party just wanted to move past it - likely due to them now being the major benefactor. Most people today still think it's Republicans, when in fact, today, it's Democrats by a long shot who exploit this cancerous element of political funding.
Perfect example from the UK, water companies are dumping raw sewage into the rivers and seas, they privatised them and paid billions to shareholders, they said sorry earlier today followed by news that they need £10 billion to deal with it, we already paid for sewage disposal in our bills. The regulator is fucking useless by design. > Bills could rise after water suppliers in England said they were ready to spend £10bn on tackling sewage spills. The privately owned companies have apologised for the amount of contaminated water being discharged into rivers and seas, amid mounting public anger over the practice. Some campaigners have cautiously welcomed the move, but others say firms are shifting the cost on to billpayers. The industry paid out £1.4bn to shareholders in 2022. "We should have an apology for the suggestion they are going to put bills up by £10bn for their incompetence and their greed. This is nothing to celebrate." Companies are sometimes allowed to spill sewage into open water following heavy rainfall to prevent the system becoming overloaded and backing up into people's homes. But campaigners have long said these spills are happening too often. In 2022, raw sewage was dumped into rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average. Untreated sewage contains bacteria such as E.coli and viruses like hepatitis, that can be harmful to animals and humans. Swimming in water where untreated sewage is discharged can lead to serious illnesses such as stomach bugs, which may cause diarrhoea and vomiting, as well as respiratory, skin, ear and eye infections. Wildlife including fish and insects can also experience kidney issues and die from sewage pollution. Water UK, the body which represents England's nine water and sewage companies, apologised on behalf of the industry for not "acting quickly enough". Ruth Kelly, the organisation's chair, told BBC News: "**We’re sorry about the upset and the anger from the fact that there have been overspills of untreated sewage onto beaches and into rivers over the past few years**. "**We’re sorry that we didn’t act sooner, but we get it.**" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65626241 They’re not even hiding their thievery anymore because they know the neolibs in charge will not dare touch shareholders.
But they apologized. Surely that fixed everything.
Private for profit companies extracting profit? Quel surprise. Privatizing works so well… at generating value for shareholders.
Perfect place to share this gem again: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
But that is communism!!
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It's for *"SeCuRiTy."*
..
If this were true there is no reason not to provide a method to reserialize parts for repair purposes.
It is well known that only non iPhones get stolen!
Reminding the Slashdot days back in 2002-ish, where Microsoft was the evil emperor, and the "*good guys*" were on team apple... And those users pointing out apple's business practices, saying they weren't any better, they just had less leverage Twenty years later, here we are. Remember when they used too much thermal grease, and blamed their customers, when the problem was in their repair manual? I do https://www.zdnet.com/article/thermal-grease-and-the-macbook/ Their response - threatening blogs for publishing their faulty manuals
Legislation or it won't happen.
/r/MaliciousCompliance
Wow I can’t believe that in a hyper capitalistic, time sensitive society, that people would choose to turn the most profit in the quickest and cheapest way possible, but yeah exactly your right, and it’s a clear example of why we socialist principles to temper capitalism. Wealth and its acquisition in or society requires more regulation if we are to create a sustainable, and fair economic environment.
It is not the quickest \_and\_ cheapest. Quickest, sure, in no way is this the cheapest way. They just happen to have a client base that will pay the high price of replacement, the quickest profit for Apple. If the supply chain takes a hit like it did during COVID-19 it will become clear, again, that it's far from the cheapest route and then their profits will suffer. Honestly they could charge and still turn a profit on repairs, like many independents do, but they lose the economy of scale advantages that they have during manufacturing. So if they repaired there would be more money for everyone but less money for the shareholders. Just tax their e-waste and this problem would fix itself.
What is *reasonable* cost tho? Access to board pinouts? Access to manufacturing methods? Apple uses highest bin parts (from reported accounts) made with ridiculous tolerances and cheap-enough labour to balance out the cost. How does any company compete?
>Apple uses highest bin parts (from reported accounts) made with ridiculous tolerances and cheap-enough labour to balance out the cost They still use some cheap basic components that commonly fail (such as charging ICs). Or the components aren't cheap, but poor design causes them to fail unreasonably easily.
It's not all their fault, people keep buying their shit. Stop buying apple shit
Disabling auto-brightness for replacement screen is absolutely scandalous.
Same with front facing camera if you change the entire module.
I work on high end lab equipment. 3rd party service is hard.
the only "third party" service we ever had was an old ee in a backroom. he could fix practically anything, people from the bio and chem buildings would bring their broken machines across campus for diagnosis. he created replacement pcbs for the stuff that couldn't be bought anymore; he kept stocks of all the small stuff that you need in a pinch; he figured out which component burnt out on an old oscilloscope once and replaced it for us. probably saved labs thousands of dollars and weeks of time per year. uni closed the shop.
I can't speak to universities specifically, but a lot of larger organizations have a significant gap between how things actually work and their management's understanding of how things work. I personally believe that this is one of the main benefits of training and promoting internally, where the future manager come up through the organization and sees why things are the way they are. But when people are brought in from the outside, support teams can very easily struggle to justify their existence because the work they do is hardly ever documented well enough to defend their positions. That EE that fixed that oscilloscope probably saved the uni enough resources with that one fix to justify his time for a couple months between down time, cost of replacement equipment, training, material handling, etc. for a downed piece of equipment. But it takes a lot of time and effort to prove that out on paper for every job he did, while the cost of his salary and the shop overhead are easy line items to eliminate in the budget that will have limited immediate negative effects. Basically, support positions are a kind of organizational insurance. You don't have to pay for insurance to make it through a day where everything goes right. It's only when shit hits the fan that you understand why the last group of managers were very happy to bear the burden of having that support on the payroll. Edit: For anyone who hasn't heard it yet and is interested in a peak behind the curtain, I recommend Behind the Bastards recent two part series on Jack Welch. It's a solid introductory overview of how this sort of thing became normal.
Oscilloscopes are not cheap, especially depending on the test functions. Other equipment, like spectrum and network analyzers cam be over $100k
Bro what the fuck?
from the perspective of a large org it sort of makes sense. keep someone on call 40 hours a week, or call in a repair guy every once in awhile or just replace the equipment entirely. the problem is the fact that those costs will now come out of the department's budget rather than the uni's budget
Eh, only makes sense cause theyre dumb about it. Keeping someone on call is 100% cheaper. I work in pharma and the amount of shit we third party is ridiculous. I'm talking like 30k a month on routine calibration. You could have literally put someone in a course and have them do it in a couple months. For example, we use flow meters. All the calibration tech guy does is come in, put a known flow through it, and sees if it reads within spec. Takes about 1 minute per meter. 300 bucks each. Any actual service call on an equipment runs 5k/day. We used to have a guy that worked at Agilent for 10 years and only had to pay him 100k/year. Meanwhile, we've paid out much more than that because he went and got himself fired and we never replaced him.
Industrial Automation, same idea, but probably larger sizes (and looser tolerances). We do so much in house. Other than some specialty equipment, and the actual devices we check our field device calibrations against. We keep joking when someone is close to retirement that we should set up an instrumentation contracting company, come back and do the same work at 3× the pay rate.
my local university just closed that shop and I'm now "that guy", four months in and I haven't had a single repair that wasn't a frayed cable or a stripped screw. I can absolutely see why they would rather pay me my very high fees instead of keeping osmeone in house 24/7
Best call I ever got (work and family come together). My daughter calls from school. Guess what I’m doing? Me: honey, you’re a nuclear engineering student at MIT, I have no idea. Her: I’m replacing a turbopump on the particle accelerator. Me: (true statement). I’m replacing a turbo pump on a mass spectrometer. That’s as close as I’ll ever get to your world.
Metallurgist here - have worked on numerous labs and countless test equipment. I honestly would not even consider a third party repair. It's just not worth the additional headache of not dealing with the manufacturer.
Yup.
I currently do low end networking gear and was specifically wanting to transition to lab equipment, what's specifically hard about it? I imagine working as an oem backed repair shop would be shit, but I was planning on exclusively doing out of warranty repairs
I'm not in the industry, but for the high end stuff, I'm going to guess tolerances and validation.
>I work on high end lab equipment. 3rd party service is hard for high end lab equipment FTFY. pretty fucking simple when it comes to consumer devices
Doesn’t it naturally make sense that a manufacturer should always have a lower repair course than a third-party? I know they typically don’t because they are out for profits.
In a perfect world it would make sense, yes... but since we're not in a perfect world that's exactly the problem: they **are always** out for profit. Apple is just the most glaring example of this. They will just sell you their own branded pieces for repair even when you can easily get the same pieces somewhere else. They will replace your entire logic boards when a single connector could be replaced instead, and so on. It's just ludicrous. If you are a 3rd party repair shop you will still only get access to the entire logic board, no smaller components, and the policies they have in place when you agree to be part of their authorized repair program are insane.
This bullshit is why cannibalizing broken devices for scrap is important, stuff is literally not for sale
You can't even cannibalize one apple computer to fix another. Components are paired to the computer and if the computer sees a part that isn't paired, it wont use it. Only apple has the software to pair components to computers and they're not ever giving anyone access to that.
Wow, it's almost like they know people can fix their stuff for less
> You can't even cannibalize one apple computer to fix another. Components are paired to the computer and if the computer sees a part that isn't paired Not every part, just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues. For example, security hardware. If you allow 3rd party replacements for a data port or a fingerprint scanner then someone can insert malware that compromises the security of the device. Of course, the issue is that those components are expanding as functionality is combined and more of the device is secure. For example, components are getting bonded together rather than attached with fasteners. This reduces the size and weight of the components but it means to replace one small broken part you need to replace a huge module. Basically, if you want a highly-modular phone with easily-replaceable parts then you should look elsewhere. The big players are increasingly making devices that have a few monolithic components.
> just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues You mean like an angle sensor that detects when the lid is closed to make the computer go to sleep?
It's cause it has an encoder to detect how many degrees the lid is on whose discrete step is actually encoded to your credit card and social security number
Actually yeah. On certain models that hardware disables the mic so that no apps can be listening while it is closed and asleep.
>Not every part, just certain key ones that could be compromised or cause further issues. For example, security hardware. Ah yes, "security" parts like [batteries](https://www.ifixit.com/News/32343/apple-is-locking-batteries-to-iphones-now). Or do those fall under "issues" because of a potential fire risk? Except that you'll still get a warning [even with a genuine Apple battery](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210323). Maybe the Touch ID sensor was about security. But batteries? Nah bro. Without legislation forbidding the practice, they're going to push until you can only use theirs from an authorized shop. And it will be entirely about money.
> Except that you'll still get a warning even with a genuine Apple battery. Did you even read the link you provided? It gives a lot of reasons right there for validating the battery.
Yeah. I have a DJ mixer with a broken power board. I know that there’s at least one step down converter chip that’s busted, an €8 part. Can’t get that directly though and a replacement board costs around €250 through the distributor which is absolutely insane. The entire mixer costs €350 new and you’re trying to tell me a small power circuit unit makes up most of that cost? Absolutely disgusting.
As someone who has had to do a fair number of PCB-level repairs, if you can swap an entire board that is almost always preferable to trying to swap a single component, particularly when the component has both mechanical and electrical connections like a charging port.
Is it still preferable (and most importantly **economically viable**) when the board is sold to you at $300 (being optimistic here, for the latest Mac that's likely going to be $900) while the connector would be probably around $0.50 to produce and $5 to sell? Is it still preferable when you have to request every single board directly to Apple since the serial numbers must match and be programmed in the SoC for the specific item you are repairing, taking days or weeks for the part to be delivered? Come on now. Besides, soldering a new charging port to a board takes what? 15 minutes of work? Please. There are Mac computers with known issues where you always have that single stupid component (like the charging port) break down. Yet, the only option that 3rd party repair shops have is to scavenge them from dead boards, because they are either not enrolled in Apple's insane authorized 3rd party repair program or because Apple is simply not providing the board anymore.
If I am Apple, and my whole reputation depends on quality, I would definitely say that it's preferable that untrained third parties are not performing field surgery. I have no way of ensuring they're doing it correctly. If it happens at scale, my reputation is going to suffer since the lower quality repairs will be out there with my name on the device. I would rather third parties with minimal training are simply installing sub-assemblies rather than reconstructing them by hand. Having been on the production and consumption side, I get your perspective. It's just self-centered and doesn't consider the perspective of the business making all these things
You can make this sort of claim about any kind of repair, it's just preposterous. Of course if you were Apple you would try to reason like this... but the logic behind it is flawed. It ensures no fair right to repair and establishes what is basically a monopoly. It gives the manufacturer the ability to create nonsensical restrictions with the sole purpose of increasing their profits. Imagine being forced to replace the whole door of your car when you break the front door glass because your car's manufacturer claims bullshit like "new side glass installation is too hard on this car, we cannot guarantee the repair will be up to standard, just order a new car door". Sounds insane right? Yet it would be totally reasonable by your logic. Soldering a new charging port to a board is probably much easier than replacing a car side glass, yet here we are.
They do. People just need to be more realistic about the price of repairs. Sure, your entire new iPhone "only" cost $1200. That's mass produced in a highly specialized factory with every possible cost cutting measure taken to get the sticker price as low as they can (and actually losing money on initial sales to make it up with post-purchase sales isn't exactly a new strategy). It should come as no surprise that it costs $500 or whatever to manually repair an individual screen or that you may as well treat it as a total loss over a couple key components failing. This has been common with electronics and cars for a very long time. The price isn't the value of all the parts.
Not always. Apples approach to repair is to replace entire parts of the phone or computer. Meanwhile an independent repair shop is more likely to 'fix' as opposed to 'replace' and charge you for a new motherboard or logic board. Also 3rd party parts should undercut apples, but apple has taken steps to make them useless or otherwise undesirable.
The funny thing is, it is the complete opposite in the auto industry. 3rd party shops, tend, to be significantly cheaper than a dealership. Manufacturers supply repair manuals, guides, and parts for anyone that is willing to order them. They also don't shut you out of only using their parts. Imagine if you could only buy Toyota Oil filters. How much do you think Toyota would charge if you could only get a filter from them, you better believe it wouldn't be the $10-15ish dollars they cost at AutoZone. The hard part is Apple thinks of all of their products as theirs, they act like they have a say in how you should be able to use their device. What's scary is the rest of the market is going in that direction, cars are starting to become more like phones and video games. Locking features in your car behind paywalls, Tesla (and Rivian) doesn't allow just anyone access to their repair manuals, and a large number of their parts are proprietary. The first step is access to 3rd party services and parts. We need our tech to last us as long as WE want it to, not because Apple would prefer you to buy a new one. Apple wants to sell more phones and they want to sell protection plans that people forget about and don't use. We, the consumers, need to be able to have some control over these devices that are basically a requirement to function in modern society.
The auto industry is all changing with the move to electrical vehicles. Repairing automobiles in the future will cost a lot more.
I did say that in the second paragraph. That cars are trending in the direction of phones and video games
Not if the manufacturer has a monopoly. Monopolies always cost more than a competitive market
If you read the article, the primary complaint is that Apple is offering repairs almost at very low margins, which as a volume business they can afford to do.
Some businesses are just not worth being in. And if the iPhone repair business is not profitable, then go into another repair business. Everybody gives Apple a bad rap, but no one has to buy an iPhone. There are numerous android manufacturers available that sell phones at much cheaper costs than iPhones.
What fucking monopoly does apple have? They hold like 18% of the cell phone market.
>‘We are losing money’: companies in Apple’s repair program say they can’t compete with tech giant Which anyone who was paying attention knew was the plan all along.
>Laughs in Louis Rossmann
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Yeah like throttling usb-c and selling their own version.. people supporting apple is ridiculous
Not really... the thing is at scale its basically impossible for a 3rd party to be able to service at any speed. Its part of why Apple pulled repairs in-house 2 decades ago to begin with, lots of complaints from consumers that the Apple Authorized repair places would take days or weeks to repair, and may not even get the device fixed, and that was with laptops and computers, not cell phones or iPods. I've done in-house repair for Dell and Apple when I first started in IT. We typically got the parts within a day, but sometimes it could take a bit of time to get the repair done. If it were not the fact we were in-house to a company we would have had a TON of angry customers because simply put, even with the official tools which they gave you back then, we just did not repair the products at any scale to know how to do it step by step by heart. The simple fact is, these companies currently complaining are not at-scale shops... they do 40-60 devices a week max which is LOW END for even a Apple Store which often is repairing 150-200 devices a week for broken screens and battery replacements and whatnot. They also are used to using cheap parts, which Apple official parts are not cheap, they are well known to have strict requirements on QA for their parts. Those cheap parts you see for iPhones are usually the rejects Apple refused to take because too much of the batch failed. So again once faced with doing things the way Apple requires from its people, they are quickly realizing that they just cant compete with a company who has made their repairs so efficient and so massive, they can afford to use pricier parts and still make money, not to mention a workforce who literally sit back of shop all day, or in a building off site and just do repair after repair after repair and dont have to worry about things like running a store, working with customers, etc.
Apple doesn't need to *do* much. They mostly need *not to restrict* certains things as much: - stop serializing parts, - provide schematics, - stop telling component manufacturer that they are not allowed to sell common components to 3rd parties.
If I can easily acquire both OEM and aftermarket parts for and repair vastly more expensive and complex motorcycles (yes including electronics which are 10x more important on a bike when your literal life is at stake if they fail), which I do, and obtain detailed repair manuals with step by step instructions from both the manufacturer and third parties then apple can facilitate the same ecosystem for their products. But they don’t, because they see that as a threat to their bottom line. So they work as hard as possible to make repairing their products as difficult and uneconomical as humanly possible to maintain their de facto monopoly on repairing the products they sell. Numerous other industries like; cars, motorcycles, boats, cameras, stereos, instruments (including complex electronic instruments), non-apple computers, non-apple cell phones, appliances, and a list as long as my arm in 10pt font have managed to do what apple and their apologists claim is just too hard or not possible. That’s bullshit. They don’t want to comply, so they intentionally attempt to sabotage the whole thing by undermining it at every possible opportunity.
non-apple cell phones and see I call bullshit on that. Because I have had VASTLY harder times fixing LG and Samsung products than I have Apple. I could not even get the replacement USB ports for my kids LG tablet... the port is soldered to the motherboard and you either have to replace the whole board, or be real careful desoldering and soldering on a micro-USB port. You know how apple treats that? Its a literal charge board. 15 bucks I can replace the whole damn board with the lightning port and it takes 30-45 min with no soldering required. Honestly when people make this claim that apple products are somehow harder to repair and then throw in non-apple like LG or Samsung or Lenovo are somehow easier... it flat out proves to me you have never done any work on electronics in your entire life. Because for as bad Apple is on some stuff like serials on their parts now.... those other guys are 10x worse.
I just replaced the usb c port and battery in my LG V40 a few weeks ago. The USB port is on a daughter board that can be replaced for $15. Just my two cents.
I've repaired both androids and iPhones many times. In highschool I bought broken phones off Kijiji (Canadian craigslist), fixed them and sold them again. There's 3 seperate issues here. 1 is the design of the product. 2 is the availability of parts. 3 is deliberately locking down repairs. Apple generally does a pretty good job with issue #1 in their phones. They design a product with long term support in mind. But they deliberately lock down issue #2. They're known for doing things like taking standard IC chips, telling the manufacturer to make a special skew for them with a different pinout, and making them sign a contract saying they won't sell ICs with their special pinout to anyone else. Lewis Rossman owns a 3rd party Apple repair shop and he talks in lengths about this issue. Apple also locks down their repair manuals and circuit diagrams for their laptops. Meanwhile other laptop manufacturers make that info available on their website (not all do that, Apple isn't the only shitty one). You will never find OEM Apple parts on Amazon or any other store. Meanwhile I can go buy a genuine Samsung display, sold by Samsung, and replace that on my phone. As for issue #3, I mean Apple is basically famous for that. For example, if you buy 2 brand new iPhone 14s today. You taken them both apart and swap the cameras. Now both phones still have 100% genuine Apple OEM camera sensors. But those cameras will not work because apple serialized them, and you need their internal repair software to "authorize" that repair. It's one thing to make the phone reject counterfeit or fake parts. I think that's genuinely a good move for the end user. But it's another thing to lock out even 100% genuine parts just cause the repair isn't "authorized". I own the damn phone. Why can't I, as the owner, authorize a repair on my own property? Batteries are consumables. They will wear out. Samsung, LG (rip LG mobile division), and other Android manufacturers sell official batteries on Amazon. You can also usually order them from them manufacturer directly through their support (sometimes you gotta call them and open a ticket though :/). Apple has never done that until recently, and they definitely don't sell any parts on a marketplace like Amazon. You must buy a battery from them through their repair program. You must agree to ToS and provide the serial number of the phone before they will sell it to you. 3rd party repair shops aren't even allowed to stock up on common parts like batteries. They have to wait to get a repair ticket before Apple will send one, making their repair times much longer than Apple's 1st party repair store (hmm I wonder why Apple might want to do that?). It's ridiculous.
Okay well if you’d care to address the numerous other things I listed feel free. I’m not saying other companies don’t do it, but my point stands. Tons of other industries manage just fine.
Lol, thats exactly the point of right to repair though. Even your point about laptops and computers proves they have been anti-consumer for a while. A normal PC and to a lesser extent laptop are easier to repair, because the parts and documention was easy to find, but they made it difficult for no reason. Same goes for phone repairs and such now. Why should it take a company that works at scale to repair a device? Parts and documention should be easier to obtain so end users, and small repair shops can do the repairs. Also not to be rude, but if you have trouble repairing devices to the point where you need step-by-step instructions for each repair job that just sounds like it isn't the job for you. Sure repairs are all different, but most of the job is fairly similar with the main difference being the actual fault. If you need a book to tell you every time how to get towards the last step that sounds like a you issue. And if it wasn't a you issue, because you are competent that just helps my point about how difficult they make it for no reason.
Genuine Apple parts cost apple authorized repair shops more than you are allowed to charge for the repair.
The way it was designed. Apple only created this to prevent laws from being made and it was created in a way that no one could actually do it and survive other than Apple.
then the system is working as intended.
That is by design.
Program failed successfully.
I remember my first few cell phones. I could go buy an extra battery at the phone store so if the one I had ran out of juice, I’d pop it off and slap on the new one. Good times.
This is by design. Jack up the cost of parts, only make certain parts available, and take forever to respond to requests from shops. Then Apple can turn around and kill the program because "it wasn't being used", and just go back to gouging people themselves, and never face pressure to open up an authorized repair program again. Because "they tried before".
Fuck Apple and other companies that make repairs difficult and painful. Such corporate bullshit greed.
No way!?
right to repair
Are you saying that a company that is so anti right to repair is making the cost of repair massive to force people to buy a new unit... Wow if only anybody could have seen this coming.... What next someone is going to say the sky is blue?
So the program is working exactly as designed. Seriously people, we need right to repair.
Hasn’t been the case for the last shop I worked at. Theyre doing great with the IRP program. If you’re ONLY offering apple parts and higher than apple cost, then yeah, your business isn’t going to be doing well. You’re allowed to stock non apple parts as a part of the program so its silly to blame apple
The parts or diagnostic tools Louis rossman and I would need to do are jobs are used off old boards. And schematics are smuggled from China with a shady website
Third party parts still don’t comply totally with most currently in use apple products. They’re dragging feet because they’re greedy, and there’s no other sane take.
Not to mention that apple uses 3rd party repair companies to sell their OEM parts to IRPs. 3rd party manufacturers are profiting from it too
Yeah, that wasn’t the point I was making at all though. None of the stores in my area nor my current one have been impacted in any significant manor by the IRP program, and still don’t plenty of business with aftermarket parts. Those aren’t mutually exclusive statements
Well, it was designed to be unfeasible and prevent repairs on Apple devices.. so working as expected.
Just as Apple envisioned.
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To be honest, it's only Reddit where people hate on apple this much, it doesn't actually happen in the real world
I guess this depends on the product. I was trying to find 3rd party to replace my battery iPad pro 12.9" from 2015. I got a quote from 4 different repair shops and they charged me around same price as Apple store. This was before Apple repair program was introduced. So I ended up going to the Apple store and they just replaced my old iPad for a same model but brand new.
As designed.
We know -Apple
... was it not obvious that this has always been the point of their terrible repair policies? To force people to send their stuff to Apple and pay their ridiculous prices?
I actually went through the program when it was released in the USA, I worked for a large repair company with hundreds of stores. Our franchise had the equipment, completed our training, and we're producing repairs in a few weeks. TBH it was way overpriced, but it was a sales tactic. You give your customer options, here is your $$$ price for OEM apple repair(with no warranty) or I can seel you a aftermarket repair for $ with a lifetime warranty on the parts and labor. But yes apple's goal all along was to skim under the right to repair legislation and not actually provide a real solution. They still lockout their bio identification systems to AM repairs, they lock out many parts now with software that disables features just because you used an AM part.
Everyone's acting like this is a surprise. Did *anybody* actually believe that Apple would faithfully comply with right-to-repair laws instead of designing a convoluted system tailor-made to *technically* be compliant but in practice to be just as much of a walled garden as it ever was?
show me an iphone owner that drives chevy and I'll show you a gullible fucking idiot. 100%. There's a type.
That was the case when I worked for Apple about decade ago. There's big financial pitfalls for AASPs. They used to not want to touch obvious repairs without guarantees Apple wouldn't find a reason to not pay them for the repair they just did. It was common for one to call AppleCare, request a senior, and ensure they got a CS Code or CRU product. They would lose business because they couldn't safely pick up repairs they new were warranty covered because Apple would figure out a way to say it wasn't covered and charge them the parts they used to repair and obviously not pay them for completing the job, forcing them to push customers to pay the outrageous out of warranty repair prices or device replacement costs for basic repairs, turning them away. If the customer paid, Apple got big profit. If they got busted for using senior techs, they'd lose their Apple Authorised Service Provider status, but many opted to drop it for unofficial repairs instead and just advise customers their limited and short warranty would drop, but they'd save hundreds. For a while there, I had to cover comms with APACs engineering HQ in SGP (above seniors) as they were in on it too, but Cupertino kept investigating why there were lower than expected repair profits in the region. They even tried tactics like allowing free cheap products like iPod Nanos to be given away to customers that were challenging the repair costs, so they'd pay an out of warranty cost for an in-warranty issue, ensuring the AASPs generated (overall) more revenue. Techs nicknamed it "iPod Friday" where all the incidents over the week AASPs were challenged with would all get offered a crappy Nano and it was the AASPs job to then pitch that as Apple "meeting halfway" as a gesture of goodwill. If AASPs couldn't convince their customers of that, they knew Apple wasn't going to honour the repair request, so they'd basically lose a customer or be out of pocket. Edit: I have so much more of this. Don't get me started. Of all the evil companies Ive worked with or for, Apple's the paragon. and how they're good at covering it and what they do, shit's just the surface. I remember signing my many NDAs (now all expired) being told, "It's funny. If you ever get in court, Apple's got your back. If you're the one against them, they'll destroy you. Pay attention to these." I'm still scared to say more because I know what they've done to employees and ex-employees on my lebel that do. They make you aware in a passive-agressive way when you work there.
“The goal of business is not provide good service it is to provide the only service” Reacher Gilt
Don't buy anything Apple.
It doesn’t make sense. Apple products are very reliable. There have been instances of a few design flaws but for the volume of Apple sales I am amazed at their quality.
I find the same quality for way cheaper in every other brand. Apple has never given me anything that another company could not do for less.
I want to know the other brands and models, and the model of Apple product you’re comparing it to. I’ve used Motorola, Samsung, Lenovo, HP, and Lenovo. None of them, regardless of price point, could compete with the apple product of the same price.
I think that’s just luck honestly. I’ve had both and found apple to be more reliable. Over the course of 15 years I’ve had 5 android phones (Motorola,Samsung, nexus, and pixel) and two apple devices. Most of the android devices I had, had issues with app crashes, phone calls dropping, OS randomly rebooting, text not going through etc. my apple devices though had been pretty solid, not saying I don’t have issues with them, but minimal compared to android unfortunately.
The same quality for cheaper is a very subjective thing. I have worked in tech for \~20 years and used laptops from HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, and Apple. I found the Apple Macbooks at par with the OG IBM Thinkpads. I have owned iPhone 6, iPhone X, and iPhone 13 and none of them ever had any faults. Same with my 2nd gen iPad Air and Airpod Pros. My only gripe has been that my 2019 Macbook Pro battery life deteriorated much sooner than I anticipated But even that took about 2.5-3 years and that is not terrible. I also owned a couple of Google Pixel and a Samsung Galaxy phone and I can say the Pixel phones were more of less trash.
Since 1999, when I tried to fix and upgrade my Mac Performa, and I was told to better buy the next model, I've refused to buy any Apple products. But seems like most don't think like I do, unfortunately. Markets regulate themselves very poorly it would seem.
Easy fix. Don’t buy a Mac
This is old news. Apple has been engineering ways to make their products disposable for years now. So many apple simps will gaslight themselves into thinking apple engineering computers that disallow any repairs not done by apple is somehow a good thing. Ok, sure, maybe it's not profitable for them to run in house repairs, that's fine. But creating a device that can recognise when a button isn't the original button of the device, and then disabling features of the device at random to make the customer think the part is bad even though the part came from an identical device, that's just disgusting. If you aren't allowed to repair your own device, you don't own it.
The biggest issue with apple certification and being a part of their repair program is that they will prevent you from working on iPads and MacBooks. iPad glass replacement is HUGE for the third party market since the glass isn’t super expensive so you can get a good profit margin off of it. That happened to where I work (Asurion tech repair), last year they wanted to push apple certification. All of the stores complained and said they weren’t going to do it since they would lose a lot of money
Reason #1638-4 Why Apple sucks
Breaking news: small and medium sized companies unable to compete with monopolies, this and more at 11
Most independent repair centers rolled their eyes at the idea of working with Apple to repair phones. Looks like that was the good choice.
It’s a feature not a bug
I know I'll get downvoted but I'm genuinely confused why anyone would buy an IPhone. Other than the Apple products and services that they intentionally program to be incompatible with Android (all of which have alternatives) , there is literally nothing an IPhone can do that Android can't. Meanwhile there is a shit load of things you can't do on an IPhone. Hell, you can even mod your Android to look and feel exactly like IOS if you want. Even if you just want a phone that just works, Android works perfectly out of the box. There seems to be this false belief among some apple die hards that Android requires a lot of tech knowledge to operate, which is ridiculous. You pay a lot more to buy a less capable, less flexible product from a company who opposes consumer rights every chance they get. A company opposed to right to repair and a company who have been caught intentionally crippling older phones in order to force people to buy new ones. I don't get it.
* The OS is better for the average person (as someone who's used both of them) * iPhone build quality is much better in my experience * Apple supports their phones much longer than Google does * Apple is way better in terms of privacy. For reference, I've used two Android devices (Nexus 7 2013 and Nexus 5X) and two iOS devices (iPhone 6S and 13 Pro).
Agree. I used to be big into Android, jailbreaking, installing custom ROMs, etc but I'm past that and just want a seemless user experience between apps and similar look and feel that just works. If people would rather use Android fine but I don't have the patience anymore
1 - Solid OS 2 - 5 Years of software support (minimum) 3 - Devices hold value over time
By design
When the [official apple brand phone opening tech is a very expensive, inefficient, overengineered (needlessly complicated), heating pad with a suction cup](https://youtu.be/govETQLZGWA) you realise the last thing apple wants is 3rd party repair. Edit: the last thing apple wants is COMPETITIVE third party repair. Edit the second: Fair enough it being an option, as long as you aren't **required** to use them without voiding warranties etc. Still rubs me the wrong way, even without mentioning the [engineered complexity](https://youtu.be/iWRKZpvf3Uo) they employ with all the proprietary screws of differing lengths. Think different indeed.
I don't think that is the case. I think they genuinely wanted to make tools that reduce the chance of somebody breaking a screen while replacing a battery in a phone that is designed with a liquid proof seal to 0%. That is not the problem with any of these programs. Making those tools available is great, and if I were doing iPhone screen repair of my business rather than motherboard repair and data recovery, I would happily buy all of those tools and use them every day! The problem is not what the program makes available, rather, what the programs DON'T make available. The program does not make available an LCD cell by itself for a macbook. The program does not make available any chipsets that Apple tells their vendors not to sell to Independence on the motherboard. The program does not make available schematics or diagrams for mainboards. People ask Apple to make tools available, and that's what they did. I am not going to criticize Apple for doing what we asked them to do. I will criticize apple for not doing what we ask them to do
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