Apple Expanding Independent Repair Provider Program to Macs

[Naraxus]

Well that’s your fault then for not having backups set up before hand.

Backups are like insurance: you need it before the incident, not after.

I have to agree 100%. I remember Scott Forestall even saying in, I believe it was the Time Machine demo, that the one thing you're always told to do is "back up, back up, back up".

If you don't backup to an external drive, sneaker drive etc then you're just asking for trouble and, quite honestly, you deserve everything you get.

 

[XXPP]

I wonder what Apple hater Louis Rossmann will have to say about this?

Like always. He shows %^&* to Apple.

 

[hans1972]

Yes. These documents are available and independent repair shops use them all the time. Apple will say that possession of them is illegal and will sue people who redistribute them. That's not helping independent repair. Its actively punishing any shop that wants to do more than act as a proxy for Apple's mail-in service.

Can you provide a link for Microsoft Surface computers or how to obtain them legally?

 

[Naraxus]

Like always. He shows %^&* to Apple.

It's not Apple but Apple's poor design choices that he exposes.

 

[l.a.rossmann]

Wow this opinion is so uninformed about how the entire electronics industry works. I don't even know where to begin. While I'm old enough to remember people bringing TVs, and stereos, and other electronics in for repair... those days are for the most part long gone. It makes no financial sense.

I hear this a lot. A mentor of mine at Avatar Studios, Ricky Begin, mentioned how "all this surface mount stuff is too small and there's not going to be any way to fix it in an economically viable way.". He was way smarter than I was. I was 17, just starting out in the industry, clueless and arrogant. I learned so much on basic troubleshooting of electronics from him. I owe that whole lot at Avatar 13 years ago with my career now - Gretchen, Phil, Roy Hendrickson, Ricky, for giving me the groundwork on how to be a professional technician that set me up for success in the business I would create.

It was to my great surprise that in spite of how correct he was on everything he taught me, how wrong he was on this.

My payroll shows people making $25-$42/hr + bonuses in the middle of a worldwide recession-turning-depression offering these services, and I'm profitable while doing it - in the most expensive city in the US! I've even had students that were assistant managers at pizza shops go on to start their own businesses doing this, that are making as much or more than I am!

There's a tint of arrogance when someone thinks that because they cannot figure out how to make something work, that it doesn't work. They can't make it work, so no one can. That's not the way this works. I have yet to figure out how to make component level repairs to phone motherboards economically viable for reasons other than data recovery - but I certainly wouldn't tell someone who is successful in that field there that they are uninformed, simply because I couldn't make it work.

My inability to make something profitable does not mean it is not profitable overall. It means, it is not profitable to me.

You can't figure out how this would make financial sense while satisfying customers - but I have, with a google maps/yelp rating higher than any Apple store or certified repair provider in the area. So, I would push back against this idea that people are uninformed about how the electronics industry works because they disagree with you.

edit: and you aren't recognizing the entire time component of repair. A swap of a larger component can often be done right away. Many people aren't going to be willing to wait days or weeks for a repair versus same day repair consisting of a swap.

I agree, time matters - ordering a board that matches and waiting for it to come in often takes way longer than component level diagnostics and fixing it with what's available.

Since you brought that up, let's talk about stock - something you're NOT allowed to have with Apple's IRP. For something as basic as an iPhone battery, I have to take down the customer's information(INCLUDING THEIR ADDRESS), the IMEI/serial of their phone, and submit it to Apple to order the battery. I can't stock it to provide an instant repair to a walk in customer. I have to take down their information, then ORDER it SPECIFICALLY FOR THEM and wait for it to arrive to replace their battery - something we do in 90 seconds here while they wait.

These programs have nothing to do with expedience of repairs. The Apple IRP program explicitly prohibits standard best practices, like stocking parts so customers can be in & out without wasting their time.

 

[TiggrToo]

i disagree with anyone who just jumps on the apple ship of pretending board level repairs are the devil's work. The first poster that mentioned replacing a $4 capacitor instead of a $500 board that results in a complete loss of data is spot on. Everyone else that slung mud at him saying " you should have backed it up" is the exact reason why shops like that are so successful. Apple sheep will do the apple approved process and never think outside the box. The user's personal data isn't important because they should have used iCloud or backed it up somehow. While this is the ideal precaution to take, shooting people down because they didn't do it is like adding insult to injury. Everyone knows that what you SHOULD do, but reality sometimes has different ideas. What if you were in a situation where a backup wasn't possible (ie not at home or not on wifi), and you lost thousands of dollars in crucial business data? You want some apple sheep to tell you that you should have backed it up or do you want an actual solution that might save your rear? Many times people are put in this position. Maybe think about that before you go quoting apple rules or agreements that will not matter to anyone put in that situation.

What is Apple sheepish when it comes to having a good backup strategy?

Backups have sweet FA to do with Apple and everything to do with being sensible.

What would you do if the SSD totally failed and you didn’t have a backup? Would you still whine and bitch about Apple?

What if the data gets corrupted meaning it can’t be decrypted? Apple’s fault for you not having a backup?

Your house burns down, taking your Apple device with it; would your lack of backups then be used by you as ammunition why Apple should build Fireproof devices?

No, a good backup strategy is a must for anyone who cares about their data. And, if someone doesn’t care or doesn’t have a backup, then, we’ll, I guess it sucks to be them the moment disaster hits.

 

[l.a.rossmann]

I wonder what Apple hater Louis Rossmann will have to say about this?

I was very happy and the first to sing Apple's praises when the IRP program came out, as a good thing. I thanked Apple publicly. I thought it was a great first step, and appreciated the olive branch. I really thought this was turning over a new leaf.

Then, I learned that the program had many limitations that made it virtually useless. One cannot plan a repair program to be this bad - it can only be intentional, in my opinion. You cannot stock parts, so a customer will have to wait a week for a phone battery. Most parts customers want me to repair/replace are not available through the program. They can audit you for up to five years after you leave the program, and some of the basic infrastructure of the program was broken to the point where repair shops couldn't participate at all, with no response from Apple when they had issues. Further, the mere presence of certain chipsets in my store I use to fix the devices I fix would be considered a violation under the program.

I lost it when it was demonstrated that I have to give Apple my customer's information including their home address when processing a repair. If one reads through the documentation an IRP receives, I cannot see how they can come to any other conclusion - this was designed for PR, so Apple can say publicly "look, we support repair! See congressperson, there's no reason to regulate us. Focus on facebook" - not to be useful. No sane customer would visit an IRP when they can visit an independent, or an Apple store - it makes no sense.

I would highly suggest not taking someone else's word for it, and reading through the program materials yourself. Ask yourself the following:

1) Do you think this is useful?
2) If you were a customer in need of repair, would you have a positive experience at a repair shop that operates under the rules of Apple IRP?
3) If you were to run a repair shop, would you run it in the manner Apple's IRP program suggests you run it if your goal were consumer satisfaction?

 

[portland_bill]

I was a Mac Genius for 7 years, some products are an absolute pain in the ass to repair (anyone who has done a DC-Power-SATA cable replacement on a Mid 2007 iMac knows exactly what I mean).

Back in those days, new technicians spent 4 awesome weeks in Cupertino learning the in's and out's of every product Apple makes. We saw Steve Jobs several times at Caffe Macs, then a small group of us had dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Woz - who ordered steaks to go... for his little dogs.

PDFs and videos will never compare to the awesome that were Genius training classes... which are no longer a thing.

As a stockholder I’m glad we are no longer pissing money up the wall on those projects that Steve wasted so much money on. It’s all window dressing. You can learn how to strip down a Mac on Udemy. I’d also make you pay for your own course.

Every cent counts and Tim is going to be long remembered for his watch on every last cent, way after Steve has become unfashionable.

 

[gavroche]

I hear this a lot. A mentor of mine at Avatar Studios, Ricky Begin, mentioned how "all this surface mount stuff is too small and there's not going to be any way to fix it in an economically viable way.". He was way smarter than I was. I was 17, just starting out in the industry, clueless and arrogant. I learned so much on basic troubleshooting of electronics from him. I owe that whole lot at Avatar 13 years ago with my career now - Gretchen, Phil, Roy Hendrickson, Ricky, for giving me the groundwork on how to be a professional technician that set me up for success in the business I would create.

It was to my great surprise that in spite of how correct he was on everything he taught me, how wrong he was on this.

My payroll shows people making $25-$42/hr + bonuses in the middle of a worldwide recession-turning-depression offering these services, and I'm profitable while doing it - in the most expensive city in the US! I've even had students that were assistant managers at pizza shops go on to start their own businesses doing this, that are making as much or more than I am!

There's a tint of arrogance when someone thinks that because they cannot figure out how to make something work, that it doesn't work. They can't make it work, so no one can. That's not the way this works. I have yet to figure out how to make component level repairs to phone motherboards economically viable for reasons other than data recovery - but I certainly wouldn't tell someone who is successful in that field there that they are uninformed, simply because I couldn't make it work.

My inability to make something profitable does not mean it is not profitable overall. It means, it is not profitable to me.

You can't figure out how this would make financial sense while satisfying customers - but I have, with a google maps/yelp rating higher than any Apple store or certified repair provider in the area. So, I would push back against this idea that people are uninformed about how the electronics industry works because they disagree with you.



I agree, time matters - ordering a board that matches and waiting for it to come in often takes way longer than component level diagnostics and fixing it with what's available.

Since you brought that up, let's talk about stock - something you're NOT allowed to have with Apple's IRP. For something as basic as an iPhone battery, I have to take down the customer's information(INCLUDING THEIR ADDRESS), the IMEI/serial of their phone, and submit it to Apple to order the battery. I can't stock it to provide an instant repair to a walk in customer. I have to take down their information, then ORDER it SPECIFICALLY FOR THEM and wait for it to arrive to replace their battery - something we do in 90 seconds here while they wait.

These programs have nothing to do with expedience of repairs. The Apple IRP program explicitly prohibits standard best practices, like stocking parts so customers can be in & out without wasting their time.

I hear everything you are saying... and another gentleman that replied... and respect your opinions. But where I think we disconnect is that im talking about what makes sense as on organizational level, versus what can be profitable on a piecemeal, one shop situation. Which is why i tried to emphasize that ‘on average‘ for cost of repair is what is crucial. Will there be times that a shop could repair a component for cheaper. Sure. Does that make it with it for a global organization to maintain capacity to perform those kinds of repairs.... that’s a totally different question. Large corporations that have to make those decisions, reach the same conclusions. And as i mentioned, not just private corporations but government and military. People who couldn’t care less about the PR look of the decision.

 

[Blackstick]

As a stockholder I’m glad we are no longer pissing money up the wall on those projects that Steve wasted so much money on. It’s all window dressing. You can learn how to strip down a Mac on Udemy. I’d also make you pay for your own course.

Every cent counts and Tim is going to be long remembered for his watch on every last cent, way after Steve has become unfashionable.

I can tell you the quality of technician has gone down, which means the end result for the customer can suffer. True, it’s 2020 not 2004... the white glove service doesn’t scale cheaply, but in the end, we’re worse off for it. Companies don’t attract top tier talent by making them pay for their own job training, a company willing to pay for their training will snap them up instead.

I’ll remind you that every last Apple technician in that store is also a shareholder. I should know, it did very well for all of us, even with a Steve at the helm.

 

[l.a.rossmann]

I hear everything you are saying... and another gentleman that replied... and respect your opinions. But where I think we disconnect is that im talking about what makes sense as on organizational level, versus what can be profitable on a piecemeal, one shop situation. Which is why i tried to emphasize that ‘on average‘ for cost of repair is what is crucial. Will there be times that a shop could repair a component for cheaper. Sure. Does that make it with it for a global organization to maintain capacity to perform those kinds of repairs.... that’s a totally different question. Large corporations that have to make those decisions, reach the same conclusions. And as i mentioned, not just private corporations but government and military. People who couldn’t care less about the PR look of the decision.

I'm not asking them to do the repairs. I want to do them myself - but I can't, because they tell the companies manufacturing basic chips to not sell them to us.

If you don't want to do the job, fine.

Why tell Intersil they can't sell mouser.com an ISL9240 so we can do the work ourselves?

there is clearly a demand for tens of thousands of these. Let mouser & intersil arrange how they deal with their customers/mark the products up accordingly, so it is not Apple's problem.

Same with the CD3217 from Texas Instruments.

This is the problem - even if independents want to do the work that the manufacturer does not wish to do for customers, we can't, because they go out of our way to lock us out.

It's not just apathy on their part: it's intentional sabotage, IMO.

 

[gavroche]

I'm not asking them to do the repairs. I want to do them myself - but I can't, because they tell the companies manufacturing basic chips to not sell them to us.

If you don't want to do the job, fine.

Why tell Intersil they can't sell mouser.com an ISL9240 so we can do the work ourselves?

there is clearly a demand for tens of thousands of these. Let mouser & intersil arrange how they deal with their customers/mark the products up accordingly, so it is not Apple's problem.

Same with the CD3217 from Texas Instruments.

This is the problem - even if independents want to do the work that the manufacturer does not wish to do for customers, we can't, because they go out of our way to lock us out.

It's not just apathy on their part: it's intentional sabotage, IMO.

But that’s a different issue. There have been a number of articles and discussion threads talking about the issue of right to repair and letting third party facilities full access to parts. And the pros and cons have been discussed in those. This article is about Apple expanding its network of facilities authorized to do repairs, to include a number that are concerning. For example... Google Best Buy and FBI... and read up about how the governments was giving bounties to techs to perform low level scans of hard drives to recover erased data... just in the hopes of recovering something illegal. And they are one of the companies apparently now to receive computes to repair, unknown to the owner. I dont trust such companies to touch my property. That’s so very much a different conversation that going back to right to repair.

 

[Ultramove69]

I was a Mac Genius for 7 years, some products are an absolute pain in the ass to repair (anyone who has done a DC-Power-SATA cable replacement on a Mid 2007 iMac knows exactly what I mean).

Back in those days, new technicians spent 4 awesome weeks in Cupertino learning the in's and out's of every product Apple makes. We saw Steve Jobs several times at Caffe Macs, then a small group of us had dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Woz - who ordered steaks to go... for his little dogs.

PDFs and videos will never compare to the awesome that were Genius training classes... which are no longer a thing.

Went through that training too! Trained on Bubb Rd, walked down after work, went to that bar at the end of the road, and it was filled with Apple employees having a cold one after hours. Also, think my training room was also called black stick haha.

 

[Blackstick]

Went through that training too! Trained on Bubb Rd, walked down after work, went to that bar at the end of the road, and it was filled with Apple employees having a cold one after hours. Also, think my training room was also called black stick haha.

Also a Black Stick alum 💚. I remember those 4 weeks better than 4 years in college.

 

[Incriminified]

Having been a part of an authorized reseller and repair depot, this program looks more to have started as an effort to gain more control over the out of warranty market. Not as a method to make money per se. Instead, I've found in dealing with Apple directly, they make great efforts towards controlling their product and their image. Their methods in this regard have been obvious in some cases, and interesting (not so obvious) in others.

Having a certified tech in house, legit parts supplied and signed agreements in place, they can replace a lot of the knockoff repair business. This by either converting them to their program, or having a larger footprint in general that will offset them. And when you are officially in their program, the agreements apply (the obvious), but then other dealings or "opportunities" with the company (not so obvious) could result in making changes to the business that benefit Apple is some way. By having a degree of control on your process, they are in essence in more control of their product. Having that control appears to be a tangible value to them. I did not see the same thing having worked in the same capacity for IBM, Lenovo, HP, Dell and Fujitsu

This plan makes 'some' sense for the phones, because the unit cost of repair parts is somewhat palatable, but not having stock of parts makes this less competitive with the knock off parts depots that can turn around a phone in an hour or so. Where it totally doesn't make sense is adding the Macs, since part cost is relatively much higher. From past experience, selling an out of warranty motherboard for a 4 year old Mac is a hard sell. This compared to a component level repair cost, or selling a digitizer on a three year old iPhone.

Once you are legit with Apple, you can't source parts from non-Apple sources, nor can you do component level repair. The other manufacturers I noted above had no problem with that (on out of warranty hardware). But they weren't looking for the same level of control over what you are doing as a business.

 

[iLilana]

when I see this kind of update I like to refer to Louis Rossman. His opinion actually means something because his business depends on these things. He recommended we read up on it and I see his valid input on how this program doesn't actually help. It is the smallest of olive branches to appease politicians. There is still a lack of access to things and it does not allow for stocking of actual parts for quick repair turn around. Among other things.

 

[fourthtunz]

I don't believe he's ever said he hates Apple, rather their consumer hostile policies towards pc design and R2R.

Right and he's not altogether wrong.
Ifixit gives a 1 rating (their lowest) on the repairability of many Apple products.

 

[WilliamBoving]

I was a Mac Genius for 7 years, some products are an absolute pain in the ass to repair (anyone who has done a DC-Power-SATA cable replacement on a Mid 2007 iMac knows exactly what I mean).

Back in those days, new technicians spent 4 awesome weeks in Cupertino learning the in's and out's of every product Apple makes. We saw Steve Jobs several times at Caffe Macs, then a small group of us had dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Woz - who ordered steaks to go... for his little dogs.

PDFs and videos will never compare to the awesome that were Genius training classes... which are no longer a thing.

I trained as an Apple engineer before there were Stores and Geniuses in UK we went to Apple Stockley Park for training Through the years i have watched Apple degrade and throw to one-side Apple trained engineers we used to be proud of the repair ability compared to other companies i constantly was cut by jagged edges on dell servers
Now it has become a throwaway product. Make it hard to repair and the customer will go out and buy a new one appears to be their philosophy.
I could go on moaning but after 30 years as an engineer i am waving the white flag.
I would like to say that it has been a pleasure Apple but I cannot. Their secrecy has been the worst part and there inability to admit there is a problem making us the engineers look like idiots ( ok one last moan )