And remember the battery life of those batteries? And yet, even though I had a whole series of laptops from that era, I have yet to replace a battery in any of them. Of the ones I kept, they all still charge. What are you all doing with your equipment?
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iFixit Says Apple's DIY Repair Program Makes MacBooks 'Seem Less Repairable'
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iFixit has partnered with Goophabet, so that’s something I take into account when they criticize Apple.
Yes, please let me and my fellow independent repair technicians do it so we can stay in business.
Well I don’t need 562 dollar MacBook top case assembly, I need schematics and specific separate components, parts.
iFixit is a joke at this point. That “excruciating gauntlet” is what it takes to do the freaking repair properly. This isn’t like unscrewing one screw and popping out a pair of AA batteries; it requires proper tools and involves delicate, minuscule parts.
But I suppose they think it’s far better and easier to pay them a bunch of money for their tools and their—in my experience—garbage batteries. MacRumors really hit the nail on the head with their conflict of interest notice here.
And you’ll get the option to buy just the battery in the future, as the site says and iFixit chooses to ignore.
That's excatly what experts are for. Your comment suggests that only Apple employees are capable of repairing Apple devices. Are you also suggesting the US consider repairing electronics & vehicles illegal to the general public? i'm interested to know what other consumer friendly ideas do you have!
This a big step in the right direction, but we have not arrived.
For car comparaison, this is like Tesla (or Nissan or Volkswagen) proposing to anybody full battery packs for replacement of the original one. It will not arrive soon, as it indeed requires skills and precautions that are not for everybody.
But in a computer or in a cell phone, changing the battery can be made simpler, without making the computer/phone significantly heavier, bigger or more expensive. We also expect that from Apple.
For car comparaison, this is like Tesla (or Nissan or Volkswagen) proposing to anybody full battery packs for replacement of the original one. It will not arrive soon, as it indeed requires skills and precautions that are not for everybody.
But in a computer or in a cell phone, changing the battery can be made simpler, without making the computer/phone significantly heavier, bigger or more expensive. We also expect that from Apple.
No, this is like Apple expecting you to replace your car engine to do an oil change. They enforce this by refusing to sell you the oil, they will only sell a new engine (already filled with oil) that you have to replace every single time you need an oil change.
The battery in the MBP has pull tabs and pops right out. Apple needs to just sell you the dang battery.
But it doesn't exist though. A lot of components are still not easily repairable and Apple is still blocking the sale of those parts. It's usually one chip that needs to get soddered too.
To be fair, although I'd be quite capable of replacing a car battery and have done that (and more) back in the good old days (when I pretty much knew how the power & ignition system worked) - by the time I'd collected a new battery, found the right spanner, skinned my knuckles, sprained my back, then found somewhere to properly dispose of the old battery... I'd rather pay someone to do it who had all the right tools lined up ready to go and knew what to do if the fancy modern engine management computer needed counselling to get over the trauma.
Yes, some people would prefer to service their own car - but they're usually prepared to invest in tools and equipment (or have a mate who's workshop they can borrow of a weekend). As far as the tool purchase/hire part of the Apple scheme is concerned - I think that's more appropriate to enthusiasts or small businesses who might buy the tools permanently and have fun/make pocket money fixing their friends' Macs and iPhones.
...also, I think the battery in my car is currently about 12 years old and still going strong - and the real reason I rarely open the bonnet is that I rarely need to, because modern (i.e. this century) cars just don't go wrong as often as they did back in the good old days. (OK, I've probably jinxed it now!)
Also, you can't ignore the fact that the sort of lithium batteries you get in modern laptops are little incendiary bombs just waiting to go foom if they're damaged - esp. if you're replacing one because it is already faulty. Sure, you could drop a car battery on your foot, get a shock or a burn or get acid in your face but it takes a special effort.
Partly this - although I do think Apple could have sacrificed a millimetre or two to avoid gluing the battery into the top case. My main beef with Apple is not so much that I can't repair stuff myself, but that you have to pay to replace so many perfectly good, expensive parts that the perishable parts are glued to.
If you look at something like the Framework Laptop - designed to be upgradeable and repairable - its a perfectly viable product but it's not MacBook slim, doesn't have cutting edge performance or battery life, no LPDDR RAM on the processor package for max performance etc. and even if you upgrade it that's still going to leave a trail of M.2 modules, DIMMs etc. for landfill. Environmentally, it's probably better to hand it on as a working system. Some people's MacBooks never leave the desk so it won't matter if the battery can't hold charge...
Question is, if Apple did produce something the size of an old ~2010 MacBook with replaceable battery, upgradeable storage and slower/power-hungry DIMM-based RAM, how many people would vote with their wallet?
The only old machine I've extensively upgraded is my 2011 17" MBP - which got a mid-life RAM upgrade, new SSD and the optical drive replaced with the original hard drive... and that was only really compelling because even an affordable SATA SSD was a vast improvement over a mechanical HD. Usually, when a machine has been obsolete, every last component has been ripe for replacement, save for a few tower PCs where the case has got re-used.
The iPhone 13 and 13 Pro would shut off Face ID if you tried to repair the screen yourself. Only after mass media backlash did Apple reverse this decision and patched that out.
Several motherboard components are still being blocked from sale by Apple which is causing difficulty for third party Mac repair shops like Louis Rossmann's to get parts for basic board repairs. Apple is even going out of their way to sue some of these shops.
There are components put into iPhones and Macbooks purpose built to discourage repairing such as the part ID tags that cause annoying software alerts if you swap out a component like a new camera or screen. https://www.ifixit.com/News/52924/the-parts-you-can-and-cant-swap-between-iphone-13-models
So while they don't stop you legally, they use social engineering to discourage self repair and to sabotage third party repair shops so you'd be more inclined to just buy a new device instead. The Apple Self Repair Program as it stands is just saving face and complying with President Biden's Right to Repair executive order, especially as local governments are barreling down on this practice that Apple and other companies like John Deere do.
How many DIMM slots are we talking about here? If 2, pass. If 8, oh hail yeah! I wouldn't even mind if it weight a paltry 5lbs like a 2010 laptop. Moar RAM! I want as much memory as I get my mitts on to keep a massive 50mp picture entirely in memory while tooling around in PS.
Oh I'm so done with iFixit.
Are they really complaining about 162 page size quality engineering documents. If navigating the relevant material in those size documents is difficult then YOU SHOULD NOT BE DOING THE REPAIR. They are no harder than the old choose your own adventure books. Go here, do that, do this.
iFixit are only complaining because their click through guides are a few trite pages of barely enough info to carry out the task and they have a comparative interest in saying that Apple are crap to protect their own market of selling low quality tools and inferior third party parts.
Note I'm more than capable of repairing these and it's no problem at all for me. I regularly repair things which have 5,000+ pages of service information and require a hell of a lot of complex diagnostic tooling and equipment and far more difficult repair processes than doing module level replacement. This stuff is really damn easy and well documented. What Apple are doing here is spot on.
The real problem is people have no idea how to repair stuff properly and reliably because they have been using half assed hacks to do it for years and assume that's the correct way of going about it. And Apple are not going to budge on doing it properly and to the same merchantable standard that put the device on the market in the first place; I know I wouldn't.
Perhaps they should bitch about:
Lenovo P53 -> 117 pages: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/tp_p53_hmm_en.pdf
Lenovo T495 -> 100 pages: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t495_hmm_en.pdf
Tektronix 2465 -> 351 pages: https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/5/5b/070-3829-00.pdf
Oh no they won't do that because it's not Apple!
Edit: also to kick them in a bit further, their toolkits are CRAP. Absolute CRAP. The screwdrivers are made of butter compared to a decent Wera driver. I'm surprised anyone can fix anything with that CRAP.
Are they really complaining about 162 page size quality engineering documents. If navigating the relevant material in those size documents is difficult then YOU SHOULD NOT BE DOING THE REPAIR. They are no harder than the old choose your own adventure books. Go here, do that, do this.
iFixit are only complaining because their click through guides are a few trite pages of barely enough info to carry out the task and they have a comparative interest in saying that Apple are crap to protect their own market of selling low quality tools and inferior third party parts.
Note I'm more than capable of repairing these and it's no problem at all for me. I regularly repair things which have 5,000+ pages of service information and require a hell of a lot of complex diagnostic tooling and equipment and far more difficult repair processes than doing module level replacement. This stuff is really damn easy and well documented. What Apple are doing here is spot on.
The real problem is people have no idea how to repair stuff properly and reliably because they have been using half assed hacks to do it for years and assume that's the correct way of going about it. And Apple are not going to budge on doing it properly and to the same merchantable standard that put the device on the market in the first place; I know I wouldn't.
Perhaps they should bitch about:
Lenovo P53 -> 117 pages: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/tp_p53_hmm_en.pdf
Lenovo T495 -> 100 pages: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t495_hmm_en.pdf
Tektronix 2465 -> 351 pages: https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/5/5b/070-3829-00.pdf
Oh no they won't do that because it's not Apple!
Edit: also to kick them in a bit further, their toolkits are CRAP. Absolute CRAP. The screwdrivers are made of butter compared to a decent Wera driver. I'm surprised anyone can fix anything with that CRAP.
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Then: OMG I need to be able to repair my MAC, taking it to a qualified, trained repair facility is just too much
Now: OMG, I need to know how to do this, need to have dexterity and good eyesight, not to mention specialized tools and OMG it takes too long. This is just too much
you are welcome
Now: OMG, I need to know how to do this, need to have dexterity and good eyesight, not to mention specialized tools and OMG it takes too long. This is just too much
you are welcome
I disagree here. Apple are trying to control the level of crap on the market.
There are so many iPhones and Macs out there with poor quality repairs that the buyer has no idea what they are getting in to when they put down their money. They closed off the stolen devices first. Now they're closing off the write offs and hack jobs. I have ZERO problem with this after seeing two relatives buy lemons off the second hand market. One of them was even signed into someone else's iCloud account!!!?!
If there is any legislation we should be in favour of it's device support, recycling and environmental responsibility. Perhaps Android vendors should be compelled to provide parts and repair for their handsets for 6+ years...
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That's a good thing. Most people I know would go at it like a monkey with a hammer due to complete overconfidence in their own abilities. What they will end up with is a broken iPhone and two broken screens.
I'm actually referring to the backup battery used for the time and date , not the batteries in laptops etc
That's pretty inaccessible in my experience
I think a lot of the neg reps I'm getting is due to that misunderstanding
That's pretty inaccessible in my experience
I think a lot of the neg reps I'm getting is due to that misunderstanding
Did anyone expect otherwise?
The nature of professional complainers is that they are NEVER satisfied. No matter what.
Apple could reverse to give iFixit what they claim they want, and they'd be complaining that "Apple is deliberately making it look easy, so people try to fix their devices, break them, and have to buy new ones".
The nature of professional complainers is that they are NEVER satisfied. No matter what.
Apple could reverse to give iFixit what they claim they want, and they'd be complaining that "Apple is deliberately making it look easy, so people try to fix their devices, break them, and have to buy new ones".
I have what I would describe as moderate hand skills.
A friend was told by Apple it would be $500 to replace the battery which in his computer was glued to the top case.
I watched the iFixit video, looked at a couple of YouTube videos on the subject and used nylon fishing line to get under the glued battery sections and, one by one, saw back and forth with the fishing line to break them free from the top case.
The iFixit kit came with a replacement battery with a "glue patch" attached. Pell off a piece of thin plastic to expose the glue, position the battery, press it against the top case and you are done.
Whole job took me about two hours and I think the iFixit kit with the tools & new battery was about $100.
A friend was told by Apple it would be $500 to replace the battery which in his computer was glued to the top case.
I watched the iFixit video, looked at a couple of YouTube videos on the subject and used nylon fishing line to get under the glued battery sections and, one by one, saw back and forth with the fishing line to break them free from the top case.
The iFixit kit came with a replacement battery with a "glue patch" attached. Pell off a piece of thin plastic to expose the glue, position the battery, press it against the top case and you are done.
Whole job took me about two hours and I think the iFixit kit with the tools & new battery was about $100.
By making part purchasing from the manufacturer contraband just like John Deere does
Then that's the specific repair shop's fault. That doesn't mean close out EVERY repair shop creating a draconian repair system that STILL doesn't allow for the basic of repairs.
Or instead of closing off competition you just let the free market handle itself naturally and the good repair shops come out of the woodworks and expose the bad ones. Convenient when the only repair shops left would be the Genius Bar and "authorized repair shops" that have the policy to push users to new devices more than just fixing the device.
Yes that's a great idea. So how about Apple stop blocking the sale of parts from their manufacturers to repair shops like John Deere does? Basic motherboard repairs where they just need to sodder one chip to fix the Macbook, and Apple makes it as difficult as possible to get the components.
I’m posting the John Deere video again
This isn’t a tractor. It’s a piece of cheap consumer electronics which costs less than some of the parts in the John Deere tractors. It isn’t even comparable.
So it's okay for Apple to do the same thing John Deere does then? Just because my laptop and phone only costs 4 figures instead of six?
And they will, as explicitly stated on the repair site.
Also, half the models Apple offers parts for are well within the warranty period, meaning anyone needing a new battery is entitled to get it replaced by Apple anyway.