I remember when you could replace a MBP battery in two minutes and most of that time was unwrapping the new one from the package.
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iFixit Says Apple's DIY Repair Program Makes MacBooks 'Seem Less Repairable'
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These are complicated, intricate parts. Lots of really....did i mention really tiny screws and there are many different sizes and lengths. If you mix them up your computer will be in a world of hurt. Just like new cars.....there are so many safety and convenience/creature comforts that they became extremely complicated. There are things , that if done wrong...miss adjusted, just can possibly kill somebody.
I've watched a few Ifixit teardown videos......I think that they are hacks!. No grounding straps, dropping parts on the floor, being too forceful. I would expect that they should be showing the correct way so that you as the consumer, can watch and learn in a fashion and it can be correctly re-assembled.Ifixit loves to whine about Apple
Or the reality of BMW/Audi, Vdub, selling you a kit to replace a thermostat.....half the front of the car has to come off to get at it.
Adide from the weight, it should not be too bad. It's a big plug in pack.Imagine if Telsa sends you a DIY Repair kit and instructs you to change the lithium battery of your car.
What's wrong with a 162 page manual? I think more information and clearer, detailed information is better than less information written in a terse style. Do you disagree? Have you clicked on the link to actually look at the manual? It's pretty nice!
What part of the manual is crazy? It looks pretty nice to me. One of the clearest, well written, and comprehensive manuals I have seen. Can you identify some specific parts which seem crazy? Did you click on the link to actually look at it.
No I did not look at it...actually I like detailed manuals. Just commented on making it not user friendly to fix as my wallet consistently is drained if I want to "not use Windows". I will retract my "crazy" comment.
Apple needs to engineer their devices for consumer replaceable batteries and easier repair. They have the brains at Apple to do both beyond competently, but they have just chosen not to as they see planned obsolescence with prohibitively expensive repair as more profitable. If they won't come to the party I hope most of the world will legislate the industry in time to do so as its insane to be filling up landfill with devices that could have much longer serviceable lives if we made that the priority.
Are you kidding? Opening up a Mac is as trivial as taking a wheel off a bicycle. It's just a bunch of screws.
Changing a battery, or RAM, or SSD, should also be just as trivial, and was back in the days before Timmy Crook.
It used to take me 5 mins flat to upgrade RAM/HD in the old UniBody MBPs, and similar to swap an SSD (hardware, that is, there's a chunk of time and work loading the software onto the new drive) on a Retina MBP. Fixing a flat tyre on a bike was a far more difficult job.
Now days it's either impossible (e.g., even if you had micro-soldering tools and replaced the SSD, it wouldn't work, as it is security linked to the OS, and Apple won't provide the owner of the Mac with the software required to unlock it), or insanely expensive and complex (e.g., the process for changing the battery as described in this article).
The ONLY reason this is so, is to make upgrading and repairing so insanely expense (or impossible), that you will throw your otherwise perfectly functional Mac in the bin, and buy a nice shiny new one.
The environmental waste makes me cringe, and makes a mockery of Apple's hypocritical puke about caring about the world.
Pure, and utter, corporate greed.
You would care if, say, your car blew an alternator, and the only way to fix it was to swap out the alternator, radiator, bonnet, and exhaust system, simply because they are all welded into a single piece, and you had to buy it from the original manufacturer who put an insane mark up on it, and thus the cost is 4x what it would cost to simply pay your local mechanic to put in a new alternator as per the current system.
What iFixit (and anyone else pro-repair) are saying, is we should have with electronics exactly what we have in the auto industry. Right to repair; can take your car to be fixed by anyone (or do it yourself); and can buy parts from a 3rd party if you choose. All of which happens because the car industry has been legislated to make it happen.
i imagine if apple create 1 page manual, people be like "WTF? trillion dollar company saving for ink and paper?"
Just remember, the battery is glued down - well that adhesive tape you need to pull out slowly at an angle without tearing.
Once you tear the tape you literally need to pry battery off which increased the risk of puncturing the battery and causing a fire or explosion.
The battery is substantially larger than an iPhone so risk is substantially greater.
Can't imagine they are happy with that level of exposure to lawsuits.
No doubt Apple does not want to offer this service so doing the minimum required.
Once you tear the tape you literally need to pry battery off which increased the risk of puncturing the battery and causing a fire or explosion.
The battery is substantially larger than an iPhone so risk is substantially greater.
Can't imagine they are happy with that level of exposure to lawsuits.
No doubt Apple does not want to offer this service so doing the minimum required.
Apple is going to get smacked hard by the EU, I suspect. Only a matter of time.
Someone will come up with a thin battery that sticks onto the bottom of the Macbook anyway, and just powers the device.
Someone will come up with a thin battery that sticks onto the bottom of the Macbook anyway, and just powers the device.
The guide and the whole process definitely makes it seems like not an easy task. Better to take it to Apple for any repair.
Oh ya typical iFixit. Aslong they can make money they are pleased with repairability. Now they wont make money of apple customers so they say oh its bad for repairabilty. IFixit i Hate your hypocrisy
Apple this week expanded its Self Service Repair program to MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models equipped with the M1 series of chips, providing customers in the U.S. with access to select parts, manuals, and tools to repair the notebooks.
While the program's expansion is good news for the right-to-repair movement, repair guide website iFixit is not entirely pleased with the implementation. (It's worth noting that Apple is now a competitor to iFixit in this area of business.)
In a blog post, iFixit's Sam Goldheart said Apple's program manages to make the MacBook Pro seem "less repairable," primarily because Apple's current procedure for replacing a MacBook Pro's battery is prohibitively expensive and time consuming.
The issue is that Apple's program does not yet allow a customer to order a standalone replacement battery for the MacBook Pro. Instead, a customer must order a part known as the "top case," which includes a glued-in battery. Then, the customer must follow Apple's exhaustive 162-page repair manual to replace the "top case" in their MacBook Pro, as the procedure involves removing every other component from the case.
Top cases are an expensive part given that they include the keyboard, battery, speakers, and more. For example, Apple's self-service parts store charges $527 for a top case for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, making it significantly more expensive to replace a MacBook Pro's battery through the program in comparison to having an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider complete the job for $199.
"Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated and decide to do the repair anyway, pay an exorbitant amount of money for an overkill replacement part, decide whether you want to drop another 50 bucks on the tools they recommend, and do the repair yourself within 14 days, including completing the System Configuration to pair your part with your device," wrote iFixit. "Which makes us wonder, does Apple even want better repairability?"
Apple says a "battery replacement part" will be available for the MacBook Pro at some point "in the future," which could make the replacement procedure easier, although details remain slim. But even if Apple releases a standalone replacement battery, it will likely remain cheaper and easier to have Apple handle the task.
Article Link: iFixit Says Apple's DIY Repair Program Makes MacBooks 'Seem Less Repairable'
It’s your choice. You can just pay apple way less and have it done by people who know what they’re doing.
Yes it does.
There is latency between the RAM controller and the RAM itself. There are transmission lines between the RAM and the memory controller which have measurable transit times for signals.
To put it into perspective at 3.2GHz, timing is incredibly important. The signal in one bit of your chip hasn’t necessarily arrive at another bit the next time the clock ticks. The closer you move everything the quicker you can do stuff.
This is incidentally, apart from power, why we have gone through die shrinkage.
Ergo the closer the SoC integration with the RAM the better the timings.
The same is not quite true with SSDs however. But when 99% of your market never replace one, why would you engineer it to be replaceable and incur the additional supply chain costs, staff training and support costs. As a corporate customer we buy 200-300 apple desktop machines a year and never open any of them.
On top of all that, the more mechanical connections in a device the less reliable it is. Vibration, impacts and connector tolerances all decrease MTTF which is bad bad bad. If you go look at military kit they avoid things like that and pot everything in epoxy, glue everything down and/or coat it in hard resin.
I remember our poor IT guys having to go around and reseat RAM once a year in some of our kit because it persistently failed with SIMM socket issues (Sun unix stuff back in the late 90s)
This is what pragmatic well thought out engineering looks like. It’s just not what people expected or got used to.
Source: ex EE.
But the self-repair "poster" showed a gender non-binary racially diverse woman (sorry for assuming the gender here) just chilling with an ESD-band and some tool just doing you know ... self repair at her condo where they/them holds community meeting, readings of various left-leanig books, knitting sweaters from recycled hemp fibre. Doing they/them part to you know - reoonsibly repairing theyr laptop to save the environment.
It looked so chill and de jour, so are you now sayinh it's not chill? And that Apple is milking the f*** out of even that consumer segment?
It looked so chill and de jour, so are you now sayinh it's not chill? And that Apple is milking the f*** out of even that consumer segment?
Blame that on the marketoids. I’m sure their engineers are cringing at this behind the scenes.
Edit: it’s pretty clear that apple are transitioning from design led to engineering and design compromise at the moment. Hopefully that will infect the marketing group soon as well.
Edit: it’s pretty clear that apple are transitioning from design led to engineering and design compromise at the moment. Hopefully that will infect the marketing group soon as well.
I can bet a million bucks peoples do this all the time without anything happening.
And They would be laughing at them and then kicked out of court as personal responsibility, not apples or other companies problem.
I don’t understand why you people gives apple more responsibility than they have?
Can you guess why people use knifes and spatulas? The pull tabs breaks.
When it comes to portable consumer devices that use batteries governments should mandate that manufacturers are to design their products that allow for user changeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries degrade over time, some quicker than others and it is a disgrace that manufacturers are allowed to design their products that do not allow for user changeable batteries, meaning the device has to be taken to a specialist to have the battery removed.
If a battery dies on a phone the user should be able to pop the back off the phone and replace the battery. The user should not have hurdles put in their way making it difficult for them to do this. Laptops, media tablets, e-readers, MP3/MP4 players, headphones, earphones and many other consumer portable devices should be made in such a way that allows the user to easily replace the battery when it fails. Manufacturers have been allowed to get away with making things difficult for consumers for way to long when it comes to battery replacements and it's about time governments stepped in because how many perfectly useable devices get thrown away because the user is unable to change the battery and is not able to afford the repair cost of getting it replaced by the manufacturers service centres.
If a battery dies on a phone the user should be able to pop the back off the phone and replace the battery. The user should not have hurdles put in their way making it difficult for them to do this. Laptops, media tablets, e-readers, MP3/MP4 players, headphones, earphones and many other consumer portable devices should be made in such a way that allows the user to easily replace the battery when it fails. Manufacturers have been allowed to get away with making things difficult for consumers for way to long when it comes to battery replacements and it's about time governments stepped in because how many perfectly useable devices get thrown away because the user is unable to change the battery and is not able to afford the repair cost of getting it replaced by the manufacturers service centres.
You want to know a revolutionary design they could do? Glue the battery on the bottom case instead of the top case.
Suddenly it becomes 10 times cheaper and easier to swap things without needing to emote every part of the motherboard