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Sixth-Generation iPad Teardown Details 'Repair Nightmare' for Education-Focused Tablet

Xenomorph said:
When my daughter got a Chromebook at her school, I went out and bought the same model for myself - Acer C740.

I read that (compared to the C720) the C740 model was more aimed at the "educational" market, and so had things like more durable hinges, thicker plastic, etc. It was designed to survive falls and abuse.

Besides all that, I fount the thing dead-simple to work on. The top pops apart, held together by plastic clips. I was easily able to replace the basic TN display with a vivid IPS display. The bottom is held together by a few screws. You can easily remove it and service the insides. The internals are user replaceable, such as the SSD (M.2), the fan, logic board, and battery. In fact, I yanked its original SSD and slapped in a 256 GB one.

They are so user-serviceable that they actually have the students themselves provide repairs. They take broken systems to a room where the kids salvage parts from them to repair and rebuild other damaged systems brought in.

The cost? Well, I paid $249 for mine. I'm sure the school got some sort of bulk discount ($199?). For that price they received:

* durable *and* easy-to-repair hardware, with a "clamshell" design that protects its display.
* a built-in pointing device and full keyboard.
* a full "Desktop" experience browser, with support for plugins and Flash.
* something that can easily sit on a desk and be used, without someone needing to constantly hold it.
* a locked-down, secure, automatic-updating OS with a seamless and quick "A/B" update system (iOS doesn't even have that).

In contrast, for a higher price, Apple is offering something that:

* must be held at all times to be used
* is much, much easier to be broken/damaged
* is much, much harder to work on or repair (students can't do it, teachers can't do it, it must be sent off)
* includes no keyboard or pointing device. each requires a separate purchase on top of the already-higher base price.
* has a relatively lengthy update process and cannot be used during

I don't think the newest "iPad for Education!" thing they are attempting will be enough to fight off Chromebook.
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Excellent points and write-up.

The only caveat I would mention is student privacy.
 
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ssspinball said:
That HP tablet iFixit recommends also costs 4 times as much as the $299 education edition iPad. Apples to oranges.
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Maybe MSRP, but a quick search at Amazon has it at $699. Still, I do find it curious that iFixit gave it a 10/10, considering the RAM and CPU are soldered. That kinda slaps in the face of every device that has those features that gets a lesser score. I’m not here to bag on iFixit, as their guides have helped me substantially over the years, but the fact that HP sent them a review sample to promote its repairability makes that score a little suspect.

bnvnsn said:
It's been a while since I worked for a school district, but we really didn't have the headcount to have somebody doing repairs that took a long time to complete. At the discounted price and the cost vs time problem, I would see 1) buying the AppleCare to have the iPads sent in for repairs and 2) ordering extra as backups.
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Exactly. Would there even be a qualified person on staff to make repairs if they had time? Could you get the right parts for a reasonable price? Often times the replacement parts cost too much to be worth the expense, especially one you include labor. The advantage to an Apple product is that there are usually quite a few places that can make authorized repairs. Send the iPad and $100 to a facility and be done with it. Have a few iPads in reserve. Even if you didn’t, you can go buy a new one almost everywhere. That’s just my opinion as a manager of resources and people, as I’m not really a big fan of technology at this level for education anyway, but that’s another discussion.
 
oldmacs said:
An agenda? They do this with literally every tech product for the purpose of helping people to fix stuff.....

I guess Apple has an Agenda as well... make their products less repairable and upgradable = more sales (and more environmental damage)


[doublepost=1522762865][/doublepost]

The lightning port, home buttons, lock buttons and headphone port. The number of iPads I've dealt with snapped lightning cables.....

The batteries do not always last 5 years...
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That type of damage you describe, equivalent damage in a laptop and you’d throw the laptop away. Really surprising though, the number of iPads I see when going out in the hands of very young kids. You would think they wouldn’t damage them. Contrast to chrome book, I have never seen one in the hands of a kid. I digress however.
 
I7guy said:
I’m sure the batteries in those iPads will last 5 years. Charging port you have a point, but the jury is out on real life durability.
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Why so sure the battery will last 5 years when Apple stated 500 cycles?
 
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Rogifan said:
Most people don’t want to fix stuff. Most people don’t want to open the insides of products to upgrade them. They use the product until it doesn’t work any more and then they buy a new one.
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It factors into the cost of the repair. I work in education, and this was a disappointing product announcement.
 
I7guy said:
That type of damage you describe, equivalent damage in a laptop and you’d throw the laptop away. Really surprising though, the number of iPads I see when going out in the hands of very young kids. You would think they wouldn’t damage them. Contrast to chrome book, I have never seen one in the hands of a kid. I digress however.
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We get broken headphone jacks, keyboards, touchpad, casings, screens all the time at the school district I work and they all get repaired. So no, the laptops are not thrown away.
 
oldmacs said:
It is a shame, especially given they're aimed at education. From working with technology in education, I know how often these things break. Or the environmental and cost impact of having to dump them when Apple ends support.
[doublepost=1522761631][/doublepost]

Chromebooks can often have batteries replaced, screens replaced and keyboards replaced with relative ease. It does depend on the model though.
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Apple wants you to buy new ones when they break! Perhaps they think the price is so low that it can be treated as a toy for kids to break easily.
 
Rogifan said:
These reviews don’t even get the hits they used to because everyone knows current mobile products aren’t designed for repairability and upgradability mostly because the public doesn’t care.
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Not caring isn't a reason not to report the facts as they stand.
 
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69Mustang said:
Unrelated but curious. You bring up Chromebooks, question if they're as repairable, and then go on to suggest buying a new one instead of repairing it. Are we witnessing you have a conversation with yourself?:p:D
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Yes, I was just wresting with both sides of the argument as I have not made up my mind which side makes more sense. I was just bouncing off my thoughts onto the forum - after all that is what this place is meant to encourage, right? :)
 
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Guy Clark said:
And generate yet more eWaste. The user should have the 'right to repair'
https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/18/right-to-repair-battery-program/
https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/15/apple-nebraska-right-to-repair/
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I'm all for having an option to repair, but i can understand that some products won't be repairable as we understand the word (iPhone, iPad, iPods and AirPods for example), but when it comes to bigger devices like Macs and displays it should be reasonably easy to repair.
 
Blaze4G said:
Charging port?

Battery last 5 years? You realize these iPads will be used for 5-6 hours per day throughout the school year? This seems like alot more tine than what a regular consumer would spend on an iPad daily. Hence, increasing battery wear. 6 hours per day is roughly 1 charging cycle, 180 school days in the year and using Apples 500 cycles that batteries should last for would result in a battery replacement in under 3 years. Battery replacement is 1/3 the cost of the edu iPad.
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The batteries lasting 5 years is not out of the question. My school has a set of 2nd gen iPads. They're crap for a number of reasons now, but the hardware, including the batteries, have held up fine. We've had to send laptops for repairs tons of times but never a single iPad, and the batteries still have juice at the end of the day.
 
I7guy said:
That type of damage you describe, equivalent damage in a laptop and you’d throw the laptop away. Really surprising though, the number of iPads I see when going out in the hands of very young kids. You would think they wouldn’t damage them. Contrast to chrome book, I have never seen one in the hands of a kid. I digress however.
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No... I would (and have) replaced laptop charger ports, buttons, etc.
 
What is it that needs to be repaired on an iPad 99% of the time? The screen, and that is easy to replace on this model. So who cares if the rest of it is hard to repair? Also, who takes their iPad to a third-party repair place for anything other than the screen? By the way, my experience with screen replacement from anywhere other than Apple has been terrible. The screen never seems to be seated properly and weird issues happening.

​
 
Rogifan said:
These reviews don’t even get the hits they used to because everyone knows current mobile products aren’t designed for repairability and upgradability mostly because the public doesn’t care.
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Obviously many people do not, but enough do care. I have used iFixit to replace at least 5 phones screens overs the years and just used them to replace my apple watch battery last week. I know plenty of people who do the same.
 
imo, iFixit is really only useful for dissecting new hardware releases. They have some decent tools for prior gen stuff, but they get little full of themselves on this whole repairability kick. Apple should really step up their recycling program and options, with Liam they can salvage most parts and pieces, vs mangling a repair and having left over parts/pieces for a single end-user.
 
mtneer said:
While I have no bone with the claims, what iPad has ever been "repairable"? I can't think of anything out of Apple's stables in the past decade that has been highly repairable. On the other end, how many Chromebooks are repairable, even if they are, why not just replace them since shop time and costs to repair a Chromebook may get close to a new one.
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Or, howabout let's talk about the MS Surface Pros. I am pretty sure they are pretty unrepairable...

MS Surface Pro 4

Repairability Score: 2

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+4+Teardown/51568
 
Will kids that break these iPads in class be sentenced to repairing them in detention?

At least that's how it would go down in my classroom.
 
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