Louis Rossman replied to this article in a humorous fashion.
Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
551–558 of 558 posts
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern smartphones have a lot of constraints to deal with and still meet consumer demand. People want large displays, all day battery life, no slow downs, fast wireless, and the phone needs to fit in a normal pocket. Oh and the phone should be durable against drops and immersion in water. A large display, fast processor/GPU, and wireless are all battery hungry components. These require a large battery to not only sup…
> People want large displays That's not clear. "Larger display" is easy and obvious from a marketing standpoint. But it's not clear that buyers are benefiting from them. I can, in fact, point to the Galaxy Tab S8 as an example. My wife wanted AMOLED for the display, but that forces the 12.4" display (or bigger) which my wife didn't really want. Manufacturers like Samsung and Apple are delivering what is convenient fo…
> Manufacturers like Samsung and Apple are delivering what is convenient for the manufacturers--what the consumer actually wants is a second level consideration.
Apple and Samsung manufacture hundreds of millions of devices per quarter. They have to optimize for the manufacture of devices. They couldn't achieve their production volume without some manufacturing-friendly concessions. It is extremely difficult to manufacture hundreds of millions of complex things.
There's 31.5m seconds in a year. If it took one second to build an iPhone, Apple could only manufacture 31.5m of them. To meet the demand for hundreds of millions in a year Apple needs to build half a dozen per second. So shaving a half second off manufacturing time by using glue instead of screws is not just a consumer durability win but simply enables their production at the necessary rates.
But to suggest that manufacturing needs override consumer demands is just silly. There's no need to produce hundreds of millions of devices without consumer demand. I don't see how you can suggest Apple and Samsung produce only convenient to manufacture phones when both are offering incredibly complex devices. If they were only interested in devices that were convenient to manufacture they'd but the BOM by a third, source only the shittiest quality screens with huge defect rates, and allow the sloppiest fit and finish while still shipping something that didn't immediately fall apart or explode.
Both companies (and many other manufacturers) are shipping tens of millions of extremely high precision manufacture and high complexity devices festooned with gewgaws and features. There's nothing easy about their manufacture. They're selling features first and then figuring out how to manufacture them at scale.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the repair cost in-store is the same as the cost of a shipped replacement battery then there was no point to this entire thing in the first place.
But it's not. The article did a crap job of explaining this. You buy the battery for the same $69 that an in store replacement costs. You then get a $24 credit when you return the old battery. Apple covers this shipping cost too.
It wasn’t a crappy explanation, it’s just that the refund is pointless if you have to pay $49 to rent their tools.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should Apple allow people to use their trademarks in order to fool people into paying more for “genuine” components. Do you think Louis Rossman was going to tell his customers that, “I know this replacement battery has an Apple logo but I didn’t buy it from Apple.”
I'm not aware of any "fooling" happening, AFAIK, the batteries were genuine batteries and were for products that Apple no longer provided repair services for. So, yes, Apple should absolutely allow repair shops to source genuine components for products they no longer support. Blocking this is uncontrovertably anti-consumer behavior that boosts Apple's profits while hurting their users and creating more e-waste.
They obviously were not genuine. If they were he would have bought them from Apple.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple used to have removable batteries. Even when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, batteries were removable. Once Lithium-Ion batteries that can hold 70% of a charge after 1000 cycles appeared, Apple got rid of the user-swappable batteries. It’s not malicious, it’s a disagreement on what is acceptable.
> It’s not malicious, it’s a disagreement on what is acceptable. They figured they could get away with removing it, so they did. In exchange the user got… what exactly? Absolutely nothing. > Once Lithium-Ion batteries that can hold 70% of a charge after 1000 cycles appeared, Apple got rid of the user-swappable batteries. That's still an absolutely pathetic lifetime compared to the rest of the device. And that also be…
Anecdotally speaking I've never known anyone to get rid of an iPhone because of battery life. Ever. I've known people to replace iPhones because of cracked screens, no longer getting iOS updates, running out of storage, or simply wanting some new feature but I've never known anyone to replace an iPhone because of the battery. They're simply too cheap and easy to replace. Honestly, call and make your appointment at iFixIt or the Apple Store, drop your phone off, come back an hour later and the battery is replaced - for under $50.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's not. The article did a crap job of explaining this. You buy the battery for the same $69 that an in store replacement costs. You then get a $24 credit when you return the old battery. Apple covers this shipping cost too.
It wasn’t a crappy explanation, it’s just that the refund is pointless if you have to pay $49 to rent their tools.
You don't have to rent the tools from Apple. There are plenty of other options.
I have the iFixit battery kit from a previous replacement and through work have access to a bench full of tools of this kind of stuff.
People that don't have that can buy the iFixit tools individually. They sell a battery with a minimal set of tools (a $5 adder) but there's doesn't seem to be an option to buy that same minimal set without the battery so you'd need to get a more general purpose set for $25 or $70.
Maybe a friend has the tools. Maybe there's a local Makerspace or library that has an appropriate set of tools.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course they can win, by designing hardware with replaceable components. This is something my 20 year old Thinkpad has figured out, and many other user-friendly products before it.
Here’s the video showing how to disassemble a modern Thinkpad to replace the battery. You might notice that it looks a fair bit like the video to replace the battery on a modern phone: https://youtu.be/lpMGVM8lPTU&t=1m10s (Also interesting that it doesn't appear that Lenovo even sells the battery [though several 3rd party suppliers do]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/d/compatibilityfinder?accessory... )
Modern Thinkpads have succumbed to the same trend, sadly. My new X1 Carbon has soldered-on, non-replaceable RAM - gotta hate it.
Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to carry a spare battery with me and swap them in 10 seconds when the one in the phone died. Now I have to carry a much bulkier battery powered charger and USB cable that takes an hour to recharge the phone.
Power banks are pretty small these days. If you have magnetic inductive charging capabilities on your phone, you can even just snap them on and keep going. Otherwise, get a power bank that has a small cable built in.
Magnetic inductive charging has an efficiency of <50%, so now the battery has to be twice as big and your phone gets really hot in your pocket.