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IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

9to5mac.com

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Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#31

Post by falcolas »

tarentel wrote: post #12
falcolas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

162 pages indicates that the item was not made to be repaired or replaced. 162 pages indicates that you're going to have to work around Apple's repair-hostile design to do a repair.

I definitely agree with you there. But the headline says it makes it "less repairable." If your car manufacturers changes all the bolts on your tires to use specialized tools and require you to read a book to understand it that makes your car less repairable. If they provide those tools and manual that doesn't make your car less repairable than it already was. My point is the title of this makes no sense.

Titles rarely do. And sadly, if you want to thrive by producing content, you need to juice up the title a little. Yeah, I hate it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

But on topic, Apple's official stance, as provided by this repair manual, is that replacing a battery requires you to replace vast portions of the final product.

Car analogy time: Got bad seals on your block? Send us the engine; who knows what kind of damage those bad seals have done. Oh, and only we, your car manufacturer can get you the tools and an authorized engine replacement.

Can the battery be replaced without the assembly? iFixit says yes. Is this how Apple does it? Sure, but it's generating a lot of cost and waste. They can write both of. Can you?

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#32

Post by pilgrimfff »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #19

>This time, along with the manuals, Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated I read the PDF. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2083/en_US/mac... It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason. In many respects, the Apple document…

> iFixit praises the M1 MacBook Air service manuals by saying “they’re in-depth, mostly logical, and well worth an additional repairability point,”

This is the service manual you're referencing. The one they're complaining about it is the M1 MacBook Pro.

Here's the actual manual referenced: https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2085/en_US/mac...

And here's iFixIt's actual complaint:

> it’s not 162 pages because Apple has changed where batteries sit in the MacBook Pro. It’s that long because the manual says that to replace the battery, you’ve got to replace the entire top case. At the time of writing, Apple will not sell you a replacement MacBook Pro battery. They sell you a “Top Case with Battery and Keyboard.”

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#33

Post by jm_l »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #19

>This time, along with the manuals, Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated I read the PDF. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2083/en_US/mac... It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason. In many respects, the Apple document…

I think they make a totally fair critique. The quote you pulled out is specifically about the fact that battery replacement alone takes 162 pages to get through.

They also describe the manual as “ they’re in-depth, mostly logical, and well worth an additional repairability point” higher up in the article.

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#34

Post by kemayo »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #20
tempnow987 wrote: post #13

What a stupid take as is increasingly the case with ifixit. How does adding manuals and parts make something LESS repairable? At worst you are no better off than you started. And for all the crap apple gets for things like their batteries, I used to do fleet battery stuff on dell machines using a third party providers and the rate at which these machines BURNED through batteries was insane. THis was a while back, and…

If you read the article you'd see that Apple will not sell you a battery. They will ONLY sell you a "Top case with battery and keyboard" which requires removing every single part of the laptop in order to replace. This is more invasive, more expensive, and less approachable from a repair standpoint if you go with their process.

That doesn't make the laptop less repairable than it was before they launched this program, though, which is what the headline claims.

It's less repairable than a hypothetical version of the repair program which sells you just the component you need to replace, sure, but you can still perform any-and-all actions that you'd have taken to replace a battery before Apple's official program existed.

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#35

Post by tpmoney »

mmastrac wrote: post #30
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #19

>This time, along with the manuals, Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated I read the PDF. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2083/en_US/mac... It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason. In many respects, the Apple document…

Apple: If the adhesive strip breaks, attempt to retrieve the rest of the strip with ESD-safe tweezers. If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case Jesus. This is not what I'd consider "repairable". And that's not the only place in the manual where Apple just says "toss the whole top case out".

Anyone who’s ever repaired a car has encountered one form or another of a fastener or hose that breaks or drops and can’t be easily removed because it’s in a bad place, and leaving it where it is won’t cause any harm. Does it really surprise us that small space computers would have their own version of this?

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#36

Post by kube-system »

mmastrac wrote: post #30
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #19

>This time, along with the manuals, Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated I read the PDF. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2083/en_US/mac... It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason. In many respects, the Apple document…

Apple: If the adhesive strip breaks, attempt to retrieve the rest of the strip with ESD-safe tweezers. If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case Jesus. This is not what I'd consider "repairable". And that's not the only place in the manual where Apple just says "toss the whole top case out".

People asked for Apple's repair manual, and they provided their repair manual.

Apple isn't going to recommend you forcefully remove a LiPo, but you're free to do so if you want to do that instead.

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#37

Post by kemayo »

bombcar wrote: post #29
lisper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh??? All three headlines (the original iFixit, the 9to5Mac clickjack, and the HN version) are essentially identical: iFixit: Self Repair Program actually makes M1 MacBooks less repairable (9to5Mac) IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable (HN) Apple’s Self-Repair Program Manages to Make MacBooks Seem Less Repairable (iFixit)

The lack of "seem" changes the title entirely. Anyone anyone who has read "official repair manuals" knows that they're always more detailed and have more steps than you actually need to perform, because they cover every possible situation and assume you have perfect tools and training and are following all possible safety protocols. I remember reading the Chilton manual for my car vs the factory repair manual, and th…

There's also iFixit's , "Apple Seems to Make MacBooks Less Repairable"... which is an entirely different implication from their heading. The former implies an absolute less-repairable state, the latter implies Apple's making repairs more intimidating.

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#38

Post by dewey »

falcolas wrote: post #11
anonymouse008 wrote: post #7

The audacity is sky high. Just check the attention to detail and care put into these manuals. The gradient blue arrows are masked by glass and alter in arrow opacities to make abundantly clear how the device is supposed to react to the force applied. You all should have been there in the original iPhone days. I apologize to my early customers as to achieve anything close to a 'repair' meant losing a few back clips an…

Yes, providing well detailed manuals on how to work around Apple's hostility to repairing is a good thing. A $500 replacement part to replace a battery is not a good thing. I'd also say that your average end user is probably still going to be breaking tabs. Applying proper force requires physical calibration; calibration takes practice.

> I'd also say that your average end user is probably still going to be breaking tabs

The average end user is not going to do the repair themselves.

Re: IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable

#40

Post by rocket_surgeron »

jm_l wrote: post #33
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #19

>This time, along with the manuals, Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated I read the PDF. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/2000/MA2083/en_US/mac... It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason. In many respects, the Apple document…

I think they make a totally fair critique. The quote you pulled out is specifically about the fact that battery replacement alone takes 162 pages to get through. They also describe the manual as “ they’re in-depth, mostly logical, and well worth an additional repairability point” higher up in the article.

>The quote you pulled out is specifically about the fact that battery replacement alone takes 162 pages to get through.

But that's not true. The table of contents has links to the small subset of pages needed to be read to replace the battery.

There are over a dozen chapters and the page count includes parts lists, safety and regulatory notices, and information about tools.

My Webster's Unabridged Dictionary has 2,129 pages before it gets to the back matter. If I want to look up a word I don't open it to page 1 and start reading.

Same for replacing a battery.

1. Open PDF 2. Scroll to table of contents 3. Click on "Battery" 4. Read 14 pages, each with 1-2 steps, about how to replace the battery

Not 162.

Besides, with the text density of those pages, they should be thought of more as "slides". A 162-slide presentation that covers the tools, part numbers, safety information, and step-by-step procedures for replacing parts that you can skip around in is not intimidating.

Of course, my perspective may be skewed. My expectation is for comprehensive documentation with the hundred page behemoths that Sun used to produce back in the Sparc era for replacing a frame buffer card being the bare minimum acceptable level of documentation.

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