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Comment by dom96 | Hacker News Reader

As much as I love Apple hardware I am really annoyed by how wasteful their products are. I recently took my Early 2015 MBP to the Apple store because one of the rubber feet came off, I was told that the warranty doesn't cover "non-functional issues" and that I would need to pay them £100 to replace the full bottom panel.

Anyone know a reason why they do this other than greed?

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Because it costs money to store and inventory small parts. It needs a sku and a price for the part, then a sku/price for the repair/replacement. How many small rubber feet should an Apple Store keep in stock for the occasional customer who comes in and loses one? Easier to just replace a whole part that contains many of the smaller attached parts.

I’m pretty sure all the MacBook feet are exactly the same, certainly the MBP line are. They could store 10000 rubber feet in a pretty reasonably sized box....

I was amazed when two of the feet on my 2014 MBP came off on the same week.

Much like the auto industry. It is all modular and they replace modules and not small individual parts.

For what it's worth, i bought a bottom panel on ebay for about $28 and swapped it myself. Small components like this are never a good deal from the OEM, regardless of brand. Same deal with cars, pick it up from the junkyard.

For reasonably generic parts like rubber feet, suitable replacements can be had for far cheaper than OEM:

https://www.amazon.com/Self-adhesive-Bumpers-Devices-Project...

I mean, it's not exactly an ultra-complex piece of kit. It's a piece of rubber with some adhesive on the back. They probably cost less than a cent each to make.

Laziness and cost reduction.

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