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Comment by viro | Hacker News Reader

Apple themselves don't do component level repair. Why do you think those "tools, manuals" even exist.

Same way you can argue Apple dont even manufacture anything themselves, its contractors all the way down. The fact is they separate real repair from their Users, funneling it thru sale channels in order to upsell at every step. "Oh it doesnt charge? Replacement logic board will cost $700-$1100, or you can "upgrade" to M1 air for only 1295.99!!1"

no its the fact that component level repair isn't really provided by most OEMs. It was never offered on any of my past laptops

Right, but all you need to do component level repair is access to schematics and the ability to buy the chips. The schematics definitely exist - they have to, in order for the motherboard to exist. And the chips on the motherboard probably exist too. But Apple would clearly rather you didn't know that, since they contract their chip manufacturers to not sell the chips to anyone else for any purpose.

Just how Apple does not calculate profit on their AppStore eh. What a wonderfully self serving coincidence.

Apple does not do component level repair because they want to push new devices and at reluctantly sell parts at obscene profit margins. That does not imply component level repair is not economically viable. It only implies that Apple is that sort of dinasour which Silicon Valley is supposed to disrupt.

I don’t see a lot of disruption heading in the direction of local high skilled technicians doing sophisticated component level repair. If anything I see the exact opposite. Unless we have some regulation forcing companies to account for cost of disposing of devices, they are going to keep making devices more disposable.

No Apple doesn't do component level repair because of the cost of having that level of techs at EVERY Apple retail isn't realistic for the number of repairs they would have to do every day.

This is an absolute nonsense response.

Ever heard of mailing your phone in for "major repairs"? Why do they need to do 'component level repair at every retail outlet"?

The problem is that on the sheer scale of Apple's worldwide repair needs (if every big repair was sent to a US location), they'd need to have tens of thousands of highly-paid technicians who are good at soldering, and make very few mistakes (also, add the cost of new machines for every failed repair). Apple's already struggling with "lego-block repairs" (take out bad motherboard, put new one in), there's no way they could do this at scale.

(See https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/acqwut/do_you_know_w... and more recent reporting on CSAT Solutions's incompetence, poor incentives, and very high turnover).

Not in store. Those refurbished logic boards have to come from somewhere, though.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/acqwut/do_you_know_w...

I had always assumed this about refurbished products, and hence stayed away from them.

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