Apple announces Self Service Repair

I didn’t see a thread on this. Seems significant considering their history.

PRESS RELEASE
18 November 2021

Apple announces Self Service Repair

Apple parts, tools and manuals — starting with iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 — available to individual consumers

Thoughts from the DIY people on here?

I suspect it will be more about making repair parts available to third party repair shops rather than most people doing their own repairs.

So more ‘choice of repairer’ than ‘DIY repair’…

there’s a youtube channel whose focus is Apple repairs, probably a few channels actually, I’ll see if I can find it later

Yes there are a few and I’ve used a couple myself, but us lot here? We’re not representative of the general public, we’re outliers.

I think “everyone” (us nerds) are waiting to see what Apple’s pricing will look like…

I think Apple is just going through the motions to make themselves appear to be doing the “right thing” given the mounting pressure for “Right to Repair” over in the US at the moment.

Whilst it’s a move in the right direction - allowing people to buy genuine parts (and where required - tools) - what they need to do is stop 2 things: gluing things, and using privacy as an excuse to make closed systems.

I know that historically, the US government pushed heavily on phone manufacturers to make their devices less desirable for thieves… and that has probably played a big part in the whole “if you remove X from this device, it’ll never work properly again…” But that’s become an excuse for making HDDs non replaceable, for example.

Once you make a computer no longer upgradable in terms of RAM and HDD, you’re limiting its life. I’ve got 3 computers here in my house right now that are 8 - 12 years old that I’m putting new drives in, and possibly increasing the RAM too, extending their life even more than the good run they’ve already had.

Louis Rossman is probably the one you’re thinking of.

The viability of the program will come down to costs.
If a screen replacement is $550 for self repair and $600 for Apple to do it, then the majority of people won’t risk it unless they are already adept at that type of task.

Likewise if Apple’s documentation is overly complex, it will scare aware the majority of people. Either way, time will tell.

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If the documentation is similar to their Mac repair manuals that I’ve used before on numerous machines - that shouldn’t be an issue.

Also these days - whilst the Apple instructions will be good to have, you’d be a fool not to also watch a few dozen YouTube vids as well to get a feel for the repair first.

I would be spending some time on iFixIts site for sure.
I am not too concerned with the technical side personally. But I am used to working with electronics. Its more the average user. Could my wife do it? My parents? My brother? This is where its more important. Otherwise we risk becoming family tech support with higher stakes :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s the beauty for Apple. They have been asked to make their devices repairable. Well - they are now offering tools, instructions, and parts (for 2 phones, prices pending). They are complying.

Who is actually going to make use of this offer? Probably less than 0.5% of the their customers… but - they are offering.

Even if things were simpler to do - you are ultimately talking about something that needs some reasonable understanding of electronics, or else people are going to static-fry their devices, or just not take the care required. Even when I opened my TAM, I broke some plastic tabs. Thankfully they weren’t critical to anything… but I was being careful as all hell, and had been warned they were easy to break…