>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
iFixit: Pivot the spudger against the hinge to pry up the end of the antenna bar.
Apple: Gently slide the flat end of the black stick below one of the four screw holes (1) to loosen the antenna module from the tape on the top case. Then rotate the black stick until you feel a click (2).
Apple's instructions also include steps to perform if an action isn't "easy":
iFixit: The antenna bar is secured with some adhesive and may require some force to dislodge.
Apple: If the antenna module doesn’t release from the tape, slowly and gently slide the black stick under the module to loosen it.
> 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.”
Modern flat lithium batteries are fairly hazardous and Apple is very conservative in their approach to handing them.
They never want a Samsung like situation where the airport announcer says “No MacBook Pro 14” on the plane”. Additionally, because it’s Apple, there would be a media shitstorm if that happened.
I purchased a battery (just a battery) for my 2013 MBP. It was a pain to replace, but I replaced it with the help of an iFixIt guide.
I believe it's that kind of guide people expected Apple to publish.
So you may be right that it's always been Apple's policy, but the point was that the self-repair program is falling short of expectations. iFixIt set a standard and Apple has fallen short.
Why would anyone expect the self service process setup by Apple to be anything other than the same processes they have for their own repair people though? I don’t expect a car manufacturer to release parts and instructions they wouldn’t have their own service people follow. It’s reasonable to debate the merits of having the battery tied to the top case on the whole, but if it’s what Apple directs their own repair personnel to do, that’s what I would expect their self service to do too.
A car manufacturer which claimed you needed to replace the whole front end of the car to replace the battery would be ridiculed by everyone and soon be out of business. The fact that those batteries are glued down is not a valid reason to replace the whole top as is shown by the multitude of mobile devices with glued-down batteries which can be replaced without problems. They either have some strip you can pull to loosen the battery or a set of instructions on where to push a thin piece of plastic underneath the battery to lift it. Apple can do this as well but they don't want to
You’re probably in for a nasty surprise when you look up the process for replacing the battery pack in an EV, which is a more apt comparison than the standard hunk of lead and acid in an ICE car. Just like Apples laptops, EVs are trying to cram batteries into every possible space to maximize capacity, meaning that replacement will involve some substantial disassembly.
And yes, Apple can do it and has even said they’re going to do it. So at this point, it’s just a matter of guessing for why they don’t do it now. And that could be any number of reasons, including easier manufacturing or in a surprise twist maybe easier repair. Look at the ifixit instructions and look at the spacing available to access the pull tabs for the adhesive around the various frame parts. It’s entirely reasonable to think that Apple did some math on battery repair frequency; on that fact that even when an M* systems battery is at the 80% mark where it’s eligible for repair that it will still be near or over 100% of the old intel laptop runtimes when new; evaluated the chances of those adhesive tabs breaking or having the battery or top case damaged while removing one or the other and decided that bundling the two together and eating the cost on battery repairs was the easier option for their repair people. Because ultimately Apple’s priorities likely are ease of manufacture first, ease of store based repair second and ease of user based repair third. Because even with really easy user based repair, I would venture to say close to 90% of people will still have Apple do it for $200. And I say that based both on the fact that Apple used to offer various DIY repair options for older models* and people have their mechanic or AutoZone replace their car batteries for them even though that’s literally just 2 bolts.
* I worked for an Apple authorized repair place in the G5 iMac days, in which for example the power supply was “user replaceable” and for which Apple offered customers DIY repair options on them. I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, the number of customers who took us up on the option to order the part and do it themselves, even if having us do it meant longer turn around times. On the whole people don’t DIY repairs for things, and so engineering and manufacturing for that use case is probably a worse decision than engineering and designing for your own people and while those people might benefit from DIY friendly features, if that makes manufacture harder or more expensive, then that’s still likely a net negative trade off.
No, the EV pack is not an apt comparison, the battery packs in e.g. those Thinkpads I have around here are. One of them (a T550) has an internal battery pack in addition to the easily replaceable one. It can still be replaced easily after removing the (clearly marked) screws and removing the pack.
As to your experience working for an Apple authorised repair centre I'd suggest that the intersection between Apple users and DIYers is probably smaller than that between e.g. Thinkpad users and DIYers. Part of the appeal of the Apple world lies in its appliance-like nature where things (are supposed to) 'just work', not in its openness to tinkering.
As an aside I must say I'm surprised in the fervour with which these Apple strategies are defended. It is not hard to design a glued-down battery which can be removed by pulling a few tabs as is common in many mobile devices, why defend this clearly wasteful practice? Maybe Apple keyboards are (or were, at least during the 'butterfly keyboard' years - 2015-2019) close to being shot around the time the battery wears out but even so it would be easy to make that keyboard replaceable.
The T550 gets 21 hours of battery life [1] so I'd say those candles are pretty well matched, especially given the possibility to swap one of the batteries in the T550 with a charged one without the need to shut it down which can extend the runtime well past what that Macbook Pro gets.
With T550 you get a computer with decent keyboard.
With M1 Max you get a Mac.
Even the best quality Mac keyboard is completely unusable for me and the OS feels like it is fighting you at every corner, I haven't been that frustrated since Windows Vista, so even if the CPU was 1000x faster, the user experience for me is horrible.
My old Samsung T700t with 2nd gen i5 and a dock keyboard feels like usability king compared to every Mac I ever used and it also feels much faster once I swapped Windows for Linux.
Obviously technology has improved (there's a 6 hour increase in battery life going from last intel laptop to an m1), but it also probably helps that that smaller light modern MacBook has a 100 watt hour battery, while the one you're referring to had a 45WHr battery.
They're glued in the 2013 retina models also (I know -- I've replaced the battery twice). To do it "properly" you pretty much have to take apart the entire thing, remove the logic board, etc., although if you're willing to cut corners you can sneak it out without too much fuss. In theory you can use a light amount of acetone to loosen the glue, but that always made me incredibly nervous so I just prodded it with a plastic spudger until I could get it free.
I would gladly trade a fancy unibody for a battery that's easily replaceable :-/
So it's a temporary situation to do it this way until they can get enough stock and work their supply chain to provide additional batteries? What a non-story.
I don't see anything to suggest that this policy will change in the future, they probably don't want to risk someone burning their house down while trying to remove a glued in pouch battery and then blaming Apple for it.
Incidentally on the flip side of this, I got a free new battery out of the keyboard replacement program because they replace this whole top case assembly for keyboard replacements as well.
I hoped that whole keyboard warranty extension fiasco would encourage Apple to stop gluing everything together so much and design for individual components to be replaced again, but I guess not.
Whoops, so they do. That's a repair I wouldn't want to touch by myself but good luck to anybody who does!
The last Mac laptop I did repairs on was a snapped hinge and man that a painful process. Similar boat with having to take the entire computer apart (including the screen assembly). These days I'd be much happier to pay someone to deal with that, but doing it yourself is certainly the affordable solution and I'm glad that self repair continues to be an option.
I replaced the glued-down baggie-cell batteries in the laptop I'm currently using. It was a giant PITA, and I was very wary of burning my house down the entire time. It would absolutely be worth the cost difference to secure and protect the batteries in any other way.
The instructions for reassembly are, in their entirety:
> CONCLUSION
> To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.
Thanks. I would have loved to see actual instructions. It is distinctly nontrivial to get the display back in, especially if the case is even slightly damaged.
On top of this, I have never encountered a non-OEM aftermarket iPhone display that wasn’t linearly polarized. If you wear polarized sunglasses, a non-polarized or circularly polarized display is an important feature.
So I consider the Apple program to be a big improvement.
I was going to say, this is a really terrific manual. Yes, many people will be better served watching a video (especially if they are new to repairs, and if that’s the case, I personally don’t recommend starting your DIY repair journey on a current-gen Apple laptop, but that’s just me), and many of the iFixit guides are quite good, but this service manual is comprehensive, well-written and easy to follow.
I also read the 162-page thing, along with a claim you had to read that just to replace the battery. And that’s not the case? The entire manual is 162 pages, not just the instructions for relaxing the top case and battery.
Yes, I think it’s insane that you (right now) have to replace the entire top case to replace the battery. It’s genuinely absurd. Apple says they’ll sell the batteries separately at some point, so that’s good. But that’s still insane.
That said, I’m not really here for exaggerations about what is an incredibly well-written manual. It’s not like this is going to cut into iFixit’s guide or tool business because I don’t see Apple trying to game the SEO for MacBook repair guide; Apple would rather you take your MacBook to an Apple Store.
It seems highly likely to me that anyone claiming this document is intimidating either has not read it or is lying for some reason.
I used to be a fan of iFixIt, and have even bought one of its larger tool kits, but have lost respect for it in the last few years.
In part, because any time Apple does anything, iFixIt is there with a snarky criticism. Like it just really really really needs the clicks. I don't mind people being critical of Apple, but what comes out of iFixIt these days is mostly very solidly in whiny baby/grumpy old man territory.
Second, because I've tried four times to repair items using iFixIt guides, and in every case the guide was incomplete, inaccurate, or the steps just sort of ended without finishing the job. Twice I was able to finish the repairs on my own. Twice, the device was ruined.
Many iFixIt guides seem to start out well-written and documented, but eventually get all hand-wavey. More often than not, when I've looked up a guide, it ends with "Reverse the steps to reassemble," which is not reassuring, considering the complexity with which modern electronics are built, and because some of the parts were destroyed (adhesive strips, for example) on the way.
Every single person related to repairing devices hates apple. For decades they have been at the forefront "you should not be able to fix/change your device". The have created billions of lbs of trash and psyop'd millions of people through these policies, and yet their unpaid shills still come out to defend them. Disgusting
I've changed parts on several Apple laptops and one Mac Mini using iFixit manuals. In every case, it was really useful to read all the comments left by readers. Sometimes the comments tell you that you can skip several steps, in some cases they point out when you need to be extra careful or when the iFixit photos were misleading.
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".
I replaced a screen on an iPhone 4 or 5 with a kit from iFixit. It was painful with the very basic tools provided and no magnifying glasses or understanding of what success was supposed to feel like. The parts aren't small, they are tiny, like 3mm screws, tiny bits of adhesive, things that are very fragile, etc. It took me like 3 hours. Experiences like that make me nope out of some DIY things.
I replaced the keyboard on a unibody era MBP. (2011 ish, the one with the dvd drive that needed to have the hard drive cable replaced every few years because it would wear at a corner and short against the case).
It had 50+ absolutely tiny screws, requiring a 000 Phillips head, probably about the size of the little ones in iPhone 6s, but all about 2mm long.
I, too, suffered through this ordeal in the name of self-repair. The worst of it was having to, every now and then, file a slot into a tiny screw I'd stripped (#%!*) so I could continue with a flathead screwdriver.
Genuine Wiha phillips head screwdrivers are magic at not stripping screws. So much so that many cheap no-name sets will imitate the red knob and dark grey finish to piggyback on that.
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?
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
Can confirm. I ended up bringing a car to the dealer to replace a certain light bulb because it was not possible for me to put my man-sized hand through the metal hole to reach the bulb area. Fortunately, the dealer did it for free.
> If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, forcefully remove the battery by jamming a pry tool under it.
This is what other people do when those strips break. This is a service manual, not a binding contract. You can choose to service your device differently if you feel inclined to do so.
Ah misunderstood the context here, I thought it was referring to cleaning up the adhesive after repair. Even still, there are plenty of bolts on a car that if you don’t do the right things to remove them, you can shear them off. Fasteners of all kinds can be broken, if you break them beyond the ability of your tools, the manual is going to tell you to take it to a shop. You can break out the screw extractor from harbor freight, or weld a new head onto the stub. But it’s unlikely the official repair manual is going to suggest that to you.
Sure, but rarely does the stuck fastener require the replacement of a car's major subsystem. Stuck bolt = replace engine? That's so rare it's hardly worth discussing. But with a Mac, stuck glue strip = replace half the laptop.
There was a notable case where road debris hit fitting on a 2 psi coolant line in a Tesla and the owner was told they would have to pay $16,000 for a new battery pack to deal with damage to a flange on the line out of pocket because no insurer would pay to replace a $16,000 battery for want of a 5 dollar piece of plastic.
The solution was a slightly more expensive $15 piece of metal and $700 in labor.
If you look at how new appliances are made with difficult to replace electronics which ought to be trivially replaceable for cheap if you weren't getting bent over by the manufacturer you might begin to notice a pattern.
Manufacturers are saving their pennies at the expense of hardware that fails outside of warranty and makes them $100 bills for their trouble of doing a bad job in the first place.
Their is little reason to build to last when bad work pays dividends in the long run.
The Tesla story for those who didn't catch it originally.
Depends on the car. There’s an infamous bolt on the transmission of 6 speed 2nd gen Miata’s. If you remove that bolt accidentally instead of the fill plug near it when replacing your transmission fluid, you will need a transmission rebuild/replacement. Likewise I would imagine if you shear off the crank bolt on a car while removing the crank pulley to do replace a water pump or a seal, you’re probably in for a heck of a tear down, and depending on how bad it is to get it removed, maybe a bottom end rebuild to replace damaged parts.
Heck we still live in a world where some cars with interference engines use timing belts instead of chains. Repair that 20 belt wrong and you will indeed need a whole engine, and that assumes your got to it before it broke and ruined your engine for you.
If a car service manual said "replace the engine" (along with detailed instructions on how to do so) when a spark plug went bad, would you consider that acceptable just because the manual were released?
There are many service manuals for cars that recommend procedures that independent auto shops and shade-tree mechanics do not follow.
Get a short in a wiring harness? The service manual for your car will almost certainly recommend replacing the entire harness which is a very labor intensive and expensive procedure. Will mechanics do this? Depends on which shop you're at and who is paying.
If there are multiple ways to solve a problem, an official service manual will typically list the safest and most repeatable solution. Rarely do they list any alternatives to this.
Well, part of me wishes this particular "car" wasn't separated into two replaceable pieces. A fender-bender or bad battery shouldn't warrant replacing half of my car! Not only is it ridiculously expensive, but it's insanely wasteful if the half it's replacing isn't being salvaged for components.
Apple has the resources to fix this. They choose to actively neglect it, since they have a very successful side-business dedicated to replacing your iDevices at-cost.
I'd definitely risk destroying an engine if the alternative were throwing it away and replacing it while there was still a chance it was fixable. Who wouldn't?
My point is the company is not going to provide you instructions that would likely damage or destroy the product, not debate whether or not one should attempt those procedures.
If I was following the shop manual and I broke a head bolt off in my engine block I would take it to a machine shop, but I wouldn’t expect the auto maker to provide instructions to remove a broken head bolt.
Businesses often wouldn’t. They have additional costs that you don’t have when you’re repairing your own stuff. Labor, liability, capacity, brand image, etc.
Automakers have been known to replace entire engines for recalls involving only one part of the engine, when they have concerns about one of the above factors.
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.
You'll note that at the beginning of the three-page battery section, it says that you must have already removed every other part from the other 159 pages. The battery section is basically just "whatever's left doesn't come apart, so replace all that for a new battery". I think saying it takes a 162-page manual is fair.
There are ~25 pages about how to change keyboard keys before even touching the bottom case.
Most of the pages are very much slide-like, extremely well done and don’t have the density one would expect from a typical electronic device manual. The statement is not fair at all.
I looked up Apple's "black stick" because I was curious what it was. Turns out I use these all the time at work. We call them green sticks for some reason despite being black. "Plastic/nylon soldering tool" is a common name from vendors but I'm not exactly sure how useful it is for soldering since it's made out of plastic and would quickly melt. We mostly use them as a spudger or pry bar, anywhere you'd normally use a screwdriver to pry something off but don't want to mar any delicate surfaces. We also have "orange sticks" which aren't really orange but are just thin wooden dowels with an angled cut at the end you can use for situations where plastic can scratch a surface.
Why in every story about Apple are their contrarian head burying. No other company would get this amount of support for finally after 20 years allowing a supposed owner of the product to change the battery
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 and figuring things out as you went.
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.
Which is a relatively new phenomenon when it comes to batteries. It's only been a handful of year since I could swap them out with a couple of latches.
Yes, they were also physically bulkier, weighed more, and substantially lower battery capacity. The last non-screwdriver replaceable MacBook Pro was 50% heavier, 50% thicker, and had a battery that was less than 50% the capacity. That difference in battery capacity matches almost exactly the user experienced battery life from the last screwdriver-free replaceable battery MacBook and the last intel laptop.
To be fair, batteries back then lasted a lot shorter than they do now. For my first MBP I had to buy multiple replacement batteries, for my newer ones I didn't have to do that a single time while using them much more.
Even today, replacing the batteries on a laptop from a competing manufacturer is a 10 minute job with an ordinary screwdriver. Many people can do it themselves, and if not, a computer/phone repair shop will do it for $10 (or free, if you buy the battery from them).
Don't forget that they also had significant wear after only a few months. HP sucked so much money out of me with replacement batteries before I switched to an MBP in 2015. I haven't bought anything from HP since, and good riddance.
Apple has never and will never be the main Target of companies like Ifixit because the vast majority of Apple users are tech illiterate NPCs. Stop shilling for a trillion dollar company for free. At least get payed for it
Stop calling tech illiterate, NPCs. Thats some arrogance. Apple has its market, and you are free to not use the devices if you dont like em.
Apple is not a monopoly in mobile phones, out of US may be a handful of countries have a significant share in Apple’s market.
> Our 14″ MacBook Pro battery replacement guide is 26 steps. That might not seem like a very speedy guide, but the Surface Pro 6 is twice that long, and iPad guides can be upwards of a hundred steps. In the scheme of things, 26 steps is pretty good. Imagine our surprise when we found that Apple’s official MacBook Pro battery replacement method clocks in at 162 pages.
162 pages is the entire damn manual[1], not just battery replacement, and the manual is very detailed, what is one step in the iFixit guide (which often includes multiple images in a carousel) could be multiple pages in the manual.
While it’s not great that Apple deems the battery a non-removable part of the top case, this complaint about complexity is misleading FUD.
Disclosure: I’ve made quite a few purchases at iFixit over the years.
You'll note that at the beginning of the three-page battery section, it says that you must have already removed every other part from the other 159 pages. The battery section is basically just "whatever's left doesn't come apart, so replace all that for a new battery". I think saying it takes a 162-page manual is fair.
If you follow everything religiously you start at p.47. You definitely don’t need the 25 pages for replacing keys. And all those pages include reassembly, which is missing from the 26-step iFixit guide, which stops at “remove the battery”.
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 the Chilton would mention "the repair manual says to remove the front bumper, but with a bit of a squeeze and some care, you can do the replacement without that step" kind of thing all the time.
There's also iFixit's <title>, "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.
They're all terrible. But "seem less repairable" and "actually make _ less repairable" have two different meanings. The latter makes it sound as if having the tools and instructions somehow make doing something harder than by not having them.
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 not sure if it was the chargers, or how they were used (plugged in a lot of deep drained a lot), but for whatever reason apple's battery management tech really seems to get some life out of their batteries.
Also, once they started validating batteries so ifixit type places couldn't drop bad batteries into phones, a lot of the trouble there went away as well.
Anyways, a screen replacement under apple care is $29. I'll report back how "terrible" the process is (first time in years that I've broken my screen).
Applecare screen replacement is a breeze, if you live near an Apple store. Walk into scheduled appointment, hand them your phone and sign your name on their little iPad granting them the permission to repair or replace your device and dealing with payment, and they tell you to come back an hour or two later and pick up your device. I always buy Applecare and have had to replace each of my last iPhones at least once this way, but it's really a no-biggie because it only takes maybe an hour total to drop it off and pick it up, including driving time, once the appointment is scheduled.
Wow, wasn’t expecting downvotes on something that seemed non-controversial like this.
I wonder am I getting downvoted because I’m a klutz and have broken a bunch of iPhones, or is it because I didn’t have a negative experience with AppleCare?
The "hackers" on HN don't have much appreciation for real world use cases / customer needs.
I'm not sure if this was permitted, but I worked with a nonprofit that ran a program for kids that bought apple products and AppleCare on them all. Apple was essentially a program sponsor. Anytime someone tells me how terrible Apple is for the customer, after having to MAIL IN products to other providers who sit on them for MONTHS, I just have to laugh. Many other providers it's not even worth trying to get warranty service because you end up not having a computer / laptop etc for weeks.
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.
>If you read the article you'd see that Apple will not sell you a battery.
YET. The manual and the article itself acknowledge that this repair is only possible with a top case replacement and that battery-only parts will be available soon.
No it doesn't. Ya, it's a 162 page manual and a huge pain and likely not worth it but the program doesn't make it less repairable. It was designed in such a way that makes repairing it a pain in the ass. Having the tooling and manual to do the repair doesn't make it less repairable.
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.
The official workshop manual from the manufacturer for my car (which includes full engine assembly!) — the same one used by all of its dealer techs - is over 6400 pages. It is loaded with an absurd number of detailed diagrams, torque specifications, required tools, checklists, etc.
Does that make my car less repairable? Or does it provide all the information necessary for someone to correctly perform repair or maintenance, including all required pre- and post- processes related to the affected area?
Does your car repair manual dictate that replacing the battery and alternator includes also replacing the unibody (including the driver controls, though not the seats) with a unit provided only by the car manufacturer?
Having used a few workshop manuals, I do get your point. But those manuals provide the advantage of actually letting you repair cars without having to replace the entire unibody when you change an oil filter (though you'll often have to disassemble vast portions of the car to get at simple consumables these days).
I imagine the replacement process for an EVs battery pack also is involved and requires a lot of work. I also imagine the official replacement process will not involve individual cell replacement and will likely be an entire pack that may also include BMS units or other components.
> I also imagine the official replacement process will not involve individual cell replacement
Since when has it involved that? Even back when cellphones were repairable, trying to fix a broken battery by manipulating the cells is a suicide mission. I get that you're trying to illustrate that "density has a repairability cost", but I think that's entirely redundant, since:
- Apple can throw money at this issue and fix it. No private interest on the planet has even remotely as much research funding as Apple. If companies like Framework can manage it, then so can Apple.
- Apple's devices are getting larger, and their SOCs are getting more dense. There's more room inside the Macbook Pro than ever before, which leaves plenty of space to reinforce the device and improve it's disassembly process.
- Making repairable/sustainable technology doesn't seem to impede any of Apple's goals. Adding an M.2 slot on the Macbook would have no perceivable downside. Removing the internal adhesive could help improve the device's lifespan and make it possible to reassemble without additional components. Offering a matte/plastic display option would also give users the option to own a Macbook that doesn't break when it falls from waist height.
So, I don't really buy this. When people come forward and speculate on Apple's behalf, I feel like they're forgetting that we're talking about the most powerful company on Earth. Apple can move mountains, and you're trying to justify why they can't offer more granular repair options? This is the exact same supply-chain pettiness that people used to applaud Apple for, and now that everyone feels the impact of it, why do we still defend them for abusing capitalism and hurting everyone in the process?
>Since when has it involved that? Even back when cellphones were repairable, trying to fix a broken battery by manipulating the cells is a suicide mission. I get that you're trying to illustrate that "density has a repairability cost"
Sure, for a small battery pack like that, but an EV's battery pack is made of self contained replaceable cells. It would be perfectly possible to replace the individual cells and save the exterior casing and any internal electronics. But the official dealer process is almost certainly going to replace the entire thing as a single unit.
My point was't "density has a repairability cost", it was that sometimes for the sake of ease, repeatability or reliability a manufacturer may decide to bundle individually replaceable components into a single module that will be replaced as a whole unit as part of the repair process and that can be a reasonable decision. We see this all the time with cars. Transmissions are rebuildable, but usually you just replace the whole thing. Same with alternators. Engines are absolutely rebuildable, but if you blow yours, the dealer will almost certainly just replace it wholesale. Wiring harnesses can be patched, but the service manuals will tell you to replace the whole thing. A single switch in your steering wheel controls might be broken, but likely the entire control cluster will be swapped. These things don't make the car "less repairable", nor does the fact that the manufacturer's manual only tells you how to replace the whole thing, and won't sell you anything other than the whole part mean you can't piece it together yourself or that they're somehow hindering you from repairing your car.
Likewise, the battery being bundled with the top case is a choice made for a reason. I suppose we can assume it's because Apple is trying to make it unrepairable, but that flies in the face of the fact that they need to make repairs themselves. It's clear apple can make it separable (see the Macbook Air repair options), and the article in question even says Apple plans on doing the same for the other Macbooks. so it really feels like a lot of this is complaining that Apple hasn't gone out of their way to tool up an entirely new set of assemblies outside of what they provide their own in house repair people, and assuming this is do to maliciousness rather than simply doing the most reasonable thing which is opening up their own official processes and parts to the public.
> Or does it provide all the information necessary for someone to correctly perform repair or maintenance
Well, that's the problem. Apple doesn't provide all of the necessary information to safely perform board repairs or fix mechanical failure. If you break your car's window, you can go get it replaced in an afternoon. If you break your Macbook's display, your options are to take it to an Apple Store and let them quote you a repair, or buy their $500 topcase "do it yourself" replacement kit. All roads lead back to Apple, and Apple deliberately destroys all roads to repairing your computer. This is clearly evidenced by their unbelievably coarse selection of replacement parts, forcing their customers to buy replacements for components they don't need.
In other words, it's like breaking your windshield and being told to get a new car or replace the entire chassis. Apple can fix this, and quite easily at that, but why would they? They have a direct financial incentive to keep letting Macbooks break in unfortunate ways. The most common damage (screen/display, logic board) also happens to be the most expensive, and their price is entirely artificial.
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.
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?
The keyboard and upper case enclosure doesn’t constitute “vast portions of the final product” to me. That still leaves the display, logic board, audio board, io board, fans, track pad, lower enclosure and all the misc parts like antennas, hinges etc.
Should it be possible to replace just the battery and not need to replace the entire top case with it? Sure. And for some of their laptops you can (like the MBA) and for the others they say they will be providing separate versions in the future. But we should be clear here that you’re not replacing “vast portions” of the laptop even if you did it now. You have to remove those items to replace the component, but remove and reinstall is not replace.
The article and manual everyone is talking about explicitly say that the top case situation is temporary and that Apple will offer battery-only parts in the future. Stop making mountains out of molehills. They're attempting to cover as many repairs with the same parts as possible. This is a supply chain issue not an intentional requirement to force people to replace parts that don't need replacement.
I replaced my laptop fan after it was grinding. The full disassemble/upgrade manual was like 30 pages. It is a system 76 machine which is just a clevo machine.
edit (30 pages).
(they post they're own manuals on github..)
This is why I argue that code should not have documentation. The more documentation and comments you have, the less modifiable the code is.
If you have 162 pages of documentation, your code must be crap. If you have one page of documentation and it reads like it was sent through Translation Party, your code must be awesome.
Feedback from iFixit is nice and all, but has Louis Rossmann weighed in on this topic yet? All feedback prior to Louis getting loose on YouTube is just the opening act.
UPDATE: Louis Rossmann has published his opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32581896 (TL;DR: 90% useless for him but an improvement from 100% useless like Apple's previous program)
Apple's self-repair program is very obviously malicious compliance.
Every rational person will tell you that shipping rented hardware back-and-forth with strict exchange of exactly one broken part for exactly one new part individually for every repair is a bad idea.
Parts and equipment need to be available for purchase with no strings attached so they can be stocked on shelves in repair shops.
I've had my 16" MBP since early April and I only have 30 cycles on the battery. At my usage rate, I charge this thing about once or twice a week on average. At this rate, the battery is going to last longer than any laptop battery I've ever owned. And then when it finally degrades to the point that I need to replace it, I would happily pay $199 to Apple for a new one rather than save a few dollars and do it myself. Plus I'd rather have someone to blame other than myself if it f's up.
I have a disassembled laptop in my garage after a failed attempt to replace the battery on my 8 year old MacBook. Apple no longer offers repairs nor is there anyone else in the area I could find to do it. I replaced my wife’s (10 year old) battery a few months prior to attempting mine: hers required a few screws and was done in about 5 minutes. Mine required disassembling the whole computer dissolving the adhesive on the old battery and replacing then reassembling. If you’re going to plan on having apple fix your battery do it 5 or 6 years from now regardless of the condition and then pray you have some repair option when Apple stops providing support.
Good advice, thanks. I've replaced the battery on my wifes 2013 MBA and it was incredibly easy.
My MBP is maxed out and was quite an investment so I want to keep it around for as long as possible. I'll probably just be safe and have Apple replace the battery around 5 years assuming it stays usable for that long.
Apple is too late to implement battery protection feature (limit max charging%) for always AC connected machine. It's implemented in 2019 meanwhile 2000s ThinkPads supported that.
I glanced through the manual linked in answers elsewhere. The Apple manual is very detailed and lays out the risks you could potentially get into - and thats a good thing. At this point, iFixit criticism looks more like a rant. FWIW, Apple must be going through this process - its not like they have shortcuts they arent willing to part with.
162 pages to replace the one degradable component. Apple sets the environment back by making this a hurdle, but it definitely helps their shareholders.
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 is vastly superior to the iFixit guides.
An example of that is that the Apple guide has more descriptive language to ensure that the user feels the correct sensations when performing a step.
Here's the iFixit guide for replacing the antenna module: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+A...
iFixit: Pivot the spudger against the hinge to pry up the end of the antenna bar.
Apple: Gently slide the flat end of the black stick below one of the four screw holes (1) to loosen the antenna module from the tape on the top case. Then rotate the black stick until you feel a click (2).
Apple's instructions also include steps to perform if an action isn't "easy":
iFixit: The antenna bar is secured with some adhesive and may require some force to dislodge.
Apple: If the antenna module doesn’t release from the tape, slowly and gently slide the black stick under the module to loosen it.