New Anti-Consumer MacBook Pros – Teardown and Repair Assessment [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Hwb5xvBn8

by sharno • 3 years ago

53 42 3 years ago

gregjor12• 3 years ago

Almost no consumer products get designed and manufactured in a way that allows self-repair or upgrade. Cars? TVs? Appliances? Phones? No. What off-the-shelf products do we own that an average person can repair or upgrade?

People who need or want that feature can find laptops they can tinker with. Everyone else — the majority of consumers — will opt for price and convenience.

ActorNightly2• 3 years ago

It's not about tinkering. People want the option to have their stuff repaired without getting scammed. It's well known that Apple techs will scam people in replacing whole motherboards rather than fix the small circuit issue at fault. Same thing for John Deer equipment that requires payment for specialized techs to come out.

On the other hand with most cars, you can take it to a mechanic who can diagnose the issue, and order the respective part.

FireBeyond• 3 years ago

Or outright replace the computer. My MBA had a damaged charging circuit. Battery was fine. Computer ran fine on AC, passed their diagnostics. Just couldn't deliver a charge to the battery.

I expected $2-300 after parts and labor.

"Looks like that will probably run you $950. How about we talk about getting you into a new Mac instead?"

No. It got repurposed into a DAW for my stepdaughter.

gregjor12• 3 years ago

It makes no economic sense to Apple to replace components on a robot-soldered board. Not a scam, just the realities of manufacturing. Almost everything we buy has the same issue. Consumers prefer paying less. AppleCare available too.

I’ve had auto mechanics try to scam me. Never Apple. John Deere isn’t selling common consumer products. Pretty bad comparisons. Try comparing to Samsung or Lenovo or Microsoft (Surface).

mistrial9• 3 years ago

massive consumer goods markets are not resulting in the best goods for the most people, they are making the most entrapment, the most addictive products as refinement -- perhaps a natural result when profit is the motive in command-and-control transactions.

secondly - long repairable lifetimes are direct targets for quick-turnaround profit attacks from ambitious and pressured decision makers. Mature company brand reputation purchased with borrowed cash and a change in the product and the warranty, is common. All that takes is someone with enough attitude to justify it. It is easy to justify, behind closed doors.

Throw away products, long food miles, lock-in service agreements, are consumer goods markets gone wrong.

gregjor12• 3 years ago

Maybe. Or just consumers repeatedly choosing price and convenience and immediacy over quality or long-term considerations.

bitwize• 3 years ago

Again, read this Mastodon thread by Hector Martin, who forgot more than most right-to-repair advocates know about how Apple devices work internally, about this issue:

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110803356645502548

Unlike every other laptop vendor, Apple actually gives a shit about the security of their systems, and does much, much more to harden a MacBook against firmware-level exploits than anyone else in the industry. That includes moving the controller, firmware, and configuration/calibration data on-die to the M2 and having signed, verified firmware.

Apple is simply built different as a company, and their concern for security and integrity of your personal data is simply UNMATCHED in the industry.

dotnet005• 3 years ago

Apple is well aware that the average user does not need that level of hardening, while also being aware that it gives them easy cover for unethical practices when it comes to repairing their hardware.

It's the "think of the children" equivalent for making things repairable.

olliej• 3 years ago

I know right? they should do what other manufacturers do: sell insecure hardware to consumers, and charge 10x extra for bolted-on-later security for people who "need it".

After all, there's never been articles about exploiting consumer devices through firmware and driver flaws, right? Nor have there ever been attacks caused by plugging in peripherals.

You can either have secure hardware, or tamperable hardware, you can't have both.

rangestransform• 3 years ago

i'd argue that everyone's device should be secure against nation-state-level actors, so that those who actually need it won't stand out from the crowd at all

Gigachad2• 3 years ago

What is the basis of your claim that users don't need secure devices?

quailfarmer• 3 years ago

Agreed with Hector, there’s so many bad-faith or misinformed opinions around this.

They should probably be obligated to provide calibration tools. However, the risk of providing those freely is that it increases the street value for stolen devices. The fact that a stolen iPhone can’t be erased and sold is a feature many people care about. Conveniently it also helps Apple’s bottom line. Someone needs to come up with a system to allow sustainable reuse without encouraging theft.

gbil• 3 years ago

so google provides a calibration software for the pixel fingerprint sensor, I've read of no security vulnerabilities with the sensor though and yet apple is not able to provide a screen calibration software because.... security

someone is trying to use 1 excuse for mulitple wrongdoings and sorry but it doesn't work

chazeon• 3 years ago

It's really painful to look at all those screws. A few days ago I opened up a ThinkCentre m900. There is only one screw and you can get access to RAM, and SSD.

Moldoteck• 3 years ago

Welp, maybe rysen framework will be good enough in battery life to motivate me switch from a macbook)

penjelly• 3 years ago

the most insane examples ive heard of are the parts are ID'd so you cant swap out generic parts for even tiny repairs, the os will warn you youre using unregistered parts and prevent use

Gigachad2• 3 years ago

Warning you is good, that's putting info in the users hand. Preventing use is the problem.

If you buy a device second hand, or you bring it in for repair, you want to know if you are getting genuine parts or not.

fragmede• 3 years ago

It's to destroy the parts market. If your laptop gets stolen, even if the thief can't get into your data, even if the thief can't use your laptop as-is, without a parts serial number database, it's still valuable for parts. By denying the use of the parts, it makes stolen laptops worthless. If a laptop's even worth $50 in parts, it's worth it to the destitute and desperate.

New Anti-Consumer MacBook Pros – Teardown and Repair Assessment [video]

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