Apple will start supplying Mac parts to independent repair shops

[Pickles von Brine]

 

Quote

 

Apple is finally loosening up its tightly-controlled repair program to allow independent repair shops to fix Macs.

The iPhone-maker — which until last year only allowed certain non-Apple partners access to company training and official parts — will provide training and official parts to a slew of smaller, independent shops as sales of its flagship computers have soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Apple last month reported 21.6 percent growth in quarterly Mac sales, bringing its computer business to $7 billion as more people are working from home. That’s compared to a 7.3 percent uptick the previous year.

The move means independent repair shops will be offered official parts for out-of-warranty repairs at the same price offered to authorized service providers, which perform warranty work.

Source

Working at an IRP, this is good to hear. To finally be able to order parts that for newer systems will be nice. May times new machines come out and we cannot even get a fan for the system for at least a year, sometimes much longer. Now, quesiton is how much the parts will be... I know apple only charges like 40 bucks for labor...

Only issue now is the price of the parts... e-e Apple charges out the butt. 

[Mateyyy]

About time.

[starry]

I really want to beleive that apple is doing something good here. But Ive seen this before, they do this as a PR stunt every once in a while and then make the program impossible to take advantage of, or make the requirements for it absurd. I dont have enough information to understand the situation yet for this one, but we'll see how it goes.

[zeusthemoose]

Finally. Let’s hope they start supplying parts for all devices soon. But knowing Apple, they will charge an absurd amount for parts.

[Athan Immortal]

2 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

About time.

Hold your celebration until Louis Rossman posts something. I seem to remember him going on about Apple concocting a scheme that still hamstrung independent repairers.

[starry]

2 minutes ago, Athan Immortal said:

Hold your celebration until Louis Rossman posts something. I seem to remember him going on about Apple concocting a scheme that still hamstrung independent repairers.

I expect him to be flipping off the camera in about a month, really hope Im wrong but probably not.

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Athan Immortal said:

Hold your celebration until Louis Rossman posts something. I seem to remember him going on about Apple concocting a scheme that still hamstrung independent repairers.

Please don't wait for Rossmann.  He's not a god; he's a repair shop owner who uses hyperbole to drum up business for products he doesn't even use.

[Pickles von Brine]

35 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Please don't wait for Rossmann.  He's not a god; he's a repair shop owner who uses hyperbole to drum up business for products he doesn't even use.

He has fair points. If you work in the repair industry like I have (for 11 years now) you would understand his point of view. Plus, he is a firm supporter of right repair. Something that affects all of us and also affects my home town (farming community). If you knew of the BS that farmers have to go through, his points makes even more sense. 

He talks about these things because he has a voice, not because his voice allows him to talk about these things. 

Things just are not repairable anymore and Apple is one of the worse at making their stuff not repairable. 


Also, do you have any proof to backup your claim?

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, BlueScope819 said:

Important quote:

"at the same price offered to authorized service providers, which perform warranty work."

 

So basically, this is the same deal as when they started selling the iPhone bits. They charged full retail price for the part, say a iPhone 6s screen for $200, ignoring the fact that it's not economical to do that at all because you can buy a perfect condition iPhone 6s for $200, take the screen from it, and swap it in.

 

It's yet to see how this plays out with Mac parts but I 100% guarantee you you are gonna see a $300 kit of 8x2 DDR4.

 

The only possible part that it would make any sense for is those parts which you can't swap, like T2 SSDs, so that you are able to at least install a new OS on a machine with a bricked SSD to resell it. But they will probably charge $500.

That's no different from how Dell does it. They send you a part, and you have to send the "defect" part back or be charged the full price of the part.

[Pickles von Brine]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

That's no different from how Dell does it. They send you a part, and you have to send the "defect" part back or be charged the full price of the part.

Most companies require this. Even if you work in enterprise. Old part goes in, old part gets sent back. Generally, depending on the part, the old one gets fixed and put back into circulation. 

[Pickles von Brine]

And then there is what apple does. 

[Trik'Stari]

Someone at apple is desperately having to come up with actual repair manuals that don't just include the word "no". 

[DrMacintosh]

The biggest thing that Apple needs to do is to let independent shops order Top Cases, Displays, Batteries, and chips from a catalog for board level repair in advance. That way when a customer walks in, they can have their machine serviced right away. If you can only order the parts after the customer walks in, the customer will just go right to Apple. 

 

Logic Board replacements should be handled by Apple directly imo, but component level repair should be able to be performed by small shops that have the proper training. 

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

Why should logic board replacements be handled by apple yet a small repair shop can do microsoldering on it?

Too much potential for fraud to take place imo. Shops can order logic boards for a machine even if the old one didn't need a replacement and use it for parts. Also I don't think Apple Wants shops to be able to order all the parts necessary to create a new Mac from replacement parts. 

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

How else do you think said repair shops are gonna get the parts to do the microsoldering?

If you had actually read what I had typed, I said shops should be able to order chips for the logic boards from a catalog. 

 

1 minute ago, BlueScope819 said:

Also, if you order all of the parts and create an entire new mac, it should cost about the same as if you were to buy it brand new from the store, otherwise the prices aren't fair at all.

Who said anything about fair prices? Apple does not have to do any of this. They can charge whatever they want. If you ask me, replacement parts should cost a premium to prevent shops from building new machines out of replacement parts and selling them for profit. 

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

pretty sure "chips" is quite broad and doesn't count other board level components that may need replacement

I used "chips" because it is a broad term and I chose it to specifically cover any "chip" that is on the logic board of a Mac

 

What other meaning could you possibly have interpreted from: 

22 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

and chips from a catalog for board level repair in advance.

 

[Dabombinable]

If Apple does the same in Australia, they are going to be better than HP. They refused to sell replacement screens to local repair shops, and demand that laptops get sent in for repairs (and in my case uoted a price higher than what I bought the laptop for.

[rcmaehl]

Here you go:
 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, BlueScope819 said:

What's wrong with that? Fraud is not ordering a part and then using it for more parts. That's the entire idea, pal. 

That's called NOS (New Old Stock) and decidedly not what any OEM wants. If someone is selling NOS Mac's using parts that were intended for repairs, then that shop is going to be violating trademarks and get it's ass handed to it under laws about producing counterfeits.

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Buying a motherboard to use the parts off of it is violating trademark laws? Can you spell out for me why that is?

https://medium.com/supplyframe-hardware/the-underground-parts-store-identifying-counterfeit-computer-chips-3020adbb01f7

 

Point being, if you can not show how you acquired that mac to sell it, it's counterfeit. You'll find a similar problem in vehicle repairs, where if a vehicle was a total write-off, it's VIN-identified parts can not find their way back into the shops, it has to be crushed. They do not want someone assembling a car and passing it off as new, that's been Frankenstein'd from several wrecked versions of the same car.

 

It's not the same as putting together PC from parts, because you can order PC parts independently, and you can't call a Hacintosh a mac. People have tried and have had their asses handed to them. This is a closed case. If you assemble a Mac from NOS, what you have is a hackintosh wearing Apple's trademarks because it wasn't built by Apple.

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, BlueScope819 said:

I don't think anyone here is advocating for assembly of a mac and reselling it as made by Apple, I think what we are saying here is that you should be able to pull parts off of boards so that you can fix stuff. Here is an example, in the case of a regular, everyday PC. On your PC, you have a bad RAM stick. From another PC, I swap the RAM stick. Is my PC counterfeit now that I used another RAM stick? No one is false advertising, clearly it's independent repair so they know it's not from Apple. It's right in the title. Why should it be any different from a Mac? If I desolder a fuse from a motherboard and put it on another one because the fuse was blown because the backlight circuit on the motherboard was corroded from liquid damage, do I have a counterfeit motherboard because I replaced a fuse on it with one from a donor board?

RAM is a user-replacable part. You can literately do it yourself https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/activity-monitor/actmntr34865/mac

 

The only parts in the mac that will bite you for replacing it is the MB and the SSD. With the iPhone it's one PCB and third party repairers were bitten when they replaced parts without doing the steps needed to clean the TPM in the T2.

[starry]

Its weird to see people advocating for a massive corporation with too much money to control the supply chain and where customers are allowed to take their device that they own for repairs.

Im quite sure that anti right to repair legislation is part of a long line of goals for CEOs' and rich shareholders' wet dream to destroy private property for the average citizen.

Imo antitrust laws should really cover this. I do not care if its against trademark laws, the law does not always represent what is correct, or just, all it does is set rules.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, BlueScope819 said:

That was my PC example. I'll copypaste for you:

Why should it be any different from a Mac? If I buy a motherboard on eBay and then desolder a fuse from it, and put it on another one because the fuse was blown due the backlight circuit on the motherboard being corroded from liquid damage, do I have a counterfeit motherboard because I replaced a fuse on it with one from a donor board?

Because that's not the same thing.

 

This is the same thing: https://www.delorean.com/new-delorean-production-update.htm

Quote

In December 2015, the language from the “Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act” (H.R. 2675) – which creates a reasonable regulatory structure allowing small companies to produce a limited number of completed replica motor vehicles that resemble the appearance of cars produced 25 years ago or more. – was inserted to the federal highway bill (H.R. 22) and signed into law.

Even if you build something from NOS OEM parts, you're not building the original vehicle. The same goes for computers. 

 

You can not say it's a "new" or "like-new" "Apple Computer" because it's none of those. It's, at most accurately described as a "refurbished" "Computer", and you'd have to leave the OS off of it. Apple did not authorize you to make a new Apple computer, as Apple is the exclusive seller of "Apple" branded computers. Apple does not want you to assemble a Mac from NOS (New Old Stock) parts any more than any other OEM does, and trust me, a lot of people out there do the frankenstein'ing bit, old systems with new parts, new-ish systems with all previously-still-in-shrink-wrap parts, etc. It's not honest however if you try to sell it as a new system supported by Apple, because it's not. If someone wants AppleCare on it, they can't get it, because the MB will be listed as either a Warranty exchange part or a destroyed/written-off part. 

 

It likely won't stop you from one-off selling a "Apple Computer built with new parts" but you'll get your ass handed to you if you decide to start selling these by ordering warranty exchange parts from Apple. It's more likely Apple will not permit you to ever have more than one MB or SSD in stock kept as spare since these parts are keyed to serial numbers, and will require every board replaced to be sent back before you get another one.

 

[Kisai]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

That is not at all what I am talking about. I am not talking about

I am talking about fixing an Apple computer.

 

I will be extremely specific.

 

If I buy a motherboard on eBay and then desolder a fuse from it, and put it on another motherboard in order to fix it, because I am unable to buy that fuse anywhere else, in order to make a repair for a paying customer, you are saying that the device is now counterfeit because I swapped a component from exactly the same model of part to a different part?

 

Yes or no, it's very simple.

You changed the context here though. It went from "building an entire system from parts supplied by apple" to "swapping a part from a dead system without involving apple"

 

If you're an electronics wizard and can deal with all the surface-mount bits, by all means try to repair it by swapping parts, but you're more likely to just straight up fail, and typical "repair" shops never get out the soldering iron. If you have to get out the soldering iron for something made after 2000, you're wasting your time unless you have expert knowledge on why that part is failed. A fuse can be tested with a continuity test, you don't need to desolder it to test it, and you can replace it with any fuse of the same rating. 

 

In general, it's not worth trying to fix laptops, tablets and phones because there's nothing you can swap other than the screen. Everything else is propietarty to that platform, and only the OEM can get you a replacement anyway. So if you have two exactly identical models, and the part that is defective is not swappable as one unit, then you're not going to end up with one working system, you're going to end up with one "mostly working" and one "mostly dead" system. Particularly if that part something like a cable between two parts inside the board. Have you seen how cat-whisker-thin cooling fan wires are in a laptop? Yeah, you're more likely to break it by breathing on it.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

5 hours ago, BlueScope819 said:

they have a blown fuse on their backlight circut

That's not how it works! It's a Macbook! The fuse has brand new Neva blow technology, so you only have to replace the LCD conector.