Monday, August 22, 2022

Self Service Repair for M1 Mac Notebooks

Apple (Hacker News):

Self Service Repair for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro offers more than a dozen different repair types for each model, including the display, top case with battery, and trackpad, with more to come. Customers who are experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices will be able to complete repairs on these Mac notebooks, with access to many of the same parts and tools available to Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Service Providers.

[…]

Apple will offer rental kits for $49, so that customers who do not want to purchase tools for a single repair still have access to these professional repair tools. Customers will have access to the tool kit for one week and it will be shipped free of charge.

This is great to see.

Hartley Charlton:

Apple reaffirmed that the program will expand to additional countries later this year, starting in Europe.

Jason Snell:

The cost of repair parts varies widely. An audio board replacement might cost $12, and speakers $29, while the logic board for a 32-core GPU MacBook Pro with 32GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive would run more than $1900. However, depending on the part, Apple will buy back the broken part and refurbish it for re-use in another repair, making that $1900+ logic board repair cost a little less than $600. (If Apple doesn’t reimburse you for a part, they’ll still accept it and recycle it if you want to send it back to them.)

Previously:

Update (2022-08-29): Mr. Macintosh:

Customer: I need to replace the battery in my 2021 M1 MBPro. (out of warranty)

Apple Store: We can do that for you. (parts & labor) = $199

Apple Self Service: You can buy the part from us = $527. You can now perform the repair yourself, then send the old part back = $439

Sam Goldheart (MacRumors, Hacker News):

But let’s not compare Apples to Phillips Screws—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.” And so their guide has you remove literally every component from the top case. The laptop is built on the top case, so to get to it, you’ve got to demanufacture the whole thing.

Previously:

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This is great, but I still want a mac that can be *upgraded*. And while the Mac Pro is designed for upgrades much like its superior non-cylinderical predecessors, $6000+ is way too much money for one — especially given that the tower Mac Pros started at $2500 — and it's still an outdated Intel mac anyway. (Pretty egregious that Apple is charging so much for a mac that's already obsolete and won't get system updates for much longer.)

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