Cory Doctorow on Apple’s cement overshoes:
"In fact, nearly every part of Apple’s official repair process was worse than the iFixit equivalent. The useless battery-seating press kept knocking the battery out of alignment, and the fancy torx drivers were choresome to use. All of this compounded Apple’s repair-hostile design: swapping the battery requires three different screwdriver bits, removing the speaker, and managing a cluster of hidden fasteners that hold down the fiddly ribbon cables. Apple’s official tools don’t have (industry standard) magnetic tips, so Hollister spent a lot of time chasing minuscule pieces of metal around his workbench."
It’s tough to see Apple’s self-repair programme as anything but, as Cory puts it, “repairwashing”. What Apple should be doing is building phones and computers which are easy to repair. The company has the best industrial designers in the world. If any business can make things that are upgradeable and serviceable without thousands of pounds of equipment, it’s Apple.
