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>It's not much of a barrier. This would be missing the point. There is a barrier in place. It hasn't been justified by anybody for technical reasons, so it exi

>It's not much of a barrier. This would be missing the point. There is a barrier in place. It hasn't been justified by anybody for technical reasons, so it exists only for the sake of being a barrier to repair. Is that acceptable behaviour from a company?

khedoros1 9y ago
If disassembly will cause the company more harm than benefit (e.g. consequences of inept repair attempts, or even just idle curiosity), it makes sense for them to put up a toekn barrier of some kind. I think that as far as the actual repairability of Apple devices goes, focusing on the screws is bikeshedding. The screws are trivial to get around. Why not talk about the glued-together, soldered-on parts instead? Those seem like much bigger issues to me.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  Because the internal glue might be forgiven by Apple's design needs, in the kind of statement like the one they made at the top of this thread. The screws aren't important as a barrier to repairability, but because they have no other purpose. It is not a consequence of product design to select a screw solely on the virtue that it makes user repair more difficult. On principle, the screws are more significant as a reflection of Apple's negative attitude towards its customers.
  - eridius 9y ago
    Its attitude is that its customers shouldn't be self-repairing devices. And that attitude is absolutely correct. The average Apple customer has no business whatsoever opening their device. And that's what the screws are, a small barrier that tells the user "you shouldn't open this unless you know what you're doing".
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > The screws aren't important as a barrier to repairability, but because they have no other purpose. Ah. From experience, the only thing that stopped me from disassembling things as a youngster that I couldn't have gotten back together were often unusual screws. In my mind, that's a more reasonable reason to use specialized screws, because they aren't more than a token barrier to actually repairing the device. Since I don't have access to Apple's internal design documents, I have no idea if that's actually their stated reason, but it makes more sense to me than malice on Apple's part.
    - ivanbakel 9y ago
      This is direct contradiction to your previous statement that the screws are trivial to get around.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        For someone who could believably repair it. I thought that would be implied by "that I couldn't have gotten back together", but I forget that someone need that kind of thing spelled out to them. It's easier to get a hold of the necessary screwdrivers than to actually repair the device.

khedoros1 9y ago

If disassembly will cause the company more harm than benefit (e.g. consequences of inept repair attempts, or even just idle curiosity), it makes sense for them to put up a toekn barrier of some kind. I think that as far as the actual repairability of Apple devices goes, focusing on the screws is bikeshedding. The screws are trivial to get around. Why not talk about the glued-together, soldered-on parts instead? Those seem like much bigger issues to me.

ivanbakel 9y ago
Because the internal glue might be forgiven by Apple's design needs, in the kind of statement like the one they made at the top of this thread. The screws aren't important as a barrier to repairability, but because they have no other purpose. It is not a consequence of product design to select a screw solely on the virtue that it makes user repair more difficult. On principle, the screws are more significant as a reflection of Apple's negative attitude towards its customers.
- eridius 9y ago
  Its attitude is that its customers shouldn't be self-repairing devices. And that attitude is absolutely correct. The average Apple customer has no business whatsoever opening their device. And that's what the screws are, a small barrier that tells the user "you shouldn't open this unless you know what you're doing".
- khedoros1 9y ago
  > The screws aren't important as a barrier to repairability, but because they have no other purpose. Ah. From experience, the only thing that stopped me from disassembling things as a youngster that I couldn't have gotten back together were often unusual screws. In my mind, that's a more reasonable reason to use specialized screws, because they aren't more than a token barrier to actually repairing the device. Since I don't have access to Apple's internal design documents, I have no idea if that's actually their stated reason, but it makes more sense to me than malice on Apple's part.
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    This is direct contradiction to your previous statement that the screws are trivial to get around.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      For someone who could believably repair it. I thought that would be implied by "that I couldn't have gotten back together", but I forget that someone need that kind of thing spelled out to them. It's easier to get a hold of the necessary screwdrivers than to actually repair the device.