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> What’s incredible here is not that Apple’s internal videos leaked, but that the third-party repair teams have done such an incredible job replicating its proc
by patorjk 8y ago
> What’s incredible here is not that Apple’s internal videos leaked, but that the third-party repair teams have done such an incredible job replicating its procedures without having seen these videos or having access to Apple’s tools.
How do we know that the third-party teams hadn't previously seen these videos? If they had a source that was getting them the videos, they probably wouldn't broadcast that information.
- draw_down 8y agoOr they could hire people with experience working in that part of Apple, etc. That passage does seem a bit naive.
- jjeaff 8y agoI don't see any need for the repair companies to have inside information beyond what is already available. They get detailed schematics of the electronics and as far as how to disassemble, that is generally figured out quickly by companies like ifixit that race to be the first company to post a teardown video on youtube when a new device comes out. They use elaborate equipment and even x-ray to figure out what is going on inside these things.
- basch 8y ago2/3rds of the challange in taking apart an iPhone is the various adhesives holding the screen, battery, and home button together.
- jdietrich 8y agoTaking apart an iPhone is absolutely trivial, relatively speaking. Good repairers can do component-level repairs, even on the weird sandwich PCB on the iPhone X. They can splice together two flat-flex PCBs to repair a TouchID home button. They can restore iCloud-locked devices by removing and reprogramming the flash memory. They can separate the individual layers of a sandwich LCD screen to replace just the cover glass or the digitizer. There are aftermarket suppliers of iPhone X screens, complete with the notch and 3D touch. Third-party iPhone repair represents the absolute cutting edge of electronics repair. The level of precision and ingenuity on display is simply staggering.
- lostlogin 8y ago> They can restore iCloud-locked devices by removing and reprogramming the flash memory. That sounds a little sketchy.
- Deathmax 8y agoI don't think they can do so for newer devices, but here's a video from REWA demonstrating the process: https://youtu.be/AYETzuYlEjE https://youtu.be/AYETzuYlEjE
- heartbreak 8y agoThat takes a pretty shady turn when they start checking serials to see if they're already activated. That's why people with a brand new iPad complain they can't activate it.
- tschwimmer 8y agoThanks for sharing. This whole video is really mindblowing. The level of sophistication is very intense. There's a lot of really cool hardware and software reverse engineering going on here, and it's worth a watch.
- tehfcuk 8y agoIn term of factory reset
- tinus_hn 8y agoAlso unlikely; the lock is not in the device but in Apples servers denying activation. To fool it you need to put a legitimate identifier into to locked device. You can’t just make up numbers because Apple has them in a database. And you can’t duplicate them because then one of the devices gets locked. It’s more likely they use identifiers, chips or boards from unlocked but broken devices.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Animats 8y agoThose elastic strips look like a variant on 3M's "Command" adhesive system for wall hooks.[1] Those can be safely mounted and unmounted. [1] https://www.command.com https://www.command.com
- moepstar 8y agoWait, somebody has and uses the domain command.com? TIL..
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- monocasa 8y agoWith the right setup, PCBs are basically source provided. There's only so much you can obfuscate when all of the chips still have to be connected the right way.
- jdietrich 8y ago>How do we know that the third-party teams hadn't previously seen these videos? The best third-party repairers are vastly more advanced than Apple's own warranty repair service. They're constantly pushing the limits of what is considered possible in SMD rework. None of these videos would have provided any useful information to them. iFixit are rank amateurs compared to companies like G-lon, REWA and ZXW. The fact that Motherboard praise them as "incredible" is frankly embarrassing.
- andrewmcwatters 8y agoThanks for adding the perspective: I had no idea who these players were in the space prior to you mentioning them. I guess that says something about iFixit's marketing outreach.
- jdietrich 8y agoiFixit sell DIY repair kits to ordinary consumers, so they need to cultivate a certain public image. The companies I mentioned sell tools to professional repairers, so they don't really care if consumers have heard of them. My gripe is with the author of this piece, who seems to unquestioningly regurgitate iFixit's PR talking points. iFixit provide a useful service and do cool stuff, but they're much better at marketing than they are at fixing things.
- yborg 8y agoYou seem to have some gripe with iFixit itself - the article just points out that iFixit has reverse-engineered some of these techniques and makes them available to the public unlike the many undoubtedly skilled professional repair companies who have a vested interest in making sure the public is as ignorant as possible. This makes it impossible to show other such examples; how this becomes "regurgitating iFixit PR" is unclear to me.
- urda 8y agoBased on the comment history GP has some axe to grind with iFixit. I don't get why they dislike iFixit, as the guides they put out are high quality and well suited for their target demographic. Not everything has to be geared to the super-knowledgeable reader, especially things like repair guides for consumer electronics.