9 ms·

This is only ever so slightly related, but I just have to write this somewhere because it happened yesterday. An iPhone X is what, 4 years old? I took one that

This is only ever so slightly related, but I just have to write this somewhere because it happened yesterday. An iPhone X is what, 4 years old? I took one that died completely to the apple store yesterday. They said that it's out of warranty and the "logic board was dead" so there was nothing they could do. But I could pay $560 for a new one! I dissappointedly gave them the phone to recycle. Then on the walk out of the mall I saw one of the "we fix phones" kiosks and thought I'd give it a shot. I was thankfully able to get the "paperweight" phone back from the Apple Store. And, I'm not kidding here, this single employee at the kiosk had the phone split open and booting in under two minutes. The genius bar staff just resorts to "bad logic board" when they don't want to spend even a minute diagnosing the problem. Or maybe they don't have the skills, IDK. I was happy that this solo kiosk rep was a repair wizard.

uncletammy 5y ago
What ended up being the actual problem with it?
kurupt213 5y ago
Servicing outdated hardware is completely against the Apple idea of providing an excellent customer experience, which requires helping you select from the current product offering that meets today’s performance experience goals
brianwawok 5y ago
I don't think genius employees are trained or permitted by Apple rules to open up a phone and start tinkering around. They are very much there to provide basic t1 tech support, and if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace.
- Bud 5y ago
  Correct. Genius Bar folks are not hardware-repair folks.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Isn't that the problem though? That someone in a mall kiosk is more skilled and authorized to fix a phone than an entire Apple store full of Apple geniuses? Edit: Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP) have mall kiosks, for those doubting authorization.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Skilled perhaps. Authorized? No. At least not by Apple.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - bipson 5y ago
    Ah, when talking about authorized: Several repairs on iPhones and other Apple hardware are exactly that: not authorized by Apple, unless done by Apple itself.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script.
    - ls15 5y ago
      > That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script. Telling customers that the phone cannot be repaired is deceptive though when it actually can be repaired. That's where I would expect regulators to step in. The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it."
      - milkytron 5y ago
        > The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it." They may or may not be competent to repair the phone, but Apple probably doesn't permit them to. So it might be more accurate to say that they aren't allowed to repair the phone, but what they _can_ do is sell you a new one.
- sigmar 5y ago
  Seems like a scam that they are portraying these people as "genius" level repair services in order to trick customers into (unknowingly) giving apple their repairable devices.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    Yes but aren't people who think they are geniuses the actual idiots? I guess we should protect idiots but can we?
    - hetspookjee 5y ago
      In general one falling for a scam doesn’t make one an idiot. Though on the other hand it might also be a slick Nigerian prince kinda of filter to push even more stuff onto whoever falls for this genius trick.
    - colpabar 5y ago
      I don't think it's idiotic at all to think that employees of an apple store would be more qualified to fix an iphone than someone in a phone repair kiosk at a mall.
      - taylodl 5y ago
        I've had several friends and family use those "we fix phones" places to fix their iPhone. They're often their own form of a scam - you pay $100 and they "fix" your phone for 30-90 days. I've seen it happen many times.
        leephillips 5y ago
        How exactly do they do this?
        jjeaff 5y ago
        They usually use batteries that are not the best. But the good kiosks will offer at least a one year warranty on the new battery.
- js2 5y ago
  Apple replaced the trackpad on a 2017 non-retina MacBook Air for me in-store last month. It was $130. $51 parts and $79 labor ("HARDWARE REPAIR-LEVEL 1"). They are definitely capable of on-site hardware repairs. Further, if the repair doesn't fix the problem, it's no charge. My only annoyance with Apple this time was that this MBA was like one month past its Applecare expiration and Apple wouldn't provide any sort of "customer good will" exception. My sob story about how much money I've spent with Apple going back decades was met only with: "sorry, policy." I don't know why OP had such a different experience. Seems like a misdiagnosis if the kiosk person was able to repair it so quickly.
  - Covzire 5y ago
    Trackpads are usually pretty easy to replace, hardest part is taking the laptop apart, unplugging the tiny cable without damaging anything and reversing the procedure. I've watched quite a few Apple repair videos, most of them with burned out chips, diodes or capacitors that require re-soldering, a skill I assure you the vast majority of "genius" bar employees don't possess nor do the stores even have the necessary tools on hand.
    - js2 5y ago
      I was refuting "if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace" which is not true. They are capable of replacing components. In OP's case, they obviously misdiagnosed that the entire logic board needed replacement. OP never said what the kiosk employee needed to do to get the phone operational, but given that it took less than two minutes, they likely didn't re-solder anything either.
cyral 5y ago
And the kiosk rep's name? Louis Rossmann
- randombits0 5y ago
  Nah, that’s Paul. Louis is busy promoting Right to Repair.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Ha ha, just finished reading "Laserwriter II" [1] by Tamara Shopsin last night and it reminds me of this. It was a fun little book if only for the trip down memory lane before Apple stores and Genius Bars when ma and pa shops would repair Macs. Book was fun (not amazing) — easy to read in one day. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269270-laserwriter-ii https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269270-laserwriter-ii
gadders 5y ago
They're not genii, they're sales assistants now.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  "Genius" should be taken as "sales genius", not as "technology genius".
e40 5y ago
> Then on the walk out of the mall I saw one of the "we fix phones" kiosks and thought I'd give it a shot Please tell us where that kiosk was. You could help a lot of people.
- bombcar 5y ago
  There are millions of them, usually one or more in each mall. The quality can vary depending on how well they've been trained; the more traffic they have the more likely they are to be pretty good. If you have a broken screen Apple's flat fee for that is honestly very good; but if it is anything more you might as well try the kiosks.
  - brimble 5y ago
    What's the flat fee? I have a gen 1 iPad Pro 12.9" with a broken screen and all the quotes I could get for screen replacement were about the same as buying another one used (which is how I got this one, with an intact screen at the time), and maybe even upgrading a generation in the process. [EDIT] I ask because I didn't find specific info on screen replacement on their site, just a general "service" fee that's about equal to what I paid for this thing originally, just after the gen3 came out.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      The iPhone flat fees are here: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-replacement https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-repla... The iPads are likely not included and yeah, the costs are insane.
    - oefrha 5y ago
      “Screen replacement” isn’t a screen replacement, they literally give you another refurb at a discount. Source: broke my 12.9’’.
      - starfallg 5y ago
        Yeah, they give you a refurb and send your old phone in to fix, which becomes a refurb for someone else down the line (supposedly).
jonny_eh 5y ago
On the bright side, Apple's poor customer support has opened a niche in the market for local entrepreneurs.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Cars are the same. Stay away from the stealership! Resist their grease-less uniforms and bright signs!
  - taylodl 5y ago
    My brother-in-law is a Ford mechanic. When he has problems diagnosing something he has access to Ford's engineers. He can hook the car's computer up to Ford's network and the Ford engineers can run their "digital twin" in real time and see exactly what's going on. They diagnose the problem and my brother-in-law fixes it. Here's the thing - my brother-in-law has been a mechanic for 40 years. He was raised on the race track building race cars. His side hustle as a kid was to repair lawnmowers people threw away as "junk" and sell them. I say all this to point out the man knows his way around a car - yet in this day and age he finds he needs access to the engineers. You may want to think about that when thinking of the service department as the "stealership." That moniker is old and hasn't applied for the past 20 years.
    - doubled112 5y ago
      With that in mind, I've also heard some manufacturers have a problem solving flow chart when the vehicles come in. You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission. I can see why this would be beneficial most of the time. Nine times out of ten it probably saves time, money, effort, reworks, etc. It's that one in ten time where I feel this would fall short.
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        > You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission. That was my German car stealership experience. Car suddenly sounds rough and reports cylinder 1 misfire. I swap around sparkies and coil packs, but still cyl 1 misfire. I write that up, go to dealership because this is beyond me and I figure they have fancier tools than my $20 reader. But for $250 they obviously didn’t read my note and advised replacing sparkies and coil packs even though I’ve 100% excluded those as the cause. And obviously if they had the tools to test a spark plug or coil back, they didn’t use them either. Their flowcharts not only lobotomize their techs, but have taken the place of basic troubleshooting techniques. Next indy read my notes and immediately does a compression test showing cyl 1 holds no pressure. Even sent pictures. Correct diagnosis was failed exhaust valve spring. $2k later and I’m back in order. I shudder to think the stealership could even tear down and rebuild their engine that way.
tshaddox 5y ago
I agree with your overall point that Apple ought to be better about repairing old iPhones, but I would also caution you to wait a bit to see how reliable your iPhone X will actually be after that mall kiosk repair. I had an iPhone X screen replaced by a mall kiosk and it was awful. The screen kinda worked, but had lots of problems flickering and the touch screen seemed very unresponsive. The screen quality itself was also terrible. It wasn't OLED and had terrible color range and contrast. All that is to say that while they did repair the phone enough to make it just barely usable, for less money than an Apple repair or a new phone purchase, but that's about it. If I had that same experience from Apple it would be totally unacceptable. I hope your iPhone X continues to work well for many more years, but I would be surprised!
- simion314 5y ago
  Would be nice if the repair shop or you would have the right to buy the original screen from Apple or from Apple sources and not have to be forced to use second hand parts or black market parts because Apple does not allow you to repair your stuff yourself or at a competent shop.
  - readbeard 5y ago
    Yes, but repair shops should also be upfront that their parts are often (albeit maybe due to no fault of their own) noticeably inferior to original parts.
    - simion314 5y ago
      Sure, like with cars you can decide what parts you want, do you want the expensive side mirror or a cheaper good enough one, you as owner decide and the mechanic or yourself replace the broken one.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    There is an Apple program being rolled out to let you do your own repairs https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-service-repair/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-... https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/08/what-happened-to-apples-new-self-service-repair-program-is-it-still-coming/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/08/what-happened-to-apples-new-s...
matsemann 5y ago
In Norway the law mandated "warranty" is 5 years for products like these. So if you didn't do anything uncommon to break it, it's Apple's problem to make you whole. If they make unservicable phones, that's just a cost they have to eat themselves, and thus provide you with a new one.
- jack_pp 5y ago
  considering how small a % Norway is to apple they probably don't care about eating the cost
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > that's just a cost they have to eat themselves Companies never eat any costs like this. Warranties, including the original one, are insurance policies by another name. You pay a premium for the insurance. For the original warranty, that premium is part of the price of the phone. I guarantee Apple knows how much the premium is. What does an iPhone sell for brand new in Norway? Half again as much as in the US?
  - matsemann 5y ago
    Of course, but it makes the average repair cost upfront. If two phones sell for $1000 in the US, but one has a 10% failure rate and the other 0%, you can't know that buying one of them will on average suddenly cost you a lot more in the future. In Norway the one with a high failure rate would instead be priced around $1100. So manufacturers are incentivized to make more lasting products, which is also good for the environment.
LouisSayers 5y ago
I remember taking my macbook 2012 in which was acting up due to the HD connector becoming fried. The only thing the "geniuses" managed to do was to screw up the HD so it couldn't load. I ended up figuring out the issue, ordered a new cable and fixed the booting issue they introduced on the HD. The laptop still works today - after a couple burnt HD cables I added some extra insulation (tape) and it seems to be running well. Recently took apart and added some new CPU adhesive as the laptop started smelling like body odour (apparently it's a thing with old macbooks). I did recently upgrade to the new M1 Macbook Pro, but very happy to have been able to keep my 2012 around and still have it running well today.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  This is the nice thing about having a large number of mostly identical devices deployed out there. Any problem is google-able and even with a vague description of symptoms, a plausible diagnosis and treatment can usually be predicted quickly. It’s also why I like my mom’s old Toyota and hate my bicycle.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    Aren't 90% of all bicycles just some Shimano components? Or at least most work the same way and documented in Big Blue Book by Park Tools.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Basically. Repairing bicycles is very easy and very standardized, except that some manufacturers just won't tell you what standard a part follows.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      At least shimano stamps a part number on most of its parts. I mostly repair 70s-80s bikes and often encounter an “I’ve never seen this before”, or a situation where parts have the same branding on them, but clearly went through multiple (undocumented) iterations. There ends up being a lot of “close enough” substitutions. E.g. cones on axles.
paxys 5y ago
There are hundreds of Louis Rossmann videos on YouTube that are variations of exactly this. Apple quotes hundreds/thousands for a fix, he opens up the device and unbends a pin in 30 seconds.
greedo 5y ago
I bought a Mac Pro in 2006 and became addicted to World of Warcraft. There was some weird bug with the GPU (Radeon x1900 XT), where it would eventually burn out. The Mac would boot, but no image on my ACD. So I schlepped the whole Mac Pro to the Apple store 50 miles away. They couldn't figure out why the GPU didn't work, so they replaced it under warranty. Two months later, the GPU burned out again (Did I say I played a lot of WoW? Like 18 hours a day?). Schlepp this heavy beast to the store, they swap out the GPU again. Three months later, GPU burns out again, I take it in, and they start giving me side-eye. The Mac was still under warranty, but they were sus about the whole situation. They still replaced the GPU, but kind of gave me the vibe that I was on some no-fly list. Eventually gave up on WoW and the Mac lasted almost another decade as my primary desktop before I turned it into a Plex server in the basement.
Vladimof 5y ago
> The genius bar staff just resorts to "bad logic board" when they don't want to spend even a minute diagnosing the problem. Or maybe they don't have the skills, IDK. I was happy that this solo kiosk rep was a repair wizard. probably neither of those reasons... just more money for Apple this way
JoeyBananas 5y ago
My phone had a cracked screen 4 years ago. I got it repaired and still use it today.

uncletammy 5y ago

What ended up being the actual problem with it?

kurupt213 5y ago

Servicing outdated hardware is completely against the Apple idea of providing an excellent customer experience, which requires helping you select from the current product offering that meets today’s performance experience goals

brianwawok 5y ago

I don't think genius employees are trained or permitted by Apple rules to open up a phone and start tinkering around. They are very much there to provide basic t1 tech support, and if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace.

Bud 5y ago
Correct. Genius Bar folks are not hardware-repair folks.
bduerst 5y ago
Isn't that the problem though? That someone in a mall kiosk is more skilled and authorized to fix a phone than an entire Apple store full of Apple geniuses? Edit: Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP) have mall kiosks, for those doubting authorization.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Skilled perhaps. Authorized? No. At least not by Apple.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- bipson 5y ago
  Ah, when talking about authorized: Several repairs on iPhones and other Apple hardware are exactly that: not authorized by Apple, unless done by Apple itself.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script.
  - ls15 5y ago
    > That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script. Telling customers that the phone cannot be repaired is deceptive though when it actually can be repaired. That's where I would expect regulators to step in. The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it."
    - milkytron 5y ago
      > The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it." They may or may not be competent to repair the phone, but Apple probably doesn't permit them to. So it might be more accurate to say that they aren't allowed to repair the phone, but what they _can_ do is sell you a new one.
sigmar 5y ago
Seems like a scam that they are portraying these people as "genius" level repair services in order to trick customers into (unknowingly) giving apple their repairable devices.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Yes but aren't people who think they are geniuses the actual idiots? I guess we should protect idiots but can we?
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    In general one falling for a scam doesn’t make one an idiot. Though on the other hand it might also be a slick Nigerian prince kinda of filter to push even more stuff onto whoever falls for this genius trick.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    I don't think it's idiotic at all to think that employees of an apple store would be more qualified to fix an iphone than someone in a phone repair kiosk at a mall.
    - taylodl 5y ago
      I've had several friends and family use those "we fix phones" places to fix their iPhone. They're often their own form of a scam - you pay $100 and they "fix" your phone for 30-90 days. I've seen it happen many times.
      - leephillips 5y ago
        How exactly do they do this?
        jjeaff 5y ago
        They usually use batteries that are not the best. But the good kiosks will offer at least a one year warranty on the new battery.
js2 5y ago
Apple replaced the trackpad on a 2017 non-retina MacBook Air for me in-store last month. It was $130. $51 parts and $79 labor ("HARDWARE REPAIR-LEVEL 1"). They are definitely capable of on-site hardware repairs. Further, if the repair doesn't fix the problem, it's no charge. My only annoyance with Apple this time was that this MBA was like one month past its Applecare expiration and Apple wouldn't provide any sort of "customer good will" exception. My sob story about how much money I've spent with Apple going back decades was met only with: "sorry, policy." I don't know why OP had such a different experience. Seems like a misdiagnosis if the kiosk person was able to repair it so quickly.
- Covzire 5y ago
  Trackpads are usually pretty easy to replace, hardest part is taking the laptop apart, unplugging the tiny cable without damaging anything and reversing the procedure. I've watched quite a few Apple repair videos, most of them with burned out chips, diodes or capacitors that require re-soldering, a skill I assure you the vast majority of "genius" bar employees don't possess nor do the stores even have the necessary tools on hand.
  - js2 5y ago
    I was refuting "if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace" which is not true. They are capable of replacing components. In OP's case, they obviously misdiagnosed that the entire logic board needed replacement. OP never said what the kiosk employee needed to do to get the phone operational, but given that it took less than two minutes, they likely didn't re-solder anything either.

cyral 5y ago

And the kiosk rep's name? Louis Rossmann

randombits0 5y ago
Nah, that’s Paul. Louis is busy promoting Right to Repair.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Ha ha, just finished reading "Laserwriter II" [1] by Tamara Shopsin last night and it reminds me of this. It was a fun little book if only for the trip down memory lane before Apple stores and Genius Bars when ma and pa shops would repair Macs. Book was fun (not amazing) — easy to read in one day. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269270-laserwriter-ii https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269270-laserwriter-ii

gadders 5y ago

They're not genii, they're sales assistants now.

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
"Genius" should be taken as "sales genius", not as "technology genius".

e40 5y ago

> Then on the walk out of the mall I saw one of the "we fix phones" kiosks and thought I'd give it a shot Please tell us where that kiosk was. You could help a lot of people.

bombcar 5y ago
There are millions of them, usually one or more in each mall. The quality can vary depending on how well they've been trained; the more traffic they have the more likely they are to be pretty good. If you have a broken screen Apple's flat fee for that is honestly very good; but if it is anything more you might as well try the kiosks.
- brimble 5y ago
  What's the flat fee? I have a gen 1 iPad Pro 12.9" with a broken screen and all the quotes I could get for screen replacement were about the same as buying another one used (which is how I got this one, with an intact screen at the time), and maybe even upgrading a generation in the process. [EDIT] I ask because I didn't find specific info on screen replacement on their site, just a general "service" fee that's about equal to what I paid for this thing originally, just after the gen3 came out.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The iPhone flat fees are here: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-replacement https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-repla... The iPads are likely not included and yeah, the costs are insane.
  - oefrha 5y ago
    “Screen replacement” isn’t a screen replacement, they literally give you another refurb at a discount. Source: broke my 12.9’’.
    - starfallg 5y ago
      Yeah, they give you a refurb and send your old phone in to fix, which becomes a refurb for someone else down the line (supposedly).

jonny_eh 5y ago

On the bright side, Apple's poor customer support has opened a niche in the market for local entrepreneurs.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Cars are the same. Stay away from the stealership! Resist their grease-less uniforms and bright signs!
- taylodl 5y ago
  My brother-in-law is a Ford mechanic. When he has problems diagnosing something he has access to Ford's engineers. He can hook the car's computer up to Ford's network and the Ford engineers can run their "digital twin" in real time and see exactly what's going on. They diagnose the problem and my brother-in-law fixes it. Here's the thing - my brother-in-law has been a mechanic for 40 years. He was raised on the race track building race cars. His side hustle as a kid was to repair lawnmowers people threw away as "junk" and sell them. I say all this to point out the man knows his way around a car - yet in this day and age he finds he needs access to the engineers. You may want to think about that when thinking of the service department as the "stealership." That moniker is old and hasn't applied for the past 20 years.
  - doubled112 5y ago
    With that in mind, I've also heard some manufacturers have a problem solving flow chart when the vehicles come in. You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission. I can see why this would be beneficial most of the time. Nine times out of ten it probably saves time, money, effort, reworks, etc. It's that one in ten time where I feel this would fall short.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      > You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission. That was my German car stealership experience. Car suddenly sounds rough and reports cylinder 1 misfire. I swap around sparkies and coil packs, but still cyl 1 misfire. I write that up, go to dealership because this is beyond me and I figure they have fancier tools than my $20 reader. But for $250 they obviously didn’t read my note and advised replacing sparkies and coil packs even though I’ve 100% excluded those as the cause. And obviously if they had the tools to test a spark plug or coil back, they didn’t use them either. Their flowcharts not only lobotomize their techs, but have taken the place of basic troubleshooting techniques. Next indy read my notes and immediately does a compression test showing cyl 1 holds no pressure. Even sent pictures. Correct diagnosis was failed exhaust valve spring. $2k later and I’m back in order. I shudder to think the stealership could even tear down and rebuild their engine that way.

tshaddox 5y ago

I agree with your overall point that Apple ought to be better about repairing old iPhones, but I would also caution you to wait a bit to see how reliable your iPhone X will actually be after that mall kiosk repair. I had an iPhone X screen replaced by a mall kiosk and it was awful. The screen kinda worked, but had lots of problems flickering and the touch screen seemed very unresponsive. The screen quality itself was also terrible. It wasn't OLED and had terrible color range and contrast. All that is to say that while they did repair the phone enough to make it just barely usable, for less money than an Apple repair or a new phone purchase, but that's about it. If I had that same experience from Apple it would be totally unacceptable. I hope your iPhone X continues to work well for many more years, but I would be surprised!

simion314 5y ago
Would be nice if the repair shop or you would have the right to buy the original screen from Apple or from Apple sources and not have to be forced to use second hand parts or black market parts because Apple does not allow you to repair your stuff yourself or at a competent shop.
- readbeard 5y ago
  Yes, but repair shops should also be upfront that their parts are often (albeit maybe due to no fault of their own) noticeably inferior to original parts.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Sure, like with cars you can decide what parts you want, do you want the expensive side mirror or a cheaper good enough one, you as owner decide and the mechanic or yourself replace the broken one.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  There is an Apple program being rolled out to let you do your own repairs https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-service-repair/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-... https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/08/what-happened-to-apples-new-self-service-repair-program-is-it-still-coming/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/08/what-happened-to-apples-new-s...

matsemann 5y ago

In Norway the law mandated "warranty" is 5 years for products like these. So if you didn't do anything uncommon to break it, it's Apple's problem to make you whole. If they make unservicable phones, that's just a cost they have to eat themselves, and thus provide you with a new one.

jack_pp 5y ago
considering how small a % Norway is to apple they probably don't care about eating the cost
rootusrootus 5y ago
> that's just a cost they have to eat themselves Companies never eat any costs like this. Warranties, including the original one, are insurance policies by another name. You pay a premium for the insurance. For the original warranty, that premium is part of the price of the phone. I guarantee Apple knows how much the premium is. What does an iPhone sell for brand new in Norway? Half again as much as in the US?
- matsemann 5y ago
  Of course, but it makes the average repair cost upfront. If two phones sell for $1000 in the US, but one has a 10% failure rate and the other 0%, you can't know that buying one of them will on average suddenly cost you a lot more in the future. In Norway the one with a high failure rate would instead be priced around $1100. So manufacturers are incentivized to make more lasting products, which is also good for the environment.

LouisSayers 5y ago

I remember taking my macbook 2012 in which was acting up due to the HD connector becoming fried. The only thing the "geniuses" managed to do was to screw up the HD so it couldn't load. I ended up figuring out the issue, ordered a new cable and fixed the booting issue they introduced on the HD. The laptop still works today - after a couple burnt HD cables I added some extra insulation (tape) and it seems to be running well. Recently took apart and added some new CPU adhesive as the laptop started smelling like body odour (apparently it's a thing with old macbooks). I did recently upgrade to the new M1 Macbook Pro, but very happy to have been able to keep my 2012 around and still have it running well today.

Scoundreller 5y ago
This is the nice thing about having a large number of mostly identical devices deployed out there. Any problem is google-able and even with a vague description of symptoms, a plausible diagnosis and treatment can usually be predicted quickly. It’s also why I like my mom’s old Toyota and hate my bicycle.
- matsemann 5y ago
  Aren't 90% of all bicycles just some Shimano components? Or at least most work the same way and documented in Big Blue Book by Park Tools.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Basically. Repairing bicycles is very easy and very standardized, except that some manufacturers just won't tell you what standard a part follows.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    At least shimano stamps a part number on most of its parts. I mostly repair 70s-80s bikes and often encounter an “I’ve never seen this before”, or a situation where parts have the same branding on them, but clearly went through multiple (undocumented) iterations. There ends up being a lot of “close enough” substitutions. E.g. cones on axles.

paxys 5y ago

There are hundreds of Louis Rossmann videos on YouTube that are variations of exactly this. Apple quotes hundreds/thousands for a fix, he opens up the device and unbends a pin in 30 seconds.

greedo 5y ago

I bought a Mac Pro in 2006 and became addicted to World of Warcraft. There was some weird bug with the GPU (Radeon x1900 XT), where it would eventually burn out. The Mac would boot, but no image on my ACD. So I schlepped the whole Mac Pro to the Apple store 50 miles away. They couldn't figure out why the GPU didn't work, so they replaced it under warranty. Two months later, the GPU burned out again (Did I say I played a lot of WoW? Like 18 hours a day?). Schlepp this heavy beast to the store, they swap out the GPU again. Three months later, GPU burns out again, I take it in, and they start giving me side-eye. The Mac was still under warranty, but they were sus about the whole situation. They still replaced the GPU, but kind of gave me the vibe that I was on some no-fly list. Eventually gave up on WoW and the Mac lasted almost another decade as my primary desktop before I turned it into a Plex server in the basement.

Vladimof 5y ago

> The genius bar staff just resorts to "bad logic board" when they don't want to spend even a minute diagnosing the problem. Or maybe they don't have the skills, IDK. I was happy that this solo kiosk rep was a repair wizard. probably neither of those reasons... just more money for Apple this way

JoeyBananas 5y ago

My phone had a cracked screen 4 years ago. I got it repaired and still use it today.