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You misread the article. Apple is renting out the tools for $49 and a $1200 deposit. Apple is doing this at a loss; the tools cost more than $49 to ship, let al

by blagie 4y ago

You misread the article. Apple is renting out the tools for $49 and a $1200 deposit. Apple is doing this at a loss; the tools cost more than $49 to ship, let alone rent, and probably way more than $1200 to buy. That's weird. Apple is also charging $69 for a $5 battery -- their normal repair fee. That's unfair. Apple set up a bizarre, convoluted process, on which both Apple and the customer lose money.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
The author negligently failed to mention the ~$25 refund you get when returning the old battery for recycling. The pricing is structured to incentivize part returns but the author was focused on what appears to be a hit piece and did not mention that.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
No, my point was that you don’t need the official repair kit at all if you’re willing to improvise like we’ve been doing forever. The author of this article is being dramatic to try to make a point. > Apple is also charging $69 for a $5 battery -- their normal repair fee. That's unfair. Honestly I don’t see any problems with any of this. A $70 replacement battery option for my $1200 iPhone that I’m owning for 3-4 years seems entirely reasonable. Renting the professional level gear as an option if I want it. For $49 is an unbelievable gesture of goodwill. Are you really demanding that Apple sell batteries for $5? At this point, I’m not convinced the HN crowd would be happy with any solution any company could offer, aside from making phones twice as big and using screws and offering $5 batteries for these $1200 phones just in case someone needs to replace the battery after 3 years.
- bryan_w 4y ago
  The problem is that $69 is the same price of replacement at the store, so apple is dumping their labor cost just to dissuade people from using DIY/3rd party repair.
dylan604 4y ago
The normal repair fee of $69 covers the $5 battery and the install fees. So the remaining $64 dollars does not seem exorbantly high on paying someone their wage of manually removing/installing all of those screws and doing so without damaging everything plus some fees for overhead of operating the business. Sure, with a different design for user replaceable batteries all of that would be moot, but with the current design and the PITA process of doing the replacement it's not prohibitively expensive for a once in every 3-4 years type of fee. Hell, most people replace the phone itself before needing a battery replacement.
- asveikau 4y ago
  But in this case the user is charged $69 to repair it themselves.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    So if that's the case, then it looks like the labor for the replacement is free when having Apple do it. Everyone keeps talking about it being a $5 battery, but where can you get the battery for $5? If it costs Apple $5, then you're dreaming if you think Apple is going to ever sell for that. Nobody sells at cost and stays in business. Also, you're forgetting about it being a $69 kit. It's the $5 battery and $64 dollars of kit.
    - asveikau 4y ago
      I didn't come up with the $5 claim and i agree it's low. I was just pointing out that the argument was mis-summarized. I am myself not certain to what extent I agree with the argument personally.
    - blagie 4y ago
      For the record, $5 is about the top for what I pay for similar batteries on Fleabay. Here's a bunch for $3.50 for my phone, in quantities of 3: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202981911712 https://www.ebay.com/itm/202981911712 OEM will cost a little bit more to manufacture -- some of the Fleabay ones are a little bit sketchy -- but not a lot more. Tear-down sites give similar costs: https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/chuckjones/files/2014/09/Apple-iPhone-5s-6-and-6-Plus-Teardown-cost-chart.jpg https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/chuckjones/files/201... That's my experience from industry as well (not Apple), but that's NDAed. I think $5 is a fair estimate. I would be shocked if Apple paid more than $10 for the battery. Not surprised, but shocked. That points to a fair retail price in the $10-$30 range, depending on markup, distribution costs, etc.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Although they are not $69, these are also not $5 batteries. $15-$20 buys you (for a reasonably modern iPhone) an AliExpress battery that has a one day warranty against exploding and is probably made from materials mined by enslaved children. Apple works hard (though they do not always succeed) to source their materials responsibly and has a large interest in making sure the parts are of reasonable quality. If they start exploding Apple will do a recall, while a random AliExpress seller will just disappear.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
Do you have any source on that battery price? I could see a dodgy battery from AliExpress that’s likely a reject from official production lines or a knockoff maybe being that cheap, but high quality OEM surely costs more. That was how it generally worked with laptop batteries, anyway — the dirt cheap ones were massive gambles that in the worst case could cause stability issues with the laptop and usually had capacities and cycle counts way under what was advertised. You generally had to go up to prices about halfway between the dirt cheap stuff and OEM to have a chance at getting a decent product, but even then nothing was as reliably solid as OEM.

by blagie 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

The author negligently failed to mention the ~$25 refund you get when returning the old battery for recycling. The pricing is structured to incentivize part returns but the author was focused on what appears to be a hit piece and did not mention that.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

No, my point was that you don’t need the official repair kit at all if you’re willing to improvise like we’ve been doing forever. The author of this article is being dramatic to try to make a point. > Apple is also charging $69 for a $5 battery -- their normal repair fee. That's unfair. Honestly I don’t see any problems with any of this. A $70 replacement battery option for my $1200 iPhone that I’m owning for 3-4 years seems entirely reasonable. Renting the professional level gear as an option if I want it. For $49 is an unbelievable gesture of goodwill. Are you really demanding that Apple sell batteries for $5? At this point, I’m not convinced the HN crowd would be happy with any solution any company could offer, aside from making phones twice as big and using screws and offering $5 batteries for these $1200 phones just in case someone needs to replace the battery after 3 years.

bryan_w 4y ago
The problem is that $69 is the same price of replacement at the store, so apple is dumping their labor cost just to dissuade people from using DIY/3rd party repair.

dylan604 4y ago

The normal repair fee of $69 covers the $5 battery and the install fees. So the remaining $64 dollars does not seem exorbantly high on paying someone their wage of manually removing/installing all of those screws and doing so without damaging everything plus some fees for overhead of operating the business. Sure, with a different design for user replaceable batteries all of that would be moot, but with the current design and the PITA process of doing the replacement it's not prohibitively expensive for a once in every 3-4 years type of fee. Hell, most people replace the phone itself before needing a battery replacement.

asveikau 4y ago
But in this case the user is charged $69 to repair it themselves.
- dylan604 4y ago
  So if that's the case, then it looks like the labor for the replacement is free when having Apple do it. Everyone keeps talking about it being a $5 battery, but where can you get the battery for $5? If it costs Apple $5, then you're dreaming if you think Apple is going to ever sell for that. Nobody sells at cost and stays in business. Also, you're forgetting about it being a $69 kit. It's the $5 battery and $64 dollars of kit.
  - asveikau 4y ago
    I didn't come up with the $5 claim and i agree it's low. I was just pointing out that the argument was mis-summarized. I am myself not certain to what extent I agree with the argument personally.
  - blagie 4y ago
    For the record, $5 is about the top for what I pay for similar batteries on Fleabay. Here's a bunch for $3.50 for my phone, in quantities of 3: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202981911712 https://www.ebay.com/itm/202981911712 OEM will cost a little bit more to manufacture -- some of the Fleabay ones are a little bit sketchy -- but not a lot more. Tear-down sites give similar costs: https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/chuckjones/files/2014/09/Apple-iPhone-5s-6-and-6-Plus-Teardown-cost-chart.jpg https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/chuckjones/files/201... That's my experience from industry as well (not Apple), but that's NDAed. I think $5 is a fair estimate. I would be shocked if Apple paid more than $10 for the battery. Not surprised, but shocked. That points to a fair retail price in the $10-$30 range, depending on markup, distribution costs, etc.

tinus_hn 4y ago

Although they are not $69, these are also not $5 batteries. $15-$20 buys you (for a reasonably modern iPhone) an AliExpress battery that has a one day warranty against exploding and is probably made from materials mined by enslaved children. Apple works hard (though they do not always succeed) to source their materials responsibly and has a large interest in making sure the parts are of reasonable quality. If they start exploding Apple will do a recall, while a random AliExpress seller will just disappear.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

Do you have any source on that battery price? I could see a dodgy battery from AliExpress that’s likely a reject from official production lines or a knockoff maybe being that cheap, but high quality OEM surely costs more. That was how it generally worked with laptop batteries, anyway — the dirt cheap ones were massive gambles that in the worst case could cause stability issues with the laptop and usually had capacities and cycle counts way under what was advertised. You generally had to go up to prices about halfway between the dirt cheap stuff and OEM to have a chance at getting a decent product, but even then nothing was as reliably solid as OEM.