4 ms·
I tried replacing a broken speaker on my old Macbook Pro. I followed a very detailed guide from ifixit and it involved removing the motherboard, disconnecting 7
by httpz 4y ago
I tried replacing a broken speaker on my old Macbook Pro. I followed a very detailed guide from ifixit and it involved removing the motherboard, disconnecting 7 different ribbon cables, and keeping track of the exact location of 30 different screws of various sizes.
I've done a fair share of self-repair on various laptops and smartphones I owned and this was by far the scariest one. It didn't seem like something an average person can pull off easily.
- JohnGB 4y agoThat's because those laptops were specifically designed to not be easily repairable. The new ones are complying with EU regulations, and so are easier to repair.
- dmix 4y agoThey were designed to be as small as possible, which sacrificed internal access. I doubt they purposefully made repairablity difficult. It just wasn't a major factor when 90% of the time they just give you a new laptop when you show up at Apple with a broken one (with a warranty or Apple+).
- user3939382 4y ago> I doubt they purposefully made repairablity difficult I'm more cynical of Apple since they started doing things like soldering in RAM connections on the Mini totally unnecessarily.
- saagarjha 4y agoWhat about “the RAM is on-package” strikes you as being unnecessary?
- acdha 4y agoWhat makes you think it was unnecessary? Sockets are good for expansion but they increase failure rates and the extra distance increases latency so losing it is one thing helping push unified SoC performance.
- user3939382 4y agoThey did it to prevent people from upgrading the RAM, and instead having to buy an entirely new machine.
- acdha 4y agoYou’re talking like you know this for a fact. Did you work at Apple? Do you have copies of internal documents?
- colejohnson66 4y agoProof besides a hunch? Hector Martin says there’s a valid reason to solder RAM: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542533147039977473 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542533147039977473
- Panzer04 4y agoThere being valid reasons to solder RAM doesn't preclude being annoyed at Apple for charging 3x the market rate to upgrade it with them, I suppose. It'd be a lot less controversial if that were the case IMO.
- acdha 4y agoI don’t think anyone is saying you can’t question their pricing. My disagreement is solely with the very confident assertion that this is done to prevent upgrades with no awareness of all of the other reasons.
- asdff 4y agoI wouldn't be surprised. It was common back then to hear on forums to never waste money speccing up the ram on macs, since you can upgrade it yourself for half the price with sticks from crucial. It was always a $200 upgrade even when you were just getting another 4gb of DDR3.
- asdff 4y agoMeanwhile, I've never had a socket failure, and I've upgraded the RAM on the 2012 mac I am using 2x now over its life (once to get to 8gb, a second time when users reported the computer could take 16gb despite what apple says). If I had soldered ram then I would be saddled with 4gb ram total and this computer would not be easily running mojave and allowing me to post this comment with 3 dozen tabs open in the background.
- threeseed 4y agoWould add to the other comments that having sockets increases the thickness of the device. Now you can argue that you wouldn't make this trade-off but for others including myself it is the right decision. For most people, including professionals, RAM is no longer the bottleneck for system performance.
- blacksmith_tb 4y agoI don't think the Mac Mini's case has gotten any thinner in spite of having soldered RAM. The M1 says it's 3.6cm thick, while my old intel mini is 3cm exactly, in spite of having socketed DIMMs (I upgraded it to 32GB, which was slightly harder than I expected, but manageable).
- kepler1 4y agoThat's a pretty bold claim, to say that a company had the motivation to purposely make it difficult to repair. What support do you have for that statement? And what support do you have on your claim that any EU rule has mandated an approach to make something easier to repair that has made Apple (or any other company) change the way they design their hardware?
- sircastor 4y agoI can’t help but think that no average person fixes their own laptop these days. And for that matter, I’d say that the average person doesn’t change their own oil anymore either.
- CivBase 4y agoI think those are both true but for very different reasons. The competition for oil changes has become so intense that there's basically no profit margin on it. People can have their oil changed "professionally" for so little cost over doing it themselves that it's just not worth bothering. Professionals do oil changes to get customers in the door and hopefully upsell them. Meanwhile, consumer electronics repair has so many barriers to entry that it's usually just easier to cut your losses and buy a replacement or pay the exorbitant prices demanded by manufacturers.
- colejohnson66 4y agoIn the US, every mall I’ve been to has a pop-up shop for phone repairs that cost far less than a new phone.
- pacetherace 4y agoEven in the past, most people who had the courage to open up their laptops, would do minor repairs like replacing/upgrading RAM, HDD, etc.