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Apple: If the adhesive strip breaks, attempt to retrieve the rest of the strip with ESD-safe tweezers. If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the

Apple: If the adhesive strip breaks, attempt to retrieve the rest of the strip with ESD-safe tweezers. If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case Jesus. This is not what I'd consider "repairable". And that's not the only place in the manual where Apple just says "toss the whole top case out".

tpmoney 4y ago
Anyone who’s ever repaired a car has encountered one form or another of a fastener or hose that breaks or drops and can’t be easily removed because it’s in a bad place, and leaving it where it is won’t cause any harm. Does it really surprise us that small space computers would have their own version of this?
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > leaving it where it is won’t cause any harm But that's apparently not the case here: > If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Their lawyers probably didn't like: > If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, forcefully remove the battery by jamming a pry tool under it. This is what other people do when those strips break. This is a service manual, not a binding contract. You can choose to service your device differently if you feel inclined to do so.
    - borski 4y ago
      True, though you may void the warranty depending on your chosen fix. :)
  - tpmoney 4y ago
    Ah misunderstood the context here, I thought it was referring to cleaning up the adhesive after repair. Even still, there are plenty of bolts on a car that if you don’t do the right things to remove them, you can shear them off. Fasteners of all kinds can be broken, if you break them beyond the ability of your tools, the manual is going to tell you to take it to a shop. You can break out the screw extractor from harbor freight, or weld a new head onto the stub. But it’s unlikely the official repair manual is going to suggest that to you.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Anyone who’s ever repaired a car has encountered one form or another of a fastener or hose that breaks or drops and can’t be easily removed because it’s in a bad place Can confirm. I ended up bringing a car to the dealer to replace a certain light bulb because it was not possible for me to put my man-sized hand through the metal hole to reach the bulb area. Fortunately, the dealer did it for free.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Sure, but rarely does the stuck fastener require the replacement of a car's major subsystem. Stuck bolt = replace engine? That's so rare it's hardly worth discussing. But with a Mac, stuck glue strip = replace half the laptop.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    There was a notable case where road debris hit fitting on a 2 psi coolant line in a Tesla and the owner was told they would have to pay $16,000 for a new battery pack to deal with damage to a flange on the line out of pocket because no insurer would pay to replace a $16,000 battery for want of a 5 dollar piece of plastic. The solution was a slightly more expensive $15 piece of metal and $700 in labor. If you look at how new appliances are made with difficult to replace electronics which ought to be trivially replaceable for cheap if you weren't getting bent over by the manufacturer you might begin to notice a pattern. Manufacturers are saving their pennies at the expense of hardware that fails outside of warranty and makes them $100 bills for their trouble of doing a bad job in the first place. Their is little reason to build to last when bad work pays dividends in the long run. The Tesla story for those who didn't catch it originally. https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a-700-fix-is-why-right-to-repair-matters https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a...
  - tpmoney 4y ago
    Depends on the car. There’s an infamous bolt on the transmission of 6 speed 2nd gen Miata’s. If you remove that bolt accidentally instead of the fill plug near it when replacing your transmission fluid, you will need a transmission rebuild/replacement. Likewise I would imagine if you shear off the crank bolt on a car while removing the crank pulley to do replace a water pump or a seal, you’re probably in for a heck of a tear down, and depending on how bad it is to get it removed, maybe a bottom end rebuild to replace damaged parts. Heck we still live in a world where some cars with interference engines use timing belts instead of chains. Repair that 20 belt wrong and you will indeed need a whole engine, and that assumes your got to it before it broke and ruined your engine for you.
kube-system 4y ago
People asked for Apple's repair manual, and they provided their repair manual. Apple isn't going to recommend you forcefully remove a LiPo, but you're free to do so if you want to do that instead.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If a car service manual said "replace the engine" (along with detailed instructions on how to do so) when a spark plug went bad, would you consider that acceptable just because the manual were released?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    There are many service manuals for cars that recommend procedures that independent auto shops and shade-tree mechanics do not follow. Get a short in a wiring harness? The service manual for your car will almost certainly recommend replacing the entire harness which is a very labor intensive and expensive procedure. Will mechanics do this? Depends on which shop you're at and who is paying. If there are multiple ways to solve a problem, an official service manual will typically list the safest and most repeatable solution. Rarely do they list any alternatives to this.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Well, part of me wishes this particular "car" wasn't separated into two replaceable pieces. A fender-bender or bad battery shouldn't warrant replacing half of my car! Not only is it ridiculously expensive, but it's insanely wasteful if the half it's replacing isn't being salvaged for components. Apple has the resources to fix this. They choose to actively neglect it, since they have a very successful side-business dedicated to replacing your iDevices at-cost.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        That's a fair criticism of the design of the device, but I fail to understand iFixit's argument that this is the repair program's fault.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
I replaced a screen on an iPhone 4 or 5 with a kit from iFixit. It was painful with the very basic tools provided and no magnifying glasses or understanding of what success was supposed to feel like. The parts aren't small, they are tiny, like 3mm screws, tiny bits of adhesive, things that are very fragile, etc. It took me like 3 hours. Experiences like that make me nope out of some DIY things.
- wiredfool 4y ago
  I replaced the keyboard on a unibody era MBP. (2011 ish, the one with the dvd drive that needed to have the hard drive cable replaced every few years because it would wear at a corner and short against the case). It had 50+ absolutely tiny screws, requiring a 000 Phillips head, probably about the size of the little ones in iPhone 6s, but all about 2mm long.
  - ectocardia 4y ago
    I, too, suffered through this ordeal in the name of self-repair. The worst of it was having to, every now and then, file a slot into a tiny screw I'd stripped (#%!*) so I could continue with a flathead screwdriver.
    - wiredfool 4y ago
      Genuine Wiha phillips head screwdrivers are magic at not stripping screws. So much so that many cheap no-name sets will imitate the red knob and dark grey finish to piggyback on that.

tpmoney 4y ago

Anyone who’s ever repaired a car has encountered one form or another of a fastener or hose that breaks or drops and can’t be easily removed because it’s in a bad place, and leaving it where it is won’t cause any harm. Does it really surprise us that small space computers would have their own version of this?

josephcsible 4y ago
> leaving it where it is won’t cause any harm But that's apparently not the case here: > If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case
- kube-system 4y ago
  Their lawyers probably didn't like: > If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, forcefully remove the battery by jamming a pry tool under it. This is what other people do when those strips break. This is a service manual, not a binding contract. You can choose to service your device differently if you feel inclined to do so.
  - borski 4y ago
    True, though you may void the warranty depending on your chosen fix. :)
- tpmoney 4y ago
  Ah misunderstood the context here, I thought it was referring to cleaning up the adhesive after repair. Even still, there are plenty of bolts on a car that if you don’t do the right things to remove them, you can shear them off. Fasteners of all kinds can be broken, if you break them beyond the ability of your tools, the manual is going to tell you to take it to a shop. You can break out the screw extractor from harbor freight, or weld a new head onto the stub. But it’s unlikely the official repair manual is going to suggest that to you.
reaperducer 4y ago
Anyone who’s ever repaired a car has encountered one form or another of a fastener or hose that breaks or drops and can’t be easily removed because it’s in a bad place Can confirm. I ended up bringing a car to the dealer to replace a certain light bulb because it was not possible for me to put my man-sized hand through the metal hole to reach the bulb area. Fortunately, the dealer did it for free.
alistairSH 4y ago
Sure, but rarely does the stuck fastener require the replacement of a car's major subsystem. Stuck bolt = replace engine? That's so rare it's hardly worth discussing. But with a Mac, stuck glue strip = replace half the laptop.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  There was a notable case where road debris hit fitting on a 2 psi coolant line in a Tesla and the owner was told they would have to pay $16,000 for a new battery pack to deal with damage to a flange on the line out of pocket because no insurer would pay to replace a $16,000 battery for want of a 5 dollar piece of plastic. The solution was a slightly more expensive $15 piece of metal and $700 in labor. If you look at how new appliances are made with difficult to replace electronics which ought to be trivially replaceable for cheap if you weren't getting bent over by the manufacturer you might begin to notice a pattern. Manufacturers are saving their pennies at the expense of hardware that fails outside of warranty and makes them $100 bills for their trouble of doing a bad job in the first place. Their is little reason to build to last when bad work pays dividends in the long run. The Tesla story for those who didn't catch it originally. https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a-700-fix-is-why-right-to-repair-matters https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a...
- tpmoney 4y ago
  Depends on the car. There’s an infamous bolt on the transmission of 6 speed 2nd gen Miata’s. If you remove that bolt accidentally instead of the fill plug near it when replacing your transmission fluid, you will need a transmission rebuild/replacement. Likewise I would imagine if you shear off the crank bolt on a car while removing the crank pulley to do replace a water pump or a seal, you’re probably in for a heck of a tear down, and depending on how bad it is to get it removed, maybe a bottom end rebuild to replace damaged parts. Heck we still live in a world where some cars with interference engines use timing belts instead of chains. Repair that 20 belt wrong and you will indeed need a whole engine, and that assumes your got to it before it broke and ruined your engine for you.

kube-system 4y ago

People asked for Apple's repair manual, and they provided their repair manual. Apple isn't going to recommend you forcefully remove a LiPo, but you're free to do so if you want to do that instead.

josephcsible 4y ago
If a car service manual said "replace the engine" (along with detailed instructions on how to do so) when a spark plug went bad, would you consider that acceptable just because the manual were released?
- kube-system 4y ago
  There are many service manuals for cars that recommend procedures that independent auto shops and shade-tree mechanics do not follow. Get a short in a wiring harness? The service manual for your car will almost certainly recommend replacing the entire harness which is a very labor intensive and expensive procedure. Will mechanics do this? Depends on which shop you're at and who is paying. If there are multiple ways to solve a problem, an official service manual will typically list the safest and most repeatable solution. Rarely do they list any alternatives to this.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Well, part of me wishes this particular "car" wasn't separated into two replaceable pieces. A fender-bender or bad battery shouldn't warrant replacing half of my car! Not only is it ridiculously expensive, but it's insanely wasteful if the half it's replacing isn't being salvaged for components. Apple has the resources to fix this. They choose to actively neglect it, since they have a very successful side-business dedicated to replacing your iDevices at-cost.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      That's a fair criticism of the design of the device, but I fail to understand iFixit's argument that this is the repair program's fault.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

I replaced a screen on an iPhone 4 or 5 with a kit from iFixit. It was painful with the very basic tools provided and no magnifying glasses or understanding of what success was supposed to feel like. The parts aren't small, they are tiny, like 3mm screws, tiny bits of adhesive, things that are very fragile, etc. It took me like 3 hours. Experiences like that make me nope out of some DIY things.

wiredfool 4y ago
I replaced the keyboard on a unibody era MBP. (2011 ish, the one with the dvd drive that needed to have the hard drive cable replaced every few years because it would wear at a corner and short against the case). It had 50+ absolutely tiny screws, requiring a 000 Phillips head, probably about the size of the little ones in iPhone 6s, but all about 2mm long.
- ectocardia 4y ago
  I, too, suffered through this ordeal in the name of self-repair. The worst of it was having to, every now and then, file a slot into a tiny screw I'd stripped (#%!*) so I could continue with a flathead screwdriver.
  - wiredfool 4y ago
    Genuine Wiha phillips head screwdrivers are magic at not stripping screws. So much so that many cheap no-name sets will imitate the red knob and dark grey finish to piggyback on that.