It's amazing how much more advanced the third party repairers are then Apple's own Authorized repairers. You are completely on point with not being interesting

It's amazing how much more advanced the third party repairers are then Apple's own Authorized repairers. You are completely on point with not being interesting in this "Right To Repair" rhetoric that I can only assume Apple is using as a marketing gimmick. From when I first started fixing Mac's - which I only ever replaced parts, Apple would never allow you to take a soldering iron to their godly products - they at least had a lot of parts you could replace. Displays could be replaced on Macbooks from the 2007 era for example and you could buy those displays in bulk for a reasonable price. From the unibody/clamshell era, 2010 onwards, Apple made these machines barely repairable, displays are now industrially glued into their metal housing, almost all I/O is soldered to the logic board requiring a full replacement to fix, good luck if you're out of warranty. In exchange for the faulty part back, Apple will offer an authorized provider about 20-30% discount on the part which they call an "Exchange Price". Nothing hurt my soul more then to have to quote customers $700-900 AUD (exchange price) to fix a simple backlight malfunction. Interestingly the price of replacing a Display or a Logic Board through Apple's 'Exchange' program is the same cost price for a Service Provider and these are the most costly parts of a Mac. They do not offer exchange prices to these independent providers and the 'stock' price of Apple's service parts are astronomical. I highly doubt that any independent repairer has ever ordered any part from Apple. Maybe they ordered tools, Apple does have some decent tools.