[dkersten]

> need a new motherboard / some drastic problem

Only because apple won’t do simple repairs. Eg, blwn capacitor worth 40 cent? New motherboard worth hundreds! [1] Of course, to the end user, the effect is the same...

[1] https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns and https://youtu.be/K1A9y4S60kg for just two examples

[RNCTX]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I find it highly unlikely that there are repair contractors with people sitting behind magnifying glasses and soldering irons.

I would suspect that toss and replace is the norm across the whole spectrum of hardware sellers.

You could debate Apple's design choices like... say... riveted keyboards, and they'd argue durability as a retort, but I don't think they're any better or worse than others in terms of warranty work.

[rudiv]

From my knowledge of working as an ACMT, Apple processes every part it takes out of a computer during repair service. I couldn't say how many are fixed in the manner you're talking about, but I can say that a significant proportion of parts we received for warranty service were clearly 'remanufactured' parts. So that kind of toss-and-replace doesn't even really happen at Apple itself.

[dkersten]

Maybe not (although Louis Rossmann does say that he checks and has many videos where he does), but they do typically at least check the connectors and the main components.

My brother has had a water-damaged macbook pro repaired by a third party repair shop when apple said the only thing that can be done is a logic board replacement and they fixed it without replacing it.

[brianwawok]

If your choices are:

$20 mother board and 15 minute of $50 / hr tech

vs

$0.40 cap and 45 minutes of a $50 / hr tech

Replacing the cap might not actually be a win. Would need to know more about the actual hardware costs, as well as how often swapping 1 cap really fixes the problem (like, why did it blow to begin with? Will it just blow again in 3 days?)

[dkersten]

Right, but apple don’t charge $20 for a motherboard, its more like $900, vs a third party repair shop charging $100 for labour + $0.40 for the cap. The third party is still a lot cheaper because apple don’t want to repair those parts.