[asdff]

Why can't they repair older computers? Car dealers do. You just might wait longer for parts. Apple should do this so users always get decent parts. Imagine how nice it would be if you did have an old Apple II and you could get it serviced just like you can get your 1980s honda serviced at the dealership today.

[Bud]

Do you want to pay 25% more for Apple products so they can afford to train hundreds of repair techs to repair 10-year-old stuff, and keep supply chains alive to keep supplying 10-year-old parts, or, apparently, by your standards, 45-year-old parts?

[lstamour]

Vehicle manufacturers don’t actually make all the spare parts, other firms find it worth it to do so for them. Similarly, I could buy some common parts for the 2014 Mac mini that was easy to service on Amazon, without waiting for Apple to return my call. The annoying part is that Apple uses security to sign and enforce their chips vs third-party replacements.

On top of that, some repairs are really cheap but require electrical work. For these, you could visit a specialist, just as not every shop or dealer will service every car.

The gotcha is that with Apple, you can only service it at Apple & friends, with Apple parts. While they enforce this, yes, they could indeed offer such a program, and it wouldn’t cost 25% more.

Training people every year on the newest models costs more than having folks who repaired the 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2016 models continue to do so, etc.

[Bud]

I grant some of these points, but:

1) You're citing the 2014 Mac mini because it's an outlier, and also old enough that some things which are integrated into the motherboard now (RAM, storage), weren't then. Coincidentally, these are the two most common reasons you'd ever want to open up and service or upgrade a Mac.

2) This isn't the auto industry; it's not as easy for third parties to make and stock these parts, and also, computers become obsolete long before cars do, for reasons that have nothing to do with repairability.

3) You cite Apple's security measures, but as you know, those only apply to a very small minority of the chips (and other parts) that are in the computer. And those security measures do provide a real benefit, much as right-to-repair advocates like to ignore or obscure or downplay this point. (Not saying you are doing this.)

[asdff]

If you can repair a modern mac, you can follow a guide to fix a 10 year old one just fine. It's just screws, flex cables, and glue in more recent models. The supply chains still exist though through third parties. I bought a flex cable on ebay for a 10 year old computer that was $7 from China.