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You appear to be assuming that the 'schematics', even if they were provided by the manufacturer, describe the actual product in your hands, which is probably the source of confusion. They don't, at least not for modern products of some intricacy. Going back to the example of Apple's glass trackpad, there's a decent chance that literally every Macbook ever sold with it has a unique trackpad, because some transistor(s) were slightly off, due to manufacturing tolerances, requiring slightly different resistor(s) to compensate, etc..., and so on. And there are hundreds of components just in the trackpad. So even in the literal sense of examining it under various microscopes and so on, I think it's pretty fair to say that it's secret enough for it to be very very difficult to recreate. But this all seems like arguing at windmills, because in practice, Apple's shareholders, board, management, employees, suppliers, customers, and competitors behave as if it was a trade secret. Which is more then sufficient for all practical purposes most HN readers are concerned with. |