[kmeisthax]

Apple already did this. They've been doing it for over a decade. They don't do component-level repair, they do assembly swaps, because it's cheaper to make the customer pay $500 to replace a board with 100 soldered-on components than to pay $50k/yr more for a skilled technician to replace just one. Then they handcuff their vendors to make sure as many chips as possible on the board can only be bought by them.

The reason why Louis Rossmann is - or, at least, was able to fix your MacBook is because Apple's vendors were breaching their supplier agreements. Apple worked around that by putting Apple logos on all their components and getting Customs to seize any parts shipments coming out of China.

[kalleboo]

Why are you singling out Apple here? I can't think of any consumer product where the manufacturer does board-level repair. My washing machine dies? They replace the whole board. TV dies? replace the TCON board. My aircon stops? They replace the whole board. ECU in my car starts throwing errors? They replace the whole unit. What company sends out a repairman with a soldering iron?

[throwaway48476]

None of those boards have expensive CPU's RAM, and NAND.

[kalleboo]

Samsung still charges $300 for a new board for their washing machines, half the cost of a new machine.

It's actually an even BETTER candidate for board-level repair as they have easier to hand-solder, off-the-shelf through-hole components, and yet they still don't do it.