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by theshrike79 751 days ago
The stuff that Rossmann repairs are "simple" because he has the tools and expertise to do so. It's very much a "$1 for the screw and $999 to know where to put it" type of situation.

Does everyone realistically expect Apple to have a Rossmann-level repair person[0] in every one of their 528 Apple Stores to do these "simple fixes" with professional gear.

Or is it actually more economical for them to build the equipment for swapping whole boards so simply that anyone with 30 minutes of training can do it. (This is the gear they rent to you when you want to self-repair btw)

[0] 3+ more likely so that they can have vacations and sick days too

2 comments

Most companies do a simple board swap for the customer, but then send the faulty boards back to the factory to be 'refurbished' - ie. run through the automated test rig and check every function is fully working.

By doing that, an unnecessary board swap is 'free' to the manufacturer - which makes diagnosing problems in the store far easier - just keep swapping parts till the issue is resolved.

When those boards end up back at the factory, they'll pass the test immediately and be able to be sent right out again for another repair.

For boards that don't pass the test, sort them by the failure symptoms and suddenly repair becomes far easier - "these 50 need a new power supply IC, pay someone $25/hour on the rework station to do that, costing $3/board labour and $3/board in components".

I didn't argue that to shame on Apple. I can understand why that is done ( especially with warranty extensions )

What I am arguing is that there may be a much cheaper ("easier" for the person who knows what to do) way to repair it if you don't care about the warranty but that path can currently be blocked by the manufacturer.

For example: We had a deadline for submitting our final game build last year and my laptop where I had everything setup died a day before the deadline. I went to a local electronics shop, bought a different laptop, removed the SSD from the broken one put it in the new one and was backup and running 30 minutes after returning home.

I would not have cared about warranty there, only about the speed of getting back up and running to meet the deadline.