Well, iFixit says even trying to remove most things from inside the machine has a chance at breaking other parts irreparably (e.g. removing the battery (which takes 30 minutes of practice) has a good chance at slicing your trackpad I/O cable).
The user hostile screws are just trying to say "Look, we're trying to save you from yourself. There's nothing in here you can fix without ripping cables and rendering your machine into an ineffective boat anchor."
I think I repeat this every time Apple releases a new Macbook model, but here it is anyways.
I was a Swiss trained watchmaker before I switched careers and became a software developer. Back in the 40s through 60s, both the Swiss and American watch companies standardized on a 6-point case back that was removable with a two or three-pronged adjustable wrench. The same design is still being used for the most part in middle luxury brands. Though, if you ever look at the back of a modern mid-100 dollar watch (Casio, off-brands, etc.), you'll probably see a little lip where you can place the blade of a knife. Giving the knife a slight twisting motion easily pops the back off, giving anyone the ability to change the battery. But go take a look at some of the higher luxury brands and you'll see various variations of case backs. Rolex uses a fluted design unique to themselves. Breitling uses a design similar to the older 6-point, but it's more like a 18-sided polygon that requires a wrench with flat jaws. Omega uses a design with a number of deep holes in the case back, requiring a wrench with points that fit loosely on the back (instead of tightened onto it).
The reasons for the "proprietary" case back designs, especially with Rolex, is exactly the same as Apple using non-standard Pentalobe screws, which you point out. These things are not serviceable to 95% of the population (and if you think that number is high, go visit the mid-west for a week and get out of the big city costal echo-chambers). I can't tell you how many times some wiseguy walked into my shop with a small container containing all but a couple pieces of his watch asking me to put it back together after they took it apart to do some trivial task, most of the time one that probably didn't require any disassembly to begin with.
If you think you can personally take apart a retina MacBook Pro and replace the trackpad, no one is stopping you from buying the special screwdriver and doing it yourself with help from iFixit, but Apple certainly isn't going to honor that warranty. Requiring at least one hoop for you to jump through in order to even get the back off is enough evidence for them to know that anyone walking through their door with their product rattling around in an altoids tin intentionally decided to disassemble the thing themselves. It's a premeditative action, instead of an accidental impulse.
I don't want to have to pay someone to undust the fan of my laptop after a year of usage. I am a grown up, I accept that the warranty will not be valid past that point and that I might break something. I paid for the thing and I have the right to do with it whatever I want.
The clock thing above isn't a fair comparison, a computer doesn't fall apart into two hundred pieces once you unscrew the case, there are just a few discrete components and most of the time one just replaces one of them completely, almost nobody attempts to repair surface mounted components with a soldering iron, even at the repair shops. You don't have to have any special knowledge to do those things, just know a few tricks, ironically mostly related to opening things the producer didn't want you to open, and handle it with some care.
By the way, am I not, accidentally, at a site called "Hacker News"?
>By the way, am I not, accidentally, at a site called "Hacker News"?
The parent's point wasn't that Apple was trying to lock out the standard HN reader, or that an HN reader shouldn't try to repair the device. His point was that Apple is putting an obstacle in the way of a nontechnical person shooting themselves in the foot.
>The clock thing above isn't a fair comparison, a computer doesn't fall apart into two hundred pieces once you unscrew the case
I think it's a good comparison. As the grandparent mentions as an example, removing the battery risks slicing the trackpad I/O cable. While that's not falling apart into hundreds of pieces, it certainly hinders use of the computer.
Removing the battery risks slicing the trackpad I/O cable because they designed it this way without any apparent reason, and they glued the battery to the case. I do understand that there are engineering tradeoffs sometimes between ease of maintenance and form factor or safety, but it's certainly not the case in all of the cases mentioned in the article.
It's Orwellian or perhaps Huxley-an to me that people buy into the rhetoric that they close up every single thing they make in a closed ecosystem just because of this oh so great care about the customer. Apple is a company, they might not have evil plans to conquer the world, but the most important thing for them is to make profit - one shouldn't fall in love with a company, no matter how good their products.
Might be, I still find it ironic, given that the founding fathers of Apple grew out of the open hacking/engineering community where all the designs were out in the wild and you could mess with things at will.
I bought a new ThinkPad W530 back in May along with an SSD and 4x8GB sticks of RAM to upgrade myself. I spent five minutes looking over the service manual and another five minutes doing the upgrades, thanks to the standard screws that Lenovo chose to use.
When I bought my last MBP, I had them (at the Apple Store) upgrade the RAM, which meant I had to wait around for 90 minutes for them to do it.
To be fair, changing RAM and putting in an SSD in a unibody MBP would only take a few minutes if you did it yourself too. The only "tricky" piece was disconnecting the battery (not strictly necessary), and that only needed a triwing screwdriver.
The user hostile screws are just trying to say "Look, we're trying to save you from yourself. There's nothing in here you can fix without ripping cables and rendering your machine into an ineffective boat anchor."