For almost two months we have been talking about the screws that Apple has been using externally on iPhones 4 and MacBooks Air and we call them “torx”.
Time for the errata: they were not torx screws, and we learned about it through iFixit, which named these little pieces with the friendly name of “Inviolable Evil Screw with Five Points” and published a video manifest, which you can see below.
What is the heart of this issue? Pentalobulares using screws that are still rarssimos market, Apple prevents consumer access s inner parts of their products.
This can be a way to ensure that a customer will not be able to open a gadget and void the warranty, but is being seen as a devilish plan to accelerate the obsolescence of devices that were on the screws could be easily repaired.
Both arguments have their own reason (tamper resistant gadgets result in cheaper guarantees for Apple, but after they run out, consumers stay on hand) and the solution that iFixit found, in addition to openly protesting, was to sell “kits release "for iPhones 4.
They consist of a wrench that can more or less remove the external screws of the smartphone, a Phillips # 00 wrench and two Phillips screws to replace the pentalobulars that should leave the process completely unusable.
I wonder the reason for this escarcu.
IFixit is interested in this issue of screws, as it lives off the repairs it does and the tools it sells: when Apple launches a gadget that requires a magic screwdriver that in there, it is bad for disassembly specialists.
Only there is no way, I don’t know, manufacture pentalobular this key instead of saying that everything is part of a malevolent plan? (Mechanical engineers, that the leaves of you!)
For those who find that the argument "the product I buy has to be my" concludes the question and boot Ma against the wall, perhaps the argument used by one of the readers Cult of Mac give a good answer: before you buy a Mac, iPhone or iPod and it’s yours, he was from Apple and she makes gadgets the way she wants (with due legal and related limitations, of course).
If a product is sold with the warning that there are parts that cannot be accessed by the consumer, technically there is no harm being done.
But much worse than using a screw any malfico the "replace battery" or "repair" of an iPod shuffle out the price of a new more freight.
The repairability of Apple gadgets historically low, very low, at a little too much for a company that is so proud of being green.
1984 may not have been like 1984, but this story of having to buy a new device when an old defect makes me think I'm in a Brave New World.
Think differently, Apple! The planet is grateful, if iPods can be repaired instead of exchanged for new ones.
Update (s 23h54)
In a kind of continuation of this protest (one that really appeal to me and what I give full support), the folks at iFixit did the math and came to the conclusion that the battery of the iPhone 4 has a service life almost calculated to last a year, so interval between updates.
"But can't you change the battery only?", You can ask.
D, but it costs half the price of a new iPhone with a two-year contract.
If we completely disregard the financial factor, arguing that Apple customers really want to change devices every year, the unpleasant smell of batteries and batteries of devices is being discarded or recycled when they could continue to be in use.
GREEN, we have to think GREEN and I'm not talking about this green, but this one.
