The cost of beating Apple's shrewd screws? £2 Apple has been switching the screws that hold its latest iPhone shut, but cries of conspiracy are somewhat refuted by the realisation that a $2 screwdriver fixes the problem. The new screws are called pentalobe (five-pointed), but if it is really (as iFixit so eloquently put it) "Apple's insidious plan to sabotage our iPhones …
At our Local Harbor Freight store, the tool is about $2. Funny, while using a wall urinal at a local mall yesterday I noticed the privacy panels were wall-mounted with brackets using "tamper proof" lag screws. I laughed. I guess it really is true, the beautiful people hang out in the same places the rest of use do.
Inspiration comes from all over.
Had sets of these for ages - little more than £4 from the average supermarket's hardware aisle and you can get sets of security bits that cover all these crazy security screws. A more premium £15 set and you get around 50 different interchangeable heads in one convenient package.
Computer kit that we can't get into? Not likely... mine's the one with the assorted screws and bolts in the pocket that ought to have gone back into the laptop but there didn't appear to be any holes left...
The trouble with the security bit sets is that the diameter of a bit-holder means that they can't be used where the screws are (deliberately) recessed by more than the length of the bit, and the hole is (deliberately) not big enough.
By the way, Mr Ray, it's a Phillips screw - Philips is a large consumer electronics company.
... I have a set of Tamper Torx (a torx head with a hole bored in the middle) drivers from T10 to T1, primarily for working on hard drives and other tiny tiny devices. Most of them don't use the tamper part, but I figured if I must buy the drivers, I might as well buy the tamper torx so I don't have to duplicate tooling in the event I run across a tamper screw.
The first real security screwdriver I bought was a tamper-hex in 5/32" , obstinately to get into telephone boxes when I worked for one of the larger ISPs here in the US and had to troubleshoot things.
The only screw heads I've ever ruined are Phillips - because you can't get enough "drive" on them... probably because pozidriv & supadriv fit them "quite well" but not properly - whereas with a slot screw only the thickness of the blade is a limit.
Oh and security screws of miscellaneous types - as others have said widely available from just about any decent tool outlet.
At least when you chew up the head of a philips screw or the driving bit, the bit can't accidentally slide out of the screw head and irrepairably scrape the surface of the thing you're trying to take apart/put together, or worse, slice up your hand which has happened to me once.
"At least the world agrees that the slot screw is an abomination that deserves to go the same way as surgery without anaesthetic and public hangings."
Funny that some of the most precise miniaturised mechanical machines, ie: watch movements, are put together exclusively with slot screws. I suspect the skill of the artificer has a lot to do with whether they're considered and abomination.
"Funny that some of the most precise miniaturised mechanical machines, ie: watch movements, are put together exclusively with slot screws. I suspect the skill of the artificer has a lot to do with whether they're considered and abomination."
Seconded. Many of the cross-head screw layouts were done to deliberately encourage cam-out, to deter knuckle-dragger operators/Conan the Chippy from blindly over-tightening, so can hardly be held up as a pinnacle of design...
The Robertson headed screw is unique to Canada - see < http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/images/robertscrew.jpg > -
There are four sizes and no other screwdrivers fit! It wasn't designed for security - just an easy, reliable design to use with a power driver.
A Canadian company I worked for had some U.S. Navy contracts and the packing/shipping directions were so detailed they were a pain to follow. Failure to comply involved return of the goods.
The only thing they didn't specify was the type of screw to be used to build the wooden crates. To show our appreciation we always used Robertson headed screws which always floored them!
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The only tool for a Phillips screw is a Phillips screwdriver and not one of the other options but Phillips screws are rare below size 1 and the smaller ones are crossed but not Phillips.
A Dean of Engineering told me that when he was working at IBM, he ended up having to go through the hundreds of screws used in a punch card machine. It turns out that IBM had several hundred part numbers for the same screw yet some cost far more than others because of volume buys and other nonsense. He reduced it to something like 23 unique screw part numbers and sent requests off to get most of those changed to less than a half a dozen.
A flat blade will open a pentalobe. They are just a cheaper to make 5 pointed star head and they have been around for at least 30 years.
- they've been at this for decades. Go to a Volvo garage and you'll see a whole wall of improbable and bizarre special tools, it looks like the inside of an alien spaceship: these are created, utterly gratuitously, to work on parts made so nobody else can without the expensive tools - prohibiting competition.
Even VW, go back to the 80s, did a certain kind of utterly unecessary pressurised clip (amongst many on the Golf) which only their tools could prize apart, to replace a jubilee clip: you could do it with a lot of pressure but you'd often cut your hands open.
Apple's efforts are nothing in this regard!
the clip was used because jubilee clips are unable to take temperature changes on hoses. the clip in question can keep a constant pressure on the hose when it's hot or cold (or something like that).
and the clip is apparently very effective as well, that's why you find them on other vehicles now as well.
"At least the world agrees that the slot screw is an abomination that deserves to go the same way as surgery without anaesthetic and public hangings."
I agree about the surgery, but there's something appealing about public hangings of company managers who decide to use special-tool fasteners in their products. I've paid my money, I own the article, now let me in!
You don't 'own' it if Apple has to warranty things. Until the warranty expires, you have limited access unless you do not wish to exercise the warranty. You break it, you (should) buy it. But here in the States there are a lot of DYI types who think others should pay for their experimentation. Then again, we've had 30 years of Reaganomics where the neo-cons felts everyone else should pay for their experimentation. Perhaps it is only an extension of a culture in decline...
"At least the world agrees that the slot screw is an abomination that deserves to go the same way as surgery without anaesthetic and public hangings."
Well, there are parts of the US that don't have a problem w/ execution by hanging.
And there is a growing movement (from the left oddly, the thought being that once people familiarity will breed contempt) to televise executions in the many US states which perform them.
So, by the transitive property I'd argue that the world does not, in fact, agree that public hangings are an abomination, although I think the author is on safer ground with respect to the slot screw.
It certainly is true that Philips screwdrivers have a problem; the screwdriver tends to wear out if used to drive screws that require any effort to turn. So the slot screw is still appropriate for plain work.
But there is no need to use fancy and proprietary screwdrivers like the Torx. The Robertson screwdriver - with a square shape, rather than the plus-sign of the Philips, or other exotic shapes like a hexagon or a triangle or the Torx six-lobes and so on - has excellent torque transmission properties, and has been around for a long time.
The fact that screwdrivers are available that can take these screws out doesn't mean it's not an attempt by Apple to make it harder to work on these than it should be. This went all the way back to the Plus and SE when they used odd-sized Torx like T7s. Jobs explicitly wanted people to treat their computers as a sealed appliances back then, and I'm sure that's the reason now too.
I've needed to buy Yet Another Stupid Torx Driver to adjust the headlights or something else that has gratuitously silly screws to prevent owners from fixing their own cars. Now, sometimes that's because it's been long enough since I bought that last one that one of the Two Gratuitously Different Stupid Torx Drivers has wandered off, but it's still annoying.
The trouble is, if you want to replace something in your house that has broken after many years of service....
- would ya believe, an internal door handle - the internal spring broke!!!
After finding a good replacement, they helpfully supply screws... Slot head!!!! I wonder if there is vast warehouse of these, for stuff that they stopped making 20 years ago!!! :)
But back to apple... warranties are a protection for any company, from idiots who open a device, and then will swear blind that they never touched it, when something goes wrong...
Apple users being a higher class of idiot, due to:
1) breaking your lovely new toy due to curiosity,
2) thinking you can do anything vaguely intelligent once you have done so!!
And apple are forgetful idiots to, they forgot they used the SAME screws in their mac-book in 2009, so it has ALREADY been documented and many suppliers have the screws and drivers for that...
im pretty sure ive got a cheap security screw bit set thats got pentalobes in it, i know they definatly dont fit torx cos i keep geting the little c@@@ mixed up
on the subject of daft screws any one remember those torx with a pre machined flat head compaq went through an obsession with in 386 days?
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