iFixit surgeons tut at iPad mini 5 X-ray: Looks like a mild case of pain-in-the-arse-to-repair Despite being rated way behind Apple's iPhones in build quality due to copious glue squirted under the componentry, Cupertino's latest fun-sized tablet was praised by teardown gurus iFixit for actually having a headphone jack. Yes, it has come to that. ipad mini 5 xray of internals Image via iFixit (click to enlarge) Alias …
Cupertino clearly didn't listen to its previous complaints on the mini 3 and the mini 4.
Oh I wouldn't be so sure about that. Consider most folk will simply buy a new one and there's no reason to make repair easier. Does Apple even sell parts or does the repair community rely on a supply of busted units and third party vendors?1
1. It's a rhetorical question.
Does Apple even sell parts or does the repair community rely on a supply of busted units and third party vendors?1
Where I live, there are no Apple authorized repair shops, and only a couple authorized resellers (no maintenance), yet there's a heeuuuuge part of the population with iPhones.
They rely on (mostly) iCloud-locked phones for that. They'd salvage the immediately-usable parts (camera/display/housing/whatever), then the not-so-immediately-usable parts (flash storage)*
* There are shops which "upgrade" a 16 GB or 32 GB to 128 GB for the equivalent of $40-50.
"...repair? ...they won't need to buy a new one."
It just happens that I own an original iPad in essentially perfect condition. (Bought it used for $40 a few years ago.)
It's now become nearly useless. YouTube still sort-of works, mostly, so I can watch QI episodes; but the YouTube GUI is horrific. More or less end-of-list Period. Nothing else is worth borthing with. None of the apps work.
Point being, even an infinite hardware life doesn't necessarily provide a useful functionality.
It just happens that I own an original iPad in essentially perfect condition. (Bought it used for $40 a few years ago.)
It's now become nearly useless. YouTube still sort-of works, mostly, so I can watch QI episodes; but the YouTube GUI is horrific. More or less end-of-list Period. Nothing else is worth borthing with. None of the apps work.
I'm surprised someone hasn't figured out how to reflash it with LineageOS.
Stupid-ass locked not-so-EFI-yet-EFI firmware (iBoot), but they almost managed to do it on iPhone 3GS and older (and the original iPad I think as well). The project was called iDroid. It relied on a BootROM exploit.
Apple really, really had to fuck that up on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.
Well, there's two sides to it. You're quite right that more and more manufacturers are designing their kit to be deliberately "disposable". However, the downsides are that warranty repairs for Apple also become much more tricky, and it also becomes much more difficult to properly dismantle the thing for recycling as well.
It does also depend on the product. People are used to tablets and phones being disposable these days, but for certain other types of product, people do usually expect some degree of repairability. Going too much down the "disposable" route can potentially cost you sales. For example, I owned one of the earlier Mac Minis and upgraded it a couple of times myself. When it became time to replace it, I looked at newer Mac Minis and didn't buy one, and one of the main reasons was the soldered RAM.
Call me old fashioned, but I remember when they bought out a graphics tablet with a puck and then a newfangled "stylus". That became a wireless stylus and then, when the touch screen arrived the 'stylus' was deemed so last year that it was committed to the hardened CAD and graphic designer's toolkits.
Apple's screen was 'great' and 'wonderful' and 'sensitive' and 'accurate' and didn't require a stylus which was a good thing and punters should pay a lot for that benefit. Now, for some reason, we should be buying a stylus again ... why? Is the screen not wonderful or sensitive or accurate any more? Are fingers getting fatter? Is the screen layout becoming so unusable fingers are not adequate? So many questions, so many reasons not to care about Apple any more.
....becoming a more green company, forcing their supply chains to use renewable engineer. Yet its clear, Apple are doing fucking all for renewable phones and devices. Making it harder and harder to repair yourself, using, what appear to be sweatshop third party repair services in the US (CSAT Solutions) and fighting more and more to squash the "Right to Repair" movement.
Apple are, quite simply, cunts.
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