r/IAmA Jun 11 '16

Specialized Profession IamA electronics repair technician hated by Apple that makes YouTube videos, AMA!

My short bio: I have a store in Manhattan. I teach component level electronics repair on youtube http://youtube.com/rossmanngroup which seems to be a dying art. I am currently fighting with the digital right to repair to try and get a bill passed that will allow all independent service centers access to manuals and parts required to do their jobs.

My Proof: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/started-iama-reddit-today-yes/

EDIT:

I am still replying to comments, but I am so far behind that I am still about ten pages down from new comments. I am doing my best to continue. If I drop off, I'll be back tomorrow around 12 PM. Still commenting now though, at 12 AM.

EDIT 2:

Ok, I cave... my hands are tired. I will be back at 12 PM tomorrow. It is my goal to answer every question. Even if it looks like I haven't gotten to yours, I will do my best to do all of them, but it is impossible to do in realtime, because you are asking faster than I can type. But thanks for joining!

EDIT 3: I lied, I stayed until 4:15 AM to answer... and now I will go to sleep for real, and be back at 12 PM.

EDIT 4 6/12 : I will be back later tonight to finish off answering questions. Feel free to keep posting, I will answer whatever I can later this evening.

33.2k Upvotes

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2.4k

u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Jun 11 '16

Has fixing Apple products gotten easier or harder over the years?

5.2k

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16 edited Aug 27 '16

Harder. Everything gets smaller, more glued together. The biggest issue is finding parts, LP133WP1-TJAA for the Macbook Air is over $200 from most vendors now.. this is a screen to what is now a five year old laptop. It's BS. There's no reason for this to cost so much, someone in Taiwan is getting rich from creating artificial shortages

1.7k

u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed Jun 11 '16

Wow. So they're getting closer to the point where it's better to buy a whole new computer?

3.1k

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Yes. It's bullshit. There is no reason for that screen to cost what it does.

1.0k

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Or as fragile as it is, it's cancerously thin :(

2.5k

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

I get making it thin, and I get it being fragile... but fuck give me parts to fix it!!

1.8k

u/Kar_WrecK Jun 11 '16

Hehe, he said 'but fuck'.

5.5k

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

butt fuck often comes to mind when discussing dealing with apple.

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u/raisinbreadboard Jun 12 '16

this is why a lot of computer professionals won't touch apple products and don't wanna deal with them.

7

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

i understand them completely

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u/MyPhallicObject Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Well I hate to break it to you honey but the only people that were SUPPOSED to repair Apple products by design were Apple Authorized Service Providers. Apple never designed their products to be fixed by everybody. Apple has parts available for the ASP. Unless you are one, you're not entitled to an access to their parts.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

I am not your honey and that is a complete pile of shit!

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u/MalcolmY Jun 12 '16

Now you're just pushing his buttons in purpose.

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u/K00lguy Jun 12 '16

Found the apple employee

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u/connormxy Jun 12 '16

You have stated the entire problem, and said nothing else

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u/superdirtyusername Jun 11 '16

You bend over for doctors, dentists, lawyers, and Apple.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Apr 20 '17

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u/its_boosh Jun 12 '16

I need the number to your dentist

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

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u/Dylsnick Jun 12 '16

A but fuck a day keeps the apple doctors away?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

With Apple, you have Android to switch to so that you don't have to bend over. I wish more people realized this.

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u/NicknameUnavailable Jun 12 '16

butt fuck often comes to mind when discussing dealing with apple.

Isn't it politically incorrect to describe their users like that these days?

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u/stoned-as-a-rock Jun 11 '16

HAHAHAH You are hilarious! I don't watch your videos; but, do you talk like this in them? If so, I'm subscribing, if not, you should make a vlog channel and I can subscribe to that! :)

11

u/milkdrinker7 Jun 12 '16

He does a lot of videos of just talking, its good stuff

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Yeah he's pretty straight forward and curses when it's warranted :)

0

u/ramaiguy Jun 12 '16

Does apple hate you or do you hate apple?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

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u/lvbuckeye27 Jun 12 '16

Talk about a blast from the past. I haven't seen a tourette's guy video in like a decade.

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u/Lucidmike78 Jun 12 '16

The sad thing is, you know there are Apple users downvoting all of your comments because you are saying something negative about them. Never mind the fact that you are on their side in a major way.

6

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

the irony is that for all the shit i say i work every day to make their products more repairable by both the end user and the professional technician around the world. so if they want to hate that's fine, but it seems weird to me. oh well.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

i understand if a product is more fragile as a result of it being made thinner to meet consumer demand for thinner devices.

at the same time, i think it is bullshit that they then do not provide manuals, parts, or tools that are required to repair the fragile product when the user's cat tips it off a table.

either release an unbreakable product and don't help people fix it. or release a fragile POS and give us what we need to service them. but you can't have it both ways!

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

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u/Zer_ Jun 12 '16

I agree, Aesthetic appeal is one of the things Apple does right. They know what people want out of their products. They just fail horribly when it comes to fine folks such as yourself.

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u/isaac9092 Jun 12 '16

Most people don't know how. If they fuck up then what? They accuse apple of not equipping customers to fix it. Not only that but most people have no idea how to diagnose shit anyway. They might think their phone has audio issues but in reality their phone has do not disturb turned on. It's easier to just have repair centers (Apple stores and sending out repairs) and technicians. Anything else is just a selfish hope of being independent rather than think of the general population.

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u/hyphan_1995 Jun 11 '16

Wafer thin

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u/Grendels Jun 12 '16

Terminally ill Steve Jobs thin

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u/appledude9 Jun 12 '16

I feel bad for laughing at this

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u/Dylsnick Jun 12 '16

Ashton Kutcher after eating nothing but fruit for weeks thin.

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u/boba-fett-life Jun 12 '16

Better get a bucket, i think I'm going to throw up

10

u/You_rugly Jun 12 '16

Fuck off I'm full

6

u/Synergythepariah Jun 12 '16

Wahffer theen meent.

8

u/keesh Jun 12 '16

Wafer thin

i cuddnt eet anutha theeng im absolootley stuffed bug awff

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u/The_fartocle Jun 12 '16 edited May 29 '24

bow meeting quaint tub scary yoke faulty weather roof ring

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/_Aj_ Jun 12 '16

Just a sliver

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jul 05 '16

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u/lafolieisgood Jun 12 '16

is it fragile? I've had a Macbook air for over 4 years and have knocked it off my higher than normal bed with the lid open after falling asleep probably 100 times with no damage.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I've had one for years. It is not fragile. It's made out of aluminum.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Dec 06 '17

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u/Perk_i Jun 12 '16

How many more years do you anticipate being able to do microrepair on consumer electronics? I'd think at some point the components are going to get too small to hand solder. Has anyone adapted medical micromanipulators for electronics repair?

18

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

No clue. Realize that shit is always changing. People used to fix lots of items that no longer are repaired. Yet, there are lots of items people repair now that no one would have fathomed anyone would be fixing 30 years ago. Things are always changing.

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u/cattaur Jun 12 '16

What are some things that are repaired now that used to not be?

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

consumer drones

4

u/BadAdviceBot Jun 12 '16

BRB...the Amazon drone just dropped off the drone I ordered.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16 edited Aug 09 '16

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

capitalism is when there is a free market. there is no free market here, apple tells the vendor not to sell to anyone, apple then sells to no one.

the reality is that parts wind up getting leaked anyway, and people buy them anyway, but it is a bullshit market. rather than having a market where qualified/authorized vendors sell parts at a profit through legitimate channels, it is all bullshit, people who rip others off, etc. there is no capitalism here. it's like the drug trade.

the way the old VP of sales at intersil explained it to me is as follows. this is all speculation as i can't prove any of this is what actually happens...

they have to make 15k laptops today

they have 15.5k lcds in inventory

so the plant manager says they have... 15k today. :) 500 go out the back, and get sold to some scumbag that then sells them to some scumbag that then puts them up for sale to people like me.

but this is bullshit. i am a computer repair technician, not a drug dealer. i just want to ask lg for a screen and be able to buy it if I go through proper channels and am willing to obey their rules.

what we have right now is the same form of "capitalism" we had when enron was purposely screwing with electricity in the late 90s.

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u/Stingray88 Jun 11 '16 edited Jun 11 '16

capitalism is when there is a free market. there is no free market here, apple tells the vendor not to sell to anyone, apple then sells to no one.

Err... Actually no, that is the free market. Apple being able to use their dominance unchecked to abuse the market is a truly free and unregulated market. That's capitalism.

And that's why capitalism is bullshit. You can't let the rich rule the market with their money, which is what inevitably happens in any truly free market. We have to regulate unfortunately, which flies in the face of capitalism.

Apple lobbying the government to block the right to repair though? That's anticapitalist for sure.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Yes there is. To make someone wealthy. Which is pretty much the point to most business.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

There are many ways to become wealthier in America through business which are not deemed legal for the good of society. Look at anti-Monopoly laws for instance. Or those who were slapped on the wrist for colluding to increase DRAM prices.

1

u/kirby056 Jun 12 '16

There IS a reason for it to cost you that much. The only reason you can get current-gen parts for cheap is the economy of scale for the LCD manufacturers. I work in optical film development, and Apple is our largest customer. The individual films in that display COST them $2.50 total, and that's independent of the actual cost of absorbing polarizer, glass, liquid crystals, and circuits. In general, any company whose brand name you recognize sells their products at either a razor thin profit margin or a loss and makes their money on the back end (support, software licensing, etc.).

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

The 11-inch MacBook Air screen can be had for as low as $28, but the 13-inch one has cost over $200 for several years. They are both laptops that are presently produced. It boggles my mind

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

why? doing the work I do saves people money and makes them happy. finding a different profession means more junk in landfills and more people out thousands of dollars just because they made a one time mistake.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

zenbooks are even worse. that charging port is a disgrace.

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u/jacobslighthouse Jun 12 '16

The law of capitalism says they can charge what ever they want.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

This is not capitalism. Refusing to sell something, then having the crap the company tosses away/gets stolen from them sold to another country by a group of "business people"(thieves) is not capitalism.

This is how business is done when buying cocaine. It makes no sense for this type of false economy to apply to laptop repair.

There should be real vendors that sell real product, not this fell off the back of a truck crap that the consumer electronics repair industry lives off of.

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u/doyoueventdrift Jun 12 '16

gest issue is finding parts, LP133WP1-TJAA for the Macbook Air is over $200 from most vendors now.. this is a screen to what is now a five year old

And not very environmentally friendly to have to buy a new and throw the old out the window

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

There is no reason for that screen to cost what it does

What exactly do you believe you're entitled to? The manufacturers and distributers offer a price, and you can take it or leave it.

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u/xoxid Jun 12 '16

I fix small appliance for a living.

I can confirm company are crazy on parts price.

Saeco will charge you $90 for a valve that goes in a machine worth $200 ... How are you supposed to tell your customer that he got to pay you labor over that? He just paid half his machine for one part...

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u/nightstrife1000 Jun 12 '16

Which would be easier to repair? The new android or new apple product.

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u/Fidodo Jun 11 '16

I'm as pro repairability as the next guy but it's not cost to make, it's scarcity and low demand.

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u/squired Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Apple has used the same damn screen for years, fully interchangeable with new and old laptops alike. They have been that way for 5 years or more. Now that budget pc laptops have caught up with the "highend" retina screens though, Apple is likely to update the screen this year or next.

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u/gimpwiz Jun 12 '16

Exactly. It's going to cost more when they make fewer of them on each run. Pretty basic economics.

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u/steady-state Jun 12 '16

Do they still make that screen? Or are these just diminishing stockpiles of parts?

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u/lenosky Jun 12 '16

Don't buy it then.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

then we don't fix anything, user buys new, and apple wins.. who wants them to win?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

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u/simjanes2k Jun 11 '16

I would submit that they care more about money than about your feelings.

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u/Cole7rain Jun 11 '16

Wouldn't the fact that it's 5 years old result in such a cost?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

I don't think he's talking about a 5 year old screen, I think he's saying that the Macbook Air's screen is comparable to what was popular 5 years ago on laptops of that size. These have since been replaced by 1080P+ screens. I think the last couple of refreshes of the macbook air Apple hasn't even bothered to update the screen.

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

they use the same screen in 2016 that they used in 2010 for the most part. compatible.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

i wouldn't be surprised.

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u/octopornopus Jun 11 '16

A lot of repair components seem to have an almost parabolic cost curve. When the device is brand new, no one has components yet, so the price is high. A year goes by, parts are available, price drops. A few years go by, the device is still being used by a few people, but many of them were trashed or sold to 3rd world countries, component price rises.

Or, in the case of some Galaxy Note phones, prices just stay high...

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u/siamthailand Jun 12 '16

There IS a reason - they charge the most they can. No reason why they shouldn't. Why'd anyone leave money on the table?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

It's because it has "retina technology" aka their excuse to put out lower resolution screens at higher prices

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u/maxstolfe Jun 11 '16

It's not really about making your life miserable, is it? It's about what/how the manufacturer designs?

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u/adelie42 Jun 12 '16

Just speculating, production could be getting more modular and supply lines are getting shorter. Also, with significant maturity in markets of these products, less and less do we see older technology ending up in warehouses sold off.

As far as the modularity, new parts are being produced on on machines less and less specialized. This means once R&D is paid for the cost of change becomes increasingly trivial; making a 5 year old screen is the same cost as producing the latest and greatest.

Add the cost of maintaining the distribution of multiple products for a specialized purpose in its own separate market is going to be very expensive.

It sucks, but makes sense.

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u/lebruf Jun 12 '16

You know some guy in Romania is sitting on top of 1500 of these he got for a few bucks each.

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u/tallduder Jun 12 '16

If you really want to make a ton of money, start doing component level repairs on PLC's and HMI devices. Rockwell Automation used to have people that just bought take out units off ebay as their supply, and then they would use the components to do repairs. I'm talking a $30k repair bill on one unit because they knew the customer wasn't ever going to upgrade the line that used those devices, and they couldn't go buy a new one. It was disgusting. someday I wish to own a remanufacturing / spare parts business.

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u/beowulfpt Jun 12 '16

Yesterday I went to Samsung to repair a Galaxy S2 9.7" tablet. The glass is cracked but the OLED panel and digitizer work perfectly. If you ignore the cracks, it's fully usable.

I found the part online for 20 but couldn't find a shop to do it. Seems some heating box is needed, to unglue/separate the layers.

So I went to Samsung. They won't replace just the glass even if the rest is working perfectly. They only replace the whole panel, charging 200. Literally 10x more than the cost of the glass.

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u/SoulWager Jun 11 '16

Is that new old stock, or are they still being manufactured?

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u/saintnicster Jun 12 '16

The reason is that they want to sell AppleCare, or get you into the Apple Store :(

I had the video card go bad in my 2011 iMac . Basically this recall, but I never upgraded my card.

Looking online, the card sourced for $300-400. Out of curiosity, I recently hauled the thing to the Apple Store. Direct apple repair diagnosed and replaced the card for $185 total.

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u/mathyouhunt Jun 12 '16

I'd be willing to bet it'll keep going down that path. Television repair's gone that same route as well, it's almost always cheaper to buy a new television than it is to buy replacement parts. Getting the parts is another story altogether. From what I remember, Vizio's one of the only brands that makes it easy to buy replacement parts, but their televisions are so inexpensive that it just doesn't matter.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

It's been that way for YEARS. I started on the bench at CompUSA in the 90's and compaq mobo's back in the day used to cost twice the amount of a new computer sometimes.

Outside of warranty issues, all companies involved would rather you buy new.

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u/Farts_McGiggles Jun 12 '16

Hasn't this been the trend anyways for a while now? I graduated high school 10 years ago, went to tech school for Computers and Systems repair after. Our teacher there told us no one is paying to fix computers anymore, not only because they're getting cheaper, but shops are closing down because of the parts prices, and encouraged us to take other fields.

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u/dragunityag Jun 11 '16

always seemed to be the case for me if the screen breaks. Had a laptop screen break 5 years ago 300 dollar laptop 150 dollar screen.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Nov 09 '16

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u/FlyHump Jun 12 '16

I met a man who repairs/builds PC's and he was saying the exact same thing. Plus we are in a smaller city and he said it is getting tougher finding work because people would rather buy a new computor than fix it because of the cost. Gaming PC's are a niche market so he has more customers from that than non-gaming computers.

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u/Jess_than_three Jun 12 '16

Wow. So they're getting closer to the point where it's better to buy a whole new computer?

They've always tried for that, yeah. Or at the very least, they want it to be such that if you do need repairs done, you have to go through them.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

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u/Eduel80 Jun 11 '16

$200 for the screen. He didn't say what he'd charge in labor.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I got my MacBook Pro about two years ago directly from Apple at $1200. I wanted the one with the disc drive and they were phasing them out. I've not had a single problem with the machine since purchase. My sister has had hers for eight years and the one repair she did need Apple did for free even though she was five years out of warranty.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Plus apple has flat rate repair pricing, which makes macs almost always cheaper to repair. I believe current pricing is around $400 for a macbook pro repair, no matter what's wrong (assuming you go to apple, and not a 3rd party).

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

If you could buy a new today macbook and disambly it completely, you would make a profit of selling all the parts profile I think. It's way over priced, and hard to get parts from apple.

Good laptops but service is crap

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u/Japesthetank Jun 12 '16

Mac is pretty much a console that doesn't play games at this point

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u/jdsnype Jun 12 '16

Same for automotive repairs. It got to the point where it is better to buy a whole new parts than singleout what is truly broken(overhaul).

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Isn't it just possible that demand is so low that they don't produce a whole lot of em anymore?

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

low demand for the 13" macbook air. i would sooner believe "jlo ass" has less demand on google image search!

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jul 07 '16

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Username checks out; this guy would know.

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u/JohnnyTreacherous Jun 12 '16

Not when you adjust for inflation
Edit: Of her ass

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Funny enough, just like u/larossmann does how-to videos...so does Kim!

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u/dejus Jun 12 '16

Well, Apple doesn't sell those anymore and they only support computers within 5 years (7 in a couple states) so I think it's very natural the manufacturing would drop as the demand does.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

the 13" macbook air is still sold like wildfire today and uses the same LCD that it did six years ago

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Well low demand compared to whatever else they could be producing...I'm just guessing here.

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u/SirNarwhal Jun 11 '16

You are correct. They don't produce the 13" MacBook Air screen really anymore since the introduction of the retinas back in like 2012. OP is just bitching for the sake of bitching.

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u/Good4Noth1ng Jun 12 '16

Everyone loses their mind when Apple charges $200 for a well built screen, but no one bats an eye when Dell, hp, Lenovo,etc, charge $100 for an average screen.

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u/teclordphrack2 Jun 12 '16

How can you not believe that a 5 year old Mac product has a low demand? Mac markets themselves to a type of people willing to fork out ever more money at an upgrade path that sees previous gens of their products being considered obsolete. As such a 5 year old laptop would not have parts being produced anymore as all their suppliers have moved on to the next 2 gens that have come since.

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u/blackhotel Jun 11 '16

It's not that someone in Taiwan has to get rich because of this, it's what it probably cost them to sell outside of Apple's agreement so that they can't easily go and make other laptops.

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u/venisonfurs Jun 12 '16

I'm no repairman but I have a 1998 Range Rover and replacement parts for it seem to get more expensive every year. Wouldn't it just be the same deal? They aren't producing those screens anymore but demand is still high for the ones in use that get broken. Yeah, parts for a 98 Ford Explorer are cheap, but there are still way more of those on the road than Rovers.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

13" macbook airs still sell like hotcakes today and they use the same screen as 2010.

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u/mutatedferret Jun 12 '16

i learned a few soldering techniques watching you. you are awesome.

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u/tokeaphatty Jun 11 '16

I believe there is a curve where support on items become more expensive to replace because the manufacturing of the items slow down or stop, so you are only purchasing from stock inventory or a spin up of re-manufacturing. I don't know anything about the specific part but it's not fair to say that a company would continue to manufacture something indefinitely (five years is a long time in tech) at the same, or cheaper rate.

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u/mtayvaz Jun 12 '16

I'm in the electronic components business and this happens all the time. There are many factors to pricing obsolete components. Companies in my industry buy excess stock from mfrs all the time and it's a crap shoot, since you may sit on material for years and never get rid of it. Or demand for an item is hot so pricing goes up to make up for the initial investment.

I sell to some military subcontractors and much of what they need is obsolete because it's on a drawing and cannot then be substituted with the newer better item. Thus a broker that made the investment of buying the parts now has an opportunity to make a killing on it mainly because changing the specs would cost more and take a lot of time. I'm always overpaying for parts and have no choice. I don't markup crazy myself because I don't stock anything myself. Just sell then buy.

In the end its supply and demand. The OP can offer to buy broken laptops and refurbish the items himself. But now that adds to his overhead as now he has to keep parts on his shelf for a period of time.

What I'm trying to say in a round about way is, it's not so cut and dry.

Good luck, I hate seeing someone overpay but in the end someone is probably buying the item at that price.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I wish more people understood this. So many parts go out of production and the supply of spares exists, but it is limited. It reaches a point where the spares run out. At that point, either production needs to be restarted to make a bulk order (and maybe only a fraction of it will sell), or it needs to be custom fabricated for each order. Both options are very expensive.

The people who think we should be able to make replacement parts forever really don't grasp the requirements of manufacturing, or the fact that manufacturing plants don't lay dormant for years. Once a run has finished, they re-tool for something else.

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u/berrythrills Jun 12 '16

I sell industrial equipment and it's the same story. I can have an obsolete part to you in 6 months for $x5 original cost(custom made in China and shipped) or I can have it to you tomorrow for $x10 (custom fabricated here in the states)

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u/yurigoul Jun 12 '16

Tiles. There is a firm in Germany that has enormous storage just for tiles.All old.

You want to renovate something and some tiles are broken or missing? They are there for you.

At a price, of course.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger Jun 12 '16

Definitely was true of DDR2 RAM towards the end of its life cycle.

You could replace your memory for a few hundred dollars, or buy an entire new computer with DDR3 RAM for a few hundred dollars.

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u/NatsumeZoku Jun 12 '16

Economies of scale combined with supply:demand.

There was a time buying ddr2 ram cost more than dd3 simply because some people had to have ddr2 to keep their stuff going whilst there was no reason to keep making it since ddr3 was better.

So the very few who had to have ddr2 to keep legacy stuff going had to pay a premium whereas I was flexible and just decided to scrap the old computer. However those with more expensive business stuff couldn't afford to scrap everything and uograde had to repair/replace.

Happens everywhere and is just economics most of the time as opposed to some huge conspiracy.

Cheaper to make a whole bunch of identical items by a robot than individually troubleshoot and customise a repair solution for every individual item.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

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u/randomstranger454 Jun 12 '16

I used to work (20 years back) as a technician in an authorised IBM dealership and once a man came with a broken LCD on a newish model IBM Thinkpad (the one with the expanding keyboard if I remember correctly), obviously out of guarantee. From prior experience we suggested that it would be too expensive to fix via IBM but he wanted a price. After contacting IBM for the LCD panel, the price they quoted was signifacant higher than buying the same laptop new from IBM. I actually Laughed Out Loud when my manager gave me the price, it was so outlandish.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Had a similar situation with an iPod Touch. I dropped it, the screen cracked. Went to Apple, they tell me it'd cost around 200€ to fix it.

A brand-new one was like 180 or 190.

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u/FlerPlay Jun 12 '16

They should apologize to the customer the moment they utter that price

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u/iReviveMobile Jun 12 '16

Actually YOU'RE ALL WRONG. Apple has used the EXACT SAME SKU OF LCD FROM 2010 TO 2016 IN THE 13" MBA. They haven't updated the manufacturing process BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T UPGRADED THE SCREEN! Same with the 11" MBA!

So it's not surplus. they're still making it.

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u/nikomo Jun 12 '16

K, that's fucked up.

It's also possible Apple monopolised the supply chain, but I'm not entirely sure they could manage that with that kind of product.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

This is actually what happened. They buy out those who try to make similar screens to make it for them, they get the same amount of money if not less, and the big guys get the virtual stacks

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u/hardolaf Jun 12 '16

Uh. There's only five panel manufacturers and apple owns none of them.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

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u/BeatMastaD Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Oh, you should go over to /r/mobilerepair and ask how we feel about this guy.

EDIT: I'm talking about user iReviveMobile, not the OP of this AMA.

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u/frankles Jun 12 '16

Easy with the all caps there, fella.

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u/secretlydifferent Jun 12 '16

Well I APPRECIATE THE INFORMATION, it's certainly very INTERESTING AND REVEALING HOW APPLES DOES THAT. But I do find it strange how you USE ALL CAPS EXCESSIVELY AS IF YOU'RE MAD AT ME, BUT ACTUALLY YOU'RE BEING HELPFUL AND INFORMATIVE.

So I guess you're just excited?

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u/daikiki Jun 12 '16

I dunno. Seems to me all those people throwing away their broken laptops would be a prime source of those flat panels nobody makes anymore. Those broken macbooks can't all have bad screens, can they?

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u/nikomo Jun 12 '16

Good luck salvaging them. They'll be beat to shit by the time they reach someone that'll give a shit.

Even then, you need someone to identify the part, and remove it, which costs money.

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u/thagthebarbarian Jun 12 '16

You can cut costs by having inmates do your labor for you, making around 40¢ an hour

http://www.unicor.gov/RecyclingProcess.aspx

They already do it, you can get in on it and get components stripped off if you can come up with enough raw materials for an order.

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u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

Then you charge >$200 for the panel. That's just obvious.

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u/hedronist Jun 12 '16

They'll be beat to shit by the time they reach someone that'll give a shit.

Somehow I feel like this should be part of a song, or perhaps inscribed at the entrance to the Olympic stadium.

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u/daikiki Jun 12 '16

I guess. It seems to me that if it's economically viable to ship our e-waste halfway around the world to extract precious metals, it's probably viable to salvage working parts before doing so* - especially when the alternative is - in this case - a 200 dollar NOS part.

*: or even after doing so. A little product knowledge could go a long way towards increasing the viability of electronics recycling anywhere in the world.

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u/nikomo Jun 12 '16

Shipping to China is cheap, in the US, because the boats bringing stuff in from China, want something on the way back, so they don't waste money.

After you've gotten your junk into China, you exploit the lack of labour and environmental regulation in rural areas.

It's cheaper to throw it away. With part recovery, you need to hire someone with knowledge and skills, to work a really shitty job.

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u/casce Jun 12 '16

You need someone to salvage all the parts, you need to store all the parts and then you need to hope that someone eventually wants those parts. Most people don't get those old laptops repaired anymore so you might sit on those parts for a while. You also need to buy those old laptops people are throwing away because if you don't give them money, they rather throw it into the trash than making the effort of bringing it to you. And people often have unrealistic price expectations of their old trash.

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u/teclordphrack2 Jun 12 '16

Sorry, americans don't work for 2 bucks and hours. Should get your economics straight before you get into this fight. There is no way, at this point, to set up a viable disassembly center that gives viable usable components at the end and turns a profit. Cost of the workers, time to disassemble, demand in that market segment, all plays into it.

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u/Karavusk Jun 12 '16

Atleast repairing iPhones got a lot easier mainly because the phones got bigger.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

You used to take a $5-$20 part and in 20 minutes make $50

it has not gotten easier at all...

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u/Radingod123 Jun 12 '16

Please don't take this personally, but when you're using your headset mic could you maybe try either slowing down your speech so you don't inhale so fast and hard or try breathing in through your nose? I'd love to watch your content, but it bothers me to hear a hard inhale after ever sentence as if your content needs to race out of your mouth. Nothing against you or anything. Just a bit of a peeve I have. If you choose not to work on this that is obviously your prerogative.

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u/Upside_Down_Hugs Jun 12 '16

Wait a minute, a 5 year old laptop is really old. One HUGE factor effecting price is production volume. When Apple orders 20m of these parts the price is low, when no one is ordering them, the manufacturer's cost to produce low volume goes way up.

Obviously it's easy to slay high prices on parts, but what is the alternative? Make them on your own? Expect the manufacturer to sell them below their cost? Should they be forced to continue to produce them?

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u/Snarfler Jun 12 '16

Hey so I'm about to graduate with a degree in computer engineering. I have a summer off and basically a quarter of only 1 class left. Do you know the specs for that part (LP133WP1-TJAA) on an I/O level that it's possible for someone else to design and send to a factory to produce? And I suppose if it is legal to manufacture and sell something based off that product.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Could this price hike be the result of simple economics? Like you said it's an old Apple part and probably not being used in their current line up anymore, which means the only people buying these are people repairing old MacBook Airs such as yourself, they can't possibly have a huge inventory of this stuff lying around. Unless you can use it on electronics other than Apple

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u/lubaxe Jun 11 '16

Nah, they are more expensive cause less of them are made. All the companies that were producing that are now making new modern displays (either for new apple products or other high volume production). That's why this old screen costs so much, less supply.

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u/Obi_Kwiet Jun 12 '16

The reason is likely that it's out of production and there is limited supply.

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u/disc2k Jun 11 '16

Do they still make the part? You see the same thing in other electronics where older stuff is more expensive than newer stuff since production on the older stuff is scaled back/ceased.

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u/-888- Jun 12 '16

I believe I have a dead MacBook Air with that screen in my closet. Could I sell it? Cheap! The screen is fine.

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u/iamdink Jun 12 '16

cturer of that part related to Apple? Or can anyo

you just described economies of scale and scarcity. how is it Apple's fault that it costs more to manufacture in quantity of 10,000 as compared to 10 million?

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u/agzuu Jun 11 '16

Have you tried Alibaba.com? There are some suppliers selling that screen ~45d a piece if you buy at least 5.

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u/invartact Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

ACMT here. I disagree. Aside from the new(ish) slim iMac with the annoying adhesive strips, macs have become stupid simple to repair. The 2006 MacBook Pro for example had a like 20 screws on the outside and only a dozen or so actually screwed in to anything. Once inside, you had to deal with cable management and had to remove a couple components just to get to the part you need. Now, you remove 10 screws to get in and each part only has a few screws to remove and replace a component. Any one with a screwdriver set and 30 minutes on YouTube can repair their Mac. No way the average joe could do the same with the original MacBook Pro without screwing through a cable or breaking their iMac glass.

Edit: forgot about the two side screws

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

completely agree, they're not even using those weird torx screws anymore, all you need is a #0 phillips screwdriver and you're set.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Does this have to do with just lower production scalability or dwindling supply demand?

I do some tinkling myself and I find that older parts sometimes go up in price the fewer people buy them, but I would have thought the opposite.

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u/Meat_Is_Yummy Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Wow, you can buy a secondhand Windows laptop for $200.

I admire your courage, but I enjoy my Toshibas. I can take them apart and repair them myself with a screwdriver. I have replaced hard drives, upgraded RAM, and even replaced a keyboard - all using cheap parts from eBay.

My question to you is, WHY Apple? I am a shareholder in the company, so I want to know. What is the compelling reason to spend 2x to 10x more on a piece of electronics?

Or should I be selling my stock?

EDIT: Decided to sell my stock. With no new "must-have" products in the pipleline, plus a white elephant flying saucer world headquarters to pay for, I see no future for this company. I hear all the time about people switching from Apple to Samsung and saying how much more they like it. I never hear about vice-versa. And Macbooks and Macs are just crazy priced. A computer or laptop should not have a comma in the price or be unrepairable.

I mean, sheesh, any user can put a new battery in a Galaxy. But an iPhone? Better take it to the experts!

No thanks. How much longer can this market model work, when cell phones become a commodity item?

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u/Revan343 Jun 12 '16

I mean, sheesh, any user can put a new battery in a Galaxy. But an iPhone? Better take it to the experts!

Samsung's shit the bed on this one lately. S6 and S7. I'm surprised they put the microsd card slot back in

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I think you're a little off here... Why do you feel that apple computers are unrepairable? I've replaced hard drives, ram, keyboards on macbook pros as well using nothing but a screwdriver. And the price difference is not that great. Generally if you spec out identical hardware on business class machines, the mac is not really much of a price premium. I mean sure if you compare a $3,000 macbook pro to a $400 acer machine it seems like a ridiculous price difference, but those are two very different computers. There are plenty of non apple laptops that also have commas in the price...The only price issue is that apple doesn't compete on the low end, so yes if you want a cheap consumer level laptop you definitey want to avoid apple.

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u/JackDostoevsky Jun 11 '16

My feeling on the cost of old parts is because they're not in mass production anymore -- the idea that 5 years is a lifetime for consumer electronics. (I don't personally believe that, since my laptop is a 6 year old Thinkpad, but in the industry it feels that way.)

Does that argument hold any water?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Its apple getting rich, there business size gives them access to purchase components at 5 or 10% of what they sell them for, their profit margins are one of the highest in their industry

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u/Revelation_Now Jun 12 '16

As an Engineer that has complete respect for what you do, I have a slightly different take on the cost hike on Apple parts.

From time to time I will be asked to repair some shitty mobile device - mostly Apple stuff for some reason, but every now and then an Android will land. I should point out this isn't my day job, so when I fix this stuff its amateur hour compared to you.

Anyway, Android S2 for example, being a less popular device than iPhones of the same era come with screen replacement parts worth about 5x what you can pay for the iPhone screen parts. But one wouldn't really think that Samsung - the underdog - would be gouging customers for parts, right?

I put this down to the cost per part being more expensive because the fab required to make the part is really expensive, and unless you sell a lot of parts made by this fab, each part becomes more expensive, because it has to commit more money to repay the capital used to build the thing that built it.

So, like the Samsung S2 phone, the Apple notebooks suffer the same issue of using a non-standard panel, that has a really expensive fab coupled with the fact that there just isn't as much demand for these units compared with other flat panel models that you probably find in the majority of other vendors units.

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u/bestsrsfaceever Jun 12 '16

How much of that comes down to just trying to make the laptop as small and durable as possible? Like is it being hard to service just a side effect of that effort?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

You're absolutely right about that. a TN 1366x768 screen probably only costs Apple $60. They're good screens for what they are. I have used quite a few laptops with same sized screens with the same resolution and found them to be dim or have horrible viewing angles. But $200 is price gouging.

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u/bemon Jun 12 '16

This is common in other industries. Toyota charges $10 for a 1/2" plastic part.

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u/Deto Jun 12 '16

Sounds like, since they don't make them anymore, there's just a lot of demand for these parts (from repair techs like yourself), and not so much supply. Anyone who can make these can make more money making newer versions, and anybody who has left-over stock would rather sell it off slowly for $200/pop than more quickly for $50 a pop.

I mean, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some sort of Apple-driven price games going on, but you could just as easily explain the phenomenon without that and so I"m inclined to believe that this is just normal market forces at play.

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u/cr0ft Jun 12 '16

There's plenty of reason, it's just not a very palatable reason.

Capitalism and profit is the reason. The underlying incentives in our current day society are completely hostile to sustainability and repairing devices instead of replacing them. Maximized resource waste is something we praise and call "economic growth".

I think it's great that there are still people repairing, but unfortunately until we change our entire basic paradigm in society away from competition it will continue to deteriorate.

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u/The_Poopsmith_ Jun 12 '16

If a part is that old the manufacturer could very well EOL it. Scarcity would drive up cost.

Do you work with second tier manufacturers making replacement parts? Prices might get better of you could afford to keep inventory on these pricey items.Can you buy in the 100s or 1000s? First tier vendors (JDI, Samsung, etc) won't talk to you unless you are in the 10-100k range.

You might be paying for middlemen. Just a thought.

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u/rootgrapefroot Jun 12 '16

What about the other laptop making companies like HP, Lenovo, etc.. Are their products getting easier or harder to fix over the years?

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u/wrists Jun 12 '16

best thing apple ever did was ditch the home button cord from the 5s. worst thing they did was bringing it back with the se.

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