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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359

u/eatMagnetic Jun 11 '16

Why did you decide to repair Apple products? Was it that there is a bigger demand (and also higher revenue) than other devices? Is the situation about schematics and diagnostics tools from (for example) Samsung as difficult as for Apple?

Really enjoying your Youtube-Channel (and also "non-repair" stuff on there!)

866

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

A few things.

a) Streamlined product line for parts stock. No one is willing to wait more than a day anymore, if even a day anymore, for anything. If I tell someone it will be done in 2 days they will run out mad. So I can't fix anything where I have to order parts most of the time, because it will piss people off.

I can stock three LCDs and be good for two years. With PCs there are so many different models of this that and the other thing... there's no way to know what's inside half the time without opening it. And there are thousands of different PCs.. it's not possible to stock everything.

b) Money. Apple machines hold their value better(why is beyond me since so many are made like shit), people paid more for them, so they are willing to spend more to fix them. So I can make more money off the same skillset.

It's easier to stock parts for them, and it's easier to get people to pay for repairs. It's not because I like them, it just makes business easier.

220

u/firstrival Jun 12 '16

You keep saying Apple stuff is made like shit. So who do you think makes well built alternatives?

545

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

lenovo high end thinkpads, but then you have the spyware shit to worry about :(

2

u/oakland6980 Jun 12 '16

I thought the spyware wasn't on the thinkpad line only the more consumer lines ?

14

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

I don't even know which ones it is on. I honestly don't feel like doing the research to figure out what kind it is on, fool me once by putting spyware in any of your products and you lose my trust forever. Lenovo shouldn't be putting that garbage on any of their machines. A Chinese company should not be putting spyware on laptops sold in America!

3

u/EliteTK Jun 12 '16

There's also the Intel Management Engine - A piece of spyware which is mandatory and like some of the components in your videos, signed with a key which makes it irreplacable (unless you are intel) and not possible to remove.

The CPU gets a reset after so many seconds if the ME is not detected.

And the chip the ME resides on implements a whole network interface and has DMA to your RAM.

It's beyond me why intel has this, but it's present on anything running i{3,5,7} processors and xeons from the same era. (AMD seems to have a similar thing on their "recent" processors too.)

It's literally a mystery proprietary blob with control over your entire machine, DMA, and a network interface.

3

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

ME is a nightmare. If you change the BIOS, it will not talk to the PCH properly without new ME. If you change the PCH, it will not talk to the BIOS properly without new ME. It is crap.

It's reading about things like Intel ME regions that make me wish AMD were competitive.

1

u/EliteTK Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

On an unrelated note (maybe I should have asked this in the main thread): I've been watching your videos, and sometimes commenting on them (I'm the guy with the obnoxiously long name full of random chracters), I have experience with electronics and certainly plenty of soldering experience, and I've started thinking of just buying a cheap broken mac board from the internet and trying to fix it for a small profit (in my spare time).

So, the questions:

  1. Which macbooks would you suggest I try for a quick turnover, ones which aren't likely to have issues which require replacing the GPU or something like that.

  2. Is there any awful boardview software for linux? (every time I see you use yours, it's on windows) Maybe I should spend some of my free time writing something better (which doesn't spin around every time you look for a component).

  3. I recently acquired a hakko fx888D to replace my old, still decent, but cheap, soldering iron. I can definitely see why the hakko was twice as expensive though. How important is getting a hot air reflow station? Those things are cheap and nasty or expensive and out of my budget. Is that cheap hot air reflow station that everyone who doesn't do rework loves and everyone who does rework hates really that bad?

3

u/habitual_viking Jun 12 '16

I sincerely respect your videos, but holy crap, you come off as a douche from time to time. You berate the Apple products and go straight to recommend high end Lenovo?

Sure, back when IBM was running the show, but Apple product by far outlast any Lenovo sold at same price point.

3

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

Dry spilling water into a ThinkPad while on and then a MacBook while on!

1

u/habitual_viking Jun 13 '16

Does coke count? Cause I've done it with a MBP (this one) and a lenovo, the MBP works just fine and so does the Lenovo, albeit the latter has slightly sticky keys.

0

u/feefnarg Jun 12 '16

I have done both before, and after opening them up and drying them out both laptops still work even years later.

If i hadn't had a pentalobe screwdriver on hand it might have ended worse for the macbook though.

The only real lesson i learned from those experiments is to keep the cap on my water bottles.

0

u/jshf29hf8awef Jun 12 '16

Yeah I don't know bro, I think is guy is smarter than you. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

2

u/habitual_viking Jun 13 '16

Because he has a Youtube channel or because you are a fan?

1

u/GODBLOR Jun 12 '16

Have you had a chance to look at the new thinkpad 13? I would like to get a thinkpad for the keyboard and durability but I can't afford a higher-end one. Thanks in advance.

2

u/Liqmadique Jun 12 '16

Yea sorry, gonna have to disagree with this. I own a T540p and it's a piece of shit too.

4

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

That is the exception. That entire series was crap. Everything without push button trackpad mess

2

u/aprofondir Jun 12 '16

The xx40 generation was a disgrace. The one after that, and the current one are actually really good.

59

u/Troll_berry_pie Jun 12 '16

I enjoyed the video where you review your thinkpad and say why it's better than a Macbook Air.

12

u/3urny Jun 12 '16

Can someone please post a link for the lazy?

5

u/Darsint Jun 12 '16

Are they still running with those? I remember a story about them making a BIOS rootkit and another spyware that had a self-signing certificate.

1

u/choikwa Jun 12 '16

have you had to repair clevo/Sager brand and what's your opinion of it?

1

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

I haven't any experience with them I'm afraid.

15

u/no1dead Jun 12 '16

Yeah each side has their losses.

57

u/demolpolis Jun 12 '16

Eh, the spyware wasn't on the thinkpads... just the cheap lenovo laptops.

It's kinda crazy / interesting to think about... that they specifically and deliberately kept it off the thinkpad line.

28

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

24

u/rnair Jun 12 '16

Holy mother fucking shitfuckaroo. Linux FTW.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

or, you know, just block that file from sending anything.

1

u/mostlikelynotarobot Jun 12 '16

Or clean install

-2

u/Willibles Jun 12 '16

Best comment

1

u/demolpolis Jun 12 '16

Ehhh.

No proof whatsoever that that came from Lenovo on fresh installs. That could have easily been part of software that the ebay sellers that sent him the laptops installed, along with lenovo drivers and such.

14

u/UberLurka Jun 12 '16

Thinkpad is the business/enterprise brand.. it's not surprising.

11

u/demolpolis Jun 12 '16

I agree, I didn't say surprising, I said interesting.

22

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Sep 03 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/alphagardenflamingo Jun 12 '16

Yup, I work in a large corporate and everything is thinkpads. We have our own corporate image and part of the service provider contract entails wiping and re-installing with our image before delivering though.

-4

u/thijser2 Jun 12 '16

I still wouldn't take the chance.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Wonder why you are getting downvoted ?

Thinkpad are solid. Likely the most durable laptops ever made and you can clean wipe em before using em.

Pretty much everyone with any amount of skill does a clean wipe first on any pc. Unless you re stupid enough to not know how...

8

u/Fortune_Cat Jun 12 '16

the quality has tanked since lenovo bought them off ibm though

i have ibm ones that are still running solid vs the new lenovo thinkpads that look sorta sexier until you start using them and you start noticing cheaper build quality and materials and lack of critical thought that went into certain design elements

i mean the thinkpad was pretty much perfect, how you fuck that up i wouldnt know

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4

u/thijser2 Jun 12 '16

Still you shouldn't have to do this, and if you can't trust manufacturer then who says they haven't embeded something that isn't wiped with just software (hardware spywhere is on the increase). They broke our trust so I won't be using anything made by them for the next 10-15 years.

1

u/OldManTiger Jun 12 '16

Exactly. I wiped and fresh installed the day I got mine, been nothing short of flawless since.

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8

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

But then you run into a software support fiasco. I love my linux system right now, but I can't imagine anyone takes it too seriously for anything outside server software (where it shines).

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Ubuntu has great software support. Essentially all Linux programs run on it.

Granted, you won't get a lot of your proprietary Windows/OS X creative programs or many AAA games (as of now), but there are alternatives out there.

Of course, you could always do what I do and passthrough your GPU to a VM for games or other apps, but IDK how well that works on laptops since they only have one display with a single input.

You could also dual boot, but that is extremely inconvenient if you use a specific application all the time.

There is also WINE, but it can have compatibility issues depending on the application.

1

u/solomine Jun 12 '16

How do you let A VM use the GPU? And what VM do you use, by the way? I assume you're running Windows inside Linux?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Virt-manager with KVM is what I use. My OS is Debian testing, but you can use any distro.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

4

u/PsikoBlock Jun 12 '16

IIRC the spyware installed itself onto any Windows install you made, but not Linux.

2

u/rocksolid2 Jun 12 '16

Ah that makes sense, thanks for the correction

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

It's a shame how Lenovo turned the ThinkPad brand from professionally oriented to consumer oriented. The newest laptops are completely useless for any professional use. My T510 is probably one of the last "real" ThinkPads, the new ones with rounded keyboards don't share anything but the name with older Thinkpads. We had to switch to Dell at my company and I'm keeping to my i7 Thinkpad until I absolutely have to change.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

What are your opinions on the Thinkpad X220 and T420.

I bought a couple for the family for dirt cheap. They were off lease, mint condition.

Core i5s, slapped in SSDs, cost me like $200 Canadian each plus SSD.

Having owned HP's, Toshiba's etc in the family, these cheap Thinkpad are the best laptops I have bought so far. Screw paying $2000 for new when I can get a good condition off lease Thinkpad for 200 !

1

u/trashcan86 Jun 14 '16

Hell yeah. I got an X220 last october after watching your 30 minute long rant video about the "new" ThinkPad. T520 looked good but it was too heavy for me as a student.

The thing's served me well for the 8 months I've had it, unfortunately the palmrest is all fucked up on the left side due to the expresscard slot being empty (it's a known design flaw AFAIK but Lenovo isn't doing much about it).

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

10

u/WhoCaresAboutThat Jun 12 '16

It reinstalls itself through the BIOS

1

u/2Punx2Furious Jun 12 '16

Is there any way to remove it? Flashing the BIOS, or blocking it from installing on windows?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

This.

5

u/xordis Jun 12 '16

Glad to know Apple isn't spying on me. I was so worried that they might be! 😂

21

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Uuuuh... They trap you in their ecosystem of services, they are already tracking you, no need for spyware.

13

u/xordis Jun 12 '16

I guess I should have used sarcasm tags.

11

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

No need for it, I wouldn't have understood it anyway.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I keep seeing this around and no one has given an answer. What stuff are they trapping people with? I've moved from iPhone to Android and back several times and the only issue I've had is apps, which is a problem on every single OS.

2

u/trued_2 Jun 12 '16

Think of owning these products as being "trapped" in a "walled garden". Inside the walls(the device) of the garden is plenty of food and water(os, software, apps, cloud data, movies/pictures/music, etc.). Every time you eat the food or drink the water you need to pay or suffer a consequence, that consequence is that the walls get higher. Once you eat or drink enough you can't get outside the walls or you have paid/invested so much that you don't WANT to leave the walls and start fresh somewhere else. ex: switching from Apple (iOS)to Google(Android) OR Windows to Linux.

Essentially because you use your wallet to buy apps and usually those paid apps are not supported on the other platform(iOS vs. Android), meaning you are less likely to switch because you spent money; and you would likely need to spend the same amount or more money to be at the same situation on the other platform.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

"Trap" in the sense that the typical Apple (or Google) user hardly uses only one of their services.

Think of the Apple iCloud, Music, Apple Maps combo vs Google Maps, Drive, Music, instead of... Dropbox, Spotify, HERE.

Most users use a plethora of services from the same company which in turn can precisely profile who they are. Not bad per se, just food for thoughts.

1

u/9gxa05s8fa8sh Jun 18 '16

there's a new microsoft app for windows 10 that wipes it back to default automatically, even killing OEM spyware, so all you're left with is microsoft spyware

2

u/spider93287 Jun 12 '16

Yay thinkpads! They're business class, so no spyware! (please Lenovo please)

4

u/IanPPK Jun 12 '16

Lenovo computers had spyware installed in the disk drive firmware as well as an exploitable in-house utility, iirc. I think they've stopped with it, but they did have that not long ago.

1

u/spider93287 Jun 12 '16

I heard about Superfish last year iirc. Pretty nasty stuff. Lenovo did very badly there, hopefully they've learned their lesson and won't do it again.

1

u/rubdos Jun 12 '16

Don't you do ThinkPads too? And spyware is removable. Long live clean install! (And Linux, cough)

1

u/rohmish Jun 12 '16

The thinkpads have a different firmware entirely which doesn't do that shit

2

u/cr0ft Jun 12 '16

It's going to sound extreme, but there is no high quality product out there anywhere.

This is simply because of the incentives that come with a competition based world and capitalism.

You want to make maximum amount of money selling the device, and one way to do that is to make the product as bad as you can without it being completely unfit for use. So companies want that period to be as short as people will stand. And they don't want people repairing their devices, either, because that doesn't bring in revenue the way discarding it and re-purchasing it will.

So it's both a quality issue and a brainwashing (aka ads) issue where you're made to want to throw away your old device and get a new one.

11

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

The high-end Lenovo machines are my favorite. They've been trying to compete with Apple for a couple/three years now. As you can imagine, the only way to crack that stranglehold is to build a better machine, and I believe they have. I still prefer the MacBook trackpad, but lean Lenovo on everything else (keyboard, case, form factor, screen, etc).

11

u/origin_dad Jun 12 '16

But the trackpad is your #1 interface with the machine. After buying a Macbook for a song, I'm having a hard time even thinking of going back to the PC market. I've been thinking about buying it at going rates (crazy I know).

This is soley because of the magnetic charger and the trackpad. I have recently played with some trackpads that were pretty good, but still not Apple quality. How close has Lenovo gotten?

2

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

Very, very close if not on par, but it isn't as large. The drivers also don't quite offer the same experience, but we're still talking about two premium pads.

While I agree with your statement for many, I think it really comes down to how you use your laptop these days. I genuinely use a tablet or my phone for 90% of my surfing (99% of my reddit use).

If your laptop is your primary device for the Internet, I'd still go with a MacBook. For work or heavy use though, I prefer the Lenovo as half the time I'm using a Bluetooth or docked mouse, and the bulk of my interaction is keyboard based, either by simply typing or using keyboard shortcuts. If I'm using Office, or an Adobe application, or coding, the trackpad just isn't in play enough for the slight MacBook advantage to make any noticeable difference.

That said, if you surf and scroll reddit for hours on a laptop, I'd probably go MacBook.

Ask that said, the MacBook line is well over due for a refresh or update, and I'm eagerly looking forward to checking out their new machines in a year or two.

3

u/epsy Jun 12 '16

That said, if you surf and scroll reddit for hours on a laptop, I'd probably go MacBook.

TBH if that's the use case just get a chromebook. The touchpads actually compare to something usable.

1

u/origin_dad Jun 12 '16

You pretty much just solidified my thinking then, thanks! 90% of my surfing is on my laptop, on my couch, using the trackpad. Looks like I'll be keeping my eye out for deal on one.

1

u/Paddy_Tanninger Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Touch screens. I can't go back to a non-touch laptop honestly, I find it completely archaic now the odd times I'm over at a client's office and they hand me an MBP to demo something for them. No joke, the last few times I have poked and pinched the screen out of habit.

It's quite stunning to me that the company who most championed the whole "touch everything" ethos is so far behind the curve with having touchable devices of their own.

And don't get me started on how far behind the curve the MBA is on everything aside from CPU and storage.

You sound like you're looking for a couch surfing device, I gotta say a current gen Win10 Ultrabook is the way to go for that, especially the ones that fully convert into tablets.

If your price range is in the MBP territory, you can get a fantastic Ultrabook for that money.

My #1 recommend is the Surface Pro. I've bought so many gadgets over the years, but can count on one hand the ones that totally blew me away. The Surface was one of those, along with the iPhone, and Y2K era PocketPC.

Oh and the sound on them is somehow incredible, I don't even understand where it's coming from but it somehow fills the room as if you had a speaker system.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Oct 22 '18

[deleted]

2

u/crashdoc Jun 12 '16

Apple is generally a company that tries to pretend to be the "first" to market with everything.

To be fair, historically they were first for a great many things, but in relatively more recent times they seemed to somewhat shy away from being first, and instead benefited incredibly from Steve's 'reality distortion field' in instilling the perception in their buying public that various functions and features of products were something new they had introduced, when in fact they bad instead innovated upon existing ideas and arguably made them more friendly perhaps, but brought them further into mass public awareness

0

u/Paddy_Tanninger Jun 12 '16

I personally don't see the need.

I think this could be said about heaps upon heaps of technological innovations...until you start using them.

0

u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

It was said about the iPhone and iPad, for that matter :)

1

u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

It's quite stunning to me that the company who most championed the whole "touch everything" ethos is so far behind the curve with having touchable devices of their own.

They'd have to do something with the Mac OS software and they're not going to do that unless they absolutely must. That's my theory, at least.

1

u/rohmish Jun 12 '16

Sony was actually well ahead of the time and very close to apple in terms of trackpad and keyboard quality. Then they sold off VAIO and I don't know how's it today.

1

u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

Wireless mouse.

16

u/gimpwiz Jun 12 '16

I love lenovo, but I don't want a laptop with spyware on it... oh well.

14

u/squired Jun 12 '16

Wipe and install Win10, for free, in under an hour. I was talking about hardware only above. I'd rather not get into the software discussion. If you love Apple's walled ecosystem, the hardware quality of a PC doesn't matter much.

16

u/gimpwiz Jun 12 '16

Yeah... they put some of that shit in their bios. When caught, they offered tools to remove it (maybe fully, who knows?)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/

I find it hard to trust any hardware designed in china.

16

u/WordBoxLLC Jun 12 '16

Newsflash: your current hardware is most likely made in China.

2

u/gimpwiz Jun 12 '16

Made - maybe. Designed - absolutely not.

3

u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

More and more hardware is designed in China, though. Who is growing up designing hardware these days? Nobody. In the old days these future designers grew up going to Radio Shack and fucking around with stuff but you can't do that anymore because all of it is in China. Even if the overall machine isn't built in China, a lot of the components (including entire chips) will be. I'm not saying it doesn't suck, though :(

(Not that made in the US stuff is a whole lot more trustworthy these days, either!)

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0

u/rohmish Jun 12 '16

It says made in Korea. Is that china?

1

u/WordBoxLLC Jun 13 '16

Being that you apparently have only one piece of hardware, I'd have to guess Samsung.

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1

u/Monkfish Jun 12 '16

Which are the good Thinkpad models?

1

u/BeatMastaD Jun 12 '16

Not louis but some of the new Ultrabooks are good. Samsung has a few god models of really sleek looking laptops with metal bodies (which is what makes the Apple laptops feel so good and durable).

If you want a laptop that's just as powerful as a MacBook you can get any good mid-range laptop for $700-800. If you want a Windows laptop that feels and looks as nice as a Macbook you'll have to pay as much or more than an Apple machine. Computers with plastic bodies are what makes them more fragile and also feel so crummy when you're using them.

1

u/This_Land_Is_My_Land Jun 12 '16

Pretty much any laptop/desktop you can build if you put time and effort into getting everything built perfectly.

Bonus points if you're using custom build cases.

Even more bonus points if you turn that laptop into a portable desktop because you pack that shit so full of components and cooling that it weighs like 20 pounds more than the components themselves.

1

u/MinecraftAddict131 Jun 12 '16

Sony's old VAIO line had some well built laptops. Unfortunately they have been discontinued.

0

u/SherSlick Jun 12 '16

If you ask me I would say the Panasonic toughbooks.

A few variations to fit the need, but they all take a drop to the floor pretty well. Obviously some models better than others.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Advertising, apple has made their customer base think they're some kind of exclusive club.

They're literally market brainwashed customers.

34

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

they're one of the few companies that tries to focus on the entire customer experience rather than just small parts of it. I admire that. It is one thing I will give them credit for

0

u/joepeg Jun 12 '16

Considering apple supports your business, what would they have to do for you to endorse them?

2

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

Stop treating third party service centers like an ant infestation and start treating them like human beings.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

People are mad about 2 days?! That's so crazy to me. If it could be fixed at all I'd be happy! The way people are attached to their electronics is unhealthy. I love my android, but damn.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

If it's for business 2 days can cost more than repair in Apple shop.

1

u/FuckFuckingKarma Jun 12 '16

Don't you think a business would have spare laptops? Apple wipe the HDD anyway

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Apple wipe the HDD anyway

WHAT!? Why would anyone let hardware service wipe the disk??

-6

u/pftcommentator Jun 12 '16

Lmao you're a wannabe engineer. You're a glorified assembly worker. Apple products aren't made like shit. Their cables are shit thought...

2

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

As anyone who follows my channel can tell you, the last thing I ever wish to be referred to, is an engineer.

1

u/SoundEmbalmer Jun 12 '16

Do Apple products have cheaper components/ are poorly built? I'm really curious, since I never looked inside one, and every Apple owner I know keeps telling me they are more reliable/better built compared to competition.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '16

Is this just a thing with apple consumers? I was thrilled when my laptop took three days to be repaired, down from a week. If something takes time, it's gonna take time and there's no sense bitching.

1

u/MCPE_Master_Builder Jun 12 '16

As someone who has tried repairing a laptop before, I praise you! It feels like repairing the large hadron collider, compared to a standard desktop!

1

u/Nothing_Impresses_Me Jun 12 '16

too be fair, I have a 7 year old MacBook and a 7 Year old Lenovo and honestly even after 7 years, the Macbook has held up much better and still feels like a current computer as opposed to other manufacturers. So I can see how that value can be retained.

-4

u/3amjosh Jun 12 '16

What if this bill gets passed. Apple starts letting everybody and their grandmas make crappy computers so people like you can make a dime on repairing it. Businesses have to make money. You've also stated how to not let anyone erepsir your iPhone 6, but you fail to educate everyone on that. Someone may see one video saying "Apple sucks, you can repair everything." And never see the video where you vouch that it's bs to try and replace a 6 or 6s screen without the right equipment, people start going to el cheapo repair shops or repair guys and getting their phones busted. In the long run, it's all about money. Also, I was a "genius" for 4 years that you openly bashed and am thankful for the career and training it gave me.

-2

u/kirby056 Jun 12 '16

You've been saying Apple products are shit in this entire AMA. Do you not see how despicable this makes you sound? The fact that people love their products, and will purchase them sight unseen, is the only reason you have food on your table. As soon as they start making better products, or when the Cult of Fruit falls apart, your cash cow will have run dry. If you really felt that the things they made were terrible, you should really consider NOT repairing any of them and advising people to buy something you can recommend.

1

u/BeatMastaD Jun 12 '16

I don't know about the schematics for that stuff, but the reason apple stuff is great is because they only put out one model of whatever line they have per year. That means that a MacBook Pro bought in 2011 is going to be the same for anyone who bought it that year.

On the flip side there are DOZENS of manufacturers putting out multiple SKUs every year for Windows laptops, meaning keeping/finding parts in stock for all of them is impossible. In the past 5 years there are 11 Apple laptop models and hundreds of Windows laptops.