Apple Taking Heat for Switching to Custom Screws on iPhone 4 and Portables
Kyle Wiens of repair site
iFixit published a
blog post today outlining Apple's increasing usage of custom "pentalobular" screws on the iPhone and other devices, with the company presumably making the shift in order to make it more difficult for users to open up their devices for repair or modification purposes.
Apple is switching to a new type of tamper-resistant screw. This is not a standard Torx, and there are no readily available screwdrivers that can remove it. This isn't the first time they've used this type of screw - it first appeared in the mid-2009 MacBook Pro to prevent you from replacing the the battery - and Apple is using a similar screw on the outer case of the current MacBook Air. This screw is the primary reason the 11" MacBook Air earned a lousy repairability score of 4 out of 10 in our teardown last October.
Apple chose this fastener specifically because it was new, guaranteeing repair tools would be both rare and expensive. Shame on them.
Wiens notes that there "isn't a single reputable supplier" offering the screwdrivers used by Apple technicians to handle the pentalobular screws.
Apple has used the pentalobular screws in iPhone 4s sold in some international markets since the device's release, although iPhone 4s sold in the U.S. have for most of the device's history used standard Phillips screws more accessible to users. But numerous reports have surfaced from users who have taken their iPhones in for service only to discover that Apple has replaced their Phillips screws with the new pentalobular ones.
In order to assist customers interested in opening up their iPhone 4s, iFixit is offering an "iPhone 4 Liberation Kit" priced at $9.95, containing a screwdriver that will fit the new pentalobular screws (although not an exact fit), two replacement Phillips screws, and a regular #00 Phillips screwdriver.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
You know exactly what I mean. It was how to descript what each point of look like.
It is a 5 point star no lobs type of screw driver. It is not standard because it is made only to take out those apple only screws.
But your entire argument falls apart when low and behold inside the devices they are using standard screws. Hurts the entire argument and with machines the aligning times are not as much of an issue.
Illegal repairs...what the hell is an illegal repair.
If I buy something I can do what the hell I want with it.
It's one thing to have the Big brother looking over my shoulder with software but hardware...give me a break.
And certainly however I chose to repair it could not be construed as illegal.