How Apple’s new CEO can fix repairability

Why is Apple scoring so poorly for repairability on iFixit?

Apple has worked hard to improve ingress protection, to make their devices more waterproof, more dustproof. I think they have pursued that version of longevity at the expense of repairability.

For example, to repair an iPad, you have to go through a display panel – there’s no other way to get in. That panel is a huge, thin, fragile piece of glass, and there’s adhesive all the way around it. In laptops, glued-down batteries have been a serious challenge. The battery cells are wide, and it can be tricky to get it all out cleanly.

Are you expecting to see any improvement in repairability under John Ternus?

He hasn’t been repairability’s biggest champion publicly. In public statements, he’s pushed back against the idea that parts pairing is a problem - this is the serialization of parts and Apple’s historic blocking of the completion of repairs that didn’t go through an official Apple process.

However, under John Ternus’ hardware leadership, Apple released Repair Assistant, a software tool that lets you complete repairs, basically ending the problems of parts pairing. That’s what excites me about Ternus coming on as leader from a repairability perspective – our biggest champions inside major manufacturers have been engineers. They see the benefits of repairability in a logical way.

What are your impressions of the state of repairability across the Apple product portfolio?

I just did a video where we tore apart every MacBook Neo, which has been lauded for being repairable, and exchanged the parts to make different colored versions. One of the obvious things was that it’s quite tedious, and I had issues using the Apple Self-Service Repair store. Still, I do think Apple should get some credit for making really good quality hardware; I really haven’t had any failures. 

How about John Ternus, do you think he’ll improve things?

I don’t know too much about John Ternus because he hasn’t had a huge presence in the company. I’ll be honest, I don’t think he’s going to be all that different. I wouldn’t be looking to John Ternus to change the state of repairability. 

However, he might be better at finding clever ways to build computers – Tim Cook wouldn’t have looked at the hardware and said ‘why don’t you try this?’, he just would’ve said ‘is it cheap to build?’

Does Apple want to be seen promoting repairability?

To me, it’s never been this obvious priority. If it was, they’d be hewing about it in their presentations [...] I don’t think Apple’s really ever cared about it, it’s never been important to them.

What are some of the considerations that go into producing a repairable electronic product at scale?

People want to hold onto the product they have. For us as a company, we have to figure out how to enable that desire in the customer. 

I think the assumption is that designing for repairability must be challenging, because otherwise, why wouldn’t every product be repairable? If you go and talk to engineers, what you’ll find is that they know how to design for repairability, but if it’s not a priority for the business, it falls to the wayside, and you might see engineers optimise against repairability in favor of other things. 

Why do you think Apple doesn’t produce repairable products? 

It comes back to an industrial design philosophy that was centred around seamlessness. Things that enable longevity, repairability, and open access to the product were strictly locked down in favor of Apple’s walled garden. I think for a period of time that resonated with consumers, because we were coming out of a period of complexity in electronics, and there’s a certain appeal to simplicity. 

Then, over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, it became apparent that the walled garden has downsides, and the unfortunate impact of generating more waste and limiting longevity of access to devices. The dead-end philosophy that Apple took on might’ve had its moment, but is increasingly irrelevant to what consumers want. 

Will John Ternus be the one to change Apple’s approach to repairability, or are other factors more persuasive?  I think the driving force will be demand from either regulators or consumers for repairability, such that it becomes a requirement from a regulatory perspective or a strong enough deciding factor from the end customer. To a large extent, it comes down to their business model being so software and services-centric that it’s easier to just comply with regulations than do the bare minimum.