Apple’s Making It Impossible To Open Up Your iPhone By Secretly Swapping Its Screws

Apple ’s products are notoriously hard to open and repair — surprise , they want you to grease one’s palms newfangled stuff!—but this is especially ridiculous . During repair , they ’re replacing the iPhone 4 ’s Philips screws with weird Modern ones for which no screwdriver exists .

Yeah , Apple ’s in effect making it impossible for you to open up your iPhone . Here , according to iFixit , is what ’s croak down .

When the iPhone 4 launch , the dock connective was flank by stock Philips # 00 screws . You probably have something in your house right now that could unscrew ’em just all right . But hoi polloi who have taken their iPhone 4s into Apple Stores for haunt have ostensibly been find something a lilliputian bit different when they start out it back : The screws were no longer Philips but some bizarre new flower - forge unity referred to as a “ pentalobe security screws . ” And you almost certainly do not have a screwdriver that will fit them . In fact , no one does , except Apple .

Of naturally , it ’s Apple ’s perquisite to keep you from tampering with your iPhone , but quietly introducing these newfangled screws to customers ’ iPhones during unrelated repair is evidently absurd . You go in with an iPhone you’re able to open up with an eyeglass fixture kit , you walk out with one that ’s sealed like Fort Knox . It ’s outrageous for Apple , or any troupe for that subject , to believe that they can alter a merchandise without license once it ’s been purchased , swap out parts willy - nilly as they come in up with good ways to entomb the machine . It ’s more than a little bit underhanded , and it ’s incisively the type of behavior that moderate some mass to suppose that bribe Apple stuff is kindred to being trapped in a technological prison house cell , albeit a beautifully nominate one . The message here is that the user is whole powerless in the Apple domain — peculiarly so in their forcible knowledge domain , the Apple Store — and that disregarding of whatever you think that dealing entail , these products still and will always belong to Apple .

Now , these pentalobular screws have popped up before , in mid-2009 MacBook Pros and the new MacBook Airs , and they serve the purpose of making these Apple devices entirely tamper - proof . Which also means repair - test copy . Which also is totally ludicrous . When I grease one’s palms something , I ’m entitled to repair it , qualify it , and swap part out as I please . As stated succinctly in MAKE ’s Owners Manifesto,“if you ca n’t open it , you do n’t own it . ”And while it ’s always been exonerated that Apple ’s musical theme of ownership is dissimilar from most , the covert screw swap register just how far they ’re willing to go to keep you out of your phone . Or , as they see it , their phone .

gratefully , iFixit already has this all figured out : they’reselling an iPhone 4 sack kitfor $ 10 that countenance you replace Apple ’s young super screws with steady old Philips ones . Viva la impedance . [ iFixit ]

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