Babbage | Serviceable hardware

Fiddly bits

Apple's hard turn of the screw may be stripped of meaning.

By G.F. | SEATTLE

THE least news from or about Apple ricochets around the twitterverse and blogosphere in seconds. The ne plus ultra of tiny bits was Thursday's bombshell that the firm has changed the type of screw it uses to secure its iPhone 4 case, followed by endless double entendres. iFixIt breathlessly announced the swapout using terms typically reserved for fiery sermons. iFixIt happens to sell a $10 screwdriver for this new screw style, along with replacement parts and tool kits that allow ordinary people to repair iPhones and other Apple products. The firm also provides free online illustrated instructions and videos.

In the past, Apple used a standard Phillips-head (cross-shaped) screw. The new screw has five scalloped indentations. iFixIt says Apple calls it a "pentalobular" head, apparently, in internal repair documents. iFixIt says that Apple is not only using this obscure style for new iPhone 4 shipments, but also that employees in Apple Stores who disassemble iPhones for repair replace the Phillips-head screws with pentalobes. However, it is not difficult to remove such screws. Commenters on items that blossomed across the internet about the villainous pentalobe—surely, one of Superman's foes—note that other styles of screwdriver can also unlock the mysteries within the mobile phone. It is not unusual for a computer maker to use unusual screws. Torx, a six-pointed pattern harder to strip at tiny sizes than a Phillips, was once the style of choice.

iFixIt posits Apple's motivation for the change thus:

This screw head clearly has one purpose: to keep you out. Otherwise, Apple would use it throughout each device. Instead, they only use it at the bulwark—on the outside case of your iPhone and MacBook Air, and protecting the battery on the Pro—so they can keep you out of your own hardware.

This is accurate, if incomplete. Apple has two complementary goals, the first of which the company would probably deny if it had not declined to comment on screws to Babbage. Setting the bar to disassembly higher allows Apple to make money from battery replacements. But a parallel goal is clearly to keep users from being their own worst enemies by tinkering destructively. In either case, Apple is not preventing repair. It merely discourages it, and iFixIt has already leapt over that hurdle.

Apple makes a good living selling battery replacements, and that is hardly a secret. The firm's MacBook Air and MacBook Pro unibody models, as well as all iOS devices, lack batteries designed to be removed by purchasers. Apple says that to increase the amount of charge a battery can hold, its design is not amenable to the kind of compromises needed to allow cells to be swapped easily. Fair enough. But that is not the whole story. Apple's iPhone 4 battery is designed to handle 400 full power cycles before its capacity diminishes to 80% of the original. For those who exhaust their iPhone battery across a normal working day, that is not much more than a year of typical usage. Given that an iPhone may last for years, the mobile battery will almost certainly need to be replaced.

Apple charges $70 to swap a battery. Typically, the company swaps the entire phone, providing a refurbished version of same model and capacity, although retail stores may perform live surgery. Apple's one-year iPhone warranty covers only manufacturing defects in the battery. A two-year extended warranty offers a little more: a battery that cannot hold a 50% charge within two years will be exchanged. iFixIt sells an iPhone 4 battery for $25. A special case-opening tool is $3, and the screwdriver kit is $10. (The kit includes a tiny Phillips tool, the pentalobular turner, and replacement Phillips-head screws.) The replacement process is straightforward for anyone who doesn't routinely shatter glasses in the sink while doing the washing up. Even assuming a high overhead, Apple clearly makes several dollars from each battery swap. With 160m iOS devices in existence, battery replacement could be a significant line of revenue.

But there is a flip side to this. Apple has squeezed an awful lot inside its mobile and its handheld. The iPad is roomier within, but nearly the same parts are employed. Elements are sensitive, and it is easy to damage a lead or the screen. Those so inclined can replace a broken touchscreen, as Babbage's good friend did, but the vast majority of electronics-owners will not want to, despite the recent mainstream resumption of interest in tinkering. No disrespect to the average consumer, but more harm than good is likely to occur unless someone sets out with a particular intent, decent instructions and takes particular care. If you are not used to dealing with sensitive components, you may seriously damage your device, and spend hundreds of dollars on a repair or replacement. Babbage lives in fear of the day his young children, both of whom asked for (and received) "wood" for Christmas to build "things", get their hands on real screwdrivers and a few moments of inattention. The pentalobe sounds perfectly pentarific in that light.

If you are not a three-year-old or six-year-old gentleman, however, Apple's change does not restrict your ability to apply iFixIt or other firms' repairs. Apple did not opt for screws or enclosure methods that require truly expensive hardware or special disassembly clamps, or that would damage devices irreparably if opened without specialised knowledge. Your correspondent has owned products with screws that could shear off when attacked with more than a low amount of torque, and one-use screws that broke a seal, making it obvious to a repair technician that a user had dared to open a device.

Apple has also not engaged in a legal defence, such as the specious application of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or other statutes to prevent people opening up its products. Lexmark failed to persuade courts in the early 2000s that the DMCA should keep competing ink-cartridge suppliers' modules from interfacing correctly with Lexmark printers because reverse engineering of software locks placed on the hardware had occurred. Apple could have built a battery that required mothership registration, or serialised circuitry, or any of a number of irritating ways to slap a DMCA threat on top, or wrap a form of DRM around its internal hardware. It did not.

The screw-swap kerfuffle is more light than heat. iFixIt will sell many screwdrivers, and has raised its geek cred, while gaining innumerable new eyeballs. And the firm isn't technically wrong. Apple wanted to make it harder and did, for profit and to make sure users really want to risk ruining their device. Apple could have made it nearly impossible, or highly frustrating, and did not.

Babbage began his own electronics career 30 years ago, adding an RS-232C serial port to an Ohio Scientific computer, and has never feared cracking a case to see the creamy filling of chips, capacitors and connectors inside. He hates to discourage anyone from following suit. While Apple's move certainly deters casual access, it has stiffened the resolve of those who prefer to do it themselves.

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