**The Apple Self-Service Repair: A Technological Marvel with a Few Caveats**

When it comes to repairing electronic devices, few people think beyond their immediate need for assistance. However, with the rise of DIY repair culture and the increasing complexity of modern electronics, some companies have taken matters into their own hands – or rather, into the hands of tech-savvy individuals. Apple's self-service repair program is one such initiative that aims to empower consumers to fix their own devices, but does it truly live up to its promise?

**A Comprehensive Guide with a Few Hiccups**

One of the first things that caught our attention was the comprehensive guide provided by Apple for the repair process. The guide itself is extensive and detailed, covering every aspect of the repair from disassembling the device to reassembly. However, despite its thoroughness, there were several areas where we felt that Apple could have done better. For instance, the instructions mention putting on an ESD strap and attaching it to a properly grounded ESD mat, which neither of these items are included in the package. This oversight may not seem like a major issue, but for individuals who are not tech-savvy, it can be a significant barrier to entry.

**A Set of Tools that Falls Short**

Another area where Apple's self-service repair program falls short is in its selection of tools and accessories. The instructions mention the use of heat gloves, which are not included in the package. Moreover, the screwdrivers provided with the kit do not have built-in magnets for magnetizing bits, making it difficult to attach them to the device without any additional assistance. This lack of inclusivity is a significant drawback, especially when compared to other companies like iFixit that provide their users with all the necessary tools and parts.

**The Reality of Repairing an iPhone**

Despite its comprehensive guide and set of tools, repairing an iPhone using Apple's self-service repair program was a much more labor-intensive process than we had anticipated. Our estimated time for the repair was approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes, which is significantly longer than what we expected. This increased time requirement makes us wonder if this repair is truly worth the cost.

**A Cost Comparison**

One of the main selling points of Apple's self-service repair program is that it promises to be cheaper than taking your device to the Genius Bar. However, when we compared the costs, we found that doing the repair ourselves actually ended up being more expensive – by $7. This unexpected increase in cost raises questions about whether this repair is truly worth the effort.

**The Verdict: A Program That Falls Short**

In conclusion, while Apple's self-service repair program has its perks, it falls short in several key areas. The lack of included tools and accessories makes the process more complicated than necessary, while the increased time requirement and unexpected cost increase make us wonder if this repair is truly worth it. If you're looking for a reliable way to fix your device, we would recommend exploring other options.

**A Word from the Expert: Sam Cole**

We had the chance to speak with Sam Cole, a seasoned iPhone repair expert who has spent countless hours perfecting his craft. When asked about his experience with Apple's self-service repair program, he expressed his disappointment and frustration with the process. "Repairing this iPhone was three and a half hours longer than I thought it would take," he said. "And to make matters worse, I ended up spending $7 more than if I had just taken my device to the Genius Bar." Sam's words echo our own concerns about Apple's self-service repair program and highlight its potential drawbacks for consumers.

**The Future of Repair: iFixit Takes Note**

While Apple's self-service repair program may not have set the bar high, it has inspired another company – iFixit – to take notice. With their extensive collection of tools and accessories, as well as a wealth of instructional content, iFixit has become the go-to resource for DIY repair enthusiasts. Their commitment to empowering consumers with the knowledge and resources they need to fix their devices is truly admirable, and we can only hope that Apple will learn from its mistakes and improve upon its self-service repair program in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso a couple of days ago when apple launched their new self-service repair portal my good buddy sam from iupdate hit me up and he said luke i've got this iphone 12 pro that needs to have a screen replacement so what if i come over to your studio and we fix it up and i was like heck yeah so we tried it out apple self-service repair the experience was the bomb it did not break yes it did what is going on apple this is something else holy bro can you get the chicken nuggets please interesting so let's get into it it is i fancy luke once more coming to you on behalf of today's very fancy sponsor masterworks masterworks lets you access investment most would have only dreamed of in the past investments the wealthy have had a monopoly on for centuries and now 85 percent of wealth managers recommend it too i'm talking about contemporary art masterworks has so far sold three paintings and they've returned over 30 net irr to their investors of course past performance is no guarantee of future results but 30 plus percent is an astonishing return very fancy especially in a time where the stock market is stagnating and investment firms like jp morgan are stating that alternatives are no longer optional now might be the perfect time to diversify your portfolio with work from artists like banksy basquiat and picasso to name a few if you want to join masterworks other fancy investors it's as simple as heading to the link in the description below to skip the wait list and join masterworks so check that out today and now let's get back into the video so as you may know apple recently launched their self-service repair program which allows normal people like you or me to repair our own iphones they offer oem parts as well as the instructions and tools for repairing your iphone and so sam thought hey let's try it out so for fifty dollars you can rent the equipment that you need to replace a display or a battery or anything like that and well um it's really something oh my god one that's a small one that's just yeah that's the freaking small one you want to repair one phone this is what they're sending you let's start with the small one oh god they can't even see me now so it's a heated display removal fixture this is a big this is a big thing dude is this an imac power cable i'm pretty sure it is good god dude this is for one screen replacement this is oh my this is a press oh it it's a timed press bro is that going to blow up you guys if you're watching this what do i do dude i was a normal person okay okay i figured it out i figured it out how is a normal person gonna do this any normal person for fifty dollars they will mail this to your house what and then these oh so these are the bits okay that's good that's good they give you all the tools this is for one screen replacement i'm drowning well good luck thanks man have fun okay let's let's go do that now where's the black stick what does it say e73 what what is e73 oh is this real are you real right now are we fixing an iphone so this is what you get if you pay 50 for the apple tool kit which you kind of are expected to do because the repair manuals that apple provided use these tools now why is that the case well these as you might imagine are exactly the same tools and in fact exactly the same repair manuals that the genius bar employees get now if you are an inexperienced person and you want to see what it's like to repair an iphone yourself using apple's tools sam and i worked on this video where he replaced the screen of his iphone 12 pro from the perspective of someone who's never done an iphone repair before i thought like i genuinely thought this is apple they're doing it it's going to be easy why is it counting down and b being so loud sounds nasty it does check that out we'll have that linked down below sam he did a great job he did it ladies and gentlemen there he is and there he goes there it goes so what exactly are we looking at with all of this stuff because it's intimidating frankly like this you know we got a big old cranky boy over here we got a knobby spinny boy we got a rolly boy with like a little flippy boy like this this is a lot of boys it's it's too many boys all right so the biggest boy here in the middle this is a device that essentially serves one very specific function and that is to melt the adhesive that holds the display onto the phone so essentially how it works is you put your phone in here you can see that's got a notch cut out here for the cameras you clamp it shut like that and then it slides onto the front where it locks in it heats the phone and then you lower this knob here activate the suction cup and you basically slowly raise it and then the idea is that it pulls the screen of the phone off now that's a lot this is a humongous machine for that simple task and in fact today's video sponsor ifixit has guides for removing the display and they were able to do it not with this 200 machine but with a 20 essentially heat pad and a suction cup so it's definitely arguable as to whether this is actually necessary so basically then once you get that done you remove it here then you unclamp and remove the iphone and then we move it over into this guy now this tool is just a tray it's milled and anodized aluminum and if you want to buy this from apple that's going to cost you 50 now if you thought that that last machine was a whole lot for a very simple task let me introduce you to the squeezy boy because what you do is put the phone in this tray with the adhesive and then we get this little tool here which is basically a little piece of aluminum with cutouts in the exact shape of the adhesive you put that on the screen and then you clamp it and then it counts down for 30 seconds that's all this machine does is count down for 30 seconds and apply constant pressure this is fun no doubt but is it 216 dollars of fun honestly maybe it's pretty fun i'm not gonna lie but i don't know so then once that's done theoretically you've got adhesive that's adhered however when sam and i did this it didn't honestly really work that well and the adhesive was still kind of loose now when you get this kit you get this other device here which sort of looks like a gallows if i'm honest but don't worry about that this is essentially the battery version of that screen press you take the tray you pop it in here it locks onto this little knob here and then you lower it down this is now positioned over the battery this little roller and then you can roll back and forth and it pushes the battery down that's it it's a rolling pin this rolling pin costs 115 if you want to buy it so overall here we are looking at over a thousand dollars worth of tools if you wanted to buy them now you could say luke why would you want to buy them because as i showed you earlier ifixit has counterparts for pretty much everything you can replace this with a simple heating pad and a suction cup or they even have a little clampy tool which makes things really easy now sure you could say don't buy the tools but that also means that you can't use apple's instruction manuals because they use the tools so that leaves you using ifixit's instruction manuals which in my opinion not just because they sponsored the video and the channel are better they're easier to follow they're something that you could do yourself and they're also more complete than apples because apple didn't change anything from the repair manuals that the genius bar uses there's a lot of stuff that we found that just was missing it just wasn't there the instructions mention putting on an esd strap and attaching it to a properly grounded esd mat neither of which are included and for using the heat press device they mention using heat gloves which again are not included oh these are way better than normal dude this is exactly like the of glove now even for something as simple as the screwdrivers the instructions say to magnetize the bits but there's no tool for instructions on how to do that this one's like half mag like see how it keeps falling bro this is hell i mean living in how do you magnetize that it doesn't say it just says to magnetize them home so it comes with magnetizable screwdrivers but nothing to magnetize them with this isn't a big deal for geniusbar employees because all of those tools are there and you're being trained in how to do that but if you're just you or me then you're kind of going to be scratching your head at a couple of points in the repair process what we ended up with was about four hours it was like a four-hour process conservative yeah and could it have been faster if we did it again right sure sure but it's not any cheaper than going to the genius bar the way we added it up you pay 269 dollars for the screen that's ten dollars less than getting it done at the genius bar but you can get a credit when you return your old mangled broken display so that sounds good but if you do use these tools then it ends up being seven dollars more than going to the genius bar so why would you spend an extra seven dollars to do all of this inconvenient work this is not something that any reasonable person would do if they want to get their phone fixed and apple phrased it like that they said look this is for tech savvy people who want to do it themselves but then they also made it such that if you are a tech savvy person and you do want to do it yourself they still don't make it easy and you're not rewarded with a cost saving i mean if you think about it doing this repair is about as expensive as going to the apple store where you're paying not only for the part but also for the labor so you're paying apple for the labor but you're doing the labor so to me the pricing doesn't really make sense the tools and the instructions don't really make sense so when it comes to actually doing this repair let's hear it from the man who did it himself are now accomplished repair expert sam cole listen man um i don't ever want to come visit you again repairing this iphone was i don't know probably three and a half hours longer than i thought it would take or should take yeah to be fair to be fair there's a lot it's 12 53 right now in the morning if you're if you're like just trying to repair your phone and you order this and apple ships you two pelican crates which i can't i cannot get over the fact that they send you this two of these that to me screams like you know what fine sam you want to repair your phone fine here you do it yourself now let's see if you complain about the genius bar after you do this like try it and i get it like i get they're like we want this to be perfect because when i finish my repair listen it was like the screen looks stock it really does it does so it works it just takes so long and i think i ended up spending like the same amount of money as you spent seven more dollars that well i didn't even know that i thought i'd get to repair for cheaper no there's so many screens for 200 plus dollars it's like why why did they do this who who should do this no one yeah if you love yourself don't do this the the oh no oh we're going down should i pop out now yeah get out of here thanks man youtube.com go back to st louis i think apple self-service repair was designed to fail designed to show people that apple is the only viable way to get your phone replaced and i think that's a shame but fortunately it's not the end of the road because ifixit has already had the instructions the tools and the parts to do this so that's going to do it for today's video let me know what you think in the comments below and of course as usual make sure to like comment and subscribe and check out the lukemiani merch store if you want to support the channel and with that i'll see you guys in the next oneso a couple of days ago when apple launched their new self-service repair portal my good buddy sam from iupdate hit me up and he said luke i've got this iphone 12 pro that needs to have a screen replacement so what if i come over to your studio and we fix it up and i was like heck yeah so we tried it out apple self-service repair the experience was the bomb it did not break yes it did what is going on apple this is something else holy bro can you get the chicken nuggets please interesting so let's get into it it is i fancy luke once more coming to you on behalf of today's very fancy sponsor masterworks masterworks lets you access investment most would have only dreamed of in the past investments the wealthy have had a monopoly on for centuries and now 85 percent of wealth managers recommend it too i'm talking about contemporary art masterworks has so far sold three paintings and they've returned over 30 net irr to their investors of course past performance is no guarantee of future results but 30 plus percent is an astonishing return very fancy especially in a time where the stock market is stagnating and investment firms like jp morgan are stating that alternatives are no longer optional now might be the perfect time to diversify your portfolio with work from artists like banksy basquiat and picasso to name a few if you want to join masterworks other fancy investors it's as simple as heading to the link in the description below to skip the wait list and join masterworks so check that out today and now let's get back into the video so as you may know apple recently launched their self-service repair program which allows normal people like you or me to repair our own iphones they offer oem parts as well as the instructions and tools for repairing your iphone and so sam thought hey let's try it out so for fifty dollars you can rent the equipment that you need to replace a display or a battery or anything like that and well um it's really something oh my god one that's a small one that's just yeah that's the freaking small one you want to repair one phone this is what they're sending you let's start with the small one oh god they can't even see me now so it's a heated display removal fixture this is a big this is a big thing dude is this an imac power cable i'm pretty sure it is good god dude this is for one screen replacement this is oh my this is a press oh it it's a timed press bro is that going to blow up you guys if you're watching this what do i do dude i was a normal person okay okay i figured it out i figured it out how is a normal person gonna do this any normal person for fifty dollars they will mail this to your house what and then these oh so these are the bits okay that's good that's good they give you all the tools this is for one screen replacement i'm drowning well good luck thanks man have fun okay let's let's go do that now where's the black stick what does it say e73 what what is e73 oh is this real are you real right now are we fixing an iphone so this is what you get if you pay 50 for the apple tool kit which you kind of are expected to do because the repair manuals that apple provided use these tools now why is that the case well these as you might imagine are exactly the same tools and in fact exactly the same repair manuals that the genius bar employees get now if you are an inexperienced person and you want to see what it's like to repair an iphone yourself using apple's tools sam and i worked on this video where he replaced the screen of his iphone 12 pro from the perspective of someone who's never done an iphone repair before i thought like i genuinely thought this is apple they're doing it it's going to be easy why is it counting down and b being so loud sounds nasty it does check that out we'll have that linked down below sam he did a great job he did it ladies and gentlemen there he is and there he goes there it goes so what exactly are we looking at with all of this stuff because it's intimidating frankly like this you know we got a big old cranky boy over here we got a knobby spinny boy we got a rolly boy with like a little flippy boy like this this is a lot of boys it's it's too many boys all right so the biggest boy here in the middle this is a device that essentially serves one very specific function and that is to melt the adhesive that holds the display onto the phone so essentially how it works is you put your phone in here you can see that's got a notch cut out here for the cameras you clamp it shut like that and then it slides onto the front where it locks in it heats the phone and then you lower this knob here activate the suction cup and you basically slowly raise it and then the idea is that it pulls the screen of the phone off now that's a lot this is a humongous machine for that simple task and in fact today's video sponsor ifixit has guides for removing the display and they were able to do it not with this 200 machine but with a 20 essentially heat pad and a suction cup so it's definitely arguable as to whether this is actually necessary so basically then once you get that done you remove it here then you unclamp and remove the iphone and then we move it over into this guy now this tool is just a tray it's milled and anodized aluminum and if you want to buy this from apple that's going to cost you 50 now if you thought that that last machine was a whole lot for a very simple task let me introduce you to the squeezy boy because what you do is put the phone in this tray with the adhesive and then we get this little tool here which is basically a little piece of aluminum with cutouts in the exact shape of the adhesive you put that on the screen and then you clamp it and then it counts down for 30 seconds that's all this machine does is count down for 30 seconds and apply constant pressure this is fun no doubt but is it 216 dollars of fun honestly maybe it's pretty fun i'm not gonna lie but i don't know so then once that's done theoretically you've got adhesive that's adhered however when sam and i did this it didn't honestly really work that well and the adhesive was still kind of loose now when you get this kit you get this other device here which sort of looks like a gallows if i'm honest but don't worry about that this is essentially the battery version of that screen press you take the tray you pop it in here it locks onto this little knob here and then you lower it down this is now positioned over the battery this little roller and then you can roll back and forth and it pushes the battery down that's it it's a rolling pin this rolling pin costs 115 if you want to buy it so overall here we are looking at over a thousand dollars worth of tools if you wanted to buy them now you could say luke why would you want to buy them because as i showed you earlier ifixit has counterparts for pretty much everything you can replace this with a simple heating pad and a suction cup or they even have a little clampy tool which makes things really easy now sure you could say don't buy the tools but that also means that you can't use apple's instruction manuals because they use the tools so that leaves you using ifixit's instruction manuals which in my opinion not just because they sponsored the video and the channel are better they're easier to follow they're something that you could do yourself and they're also more complete than apples because apple didn't change anything from the repair manuals that the genius bar uses there's a lot of stuff that we found that just was missing it just wasn't there the instructions mention putting on an esd strap and attaching it to a properly grounded esd mat neither of which are included and for using the heat press device they mention using heat gloves which again are not included oh these are way better than normal dude this is exactly like the of glove now even for something as simple as the screwdrivers the instructions say to magnetize the bits but there's no tool for instructions on how to do that this one's like half mag like see how it keeps falling bro this is hell i mean living in how do you magnetize that it doesn't say it just says to magnetize them home so it comes with magnetizable screwdrivers but nothing to magnetize them with this isn't a big deal for geniusbar employees because all of those tools are there and you're being trained in how to do that but if you're just you or me then you're kind of going to be scratching your head at a couple of points in the repair process what we ended up with was about four hours it was like a four-hour process conservative yeah and could it have been faster if we did it again right sure sure but it's not any cheaper than going to the genius bar the way we added it up you pay 269 dollars for the screen that's ten dollars less than getting it done at the genius bar but you can get a credit when you return your old mangled broken display so that sounds good but if you do use these tools then it ends up being seven dollars more than going to the genius bar so why would you spend an extra seven dollars to do all of this inconvenient work this is not something that any reasonable person would do if they want to get their phone fixed and apple phrased it like that they said look this is for tech savvy people who want to do it themselves but then they also made it such that if you are a tech savvy person and you do want to do it yourself they still don't make it easy and you're not rewarded with a cost saving i mean if you think about it doing this repair is about as expensive as going to the apple store where you're paying not only for the part but also for the labor so you're paying apple for the labor but you're doing the labor so to me the pricing doesn't really make sense the tools and the instructions don't really make sense so when it comes to actually doing this repair let's hear it from the man who did it himself are now accomplished repair expert sam cole listen man um i don't ever want to come visit you again repairing this iphone was i don't know probably three and a half hours longer than i thought it would take or should take yeah to be fair to be fair there's a lot it's 12 53 right now in the morning if you're if you're like just trying to repair your phone and you order this and apple ships you two pelican crates which i can't i cannot get over the fact that they send you this two of these that to me screams like you know what fine sam you want to repair your phone fine here you do it yourself now let's see if you complain about the genius bar after you do this like try it and i get it like i get they're like we want this to be perfect because when i finish my repair listen it was like the screen looks stock it really does it does so it works it just takes so long and i think i ended up spending like the same amount of money as you spent seven more dollars that well i didn't even know that i thought i'd get to repair for cheaper no there's so many screens for 200 plus dollars it's like why why did they do this who who should do this no one yeah if you love yourself don't do this the the oh no oh we're going down should i pop out now yeah get out of here thanks man youtube.com go back to st louis i think apple self-service repair was designed to fail designed to show people that apple is the only viable way to get your phone replaced and i think that's a shame but fortunately it's not the end of the road because ifixit has already had the instructions the tools and the parts to do this so that's going to do it for today's video let me know what you think in the comments below and of course as usual make sure to like comment and subscribe and check out the lukemiani merch store if you want to support the channel and with that i'll see you guys in the next one\n"