My Biggest Gripe with Apple

(Disclaimer: I’m an Apple fanboy, through and through, and I repair MacBooks for beer money.)

I like to be able to replace my own components, if possible, especially if they’re industry-standard. New memory or a hard drive or a battery should be as easy as removing a panel, pulling a card, putting the panel back on. But Apple doesn’t want panels cluttering up their pretty cases, and they don’t want users’ bargain-basement components screwing up the user experience. I get that.

At least they should make typical user-serviceable components replaceable — not soldered or glued to the case — and you shouldn’t have to disassemble the entire device (like removing the screen panel on an iMac) to replace them.

On a MacBook 12, I simply cannot replace the screen without replacing the entire top cover display assembly. Is the user supposed to throw away their $1,500 computer when a $200 part — the screen itself — is broken?

Laptops are abused. That’s what they’re for. I’d like the designers to take this into consideration.