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

Apple’s products are notoriously difficult to open and repair-surprise, they need you to buy new stuff!-but it truly is especially ridiculous. During repairs, they’re replacing the iPhone 4′s Philips screws with weird new ones for which no screwdriver exists.

Yeah, Apple’s effectively making it impossible which will open up your iPhone. Here, in keeping with iFixit, is what’s taking place.

When the iPhone 4 launched, the dock connector was flanked by standard Philips #00 screws. When you have something at your residence instantly that may unscrew ‘em just fine. But those who have taken their iPhone 4s into Apple Stores for repair have noticed something a bit different once they got it back: The screws were not Philips but some bizarre new flower-shaped ones often called a ” pentalobe security screws.” And you most likely do not need a screwdriver which may fit them. On the contrary, not anyone does, except Apple.

Of course, it’s Apple’s prerogative to keep you from tampering along with your iPhone, but quietly introducing these new screws to customers’ iPhones during unrelated repairs is patently absurd. You go in with an iPhone you could open up with an eyeglass repair kit, you walk out with person who’s sealed like Fort Knox. It’s outrageous for Apple, or any company for that matter, to think that they could alter a product without permission once it’s been purchased, swapping out parts willy-nilly as they provide you with better how you can entomb the device. It’s more than somewhat underhanded, and it’s exactly the kind of behavior that leads some people to think that buying Apple stuff is comparable to being trapped in a technological prison cell, albeit a beautifully appointed one. The message this is that the user is absolutely powerless inside the Apple domain-especially so in their physical domain, the Apple Store-and that in spite of whatever you’re thinking that transaction meant, these products still and should always belong to Apple.

Now, these pentalobular screws have popped up before, in mid-2009 MacBook Pros and the most recent MacBook Airs, and they serve the purpose of creating these Apple devices totally tamper-proof. Which also means repair-proof. Which also is completely ludicrous. After I buy something, I’m entitled to repair it, modify it, and swap parts out as I please. As stated succinctly in MAKE’s Owners Manifesto, ” in the event you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” And while it’s always been clear that Apple’s idea of ownership isn’t like most, the covert screw swap shows just how far they’re willing to move to keep you out of your phone. Or, as they see it, their phone.

Thankfully, iFixit already has this all found out: they’re selling an iPhone 4 liberation kit for $10 that permits you to replace Apple’s new super screws with regular old Philips ones. Viva la resistance. [ iFixit ]

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This post is tagged: apple stores, eyeglass repair kit, physical domain, prison cell, screwdriver, security screws