Last year, Apple finally launched a self-service repair program, allowing more people to complete repairs on iPhones, Macs, and other Apple products. It had problems from the start, and it’s increasingly becoming worse.
Apple said in November 2021 that it was working on a self-service repair program, which would provide repair manuals and official parts to anyone who wanted to fix their own device. The service finally arrived in April 2022, but it wasn’t the simple and easy experience many were hoping for — you have to rent equipment from Apple for repairs (an iFixit toolkit apparently isn’t good enough), and in some cases, contact a support number to authorize newly-installed parts.
Unfortunately, the repair program is even less useful than it was at launch. Apple still hasn’t added official parts or repair manuals for the iPhone 14 series, which is now eight months old. There also aren’t any manuals or parts available for any Mac computers with M2 chips, including the current MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, 14/16-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini. The oldest model in that list, the M2 MacBook Air, was released on July 15, 2022. That was a whopping 10 months ago.
Apple’s self-repair program also still doesn’t cover anything beyond the handful of Mac and iPhone models. There are no parts or manuals available for iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TV, or anything else the company sells.
We’ve asked Apple why the newer devices are still missing from the self repair program, and we will update this article when (or if) the company responds. It’s frustrating to see the already-limited repair service become even less useful, contributing further to planned obsolescence — especially when next month’s WWDC event will likely include a segment about how much Apple supposedly cares about the environment.
