The cost of the tools required to cut my lawn is far more than hiring someone to cut it.
Likewise for almost every home or car repair.
The whole point is that the tools are largely a once off purchase and repairing your phone is something you might do throughout your life. Therefore the initial costs should be spread over a longer period.
Do you expect your iPhone 16 battery press tool to still be useful in 2 phone generations ? How many times do you see yourself replacing the iPhone 16's battery ?
If Apple was also promising to keep the same process for the next 7 years I'd see a point to this, but this of course not the case.
Considering that it's been the same battery press going back at least as far as the iPhone 12, it's probably going to continue to be the same battery press for a long time. Especially now that they've definitely been using the same battery press across at least two methods of gluing in the battery (the adhesive with pull tabs, and the new adhesive that's released electrically).
> Do you expect your iPhone 16 battery press tool to still be useful in 2 phone generations ? How many times do you see yourself replacing the iPhone 16's battery ?
Lots of my bike tools I have will take over a decade to get my money back on my stuff alone. But I get to do something I mostly enjoy. I can also help out friends/acquaintances when they need it. The same goes for this.
- Bikes will last decades with good maintenance. An iPhone wont, even if the device hardware was somewhat kept alive most standard software functionalities will be lost.
- Bikes don't mandate fancy tools for regular maintenance. Regular people won't need your super pricey tools to replace brakes or tires. You can use them if you want to, but that's your hobby, not what the maker mandates.
You can enjoy nice tools, but that's orthogonal to the issue here IMHO.
> Bikes don't mandate fancy tools for regular maintenance.
Phone batteries need replacing every few years. The kind of maintenance that a bike used daily will need on that schedule is absolutely stuff that requires fancy tools.
Current iPhone batteries are rated 1000 cycles. That's many years if you mostly leave your phone in standby, that will be less than a year before it significantly degrades if you're using it daily and not just for web/SNS browsing.
That's my home's experience, if you listen to The Vergecast that's the hosts' experiences as well.
> Lots of my bike tools I have will take over a decade to get my money back
That's... a bit surprising. Maybe one or two I could see, like a truing stand or some one-off equally proprietary thing for one brand of part, but what else?
Edit: nvm, there seems to be plenty of Park Tools brand niche reamers and so on that are many hundreds of dollars. I would think they'd remain viable for much longer than a battery replacement press though, since you'd adapt it to a particular bike's repair needs with different bits.
> Do you expect your iPhone 16 battery press tool to still be useful in 2 phone generations ?
Let's assume a "no" for the sake of the discussion.
> How many times do you see yourself replacing the iPhone 16's battery ?
100s of times (for 100s of different phones, obviously), because otherwise you _would not be buying repair tools_!
The whole notion that you buy a set of high-tech tools and then use them only once or twice is the insanity that causes this whole discussion to even take place. These are tools intended for professional repair shops, not for consumers to repair their own phone.
My dude, I bought a Park Tools Crank Puller CCP-44. This works on a M12 or M15 crank bolt. This is great since it worked on my Peloton and my bike. Then the other day, my friend's bike needed a CCP-22 which works on an M8 crank bolt. Oh no, why did the bike industry not all use M12. I am replacing my iPhone 13 tomorrow with an iPhone 16. Three years of use. If I were using it another three years, I might use the battery press once. This is how tools are. To have amortized utility, you need to use them multiple times. The CCP-22 was a one-time use tool.
iPhone batteries have been replaced long before Apple provided specialized tools, so you don’t need any of them. They will make your life a lot easier though.
Likewise for almost every home or car repair.
The whole point is that the tools are largely a once off purchase and repairing your phone is something you might do throughout your life. Therefore the initial costs should be spread over a longer period.