 Popular YouTuber says Apple won't fix his iMac Pro damaged while disassembled. Ill-informed YouTuber bemoans Apple repair policies after breaking iMac Pro. YouTube channel claims Apple is refusing to fix its broken iMac Pro. How is it even possible that so many people don't get this at all? And the worst part is that this is far from over. Thankfully, I've got iFixit. iFixit's ProTech Toolkit will get you through any electronics repair challenge. Just visit ifixit.com forward slash Linus to get your own today. So first off, I really want to give a huge thank you to everyone out there who contributed advice, suggestions, or even offered to come and help us out directly. Without you guys, this update video would not have been possible. And even worse than that, I don't think we'd be seeing all the discussion that we have about our circumstances and what they mean for right to repair. Fair repair would open a whole market of reuse for customers and their electronics. The pressures, frustrations, and limited access of standing on a line to speak to someone at the Genius Bar where they don't even serve Appletinis will be lifted from consumers. So a refresher then for those of you who missed it or forgot. We knew that we weren't going to get warranty service on our iMac Pro. And we're not even talking warranty service. We understood we would have to pay. We wanted to pay. But we did at least expect Apple to be able to offer us a reasonable repair solution. And I'm not talking about expectation. I'm not talking like, you know, an angry, do you guys even know who I am? I'm not as tech-like. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. Apple actually averted a similar PR crisis with Quinn Nelson over at Snazzy Labs by just eating the cost of an iMac Pro and sending him a new one. But as he pointed out. So I did walk out of the store with a brand new iMac, but I asked myself the question, would they have done this for anyone? And our goal here was to have the normal customer experience. So there have been some arguments in favor of Apple's position here, not repairing this. And let's address the main ones before we go any further. Starting with, Apple is refusing to quote you a repair cost because it will be higher than the cost of a brand new machine. Ya idiot. And my response to that is pretty simple. A Mac is not special. It's not magic. It's just a computer. So a broken screen, maybe a fried motherboard, and also maybe a bad power supply. Does not turn a $5,000 workstation into scrap metal. We know from our price breakdown of the iMac Pro that Apple charges about market rates actually for their parts when you buy them integrated in a complete system. So even if I picked top of the line components, the worst case scenario parts cost should be about $2,100 US dollars. And if they were willing to provide those parts, we'd expect to pay a couple hours of labor for another few hundred dollars or so. Definitely not enough to cancel out the value of the CPU, RAM, SSD, chassis, and cooler that are probably all still working. They're not that difficult to repair. The reality of it is, we just slipped. These things do happen. Next up is the liability argument. What about Apple's liability for the long-term functionality of that machine? Well, what about it? I mean, if you take your computer to, I don't know, let's say a Geek Squad for repairs, they'll do the work, complete a wider check of the machine to see if there's anything else wrong with it, and then even then, warranty their repairs in case they miss something. I mean, is the argument really that Apple, of all people, can't do a comprehensive check of its own hardware and has so little faith in the training of its technicians that they can't guarantee a repair? If that were true, I don't think we should buy computers from them at all. This kind of stuff, industry standard stuff, not that complicated. Back to the training bit, though. That one was a tough nut to crack, so we were actually accused of making false claims about the availability of Apple's repair certification for the iMac Pro, with other publications going as far as to contact Apple authorized service providers in the States who confirmed that they already had it. So, here's what actually happened. It was available to at least some AASPs at the time we did our video. However, it wasn't available to our local AASP, so that got me thinking, oh, there's my chair, maybe this is like a Canada-US thing? But then, I spoke personally to an American AASP technician who said, and this is after our local shop got certified, mind you, that he wasn't going to be able to get it for a couple more months. So something about the way that Apple's rolling these programs out to their AASPs isn't quite right here. But for now, though, we need to get back to addressing the problems that we identified in our first video, and fixing this stupid professional workstation that has been out of commission for months now is... well, that's pretty much the problem. So, coming back to certifications. The training and parts availability has actually improved dramatically since our first video, and we were finally able to take our iMac to an AASP who assured us that they could get the job done. The end. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to ha-hah-ha-hah-hah. No, I'm just kidding. Nothing is ever that easy. You see, while we managed to get our display replaced for a reasonable price, thanks to qualifying for what they call return pricing, where you send the original part back to Apple for disposal, we actually broke the warranty void if removed stickers around our CPU socket, this one right here. So what that means is that because of that sticker, we didn't qualify for return pricing on our logic board, which it turns out is a really bad thing because Apple wants 5,500 Canadian rupees plus tax for a new logic board, which for some reason includes both the CPU and the RAM, even though contrary to what a lot of our detractors thought, they are socketed and not soldered on this particular system. So that is about double of Apple's own price for this hardware when they sell you the system originally. And that is how much they charge the AASPs. So if an authorized service provider fails to return a defective part during the exchange for any reason, they get dinged for the price of the replacement part in what is a clear effort to prevent any spare parts from making their way out into the wild, which makes it pretty hard to get your hands on this stuff. And interestingly, this is far from the only punitive measure that Apple appears to be willing to inflict upon its partners. From talking to them, we were struck by the culture of fear that Apple cultivates among its authorized service providers. They explicitly prevent them from ordering replacement parts for the sake of having them on hand. So what that means is that they require a work order to be placed before the part will even be shipped, which creates massive delays of potentially weeks for something as simple as a freaking RAM swap, which makes the AASP look bad in comparison to Apple's own service centers. But that's Apple's policy. To make matters worse, if an AASP attempts to order a part that they don't yet have the certification for, Apple will send them a fine instead of the parts they ordered. And this is all for the privilege of having access to Apple's supply chain. Oh, and the best part is anyone caught talking about any of this to anybody outside of Apple, for them, this is grounds for severe retaliation, revocation of AASP status or certifications, fines, or even potential legal action. Only a handful of brave souls were willing to tell us their names or the names of the shops they ran or worked for. And of course, we are going to be keeping all of that information private in order to protect them. By comparison, Samsung has a web portal that you can log into and order any replacement foam parts that you could want. So at that kind of markup over a sticker, the AASP option was obviously out. We really would have been better off ordering a brand new iMac Pro. But another one of you guardian angels out there who also shall not be named for legal reasons, stepped up to the plate. Now we're getting to the point where the solutions that we're working on wouldn't be available to Joe Average, but even though it was a lot of work, we really wanted to know how deep this rabbit hole goes. So it ended up being a case of, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. So given how much money was being exchanged, I was sketched out to the max. But after a series of back alley deals, like almost literally back alley deals, our contact managed to get us this, a brand new iMac Pro logic board, complete with CPU and RAM for 2000 US dollars. And here's the kicker. If our contact de-ghostifies, because right now he's sort of gone dark. If our contact shows back up again and can get us exchange pricing, that could actually become as low as $0. So, oh, excellent, I've got a calculator. So let's do some quick maths for you guys. Our screen and power supply replacement at the AASP cost was roughly 1400 US dollars, including labor and shipping thanks to return pricing. At worst, we can add another $2,000 on top of that for the logic board and, oh, look at that, 3400 US dollars. How much does an iMac Pro cost again? So, sorry haters, it looks like you're wrong. I guess if it wasn't for Apple's anti-consumer, anti-partner, and possibly looking at what's going on with right to repair in the States right now, illegal policies, it would be possible to get the replacement parts for less than the retail price of a new unit. Only one thing remains now then. We still don't actually know if our Frankenstein machine works or not. And I could get Anthony to test it, but I think we all know what happened last time. I can't believe that some people thought that this was intended to deceive the audience, by the way. It was clearly a CSI style dramatic reenactment. Look at the sparks. We're not even good at special effects. Anyway, this video is long enough already, and I think I've got a better idea. And some of you will probably already know where I'm going with this. Hey, Lewis? I think I've got a fun little project for us. Have you ever worked on an iMac Pro before? We don't stop watching yet. I have a teaser and an offer for you. The teaser is we have a video upcoming with Wendel from Level One Techs. Gaming on Linux. It's better than you think, unless you think it's perfect, in which case it's not better than you think, but don't worry about that. Also PIA, go check out Private Internet Access for the VPN that does, well, pretty much what a VPN does. It encrypts your traffic and makes it so that it's harder to track you on the internet. It's great. Go check it out at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching, you guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button, but if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, and maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Particularly iFixit stuff. I'm not sure if we're recommending the iMac Pro at this point. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.