Lawrence Finch wrote:
I need to point out that the contents of the flash memory are encrypted with strong encryption, and the encryption key is in the secure enclave in the processor chip where it is not accessible. So removing the surface mounted components is a worthless exercise, because there will be no way to decrypt the contents.
I meant maybe maybe a surface mount capacitor/resistor between power/ground is shorted, which would prevent powering on. But yeah if the flash or CPU gets damaged the data is pretty much gone. But I don’t subscribe to idea that Apple devices can’t be repaired - especially if it’s just to recover data.
If it’s something like a surface mount cap blown then it might even be possible to reuse a device indefinitely after the component is fixed. It would be obvious that it was “tampered” and the customer should understand that it would risk Apple’s future repair support. However, Apple is certainly like a lot of the places I’ve worked where an entire board is considered a single part and gets tossed if there’s a production test failure. That’s basically what the electronics industry is like these days with automated board assembly and micro BGA assembly in ovens.