Michael Black wrote:
I would imagine if an authorized repair provider offers loaners or not will be entirely up to them. Some may, some won’t.
The whole approach to over the counter replace instead of repair on site isn’t just Apple - that’s how Barnes and Noble serviced my nook years ago, how Amazon services kindles, pretty much how everybody services mobile electronic devices these days. I know some people think it’s wasteful but it’s actually not. Since the turned in devices go back to the OEM or a full time electronics recycler, they get either refurbished and put back into the service pipeline, or parts from them are used to refurbish other devices, or they get properly recycled for material recovery. But all that is done at centralized facilities with all the required equipment and trained personal to do that work who can do it far more cost effectively than individual retail outlets could.
I've worked in the electronics industry, and one of the things I did was work on technologies related to board level testing, chip-level testing, etc. as well as taken classes on how to handle failures. Remarkably enough, most of the time there's any kind of failure the whole thing just gets tossed these days because it isn't considered cost effective to try to do repairs. You find one fault in a chip and the whole things gets rejected. Maybe an exception is RAM or flash where the regularity allows spares to be built and then enabled if needed. An assembled board will be tested and tossed if there's a single connection fault. Maybe failed samples go in for failure analysis, but the idea is that the assembly is so good that they just deal with it as a cost of doing business. It may also be expensive to deal with having to replaced failed units where an attempt to do board-level repair was made.
If they're not interested in doing board-level repairs at the manufacturing level, it follows that they're probably not interested in doing that at the repair service level. Simplifying everything into simply repairing major parts makes it easier. And during the warranty period they've going to be paying for the replacement of those major parts.
Sometimes prototypes get reworked, but that's expensive. I know there are some independent businesses doing micro soldering rework, but that's specialized work that a large company like Apple isn't interested in doing. As you noted, they look to keep as many working parts as they can to reuse. However, there might be some things that Apple might be able to fix at a central repair facility to make service replacements, that they wouldn't repair for a customer. I keep on hearing that Apple's only fix for a damaged Lightning port is a complete replacement. However, I've seen what it looks like inside, and the Lightning port and its associated connector are a separate part. That they don't do this repair at Apple Stores is more a business decision. But a single chip or surface mount cap/resistor on the board blows? It's pretty much industry standard that no OEM is going to try and fix that.
