Of course repairing the brand new Apple TV distant is tougher than merely unscrewing it

Apple, an organization infamous for making its merchandise troublesome to restore, has given us an actual head-scratcher of a restore state of affairs with its next-generation streaming distant.

At subject listed here are a pair of screws that would seem to make restore semi-straightforward however completely don’t. iFixit tore down the second-generation Siri Remote, which is able to ship with the newest Apple TV 4K streaming field, and located that these two screws on the skin of the distant do principally nothing. Do not, in different phrases, count on to have the ability to repair your new distant or its battery simply.

First off, Apple’s new wand encompasses a one-piece aluminum outer casing design — that means that whereas minimal and fairly, this factor was in all probability already going to show troublesome to tinker with. You would possibly assume, due to this fact, {that a} pair of tiny screws on the backside of the distant close to its charging port would provide quick access to the factor almost certainly to must be repaired on this distant: the battery. You could be unsuitable.

Instead, iFixit’s video teardown indicated that the tiny plate that covers its Lightning port — one other Siri Remote sin, if I’m being sincere — successfully goes nowhere. To get contained in the distant, iFixit wanted to make use of a handful of specialised instruments to pop off the buttons on the distant, take away extra tiny screws and tiny part elements, wriggle the distant’s internal body out of its aluminum shell, unscrew the logic board from the distant’s skeleton, and at last, come out the 1.52Wh battery. Oh, and its cables are soldered along with these of the Lightning port, making DIY repairs all of the harder.

Is the dearth of easy repairability on the next-generation Siri Remote totally shocking? Well, no. Of course not. Repairing the first-generation Siri wand was equally a whole entire thing. Apple can be infamous for lobbying against right-to-repair laws, has been proven to be internally conflicted about its personal place on the matter, and has used bad-faith arguments to protect itself from criticism about how troublesome its merchandise are to repair, notably the place it pertains to proprietary part elements and restore directions.

But for a distant with a chargeable battery, Apple positive makes it troublesome to really get in there and entry one of many issues almost certainly to want alternative down the street. And tricking us with a pair of screws that do little for repairability doesn’t precisely curry favor on the restore entrance, both.