Apple Said Don’t—But I Upgraded My iPad Pro Screen Anyway!

So I just spent $579 to potentially destroy my iPad Pro. My iPad Pro. Not on purpose, mind you. I am attempting something that Apple never intended I do. I am converting my glossy M4 iPad Pro to the nano texture version using a loophole in their self-service repair program. It's either going to be the world's most expensive screen upgrade or the world's most expensive mistake if I botch this thing. By the way, it ain't gonna be cheap. Three years ago, when Apple launched its self-service repair website, it felt like textbook malicious compliance. You want right to repair? Fine, here's a program so convoluted and expensive that you'll beg us, Apple, to fix your device instead. The program was iPhone only, it was comically overpriced, had a horrible website, and you had to validate your repair with Apple. So you had the assumption of risk of a DIY repair, but with none of the cost benefits. But quietly, steadily, Apple has been expanding and, dare I say, improving the program, and I've been watching from afar. First came M-series MacBooks, then Mac Minis, then iMacs, and then Studio Displays, a couple other things, like the Beats Pill, okay. And as of this summer, well, the current generation iPad lineup in its entirety, and some select older models, had joined the repair party. iPads were always weird in Apple's repair ecosystem, because for years, you only had two repair options through the Apple Store. Battery service, or number two, other damage. Crack screen, that's other damage. Bent frame, that's other damage. Charge port full of pocket lint that no amount of compressed air can solve, that's other damage. Everything was priced the same because Apple would just swap out your entire iPad for a refurbished unit. That has changed with current generation models. Now at Apple stores, Apple offers a cracked screen. Front-only repair service, when no other damage is present. So if your frame isn't damaged, which is probably unlikely if you drop the iPad because it's made of aluminum, but let's say that that's the case, and the display cracks, well, you can fix just the screen. What is that going to cost? I don't know. They literally won't tell you. A full unit replacement for my M4 iPad Pro, so the other service repair, is $849. But the screen-only repair? I called AppleCare twice and I got two different non-answers. Both of them asked me to send in my device for diagnosis and they let me know the repair bill. Probably they wanna make sure that the chassis or frame isn't damaged, but still. Improved iPad reliability is exciting to me, as the M4 iPad Pro has become my most used computer over the last year. Don't worry, I have a lot of videos coming later this fall about iPadOS 26 and how I use my iPad. I absolutely love this thing. It is impossibly thin, it is ridiculously powerful, and that Tandem OLED display is the best screen that I've ever owned. But I did make one critical mistake, and that's that I cheaped out on the Nano Texture option. It got glossy instead because, you see, I've always viewed iPads as content consumption devices. Watch me some YouTube, read some articles, maybe play a game, things where contrast ratio is nice to have and a little bit of glare, not such a problem. But because this M4 iPad Pro has completely changed my workflow, When I'm editing videos and writing scripts eight hours a day, those fingerprints and reflections aren't just annoying, they're legitimately affecting my work. See, the original SSR store made you enter your serial number before it would show you any parts. And while that's still true for Macs and displays, iOS devices no longer have that weird limitation. Combined with the manual repair code, Which Apple mercifully moved from deep inside the repair PDF that you had to whack-a-mole and find to just putting it right on the webpage. I can actually order a nanotexture display for my glossy iPad because they don't do a serial validation check. And that painful phone call that you would have to make years ago to validate every single part for your specific device, that's no longer required for pretty much any repair. Allegedly. And where verification or validation of a part is required, you can just do it yourself right inside of iPadOS's settings. No phone call needed. So it's as easy as placing an order, right? My first attempt, and subsequent credit card charge to get my hands on both the display and the toolkit that I would need to rent to do the repair was made on May 29th. Yeah, it's been a minute. After two weeks of silence, having heard nothing and no status update, I reached out to the live chat support agent for help, and they informed me that they were just waiting on parts for the toolkit rental but would escalate my order for an update. The next morning, my order was cancelled. But why? For not? Passing the verification process. What does that mean? When I inquired anew what that scary error meant, they said, oh yeah, no, that's just a generic error. The real reason is that the toolkit rental, it's not ready, but you can order the screen. Yeah, sure. Let me buy the very expensive part, but without the tools to do the repair. No. So come June 24th, almost a month later, I try the order again and it's, well, canceled. Same reason. Weeks pass. I check in every couple of days. I become best friends with the support agent. They're like, hey, this is the only guy that ever orders anything from this store. And then on July 9th, armed with chat assurances that everything was definitely, absolutely in stock, I placed my third order. It finally shipped on July 23rd, nearly two months after Apple announced that iPad parts were now available. But hey. Let's let bygones be bygones, because right in front of me, I have got a brand new nano-texture display for my M4 iPad Pro, along with two massive Pelican cases containing 70 pounds of Apple's official repair equipment. So is this gonna work? Well, there's only one way to find out. I suppose we should begin by opening up everything that we got. This should be our parts, meaning our display and, of course, our display adhesive. Yep, which you'll notice is a separate line item because it is not included. It's $11 extra and I only wanted to buy one of them. So I'm really hoping I don't mess up the install. Oh my gosh, there's so much like, oh my goodness, there's so much fluff in here. Look at that. There's dust all over inside this bag. Hopefully it hasn't ruined the adhesive. Great first impression. And here is the $570 display. Now, like the prior versions of this program, if you return your old broken display, they will give you a parts or recycling credit. I think for this display, it's $70 or so. But because mine still works, I'm going to keep it around. Got a nice adhesive sticker on the front, an adhesive sticker on the back. That looks expensive. And I want to put that back until I'm ready for it. And now we move on to the parts. Box one! Oh my gosh! These are huge! Okay, so we've got these security tags. They're locked out with a serialized sealed number, so that we know... Should I cut these? I guess. Oh, this one's already been broken. Oh no! It's not sealed! This one, however, is. So I can cut this one. There we go. And sure that I am the first person to be opening this. Oh yeah, they're side ones. I was like, wait a minute. There we go. Holy smokes. So I've got a return label. I've got some toolkit contents. So number seven is my repair tray. These are still just as fancy as ever. There's a nice kind of soft material here so that your display, I guess the back of your iPad doesn't touch it. This is plastic or Delrin or nylon or something like that, but it is CNC. So this is just like, it's machined plastic, which is insane. The display adhesive alignment tray. So this is for our screen. Same deal. Machined. This is insane. Why? Here we go. Here's our heated display pocket and one suction cup. Box number two. Oh, this one's heavier, though. This one's 40 pounds. My goodness. There's no side ones. Box number one contains our torque drivers, our J6 bits, our torque plus bits... It's Bob, but what's in it? This is the heated display press. Holy smokes, it's just as heavy as I remember. This is the same one that is used for the iPhone and other devices, you just have a differently sized tray. A power cable, which yes, it remains an iMac power cable, like an old-school white iMac power cable that doesn't even fit, like, properly into this thing. Look at this. That looks so dumb. I guess Apple was like, we've got billions of those. We're not buying new power cables. Our display adhesive roller. We got our tools. I'm already overwhelmed. I've got my manual pulled up. And now we begin. Removal. OK, wear heat resistant gloves. They don't include this, so I'm raw-dogging it. This thing is massive and so weighty. It weighs like 10 pounds. But there are just heating elements in each one of these what appear to be brass kind of metal inserts. They just heat up the side of your iPad with very localized heat, and they heat it enough not to ruin the iPad, but enough to loosen the glue. So I'm going to lower this in with my camera. It says do not scratch when inserting, which makes me a little worried. Is that a thing that happens? Okay, sure. I'm going to just lower these two. The top and bottom seem significantly tighter than side to side. Hold on, I'm a little freaked out. That was a lot of pressure. Okay, so it's aligned on the top left and right. Is my iPad bent? Maybe. Why was that bounce? Oh, this whole plate bounces. Okay, sure. Why does it do that? I don't know, but it does. So that's good. Lower my iPad in once more. Just slide it into the corner. This one is significantly tighter than this one. These are adjustable. I'm like, do they check the torque ratings on the side before they ship them? Normally, you just twist to release, but... Oh, there we go. Guys, I am not off to a good start. I didn't get a good night's sleep last night. Whoa. Slide the pocket into place until you feel it click into place. No, I gotta do it the right way. Here we go. There we go. It said the screen will turn red, which it does. And it has now begun a two-minute timer. Is my iPad getting toasty? Are these hot? Oh yeah. Yeah, that's warm. That's good. Oh, that was just getting up to temperature. And now that it's at temperature, it needs to let the glue bake for two minutes. So now there's a two minute countdown. You know, I do remember taking this apart and being astonished that it weighed as much as it does, because it's all fodder. I mean, like, all of the heating elements are here, so it's just supplying power to this specific thing. There's an NFC tag on each tray that lets the device know for how long, and presumably at what temperature or current, it's supposed to let this stuff bake. But other than that, most of the weight is just in steel. I mean, like, listen to the gauge of that. That is like very heavy duty. Everything's so fancy. Beautiful lead screw right here. Well oiled. Okay, it's green. We now have 15 minutes to complete the repair. And I do remember that this beeping stops once you lower this down to the iPad. So once we get close, there we go. It finally shuts up. Okay, it says get it down, but don't let it touch. Ensure that you complete this procedure within the 15 minutes. Uh-oh. I've been chatting about okay, so I've lowered it down to the iPad and now I'm going to secure now It says slowly turn the black knob on the fixture two and a half rotations Counterclockwise then wait 30 seconds then turn it again another two rotations, so I've got my thing here So one who I can feel the display already starting to give two three. Oh, that's that's tight, okay? Oh, look, he's listen to that oh It just... it already released the adhesive. That was pretty cool. I just heard it going... No matter how sophisticated you get, you're still using a nylon little guitar pick. Hey! Look at these cards! Does anyone remember these? These are from the infamous iMac Pro VESA kit, which I famously loved. And Apple famously loves me for that video. Dude, I don't even have to do anything. That freaks me out how high that is. Look at that. The whole display is warped. I'm gonna just start. I don't feel like we need another two rotations. I don't know. Should I listen to what it says? That's just so much. That just freaks me the crap out. Look at that. It's like completely concave down here and convex up here. I'm putting that back down a little bit. That's scary. Let's get the adhesive working right there. Oh, it is tight down here. I'll tell you that much. This is coming off super easy, which is good, because I was worried it would be a little bit tight, but nope. This thing came completely unglued. Oh, this is the TrueDepth camera down here. What the f- Did I put this in backwards? No. I did. Wait, no. I didn't put the iPad in backwards, because otherwise it would not have gone in. But this is where the TrueDepth assembly is. So I just gotta be really careful along this edge. Oh, that makes sense why that's all blue. Disregard me. I'm just gonna shut up. I knew that. I'm not dumb. And I did it with so much time to spare. Look at that. It says, save SD okay. All right, whatever that means. Turn it back off. Dang, this thing's heavy. Lift this clamp up, lift this clamp up. We'll get my repair tray, which is this one. That thing is over-engineered. Dang, that's hot. Ooh, ooh, that iPad is, ooh, that iPad is warm. That can't be good for the battery. Wait a minute, those morons. They sent me the one for the 13-inch iPad. What the hay? Look at this. Oh, first of all, that explains that. So I did have it in upside down. Maybe it's just bi-directional. You can put it in whatever way you want. Because there's cutouts on both sides for power and volume. This is not right, though. Look at this. Did they send me the 13-inch adhesive thing? Oh, that's gonna be a... that's gonna be a real problem if that's what I got. No. This is right. Right? Yeah, that's for 11-inch. Am I just dumb? Because I didn't ask for, like, a 13-inch repair tray. So, thanks a lot, Apple. They just sent me the completely wrong thing. Boo! You suck! And put it in here. Does this slide around? Honestly, no. That's pretty good. It's not perfect, but... And all I gotta do is remove this screw. Oh, yeah. Don't touch the... Did I touch that? I didn't. And then I just need to remove the microphone connector. Beautiful. They gave you these suction cups, and theoretically these are cool, because it can hold the display up while you're working on the other connectors. Practically, I'm not really confident I care about that. Because I think they only sent me one of them, which is... Yep, there's only one suction cup. So, not after a great start, Apple. I guess technically it's Spot. It's not Apple, which is a company that is contracted by Apple to do the job. But Apple, you might want to check in on Spot. Because not only did I get the wrong size display pocket, I also got one of two suction cups. And if they charge me for this, I'm gonna raise hell. Okay, so this is what you do. You lift the display up, and then you go, That's the, that's the point of this thing, and I've never liked these because they say don't push the display back, and you really shouldn't. These OLEDs are super fragile, but these suction cups are so, like, crappy. Look at these. This is like Fisher-Price suction cups. These are not flexible, they're not malleable, they're very firm, so you need to push really, really hard to get good suction against these, and you just can't do that without pushing the back of the display, which they explicitly tell you not to do. So there we go. But this is, I mean, that's. Freaks me out, honestly. I don't want that to release and come shattering down, but whatever. Screw removed. This does come with a magnetizer, which would be nice, because currently there is no magnetic attachment. There we go. Hey, check it out. Way to go. And then does the demagnetizer work? Sometimes these do not work well. Hey, this one's pretty good. All right. Two screws down, three to go. You know, Apple calls this thing, this plate that we're removing, a cowling. And it just sits on top of all of the various connectors. The display connector, the digitizer connector, the other sensors that are inside the display. Back in my day, they used to call these EMI shields, because they are for electromagnetic interference. Because your main board is directly down the center vein of the iPads. You've got a battery on each side, and then you've got, I mean, the M4 is right here in the middle. We're going to take this. Little cowling cover and just place it to the side and that's all it is. It's just a little sheet of metal that has a little foam to push down on the connectors and then it's also to reduce electromagnetic interference. That's pretty much all it does. It also makes the iPad look really pretty and I haven't remarked on that, but boy, this thing is something else. I mean, this is a work of art. Oh, power is separate now. That's cool. So that was just video, then flex. Now we've got power and boy, this is a double-headed connector. I guess that makes sense. I mean, when you've got a tandem OLED that can... Two OLED displays. I wonder if, by the way, that's why there's two connectors. One for each display, maybe? Because it is two OLEDs stacked on top of each other. Or it could be just because they need so many pins for how much current this display takes, because it does draw quite a lot of power. Is that face down? I don't know. I feel better about putting the display face up. Face down. I don't know. There we go. Clean flat surface. The back of my iPad. Not very clean. Okay, and that's done. The repair is complete. Not true. We've got the rest of this. Wow, this thing is pretty bare bones. Look at this thing. Here's the inside of my M4 iPad Pro. So we've got the TrueDepth camera system. We've got an ambient line sensor down here. We've got our USB-C connector. We've got speakers on each side. So you've got the speaker and then you've also got the woofer. So for, well. Technically, the driver is right here, but they do this as all iPads and all Macs want to do. They do this kind of like base porting to try and make it feel boomier than it is. So these look like lower range woofers. These are kind of mid-range drivers. They're obviously all designed to fit inside the cavity, but there's really not much going on over here. I mean, this is all magnets. That's it. There's nothing even over here. This is empty. You've got one battery here, one battery here. Again, here's your main board. Underneath here is your M4 and all associated processing features. You've got an antenna here. You've got some magnets for the magnets here, magnets here for your Apple Pencil. The Apple Pencil charger is behind the Face ID assembly and your buttons. And that's it. I mean, like, for real. This thing is bare bones, look at this. It's like, huh? Now we get to the not so fun part of having to remove all the remaining adhesive. They give you a couple of these black nylon spudgers and basically you just have to very carefully pick off all of the lint and all of the dust and all of the remaining glue. Look at that, that's yucky. Because if this is on the adhesive and on the display when you reattach it, you're going to be in for a bad time. You're not going to get a good seal. Things will move and shift over time as the chassis of the iPad heats up and cools down, especially because the M4 does get warm. This part is just unfortunately, no matter how you slice it, a bit tedious. This sure would be a lot simpler and I'd have to be a lot less careful if I had a freaking tray that fit my iPad. Renting tools if they don't even send you the right stuff. You know, those little microwavable bags that iFixit sells, I think they call them the iOpener. Maybe they don't anymore. I feel like they used to. Anyway, those things work really good. Probably just as good as this. You get four of those, you stick a little hot gel on each side of the iPad and buddy for $10, you're in the same place as all these thousands of dollars in tools that Apple sells. But replicability and 100% repair success rate Kind of what you need to achieve in an Apple store. So if you're not a skilled repair person, which let's be honest, a lot of geniuses are not, especially now that they're not going to Apple's campus to learn and be trained on site. You used to. And that was a change made in the Angela Ahrens era of Apple. I think it was a big mistake. Truly, back in the day, if you became a genius, you would go to Cupertino and they would train you how to be a genius on site for every Apple store in the United States. I'm not sure if it was global, probably not, but certainly for the US, they take you, they teach you right at Apple Park. Well, it wasn't Apple Park back then, but right at one infinite loop, how to do repairs. And then they stopped that because that was too... Expensive, and that's in the era where they kind of stopped repairing stuff in store and geniuses didn't get very good And they're kind of dumb for a while. I think they've come back a lot since then But it's hard to undo the damage that was done to grab an ethanol alcohol wipe here I'm just gonna wetten up this perimeter you see in the manual they don't really talk about how long this step is but this is the single longest part to any repair is dealing with adhesive and In the manual, they're just like, oh yeah, just use the little incuted tweezers or the little spudger, whatever you can do. It's just a little bit of adhesive. And then after several minutes of scratching this off with crude instruments, you wonder to yourself, what's the point of all these fancy tools to begin with? Okay, I need to be incredibly careful around the TrueDepth camera system. Do not touch it, do not look at it, do not smile at it. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Luckily, there's not too much adhesive around that. Because let me tell you, taking a sharp instrument next to the most delicate part of the iPad, not fun. My hands are sweaty, which is not good to a successful repair, so I'm going to go wash them. Here is my display adhesive alignment tray, and thankfully, this appears to be the 11-inch version. If not, I literally wouldn't even try the repair, because this requires intense attention to detail. So here's the top liner. Ah! It's so pretty. It's so pretty. It's going to be covered in fingerprints by the time I get this thing on. But look at that. Look at that. Oh, it's so matte and anti-reflective. Okay, okay. All right. All right, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready. Oh boy. It's no comparison. So I'm gonna insert this into the display pocket. A little masking tape that they use for the flex cable. And do not tear the flex cable because that is a $500 boo-boo. Everything is a $500 boo-boo or more from this point, because let's not rule out the possible reality that I break the iPad itself. Like this is not a clean warehouse. Like, oh my gosh, look at that. That looks like it's been used already. Looks horrible. Is it just exterior dust or is it inside? Oh, it's inside. Great. Love that. Oh my gosh. It seriously looks like it was like sitting inside of a factory where they were making newspaper. That's not insignificant. This is the correct direction because that is where the pins line up. So the bottom release liner is this one. So I'm going to start to peel it back and then I am going to line it up on the display adhesive, on the pins. And then as I'm, as I've got it lined up, I'm just going to slowly keep pulling as I align it on the subsequent pins. And this is kind of when we have the moment of truth. As soon as we push down from here, this is when it's going to start to actually stick. So I need to make sure it's all lined up. I'm not joking. Look at this. Look at my perfectly clean display. A sheep got into the factory. Like that is a whole ass cotton swab inside the display. My goodness. Come on, Apple. So basically just take my black stick and I rub it around the perimeter, making sure it has good contact everywhere on the iPad. Am I confident they gave me the right display to use it? Part 9 2 3 1 0 5 5 7. I'll stop being dramatic. This is probably right. It's pretty close. It's just like see this right here that's on magnets and I guess I guess you need it to adhere somewhere so you I mean like if I look here is it on the magnets here? No it's not on the magnets here. Oh my crikey. Did they give me the wrong display adhesive? This is not the same display adhesive. Well folks have we found ourselves in a predicament. You see the bag that I received 9-2-3-1-0-5-5-7 does, in fact, match the part number on self-service repair. However, the display is, the adhesive is not the same. And I did not do this incorrectly, because there's only one way to do it. This pin right here is misaligned from this pin, so there's only one way to place it on. There's not enough pulling or tearing in this material that I put it on backwards. And furthermore, if you look at the repair manual, there is the pull tabs down here in the bottom left, which... Mine are there. Now you might be thinking, ah, but Quinn, is it because you went with a matte display instead of a gloss? No, because that would fit and this doesn't. The part number is exactly the same, no matter whether or not it is the nanotexture or the regular. Now there is a difference in skew for the cellular model. Is it possible that they sent the cellular adhesive packaged in the non-cellular bag? Yeah. In fact, I think that's probably likely. But, um, well, I don't have the cellular, and I don't want to have to wait on a new repair, so I'm going to try to put this back together as is. If I can do it, great, mum's the word. If I have a catastrophic failure, well, your boy's going to be in touch with the self-service repair store. Although, I'll tell you what, it's not looking good, because the adhesive is even cutting slightly down into the dot projector ring. Good criminy. These folks have really fricked it. Oh, this is not looking good! This is not looking good! This is not my fault. This is Apple's fault, or the self-service repair store's fault. We're now on to error number three. I'll remind you. Error number one, they sent me the 13-inch iPad repair tray instead of the 11-inch tray. They only sent me one suction cup. There are two, not just for the 13-inch, but also for the 11-inch. So I can't reliably hold up my display. And the third... For sure, the worst of all is that they sent me the correct part number, but with the wrong part inside. Display adhesive that does not match and will probably likely ruin my chances at a successful repair. That's not acceptable. That's not okay. This was a $570 part. More than the Apple store. And you can't even send me the right thing weeks after you were supposed to send it? Yep. Okay. Now, because I can see naysayers in the comments already saying, eh, you put it on backwards. First of all, I didn't. You can literally not put it on backwards, because not only are these offset from one another, but that doesn't line up over here. Okay? I did it right. Back off. Second of all, I don't have to explain myself to you. You're wrong, I'm right. So, as any reasonable person would do, we're going to take a utility knife to our brand new $570 OLED. We've got the adhesive into place, and we now just basically need to put the display Back near the iPad, reattach the DisplayFlex cables. Oh boy, this is... that's not a good sign. That means the adhesive has gone outside the perimeter of the window on the iPad. I'm just going to keep doing it, because your boy needs content. I'll start clicking these things back into place. So, connector numero uno. We've got our power connector. Same deal with these. You'd think there's like a science. They're like, no, just line it up and push it down with your fingy. That's good enough. Here is our screw kit because remember screws from Apple are single use only. Why? I don't know, but they are. The good news is is that they are all staggered such that we know the order in which to put them back in because they're typically not the same length and all this other stuff. Here's a little bit of a trick. Screw backwards a little bit just to make sure you don't cross thread your boy. And I'm going to insert all of them. before I start to do the actual torquing. These all do have threadlocker applied, which is probably why they give you new ones. I'm going to tighten these until the screwdriver clicks. There you go. One click, two click, three click, four click, five click. You honestly could probably do this without a torque driver. I don't really know why. I mean, I know why they're antsy about it, because that's Apple, but... All right, so here's the tricky part. Without letting this adhesive touch, because if it touches... It's gonna stick, because it's very sticky adhesive. I need to reattach not just the screw, oh, excuse me, the connector from the microphone, but also the screw and the shield, without knocking the adhesive anywhere else on the iPad. This connector is fresh, I will tell you that much. We're gonna line this up. There we go. Okay, that went down, honestly, a lot easier than I expected. And in one fell swoop, I will line this boy up. Uh-oh. Oh no. Oh no. I just dropped it. Where did it go? Okay, good. It's down in the pocket where I don't have a suction cup because they only sent me one of them. There we go. That was scary. I guess I could have reused the same screw. It would have been fine, but... Give me a click, boy! Ha ha! That just fell. Okay. Oh boy. That's okay. That's alright. Got a little bit of leeway here. There we go. There we go. Okay. I got it. And that actually looks, honestly, surprisingly dang good. Okay. Right here. And now... I'm gonna just push down so that this little green guy is in the hand-painted white. Is that... is that white out? That's white out. They put white out around this. Yes. Okay, so I line up my little green jig right up to the white. Not more, but not less. And I just go around the display adhesive ten times back and forth. Okay, sorry, I only did like one or two. Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I think I did like two or three per side, but that's all right. I'll do 10. This repair was made significantly more difficult by not having the correct parts. It honestly is like I should have just done an iFixit repair for one third the cost. Okay, and we're done. Here's the moment of truth. Does my iPad power on? I will now push the Apple does this as a joke, I think. Every time you remove a battery or a display or a component and then you put it back on, the next time you turn it on, it takes a good long while. Probably because it's checking stuff, but it takes long enough that you're like, what is going on? Hey, look at that. It's turned on and it works. Look at that. Oh boy. Oh boy, I can scroll back and forth. Does Face ID work? Face ID works. Wow, bada boom, bada bing. This is a miracle. Oh, how naive former me was. You see, this is a repair that needs to be completed within iPadOS Settings. If I open up the iPadOS Settings app, which has a badge on it, you'll see that there is a new notification that says, finish your display repair. And it takes me to a new tab inside of general, about, and parts and service history, which was not present before I completed the repair. And here it says, configuration available, display. A new display was detected for start to configure your new display for this iPad. Now, Why the heck is this here? And why do I need to reboot? This is the replacement for the old phone line that used to have to call in and validate your display serial with your iPad serial. Why are they doing this? Well, there's a cynical reason, and I think a more realistic reason. The cynical reason is Apple wants to gatekeep. They don't want you performing repairs with inauthentic parts. And so if you use a Chinese OEM screen that's unlabeled, it will show you in the settings app when you get your iPad back from a third-party repair shop, hey, this screen is not legitimate. Apple wants their parts in their iPads regardless of whether or not the iPad is under warranty or whatever, because if something goes wrong, Many people blame Apple, not the The real reason, though, in my opinion, is that each display has its own display controller on board. And these displays, while very good, are not all exactly the same. And so they're calibrated from the factory. To meet the color requirements that Apple has. And it's stored on a little, little tiny EEPROM chip on the display controller itself. And so when you bind the two together, the display has to tell the iPad, hey, this is my color calibrated profile that you should apply. And in order to do that, you need to restart and finish the repair. So let's push the button and hopefully everything will reboot. It will be fine. Did the color look totally fine before this repair? Yeah. Did I notice that there was a problem at all? No. But I guess we do it the right way, and now the iPad begins to reboot. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. I thought that would be it. Okay, so we're presented with a new app that says Repair Assistant. Apple will verify that the parts used in your recent repair are functioning correctly and can be configured for this iPad. So I'll push continue to connect to a Wi-Fi network, which it does remember, so that's nice. It's not like a recovery mode. Please connect. No network connection. Well, that's a lie. Try again. My internet is working just fine, and it was before I got into the repair assistant mode, so I don't know what to do. Maybe set up a hotspot from my phone? All right, all I needed to do was hotspot to my iPhone. Why that wasn't working? No idea. Okay! Configuring. This may take a few minutes. Keep this iPad connected to Wi-Fi until the configuration is finished. Which suggests that it is downloading something. And we're done. Finish repair. Tap continue to complete the configuration of the parts listed below. Display. There's a little check and it says this is a genuine Apple part. I push continue. Oh, and it continues configuring, I guess. I guess that first part was just to see if it was a genuine part. And that's where I think Apple is in some ways in the wrong. I don't think it's incorrect of them to prevent, well, to notify users that parts they're using are not genuine, but I don't think they should prevent the repair from happening. I don't think there should be a persistent badge in your settings app forever that says, hey, this is an inauthentic part. I think it should notify you. You as the user should say, yes, I understand this. And then it should go away. And that doesn't mean that Apple has to honor the warranty if the display breaks on a display that they didn't manufacture or install, Let me do what I want with my device. You know what I mean? Okay, it's finally booted, and holy crap, that looks so much better. No, it doesn't. It looks exactly the same. Maybe the blues are slightly less saturated than they were before, but the reality is these displays are all so good from the factory that the calibration is like the most minute percentage possible that it's probably not even perceptible to the human eye. And so that, I guess, brings forth my conclusion and the question, is this all worth it? Is this song and dance just a charade by Apple to pretend to be pro-repair? I'm conflicted, because in some ways, the program has improved substantially over the last few years in good ways. When it launched, it was iPhone-only, and you needed to validate your serial number with Apple. That's no longer the case. You can buy parts as a repair shop, in bulk. I don't have to put in my specific iPad serial to get a specific part for my iPad, and that is a fantastic change. Additionally, I can repair an iPad! That wasn't the case even just a few months ago. But it's not just the iPad, it's Macs and displays and speakers and almost everything Apple releases now eventually makes its way onto the SSR store. Which is great not just for extending the life of these devices, but is an indicator to me that Apple is trying more than they used to be. At making devices repairable in the long run, designing things with repairability in mind, and that's fantastic. My problems with the program are the same problems that I had a couple of years ago. Number one, they are very much only providing 10,000 feet up documentation. And so they are providing documentation on how to perform a repair, but the repairs are like how to replace the logic board inside of an iMac. That's the whole computer, right? A third-party repair shop would likely use drawings and component-level information to do much smaller repairs. Rather than replace an $850 logic board, maybe you could find and replace a 20-cent capacitor that had gone bad, but that's very difficult to do without proper diagrams, and Apple doesn't provide those, which is a real shame. The second problem I have with the program... is that Apple in many ways is preventing the third-party supply chain from making good parts because of this scare sheet that they show you when you install a third-party part. I think it is reasonable for them to say, hey, just so you know, the part you put in your iPad, that's not a genuine part. And that's fine. You can put it in there. But just be aware it's not legit. And you might have issues. And if you do have issues and other issues are caused by this component to the rest of the system, that's on you, not on us. Apple, that's completely within their right to do. The problem is, is that because they make it so persistent, you can never let that badge go away. We'll always be there saying, hey, this is an inauthentic part. Well, just China stopped making third party parts for most of their devices. And so your only way to get a repair is via the self-service repair store, which is, as we've discussed, intentionally priced such that You'd be kind of dumb to do it anyway, you just take it to Apple. And Apple doesn't charge a good price, neither does the self-service repair store. And so at the end of the day, is stuff more repairable? Yeah. But if it's so pricey that you're just better off buying an entirely new iPad? Well guess who wins? Apple. Not you. But then they can still give lip service and say, no, no, we deeply care about the environment and about repairability. But actions speak louder than words, and that's a huge problem that they really, really need And if they do that, then things are looking pretty. But right now, it still feels like malicious compliance, and that's a shame for a company that claims to care about Mother Earth so much. Thank you so much for watching. Please subscribe, rate, and comment, but most importantly, and as always, stay snazzy. See you later, folks.