Apple announced Self Service Repair will be available tomorrow for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks with the M1 family of chips, providing repair manuals and genuine Apple parts and tools through the Apple Self Service Repair Store. Self Service Repair for iPhone launched earlier this year and the program will expand to additional countries — beginning in Europe — as well as additional Mac models later this year.
Self Service Repair for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro offers more than a dozen different repair types for each model, including the display, top case with battery, and trackpad, with more to come. Customers who are experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices will be able to complete repairs on these Mac notebooks, with access to many of the same parts and tools available to Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Service Providers.
Jason Snell has more details at Six Colors:
At launch, Apple is supporting some specific repair types, though others will be added as the program goes along. For this first round of Macs, you’ll be able to perform replacements for many items, including the audio board, battery (for MacBook Air), bottom case, display, keycaps, logic board, speaker, top case, Touch ID board, trackpad, fans (for MacBook Pro), MagSafe (for MacBook Pro), and the antenna modules. (Apple says there will be a MacBook Pro battery replacement available in the near future.)
The cost of repair parts varies widely. An audio board replacement might cost $12, and speakers $29, while the logic board for a 32-core GPU MacBook Pro with 32GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive would run more than $1900. However, depending on the part, Apple will buy back the broken part and refurbish it for re-use in another repair, making that $1900+ logic board repair cost a little less than $600. (If Apple doesn’t reimburse you for a part, they’ll still accept it and recycle it if you want to send it back to them.)
Like with the iPhone Self Service Repair Program, users can purchase parts and rent tools from the Self Service Repair Store, which as previously discussed, is managed by CTDI for Apple.
Also like the iPhone Self Service Repair Program, I don’t think most people are going to opt to crack open their Macs when a repair is needed. This is great for those of us with the skills — or bravery — to do so, but if I were still in the Apple-Authorized Service Provider business, I wouldn’t be too worried about this tanking my repair revenue.
I am curious to see what will happen with machines like the iMac and Mac Studio are included in the program, as they are more difficult to open than a notebook. Until then, I’m glad to see this program continue to grow.