Ifixit Iphone Air Teardown

IIRC they started doing it with the PS4, then PS4 Pro, PS5 and PS5 Pro.

The fact that seemingly 90% of stolen iPhones end up pinging from Shenzhen months later seems to indicate it's the inevitable top of the pyramid for the vast majority of the stolen phone market. As you mention due to the abundance of highly sophisticated large scale reverse engineering and disassembly capability in a cat and mouse game with Apple's expanding parts serialization. Plus, maybe 1/100 victims fall prey to the various phishing or threatening harassment strategies also associated with Shehnzen pings to remove the iCloud lock giving them full resale value occasionally as additional incentive.

So despite the meme that stolen iPhones are "worthless" while locked, the presence of large buyers with demand for unlimited quantities of locked iPhones means that the fence value at the lowest level of the food chain is still more than enough to incentivize rampant theft (even if it were only like $50 to a thief for a $1200 phone, that is worth $200 to a Shehnzen buyer).

I'm making the numbers up, but the point is that even if iCloud activation lock and serialization destroys the vast majority of the phone's value it's not enough to truly discourage theft rings selling to wholesale buyers overseas. It just put the humble local neighborhood thief or opportunist reselling on eBay out of business, with the vacuum quickly filled by organized crime.

In a world where most people don't carry around cash or valuables that's the best a street level thief is going to do unless you run into the odd person with a Rolex or jewelry with rare actual pawnable value, and it's a bottomless crime of opportunity in a big city or festival/concert/etc so adds up quickly.

I recall the same documentary, but I recall that Stranger Parts used to use locked boards (he lived in Schenzen) for testing, but that they were useless and could not be unlocked by anybody.

Of course I have no first hand knowledge myself- but he definitely gave me the impression that they were functionally useless aside from their components.

Certainly beats using a heat gun and a prying tool to dislodge a battery.

What. Who says you can't batch CNC?

Nearly all tools used professionally now are harder than hard Ti alloys. HSS has been niche for decades now.

> and titanium is prone to catching fire during machining (so the work piece usually needs to be submerged during)

Using spray or mist coolant is common in machining anyway for hard materials. Also titanium fires can't be put out with water. That said Ti is not magnesium and does not burn readily: you have to be both unlucky and incompetent.

It's not that tiny parts are harder for conventional, but that for 3d printing metal, the smaller it is, the faster.

But do you have industry experience for the suggestion to mean anything?

I successfully replaced the batteries of several iPhone models that were supposedly ‘full of glue’ without any issues. That stuff was always way overblown. After all, Apple needed to be able to replace the batteries themselves.

Nah he is like a modern day charlatan.

but should it then even be listed there?

The iPhone Air, however, does not.

(Which is technically in line with you saying “17 series”, since there’s no number in the Air’s name. But your comment makes no sense unless you thought the Air was included in that, and so…)

See: https://www.telegraphindia.com/gallery/at-5-6mm-ultra-slim-i...

On the regular models, the iPhone Air in China will only have eSIM, along with the European models.

This is the only time I've considered sim tray removal acceptable, because there's physically no where for it to go.

Sweden - Netherland: 3.6 euros to send a letter. Sure I could fit a couple of 500 euro bills there, but the point was that you cant send money with out paying too much.

Ha! Fine, it will have to wait until I'm next near a post office with time to kill, otherwise it's not convenient. I think you'll allow that "not an unreasonable amount of effort" could imply "convenient".

I think the post offices where I am only sell the envelopes in bulk, and buying a pack will probably add an unreasonable 20% - 30% of the amount, but I'll concede that most people will probably have an envelope from a bank and a glue-stick lying around.

This is very off-topic, but sending something to an address which I can't tell is complete, without a name, has reminded me of something I find interesting.

A few years ago, my mother received a postcard from a friend who didn't have her address handy. She sent it with just my mother's name (first and last), the city, and country (New Zealand). It took some time, but it reached her! In NZ, "city" is used for some pretty small places - the population is only around 70,000. But I'm still very impressed with the effort to deliver that to her. Especially for a postcard - even internationally the postage on those is not a lot!

I'm fine with that solution, how can I store the $10 safely in that case?

If you ignore parts the transaction sure it is cheap. What can I do with USDT? no shop near me would accept it, most major digital commerce stores like Amazon won't accept it, my bank won't accept deposits in USDT.

If I have to start and end with USD which is what anyone interested in other three functions of money want, there is USD -> USDT and back to USD costs, and depending on geography there may not be cheap or legal way to make that trade, which means it is going to be far more expensive than just the $0.25 "gas" fees.

I think I agree with the hacker new hivemind, but I think I formed the opinion separately. I did a few small transactions with bitcoin ages ago, and it was a huge pain. Buying the bitcoin was painful, and then I couldn't send an exact amount, it's better to receive change to a different address, and the fees weren't as cheap as I expected for small amounts.

I often hear this has been solved with additional layers, and I see that you mentioned Ethereum instead of bitcoin. Is that significantly easier? $0.25 is not bad for $10, so the fee seems fine. I'm accepting money in an envelope as a solution, and that costs more, but I'm keen to hear whether this would have been easier.

Apple fans were fine with the notch. If I were them would embrace the bezel and make UIs like a book with distinct left and right panes. Even embrace multi tasking and run two regular apps side by side.

All the products compete. A foldable phone already competes with iPads. iPad competes with Mac. iPad Mini competes with iPads.

>> introduced

> MacBooks

Laptops have been a thing since the 80s.

The hinge of the case (not the buds themselves).

They have straps, not hinges.

And what else did Apple do? Build two “Pro” phones with even bigger batteries for these folks. Come on, let a thousand flowers bloom!

(Yeah that phrase has unfortunate Mao-era baggage, but personally I really just want the mini series back—which many also consider to have too little battery capacity—so I feel encouraged by Apple broadening the iPhone lineup.)

These improvements could be laying the groundwork for future products. Engineering wins in this regard are almost never useless - that’s a short sighted take imo.

But I agree this iphone air as a product is kind of weird. Similar to the original macbook air maybe? Ahead of its time but a bit limited by today’s tech. A peek at the future…

> I do know many who say “man, I wish iPhone battery was much larger”

This group is adequately served with an external battery pack.

They did make the batteries bigger in the iPhone 17 phones … so they are indeed chasing the right goals.

Other users want a lighter phone (decent amount of iPhone mini fans) and that’s what the air achieves.

Silicon Carbon sucks, it's longevity is pretty bad, and most people I know keep their iPhones for a long time and expect the battery to remain high enough quality for years.

I'm not saying they're engineering the batteries. But they did have to engineer the whole phone to fit in a very small space without making serious spec compromises. And my statement about their engineers isn't comparative to other companies. They can all have excellent engineering teams at the same time.

Selling phones with generally longer real world battery life yet lighter batteries, and longer battery longevity due to superior battery recharge rate management is the most anti-consumer stand possible?

Having the most accessible and convenient and in some cases cheapest manufacture’s battery replacement service is anti-consumer? What does that make every other phone manufacturer?