Apple announced yesterday that it would add replacement parts for its M1 MacBook Air and Pro laptops. Now, the store is back online after a brief period of maintenance, and now it offers replacement trackpads, displays, batteries, and more parts to fix your own computer.
This creation of the Self Service repair store has been a long time coming. Apple’s repair program was announced late last year, and the store officially opened earlier this year with replacement parts for recent iPhone models.
For the iPhone SE, 12, and 13, you could get replacement batteries, screens, cameras, and a few other parts. Apple also offered the ability to purchase or rent the first-party tools needed to perform the repair to Apple’s specifications. The repair manuals offered alongside the devices were extremely in-depth for the replacement parts available. One of the best parts of the service was the ability to rent all the tools necessary to repair your device for $49. For all the tools it offers, that’s a pretty good deal, even if you aren’t saving much money over getting it repaired by Apple.
Now, the self-service repair store is live with replacement parts for the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro models. And Apple is offering a wide variety of replacement parts through the self-service repair program – everything from keycaps, fans, and speakers to the Touch ID, display, and mainboard in all its varieties from the base model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD up to the highest end M1 Max motherboard for the 16-inch MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM and 8TB of SSD storage.
Something like a replacement screen for the M1 MacBook Air will run you $395, with an $88 credit after returning the original part. A battery for the same MacBook will run you $119, with a $22 credit for returning your existing battery. Having Apple perform a battery replacement would cost you $129 – so if you factor in first-party tools, you aren’t saving any money over just letting Apple repair it.
In addition to grabbing the tools and parts from selfservicerepair.com, Apple’s site hosts the repair manuals for the M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, 14-inch M1 MacBook Pro, and 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro. These manuals are incredibly detailed – to the extent that those experienced with repairs may find them repetitive – but they are detailed enough to ensure that even someone who has never opened up an electronic device before could jump in and successfully perform a supported repair.
Once again, this is a great step forward for those who would prefer to fix their own devices, but it’s still far from a “perfect” repair program. As I noted earlier this year, you need to contact support to get repaired devices back to full working order after some repairs, and you need to reach out to support return and get a credit for returned used batteries. Nonetheless, I am glad to see the program expanding to more devices, even if I don’t expect many people to find the program in its current implementation very useful.
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