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May 27, 2022-Apple Display Provider was Caught cutting Corners
John C. Morley: (00:09)
Hi everyone. I'm John C. Morley, the host of the JMOR Tech Talk show and inspirations for your life.
John C. Morley: (01:02)
Well, hi everyone. It is John C. Morley, a serial entrepreneur coming at you on our last Friday of the month. I cannot believe it is May 27th already. Where did this entire month go? Anyway, we have a great show for you tonight. Following up on a lot of the trends and things we were talking about. The first thing I'd like to really discuss with you guys is something really critical that happened in the production chain. That's really going to affect something with Apple. So let's talk a little about that. So Apple display contractor was caught cutting corners. Now, this might, may not seem like a big deal to you, but the supplier could lose out on a large iPhone 14 order after it was caught cutting corners.
John C. Morley: (01:59)
And you know, this is a challenge because the Chinese display manufacturer, Beijing Oriental electronics could lose out on 30 million display orders for the upcoming iPhone 14, after it reportedly altered the design of the iPhone 13 display to increase the yield rate. I have to tell you, I mean, nothing against other countries, but I always say that if you can't keep an eye on what's in the oven, then you shouldn't put it in the oven. In other words, when we give stuff to other countries, which I'm not a fan of, we should be giving work to people in our own country. I mean, that's really what it should be about. We should not be sending things to other countries because let's face it. They're all about the dollar. And if it's somebody in the United States, they're going to have a little more ethic to want to do the right thing.
John C. Morley: (02:53)
But a lot of these companies, whether it's China or Japan, I don't care who it is. They just don't seem to have a proper ethical work belief. And the fact that they altered the design to increase the yield rate. I mean, what they should have done is said, Hey, Apple, we're having an issue with our yield rate. We're going to be a little bit later on the delivery. And I think that would've been fine, but they deserve to lose the contract in my eyes. I mean, that was just pitiful. And I think Apple should take it away from them and should make sure they never get it again. I think they should never give work to people overseas again. They should give everything to the United States. All right. On more news we've talked about for a long time, the fact that Apple had not allowed people to be able to repair their own phones.
John C. Morley: (03:49)
So Apple had announced not too long ago, the iPhone repair process. So how the iPhone self-repair process works. First of all, I should tell you it's a real disaster. So Apple will ship you a, roughly 79-pound iPhone repair kit to fix. a 1.1-ounce battery. If that isn't ridiculous and superfluous, I don't know what is, I am really starting to believe with a lot of people when they say that Apple doesn't want people to repair their product. So what actually do they send you? Well, that's a very good question. I mean, they made their product very un user-friendly. Let's just go with that. All right. So step one of opening an iPhone is basically using a machine to kind of if you will suck the screen off the top and that's the first part of it.
John C. Morley: (05:03)
And so Apple lets you rent an industrial-grade heat station that looks like a piece of lab equipment including the big red safety dial and emergency shut-off buttons that you'd only see if it was really in a lab. Looks pretty cool, has a digital screen showing you the temperature, but I have to tell you, I think this is way over the top. So you slip your phone into this perfectly sized heating pocket seems pretty simple. It clamps this ring of copper around the iPhone's bin to distribute it evenly. And the heat basically melts the seal around the screen. Now what you've really done is you've invited basically a hot pocket to start coming in. And basically now you have this strong, hot thing, which is not good for you. And then you spin a dial to raise the arm that separates the iPhone screen from its body.
John C. Morley: (06:14)
Okay. So then what's supposed to happen next will the heating machine is supposed to go through a process. However, it sometimes throws an error code through the first attempt which will happen. And Apple's manual doesn't seem to explain anywhere what you should do if this happens after the phone is stuck inside. So most people will turn the unit off heat it up again in a row, and then hope that it works still. It might not be quite enough for the screen to immediately pop off when the suction cup arm begins to lift the glass. So the manual does cover this situation and I'm sure it'll make you spin your head. But what it says to do is to turn the knob, the second hidden knob to put more pressure on the suction cup. And you're probably getting a little craze like this is nuts.
John C. Morley: (07:20)
And then you'll probably notice that there's going to be like these spider cracks across the screen and really what it is not any damage. It's just the residue from the suction cup. So you don't have to panic about that. So once the screen is loose you cut through the softened glue that holds it to the iPhone frame with the Apple's single tiny adhesive cutter, which will inevitably give you some trouble. The blade may get caught when you wedge it under the corners of the screen and you may have to yank it out and be careful not to cause more damage to the phone. The kit also comes with a perfect fit tray to hold your phone steady and extra suction cups to hold the screen without stretching the fragile ribbon cables, but nothing to hold the tray itself. Oh gee, thanks, Apple.
John C. Morley: (08:16)
That was real nice. You sent us almost an 80-pound set of equipment just to take off a simple cover. So then you have to slide the display toward the bottom of the iPhone, and then you insert the edge of the adhesive cutter into the top of the iPhone between the display and enclosure. Whole adhesive cutter at a 45-degree angle, start at the middle, and cut along the top and sides of the phone until the display is free. That is absolutely ludicrous. So Apple also provides a pretty cool set of fancy torque drivers to make sure you don't screw down the phone's tiny screws too tightly, but this is a little bit of a chore as you can imagine. And I'm sure while you're doing this you'll probably drop the Apple phone becoming frustrated and whatnot and the tiny fasteners at least a dozen times.
John C. Morley: (09:18)
So there's this little challenge of removing the silver metal that holds the screen ribbon cable in place, as well as the bottom speaker and Apple makes you yank to get at the battery. Now just to make it more difficult to repair. I think they did it this way because they could have made it. So the wire didn't have to be yanked. I see this on a lot of printers. They really made this in a way that does not welcome self-repair, but Hey, they made it available because people asked for it and they're just making it really difficult. Apple requires three different screwdriver bits. Of course, they do. Just to remove the screen and none of the Apple bits are magnetized. So you better be careful that you don't lose these screws or you're going to have more problems. So now there's still a bunch of this adhesive junk around the sides of the iPhone frame. And the instruction suggests just peeling it off in a few big pieces. If you pull with tweezers, which of course didn't come in their kit. Yeah. They send you almost 80 pounds, but they can't send you a stupid little tweezer. So most people will give up after 10 to 15 minutes of picking away at the tiny fuzzy globs. It's just more annoying and more adhesive anyway. Later on, you're discovered that this is probably the best idea because it's not worth the time when you finally get the iPhone open. Wow.
John C. Morley: (10:56)
You're probably not going to be able to have to Gander and be in awe at the iPhone. The mini precisely packed guts were absolutely earth-bounding. Slicing open. Your iPhone might have been a thrill. But a lot of that thrill came from not knowing whether the phone would survive the surgery. Apple tools or no Apple tools? So in case, you're wondering when you take the case basically off your phone, you're going to notice that there, at the top, you're going to see the camera and the second camera on the right. Then you're going to notice a little bit on the left-hand side, just below the camera, you'll notice the A15 bionic chip, and then smack to the right of the A15 chip is yes, the Apple recharge rechargeable lion battery model A2660, if you're an i13. And it says warning authorized service providers only potential for fire or burning do not disassemble crush, heat, puncture, or burn, obviously the battery. So then if that was not enough, things are really tightly packed in there. You go all the way down to the bottom left corner and just a little up, you're going to see the Taptic engine, which is the chip that runs the tap. So all in all, this might seem interesting. So now you're not done yet.
John C. Morley: (12:41)
You have to swap out the battery and once you finish doing that and see how it was probably too easy to just tear the tabs that held in the original lithium pack you use the Apple fancy battery press with a rolling arm to see, but not squish the new battery down. Now you probably could have done that easily with your fingertips, Ugh, but it's nice to have the tool to properly align the battery, which you had to yank out and reposition after plopping it down a millimeter, just a little bit to north or south of the actual location. It was supposed to go. It'd be nice if there's a tool to test whether you properly received the battery and display connectors, but I guess that's for another day. Now the instructions are a little bit cryptic and they're supposed to be helpful.
John C. Morley: (13:43)
So you pre-cut the adhesive sheet designed to stick your screen back to the frame, which is pretty easy to slot in the right place. And then press it down with your fingers. Then you're going to notice there is a huge spring-loaded press with basically the versatile slot machine of an arm to close the phone once more. But even with the press, the screen was not entirely flush with the frame afterward. Maybe this is due to the extra glue or maybe it's because it wasn't receded properly. All in all, putting an iPhone back together is a lot easier than taking it apart. But I have to tell you, I really do believe that Apple has made this phone very difficult. So again, when you think of the phone and you think about how it is, realize that this is the weird part about it is that your battery is not stored from the back. Okay? The guts of the phone are mounted to the back. But what happens is you have to take the front of the phone, taking the screen off to get to the battery. That just seems like a terrible design. I mean, this was engineered in such a way to make this such a mind-blowing time-wasting experiment, which is why they charge a lot of money to take your phone apart.
John C. Morley: (15:21)
I don't know Apple. This is just really, really poor. So once the phone has been closed up, you hold down the power button, and you probably get nothing, right? No bright white Apple logo, no response at all. And probably for that first second or two, you panicked. And Apple has given you no way to test whether the battery in the display connectors was actually seated properly. I'm guessing they probably weren't. And then you had to close the phone up anyhow. Now then for this hope maybe their replacement battery shipped empty. Maybe you'll scramble around your home or your office for a lightning cable. And maybe it will actually light up, but you're not done yet. The single most frustrating part of this process after using Apple's genuine parts and tools was that the iPhone may not recognize the genuine battery is genuine. It'll see it as an unknown part, quote, unquote, and you'll get a flashing warning.
John C. Morley: (16:43)
And apparently, that's the case for almost all these parts you're expected to basically replace and configure up using Apple's third-party logistics company after the repair can validate the part for you. Now that's another grueling process that involves having an entirely separate computer and a wifi connection. Since you have to reboot your iPhone into diagnostic mode and give the company remote control, which of course defeats a bunch of the reasons you'd repair your own device at home. So all in all ladies and gentlemen, I think repairing an Apple phone is really not worth the time. And I have to tell you, this is a poor excuse for saying that the phone can be repaired, without a valid Apple center. They kind of went down that road and they're hoping that many people are going to be discouraged. But I think if this gets to the courts and maybe a class action comes around down the road, I think what we're going to see is that Apple has not made this easy.
John C. Morley: (17:54)
In fact, in all my years in engineering, I have never seen a product that was so poorly manufactured to not be able to maintain. I've seen laptops that are a little bit challenging, but you can still get them out pretty easily. I mean, to go through the screen, to get to the battery, I mean, come on. I am speechless with how unprofessional, although they try to make it look professional by saying, they give you all the tools. They don't really give you much support. And then you have to call another company to validate the part because Apple doesn't work with a non-third party. This is really something I think that needs a lot of people to complain about. And there needs to be a more streamlined way to change the battery. I hope that in the iPhone 14. But I doubt it. It's probably going to be the same crap where you're going to have to go through the front.
John C. Morley: (18:52)
I mean, Apple made these phones like this for a long way. And I don't in a long time, I don't think they want to re-engineer something because they never were planning for people at home to change their own battery. It's only because of the push and the government that's made them do this, but what they don't realize and what the government doesn't realize is that they really have made it almost impossible to change your iPhone battery. And this is why when you go to a store, ladies and gentlemen and they, and they go to change your battery. You're probably saying to me, John, how much do stores charge to change an iPhone 13 battery?
John C. Morley: (19:39)
Well, are you sitting down for this iPhone charge? Okay. Apple charges $69 for an out-of-warranty replacement. If you have an older device, going back to the SC, you're going to be paying only 49 bucks. The iPhone 13 screen replacement cost in the United States is $329 on the max, $279 on the 13 pros, $279 on the iPhone 13, and $229 on the iPhone 13 mini. So the question is, is replacing the iPhone battery really worth it? Getting your iPhone battery replaced when it starts to slow down should be a no-brainer in fact, but are the benefits really outweighing the costs? You want to see if you're still under warranty with Apple and if you're covered, have them change it. My recommendation, I'm not a big fan of warranties, but I have to tell you two that I think are really good. One is Lenovo.
John C. Morley: (20:51)
And the other one, I think that's really good. I'm not a big fan of Apple, but I have to tell you about buying the plan. If something goes wrong, they cover, they fix it or replace the phone, but a time you gotta go through and your time's worth money, right? So now you had to get these big suitcases set up in this lab. Hopefully, you have room in your house somewhere, and then you gotta be really careful. So if you're not somebody that's used to taking apart printers like I am or other microelectronics, you're probably not going to, want to do a self-repair because again, you've gotta take off the screen of your phone first to get to the battery, Apple, really poor design, very poor design.
John C. Morley: (21:35)
All right. More news with Apple, if that wasn't bad enough that they have to ship you this case that's nearly almost 80 pounds or 79 pounds to fix a 1.1-ounce battery. I mean that is just absolutely pathetic. And when I tell you ludicrous, it is literally ludicrous. So I don't know what to tell you, but this is when I tell you terribly, this is absolutely terrible to the nines. All right. So in other Apple news, because there's more Apple news and it's not about the battery you know what I'm talking about? Yes. The second Apple store to file a union election. So you guys know about a lot of the controversy that's been happening and employees at the recent Apples town center store in Maryland are beginning their union election on June 15th, 2022, after filing a request with the national labor relations board, the NLRB just earlier this month of May.
John C. Morley: (22:49)
So the store is the second to schedule an election and in April employees from an Apple store in Atlanta filed their own petition to hold the union election with Apple recently agreed to. That vote is set to start on June 2nd. So the election in Maryland will take place over four days and voting will be in person on basically the way this is going. It's been pretty bad. And in a letter to Tim cook, I want to quote what the group said that it had support from a solid majority of the workers at the store. The NLRB requires that at least 30% of employees support a union election before trying to negotiate terms for the vote between the company and the employees. If the two parties, in this case, Apple and Apple core don't agree, the regulator will hold a hearing. It's unlikely. I should say it is likely that the employees at the town center won't be the last to file for a union election.
John C. Morley: (23:49)
Just a few months ago, employees at Apple's grand central terminal store in New York began collecting signatures. So why do they want to do this? I think they feel that they're basically getting work to not properly paid for it and the time and the benefits. So I think this is why they're trying to unionize. I think what happens to a lot of these companies is they built this how can I say this elephant? And nobody wants to work on it. And the people that are working on it are not getting paid a lot of money and they're getting really poor working conditions. So I think this is why they want to unionize. Why do you think Apple stores are wanting to unionize? What do you think?
John C. Morley: (24:41)
Well, people unionize for a couple of reasons. So labor unions give workers the powers to negotiate for more favorable working conditions, as I said, and other benefits. So the union with the Apple core is backed by Apple retail union, which is affiliated with the CWA. And it's very interesting what's going on with this, but, you know, we always thought that Apple was a great company and they treated their workers well in the retail spot. But what we're learning is that these people are really not treated well. I have to tell you, I went to an Apple store not too long ago because I wanted to get an accessory and I have to tell you the experience was pretty pleasant. However, most times you go there, they are running around with their heads in all different directions, because they're trying to handle the volume. They have to follow Apple's policies and procedures. Okay. And deal with frustrated clients that don't want to deal with it. So I think it's a complete nightmare. If you ask me a complete, complete nightmare, so we'll have to just see what happens, but more stores I'm sure are going to unionize.
John C. Morley: (25:55)
So another thing I want to share with you, which is kind of cool, I bet you didn't know that you could use your iPhone. yes. To become a white noise machine. Well, what's a white noise machine. That's a great question. Well, maybe you are in a room, maybe it's in your office and maybe it's not really soundproof, but you don't really want other people to hear the conversation you're having with another employee or management. So you can actually launch white noise from your phone. So basically you'll unlock your phone. You're going to go to your settings area and then you're going to go to where it says, accessibility, go to accessibility. And then you're going to notice on the accessibility screen, you're going to see something there that says audio and visual. Before I go there, I want to show you one other thing. There's something that says, Siri, you actually can enable basically a couple of things type to Siri.
John C. Morley: (26:50)
So Siri will listen for voice input when you press and hold the side button. Now that's off by default. That was on other phones, but you can turn that on if you want. Spoken responses can either be always when silent mode is off or only with, Hey Siri. So when silent mode is off you know, how do you want? Do you want to be spoken, to and refine your responses? Do you want to always, or when silent mode is off? Okay. So that's some flexibility. A lot of people that know about, and Siri will speak when silent modes off when using hay Siri or when connected to a Bluetooth device or CarPlay. So what we're really saying is that Siri will speak when silent modes off and when using hey Siri, or when connected to a Bluetooth device or CarPlay. So again, if you have the check mark uncheck when silent motors are off, Siri will speak all the time, which you don't want.
John C. Morley: (27:47)
And do you want Siri to listen, to always listen for hey? And then her name like listen for hey Siri, when your iPhone is facing down or covered, if by default, that is off, which it is, and your phone is facing down. Siri won't pay attention to you. If you have that toggled on Siri will respond. Even if the screen is covered or the phone is over. Do you want to allow Siri to show, ask behind Siri, and allow the current to remain visible when sir is active, you could check that on if you want? All right. So getting back to accessibility and going down to where I said before, which is going to be audio and visual. All right. So again, you went to accessibility and then you scroll down to audio visual, and you're going to see there are a couple of things. One thing says, background sounds, I'll toggle on that right now. And right now I have the mindset for rain. You can go to sound and check either balance noise, bright noise, dark noise, ocean rain, or stream. I'll go back. I'm going to turn on my sound here. You might be able to hear it a little bit. Can you hear that? All right. I can change the volume of it.
John C. Morley: (29:04)
So I can do that. I can change the mode from balance noise, right noise, dark noise, ocean rain, or stream. So again, this is something neat because maybe you're somewhere and you don't want somebody to hear you. And by having that little bit of white noise on, you'll have to go spend money on any store online. You actually have a white noise generator right on your phone. So I thought that was pretty cool. And I really wanted to share that with you, but I have to tell you when it comes to technology and everything that's going on in the world you know, we still have a lot of challenges that are happening in the tech space, right. And so where I want to wrap up here is, you know, we've got things happening still with Russia and what's going on there. Right. we've got challenges in space technology. So there are lots of different challenges, but tech, computer challenges, and issue challenges are definitely around. And as we were talking on another show, we talked about the fact about crystals and things using technology to use these core crystals that might help to basically make computers more efficient by this new process. However, when this happens, I think what we're going to realize is that the cost of doing this might be more money. And now with this other new technology, being able to make the chips smaller, they might have more information on the chips, but initially, the cost of research and development to produce those chips is going to be sky-high. And so now it might take a while before that chip gets into the mainstream and the cost of it comes down just like what happened with solar what's happened with wifi, same thing.
John C. Morley: (30:58)
And so I think people need to be cognizant and understanding of technology. And I'm going to say this again. I said this many times. Technology can be used for good and be used for bad, the choice of what you use it is up to you. But remember when you use technology for good, it can have a growth pattern that can have others to help and grow others. When you use it for bad, it causes a challenge. It can hurt that one person, it can block or annihilate a group, and it can also sever connections. So I think right now when we ponder about what's going on in technology? I think the biggest thing that I'd like to share is that people are the driving factor to what takes technology to the next level. I mean, that's really, what it's about. And on March, basically 22nd earlier this week, Nvidia announced some changes.
John C. Morley: (32:08)
So what the company keeps changing and you know, what's going on, they're announcing new chip technologies and the company is providing details on the new graphics trip. That'll be at the core of the new AI of these infrastructures. So this was back actually in March. Now they're making more changes again. So I think all these companies are looking for a way to be able to gain more traction in the marketplace and you, and I all know that the way we get people to buy something is there are three stages in basically the buyer's journey. One is they have to be aware of a problem that they have. They don't necessarily know how to fix it, but they know they have a problem. Number two, the consideration stage they need to consider, well, what choices, what options do I have out there that possibly fix my problem?
John C. Morley: (03:04)
And the third one, the decision face, Hey ladies and gentlemen! I have a hat on me. I'm not sure if, you know, that says believe and achieve. Uh, if you go to www.believemeachieve.com, you'll get access to lots of my great free videos and other content in the show so that you can become a better version of yourself and help other people become better versions of themselves. Well, you know we are at the end of May, I don't know where it has gone. Our next episode is going to be in June. On June 3rd, we have a lot more coming. We have guests coming up in July and on June 26th, we have something really amazing. JMOR is celebrating its two-year birthday for all the JMOR channels. And we're planning a huge birthday party for everyone in the local area. And we're hoping to have a live stream for three hours and have some guests in the local area.
John C. Morley: (33:51)
Be right there. People come to sing happy birthday to us, have some cake and it's going to be a blast ladies and gentlemen. So I hope that if you're in the Bergen Mars or state county area, you will definitely go and register and get yourself a ticket for an event, right? We'll give you more details as we get closer to that. Probably by the first week of June or sooner, you'll be able to find it on my link to you as well. We'll definitely have access to where you can get those free tickets and you'll get all kinds of free stuff when you come to the events. So you're definitely going to, want to do that. I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope tonight was inspiring to you and I hope it got you to get a perspective on technology. I'm John C. Morley, a serial entrepreneur, it's been a privilege. It's been a pleasure and honor to be with you as your host here at the JMOR tech talk show. I will see you next Friday, which is June 3rd, right here at 5:30 PM Eastern time. Have yourself a wonderful rest of your weekend. Enjoy the weather. Hopefully, it'll be warm, but not too hot. And I hope that you will make the choice to come and join us for our birthday when we turn two years old. Have yourself a wonderful weekend. Everyone take care.