#appletax — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

C. @[email protected] · 2026-03-29 · 00:57 UTC

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

#apple #appletax #macbook #macbookpro #glue #spicypillow

C. @[email protected] · 2026-03-29 · 00:57 UTC

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

#apple #appletax #macbook #macbookpro #glue #spicypillow

C. @[email protected] · 2026-03-29 · 00:57 UTC

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

#apple #appletax #macbook #macbookpro #glue #spicypillow

C. @[email protected] · 2026-03-29 · 00:57 UTC

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

#applemac #captivemarket #userhostile #janky #hardware #baddesign

C. @[email protected] · 2026-03-29 · 00:57 UTC

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

#apple #appletax #macbook #macbookpro #glue #spicypillow

Mark Powney @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 23:12 UTC

When I bought my #Apple M4 Mac Mini in 2024, I opted for a thunderbolt NVME external SSD enclosure instead of paying the storage #appletax . For 2TB, that decision saved me about AUD $900
- Apple 2TB Mac Mini upgrade: $1,200
- Enclosure + 2TB SSD: $305

Over the weekend, the enclosure died, the built in fan started whirring. Probably just needs a clean, but I lacked the tool to open the enclosure up. So I bought another enclosure same model / spec.

So now my decision to avoid the apple tax has reduced in ROI. From ~$900 saving to about $780.

Given I’ve been using the storage to hold many LLM models of different sizes, I think my decision has over time still paid off.

Side note: today 2TB SSD equivalent is about double (AUD ~$320 give or take) the price of what I paid late 2024 (AUD $163). Either that, or I got a very good deal on the SSD.

#apple #appletax

N-gated Hacker News @[email protected] · 2025-12-12 · 19:06 UTC

🎉🎊 Oh look, Epic's victory dance about the "end of the Apple Tax"—as if they haven't just swapped one corporate overlord for another! Meanwhile, Apple sulks in the corner, planning its next strategy to keep those golden gates firmly shut. 🔒🍏
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/epic-celebrates-the-end-of-the-apple-tax-after-appeals-court-win-in-ios-payments-case/ #EpicGames #AppleTax #CorporateOverlords #TechNews #GamingIndustry #HackerNews #ngated

#epicgames #appletax #corporateoverlords #technews #gamingindustry #hackernews