Special Screws

From Miscellaneous

I'm going to lose my science cred if I don't put more charts on here, so here's an attempt to summarize yesterday's blog in graphics.

I'm told that there are a lot of illegal mods for X-Boxes so I made that the pinnacle of nefarious purposes. But I'm really not sure what the deal is with public bathroom stalls having those screws that can be tightened but not loosened. Is that to prevent blatant destruction of property with common hand tools or to prevent juvenile pranks where the walls fall down on cue? I made it the middle ground because I just don't know. I found an online store selling screwdrivers  to remove those one-way screws but the picture showed them with a rubber cap on the end so I can't see what they actually look like. There was a warning that they are only for removing, not installing the screws. I want to know how they work!

Weird segue -- how do I educate the managers of establishments with public bathrooms in the workings of a floor drain? Maybe I should go to Vistaprint and get a pack of preprinted post-it notes to stick to the mirror.
Dear Management: There's a curve in the drain pipe down under the floor -- a trap -- and you have to keep water in it. That stench in your bathroom is the sewer. Pour water in that hole in the floor. Thank you.

No, you can't fix it

I'm gonna come right out and say Apple can put any kind of screws they want in my phone. I respect the engineers at Apple. Anybody that thinks they know better can suck it.

My iPhone 4 with the new fabulous pentalobular screws I've had to two of my friends pop up on IM to complain about these tiny screws on the iPhone 4, like it's some kind of personal insult that Apple designed their own screw head. They were of the same frame of mind as MJ on iFixit in this video. Apple's Diabolical Plan to Screw your iPhone from iFixit on Vimeo. I can't watch that whole video because it just annoys me unnecessarily, particularly when it gets to the part where she's trying to sell something. I don't believe MJ has ever had to develop a bill of materials for a piece of consumer electronics nor deal with the transition to manufacturing and roll out of a new product. Well I have. So MJ can suck it. Repair is not the main concern of the Apple engineers when they specify their screws. They are thinking of how the assemblers can most easily put these things together. The next issue is how a proper service technician will reliably remove the screws to refurbish the phone with a new battery down the line. How the iFixit girl will take the back off so she can take it to her manicurist and get it decorated to match her nails is really not their concern. They probably only used those Philips screws in MJ's early version American phone because they had a box full of them they had to use up and they were waiting for the factory to ramp up making their special screws. The ones in iPhone 4s now are five lobed flower-shaped screws apparently specific to Apple. After this became a news story "pentalobular screwdriver" shot up 1000% in Google searches. These screws are freaking tiny, by the way. The actual part where the screwdriver would go is smaller than the end of a toothpick. From inspection with my bookworm eye I can tell you the sides of the indentation are not angled like a Philips, they are straight, like a square bit. There are a lot of different screw drives and there are reasons they exist. Square bits, for example, hold the screw better at an angle. This one looks like that, straight sided cylinder cut out of the head of the screw, not angled like Philips. Say the Apple assembly line wanted to have the phone sideways when the screws were installed, like my phone in the picture above. I mean, I would, to keep the screw from accidentally falling into the docking connector. You're going to want a bit that will hold the screw. Phillips wouldn't work at all. The screw would fall off the bit as you tried to get it in the screw hole. I checked with my friend Cheryl Tulkoff, a reliability engineer, to see I could find ANYBODY who would be with me on the side of the pentabular screw. Here's what she said: It's funny that Apple ever used Phillips head screws to begin with. We routinely recommend against them in manufacturing because they are notoriously easy to strip - especially when they're small. So, you don't want to use them in situations where you'd expect to have to a need to remove them. I could see where you could end up doing cosmetic damage to the case trying remove stripped screws. However, the real advantage is really in the replacement options from a manufacturing perspective. The Torx are supposed to save money in the manufacturing process now that torque controlled screwdrivers are so widely available. The Torx head wears the bits much less so they last longer before needing repair. And, they're supposed to stay tight once installed correctly - no backing out.  But, tamper-proofing is also an important concern for warranty costs. Contrary to the opinions of folks who hack their devices, the majority of users aren't savvy enough to do anything but damage their device by opening it. And, everyone lies when they take a product in for warranty about what actually happened to it. :-) In your face, iFixit! I think the pentalobular screw head is probably better than Torx since it is SO VERY TINY. Any sharp edges would just break right off. I think this screw design is kind of genius. I'm really sorry these people on the internet are being so mean about it. Some stuff just isn't designed to be taken apart or repaired. I took apart my Mighty Mouse to try to fix it. Once I got it apart and cleaned it I found that that my sweaty hands had just corroded through the conductor on the flex circuit and it was a goner. Saved me the trouble of gluing it back together. I bought another one for $60. I accepted that I just wore it out. I used it A LOT. I bet it cost me about $0.0001 per hour of use, so that's perfectly acceptable. But it doesn't make me mad that they designed a product that was held together with glue. They didn't do it to keep me out. They did it because that was the best way to make it. The scroll ball had issues though, and they phased it out. Now I use a big glass trackpad that won't corrode. I bought the iPhone because I expected a high level of build quality, plus it was highly subsidized by the phone company. I'm not even sure I agree with MJ's claim that once she buys her phone it's hers to do with as she wants. We're really just renting it from AT&T. I plan to use my iPhone 4 until they are ready to entice me into getting a new one with fabulous new features. People are lucky if they even keep the same phone for 2 years. We already know what happens when I drop it in the creek. I just go straight to the Apple store and get a new one. I could tell by looking at the outside there was no way I could clean the condensation out of the camera lens even if the rest of it wasn't damaged. This is not something I'm going to try to "repair," even if I had the right screwdriver.

http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto

So to recap, ifixit.com thinks the pentabular screw is evil. In this article on cnet.com they kind of take my side and think iFixit overreacts. In the background of MJs video you can see this poster. Honestly I find this iFixit manifesto kind of offensive. I bet these people also want their new products to be inexpensive. R&D is a bare bones business. When I designed consumer electronics I was usually creating a Quick Start guide right after I finished checking the first sample off the production line and I was lucky if I even know how it worked since that was kind of a firmware thing and not really my area. It's not like there are separate people writing the instructions, let alone a whole team to work out the instructions for how to repair it. I don't think repair teaches engineering as much as trying to design stuff from scratch does. Especially since these dopes on iFixit seem to have no appreciation whatsoever of what goes into designing and manufacturing a product like the iPhone.

Now if they were talking about a lawnmower I'm completely with them. My Snapper back in Beachton came with a wonderful book that tells me exactly how to do all the maintenance on it. Step by step instructions for how to change the oil, how to drop the deck and get the blade off, how to tension the belt, on and on. Because it's a LAWNMOWER! Built by people in McDonough, Georgia with hand tools. OK, they're probably pneumatic, but the point is that it's MADE to be worked on by humans. Circuit boards today have components 1.8 the size of a piece of rice. The solder is silkscreened on and the parts are placed by precision robots, soldered in an oven and tested on a specially designed test station. They are not user serviceable. They're just not. If you want to get your phone apart so you can paint it then that's not repair, that's art, and I am fine with that. But I would think a real artist would recognize the beauty in that design and wouldn't be demanding inferior screws. And then try to sell them to you.....

iDay

I got up at 4am to go get in line for an iPhone. I'm at Barton Creek Square in Austin. The mall cops weren't letting people into the parking lot when I got here. There were people parked all along the street for a half mile in both directions. I parked and walked back in the dark and got in line. At 5:30 they let the line move up to the mall. We got to stand by the dumpster behind California Pizza Kitchen which smelled lovely in the pre-dawn heat and humidity. The guys in line around me and I took turns going to get our cars to move them off the street. I got my chair out of the car then.

From Apple iPhone4

From Apple iPhone4

At 6am they opened the doors to the mall. The entry way was lined with Apple employees who clapped and cheered as the line moved through the doors. It was like it was my birthday at TGIFridays. At that point it felt like I was about number 200 in line and there were twice as many people behind me. As soon as we got inside an Apple employee came around with a cart full of bottled water and gave one to every person in line.

From Apple iPhone4

Next they separated the people in line into two lines -- people who got their reservation to go through online, and those of us who were unsuccessful. I was moved to another area of the mall where I sat from 6:30 to 9:00, at which point I decided I needed to go get my lappy. The mall has free wifi.

I had been reading a story about Jonestown when I took this picture.

From Apple iPhone4

The Chick-fil-a manager came down the line and gave everybody a free breakfast. She told us they had coffee and ice tea by the entrance to the Apple store. People were too dazed to even be that excited about it. We realized it would just make us have to go to the bathroom. And the mall really didn't make any changes to their standard deal. The lights weren't on in the bathrooms yet.

From Apple iPhone4

At 9:30 they moved my line forward one section of walkway. They kept us clear of interesections just like we were cars in a traffic jam. And it looks like we're moving again!