If anti-tamper screws are that much of an issue, (or non-replaceable batteries for that matter), tell Apple exactly how you feel.
DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT.
There are competitive products to the I-Phone. There is a price to be paid for the Apple interface. If you must have it, you must also accept their anti-tamper methods. Otherwise, shop elsewhere.
If enough people do this, you will effect a change.
I agree with the meme expressed here that if you're not smart enough to deal with these screws, you shouldn't be mucking around attempting repairs anyway. I don't think that was the point though in the original criticism of Apple. It's more that they have a culture of making things difficult.
We all have pet peaves about Apple no doubt, but you probably can't blame the 5-pont screws on them. The 60GB Toshiba drive in front of me now (from a crushed 2005 Apple iPod I should add) has 5-point screws and it's many years older than the iPhone 4s. Yes. Looks almost like a toque, but lacking 1 point -- and I don't have a driver either. By the way, Amazon has a driver for 0.99.
The 5 sided pentagon drive screws used in UK municipal playgrounds are exclusive to Wicksteed Leisure, and spare fixings and keys can be obtained from them. This is an anti-vandal safety measure and is not intended to give Wicksteed a monopoly on maintenance.
As a dedicated "bodge artist"; I avoid Apple devices preferring more open sourced products. The issue comes in however when family or friends ask me to repair little Timmy, or Tina's iPlop. Although replacement components are readily available from many online sources it would be nice to not have a requirement of buying a new 5 sided torx for a one off repair; in my opinion, it's just unnecessary cost which only benefits the tool maker / seller.
I concur with fatmanonabicycle. Love when people who trump "free" cry when someone or company "freely" tries to prevent others from easily diseminating their product.
In a free market you don't necessarily have to be mr. nice guy to everyone that wants to use your product in a "their" way. That's why there are many manufacturers of these devices; one company cannot, nor should, try to appease everyone. Nor should they be "forced" to have to create open products; if that's that important to you then you go make products anyone can take apart.
Your exactly correct. Only those savy enough to acquire a pentelobe screwdriver whould even begin to have enough smarts to understand what's going on inside their iDevice. Apple needs to keep the idiots out of the product's guts.
Moody Tools, Inc. manufacture the required tools. A search on "Moody 5 Star Torx" will yield several suppliers who will sell them for less than $9 each. I wasn't sure which of the 4 sizes I would need so I bought one each of the 4 sizes I found. I have no assocaition with Moody except as a customer.
What problem ? The only people readily able to get inside to do repairs and mods will be those savvy enough to overcome this very small problem. If you couldn't do that, you shouldn't be thinking about getting inside anyway. A bit like Heinlein's idea of making people solve an equation before being allowed to vote.
By the time an Apple device is ruined enough for little Timmy or Tina to do a kid's wrecking dismantling job, this driver will probably be readily available. The Torx with centre hole drivers came out pretty quickly, though I still haven't noticed the five-sided Allen-type key used on municipal playgrounds (UK).
One could attack Apple for many, many things, but this is frankly pathetic. overcoming these hurdles is part of the fun to a dedicated bodge artist.
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