People who understand manufacturing will think this is great.

Those who do not will think this is excessive, if not ridiculous.

It's a matter of having the sufficient context. If I was interested in repairing my iPhone this is precisely the toolset I would want to have in front of me. No question about it. This is the kind of tooling you need for process-controlled disassembly and reassembly. Regardless of what you are doing, there's nothing better than using the right tool for the job. It can make a massive difference in outcomes.

I found a video showing their use. As someone who has designed a lot of production tooling over the last thirty years, I appreciate the purpose and design of the tools Apple is shipping. To beat the message to death: The right tool for the job ensures success.

I can understand how this can look from the perspective of those with no experience in manufacturing, yields and reliability. I get it. This is likely precisely the tools Apple uses to repair your phone when they do it. They have to because they need to ensure the repair process delivers reliable products.

Coincidentally, we had an interesting experience this past week. One of my kids dropped his Android phone and cracked the screen. My wife, against my objections, decided to take it to one of those repair shops at the mall. Well, $130 later the phone's speaker didn't work and it would vibrate nonstop when you plugged it into the charger.

I decided to now go there myself with the phone and see what they would do about it. I stood there the entire time and watched this guy take the phone apart again. I never told him that I was an engineer, much less about my experience in manufacturing.

Let's put it this way: If someone in a manufacturing environment handled any kind of a device like this guy did in front of me, they would have been fired instantly. Stupid tools. Horrible process. Laughable, really, he had an ESD mat on the counter and yet he was walking around and not grounded himself. The process was not clean. He really didn't have enough knowledge to know what he was dealing with. He was using latex or nitrile gloves (not ESD gloves) and the tips of the glove index fingers were cut out so he could use his fingertips to grasp stuff. He was touching the boards indiscriminately as he did the work, not even trying to just grab from the edges as a way to mitigate potential ESD damage.

Three disassemble-reassemble cycles later (I stood there and watched the whole thing) he gave up and offered a full refund of the $130. I walked away with a phone with a cracked screen, only that now it wasn't working. It worked fine with a screen having a single crack on it, nothing wrong with it beyond that.

Of course, I went there knowing full-well that I was going to have to buy a new phone. I knew what happened before I even stepped foot in that store, it was likely ESD damage during handling.

Here's the kicker: The brand new phone from Verizon, after discounts, was $180. Better phone, brand new, next-generation and all that.

It all came down to using the wrong tools for the job and not having a clue really. Interestingly enough, while I was there a woman came into the store with a similar problem.

Oh, yeah, he also offered me a previously repaired phone "at a really good deal". Brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6u4MepcI0A