I thought for initially shipped in the
US with common Phillips double-0 screws
down at a dock connector my phone has
them and the chances are if you have an
iPhone 4 at the time this is posted your
phone has Phillips double zero screws
also unless of course you've taken your
iPhone 4 into the Apple Store for repair
recently in which case you're likely to
find something entirely different down
there hi I'm MJ with iFixit and today
I'm talking about Apple's insidious plan
to sabotage our iPhones what's
interesting is that and all the original
iPhone 4 promo photos the screws on
either side of the dock connector aren't
Phillips double zero screws and in other
countries the phone never ship is
Phillips screws at all they shipped with
these five pointed flowery looking
screws the same shape as the ones in the
mid 2009 MacBook Pro in the current
MacBook Air the technical name for them
by the way is Penta lobular not flowery
it's been widely reported that people
bringing their iPhone 4 into the Apple
Store for repair have found their
Phillips screws have been
unceremoniously swapped with the Apple
five pointed screws in an effort to keep
people out of their iPhones you can
probably guess how I feel about that but
before I talk about it I'm going to vent
for a moment about a related subject its
nitpicky and its convoluted but it's
important so here it goes all over the
internet bloggers and commenters alike
are referring to these special five
pointed screws as security Torx screws
and it's making me crazy
these aren't Torx security screws nor
are they standard Torx screws Torx
security screws have a pin in the middle
of the head and as you can see these
don't have a pin my primary complaint
though and the one that spurred the
creation of this video is Apple's
insistence on baby proofing our phones
without permission or explanation the
annoying fact is you're going to need an
entirely different driver for these
special Apple penta lobular screws which
doesn't sound like that big of a deal
except these drivers are really rare and
expensive and usually require proof of
Apple certification just to purchase
them Apple won't sell me the screwdriver
I need to fix my own phone and all this
for what to keep people from modding
their phones to make them different
colors heaven forbid sure I agree some
people probably shouldn't be taking
apart their iPhones
but isn't that our right to make the
decision for ourselves if we don't have
to pass a standard intelligence test to
cast a ballot in this country I
shouldn't have to be an apple certified
repair technician to take out a couple
of screws in my iPhone I appreciate the
thoughtful and beautiful design of all
of my Apple products but as far as I'm
concerned
once I've purchased it it's mine to do
with as I please to that and I'm very
proud to tell you that I fix it's
intrepid hardware acquisition team has
discovered solutions to all of your
unnecessarily complicated penta lobular
screw issues including a new product
that I'm very excited about our iPhone 4
Liberation kit the liberation kit
includes a five-pointed Philips driver
to remove the tamper resistant screws a
set of two replacement Phillips screws
just like the ones iPhone originally
shipped with and a Phillips driver the
five-pointed Phillips driver is a
stopgap fix the cheapest way we can find
to remove the tamper resistant screws
the only catch is that there's a chance
it might render the tamper resistant
screws useless after they're removed but
that's the whole point right you can
find the iPhone 4 Liberation kit in the
iPhone 4 section of our site apple also
use similar but slightly larger screws
in the mid 2009 MacBook Pro and current
MacBook Air we've got you covered for
those as well and you can find drivers
for those computers in our tool store
we've made it our responsibility to
provide you with all the tools you'll
need for electronics repair and I've got
to say we're only further excited by
this challenge that's all I've got for
now but I'll be sure to come back with
updates as they're available of course
you can follow us on twitter at
twitter.com/randymckown all for all the
latest tear downs and repair videos I'm
MJ with iFixit thanks for watching and
happy repairing