Apple’s secret repair kill switch hasn’t been activated—yet

iFixit:

Well, stop the presses. Turns out, ‘Apple makes your MacBook inoperative if you get it fixed at local repair shops’ isn’t quite true—not yet, no matter what The Sun says. Our lab testing has found that independent (and DIY) repair is alive and well. But it is under threat.

This service document certainly paints a grim picture, but ever the optimists, we headed down to our friendly local Apple Store and bought a brand new 2018 13” MacBook Pro Touch Bar unit. Then we disassembled it and traded displays with our teardown unit from this summer. To our surprise, the displays and MacBooks functioned normally in every combination we tried. We also updated to Mojave and swapped logic boards with the same results.

That’s a promising sign, and it means the sky isn’t quite falling—yet.

As is often the case, the furor that arose from this earlier in the week is tempered with time. It doesn’t mean that Apple won’t turn this “feature” on in the future though.