LTT runs the numbers to demonstrate it. Apple is making you pay more to do it yourself, and you have to wait days for the parts to arrive, when you could just go down to the Apple Store. The pricing completely nullifies any real-world benefit of this program, making the program seem like it is entirely performative.
If an individual can't even save money doing it this way, the program is worse than useless for repair shops since they won't be able to compete with Apple Store repair services. That's also without even addressing the inability for repair shops to buy parts before a customer shows up with a problem. Repair shops want to be able to provide same day service, which this program makes impossible... unless your name is Apple.
There are no iPhone itemized repairs, with most items resulting in an equipment swap. Some of these are subsidized (for instance, some battery replacements). The replaced items are salvaged.
Linus's numbers are sensationalized on top of that - he drops the equipment return and salvage credit at some point, considers equipment rental as part of the part cost, as well as running numbers for his person's time (who I'm not sure is a trained technician, just that they value their time more than minimum wage). I personally would have looked for an AASP source for a cost comparison.
Mac numbers will lend themselves quite a bit more to an apples-to-apples comparison.
Repair shops have only been able to compete on pricing when they use non-OEM replacement parts or repair the OEM parts. Both these approaches are both getting much more difficult.
Independent repair shops also have the sales disadvantage when they don't have a relationship set up to cover warranty repairs - so they often would be quoting OEM replacement parts for gear with years of depreciation, as well as upgrade benefits when the customer does a cost analysis.
I'll go so far as to say if a repair place _ever_ quotes a cheaper price on a repair than Apple does themselves, they are doing a different repair. They are repairing the OEM part rather than replacing it, they are replacing a OEM part with a part salvaged from another device, or they are putting non-OEM parts in. For screen and battery replacements, the majority of phone repairs, it's almost always non-OEM parts.
Apple testified to Congress that their repair services lose them money [1]. If they have not focused on their own repair services profitability, then they likely also have not focused on profitability of independent repair services.
People upthread are saying Apple's OOW price for an MBA screen replacement is in the $500-600 range. The new self service program will sell you one for $300 if you return the old part, or $400 if you don't. Seems like it's perfectly possible to save money doing it this way.
The self-service prices for Mac weren't available yesterday, so all that we could discuss was their iPhone program. Apple doesn't publicly list repair prices for laptops, so it is hard to say exactly what you'll pay. I look forward to people doing more in-depth research and figuring out exactly how things balance out with the Mac self-service program, but the iPhone program did not live up to even the most basic expectations.
I'm also not seeing where you got that "$500-600" number "upthread", which presumably refers to the rest of this HN discussion, since I don't see any numbers like that. It could make the prices somewhat more reasonable than they were for iPhone, but I definitely haven't had time to do the research myself, and I don't appreciate how Apple hides the OOW repair cost for laptops, which makes this analysis harder.
