iFixit Broke

iFixit, which provides teardowns of all sorts of hardware, got slapped down by Apple. They got a hold of one of the pre-release Apple TVs, reserved for developers, but, as as they explain on a blog post, had their developer account banned, and their app removed from the App Store.

The company tried to slough off the punishment saying:

Live and learn.

And saying that:

The app that Apple pulled was outdated, and iOS 9 introduced some major bugs into the system. Fixing them would require a substantial rewrite to a bunch of iOS 4-era code.

Let’s be clear. Apple sent pre-release units to selected developers with the clear instructions that they were not to write about them. Apple has not been enforcing NDAs on its software for a while, but when it’s about hardware, one can understand that they get pissed off. After all, that might not even be the final Apple TV; there may be hardware changes made since the first units were produced.

While iFixit provides a public service, with its detailed manuals which help many tech users repair and upgrade their devices, they went a bit too far this time.

We weighed the risks, blithely tossed those risks over our shoulder, and tore down the Apple TV anyway.

Yes, you did. And now you look a bit stupid.