Is Apple's behavior ILLEGAL?? - iMac Pro Repair Pt. 2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,173 words · ~10 min read
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popular youtuber says apple won't fix his imac pro damaged while disassembled
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ill-informed youtuber bemoans apple repair policies after breaking imac pro
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youtube channel claims apple is refusing to fix its broken imac pro
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how is it even possible
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that so many people don't get this at
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all and the worst part
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is that this is far from over
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thankfully i've got ifixit
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ifixit's protec toolkit will get you through any electronics repair challenge
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just visit ifixit.com forward slash Linus to get your own today
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so first off i really want to give a huge thank you to everyone out there who
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contributed uh advice suggestions or even offered to come and
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help us out directly without you guys this update video would not have been
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possible and even worse than that i don't think we'd be seeing all the
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discussion that we have about our circumstances and what they mean for
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right to repair fair repair would open a whole market of reuse for customers and
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their electronics the pressures frustrations and limited access of
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standing on a line to speak to someone at the genius bar where they don't even
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serve appletinis uh will be lifted from consumers okay so a refresher then for
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those of you who missed it or forgot we knew that we weren't going to get
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warranty service on our imac pro and we're not even talking warranty service
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we understood we would have to pay we wanted to pay but
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we did at least expect apple to be able to offer us a reasonable repair solution
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and i'm gonna talk about expectation i'm not talking like you know when angry do
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you guys even know who i am i'm not as texted like i'm not talking about that
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kind of thing apple actually averted a similar pr crisis with quinn nelson over
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at snazzy Labs by just eating the cost of an imac pro and sending him a new one
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but as he pointed out so i did walk out of the store with a brand new imac but i
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asked myself the question would they have done this for anyone and our goal
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here was to have the normal customer experience
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so there have been some arguments in favor
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of apple's position here not repairing this
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and let's address the main ones before we go any further starting with
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apple is refusing to quote you a repair cost because it will be higher than the
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cost of a brand new machine you idiot
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and my response to that is pretty simple a mac is not special it's not magic it's
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just a computer so a broken screen
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maybe a fried motherboard and also maybe
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a bad power supply does not turn a 5 000
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workstation into scrap metal we know from our price breakdown of the
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imac pro that apple charges about
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market rates actually for their parts when you buy them integrated in a
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complete system so even if i picked top of the line components the worst case
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scenario parts cost should be about 2
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100 us dollars and if they were willing to provide those
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parts we'd expect to pay a couple hours of labor for another few hundred dollars
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or so definitely not enough to cancel out the
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value of the CPU RAM SSD chassis and cooler that are probably
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all still working they're not that difficult to repair
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the reality of it is we just slipped
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these things do happen next up is the liability argument
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what about apple's liability for the long-term functionality of that machine
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well what about it i mean if you take your computer to
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i don't know let's say a geek squad for repairs they'll do the work complete a
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wider check of the machine to see if there's anything else wrong with it and
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then even then warranty their repairs in case they miss
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something i mean is the argument really
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that apple of all people can't do a comprehensive check of its own hardware
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and has so little faith in the training of its technicians that they can't
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guarantee a repair if that were true i don't think we
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should buy computers from them at all this kind of stuff
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industry standard stuff not that complicated
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back to the training bit though that one
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was a tough nut to crack so we were actually accused of making false claims
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about the availability of apple's repair certification for the imac pro with
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other publications going as far as to contact apple authorized service
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providers in the states who confirmed
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that they already had it so here's what actually happened
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it was available to at least some aasps at the time we did our video
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however it wasn't available to our local aasp so
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that got me thinking oh there's my chair maybe this is like a canada u.s thing
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but then i spoke personally to an american aasp technician who said
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and this is after our local shop got certified mind you that he wasn't going
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to be able to get it for a couple more months so something about the way that apple's
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rolling these programs out to their asps isn't quite right here
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but for now though we need to get back to addressing the problems that we identified in our first video and fixing
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this stupid professional workstation that has been
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out of commission for months now is
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well that's that's pretty much the problem
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so coming back to certifications the
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training and parts availability has actually improved dramatically since our
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first video and we were finally able to take our imac
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to an aasp who assured us that they could get the job done
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the end so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to
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no i'm just kidding nothing is ever that
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easy you see while we managed to get our display
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replaced for a reasonable price thanks to qualifying
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for what they call return pricing where you send the
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original part back to apple for disposal
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we actually broke the warranty void if
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removed stickers around our CPU socket
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this one right here so what that means
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is that because of that sticker we didn't qualify for return pricing on our
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logic board which it turns out is a really bad thing because apple wants
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5 500 canadian rupees plus tax for a new
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logic board which for some reason includes both the CPU
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and the RAM even though contrary to what
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a lot of our detractors thought they are socketed and not soldered on this
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particular system so that is about double of apple's own price for this
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hardware when they sell you the system originally and that is how much they
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charge the aasps so if an authorized service provider
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fails to return a defective part during the exchange for any reason they
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get dinged for the price of the replacement part in what is a clear
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effort to prevent any spare parts from
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making their way out into the wild which makes it pretty hard to get your hands
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on this stuff and interestingly this is far from the
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only punitive measure that apple appears to be willing to inflict upon its
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partners from talking to them we were struck by the culture of fear that apple
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cultivates among its authorized service providers they explicitly prevent them
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from ordering replacement parts for the sake of having them on hand so what that
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means is that they require a work order to be placed
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before the part will even be shipped which creates massive delays of
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potentially weeks for something as simple as a freaking RAM swap
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which makes the aasp look bad in comparison to apple's own service
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centers but that's apple's policy to make matters worse if an aasp
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attempts to order a part that they don't yet have the certification for apple
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will send them a fine instead of the parts they ordered and
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this is all for the privilege of having access to apple's supply chain oh and
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the best part is anyone caught talking about any of this to anybody outside of
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apple for them this is grounds for severe
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retaliation revocation of aasp status or
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certifications fines or even potential legal action
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only a handful of brave souls were willing to tell us their names or the
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names of the shops they ran or worked for and of course we are going to be
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keeping all of that information private in order to protect them by comparison
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samsung has a web portal that you can log into and order any replacement phone
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parts that you could want so
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at that kind of markup over a sticker
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the aasp option was obviously out we really would have been better off
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ordering a brand new imac pro but
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another one of you guardian angels out there who
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also shall not be named for legal reasons stepped up to the plate
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now we're getting to the point where the solutions that we're working on wouldn't
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be available to joe average but even though it was a lot of work we
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really wanted to know how deep this rabbit hole goes
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so it ended up being a case of i know a guy who knows a guy who knows a
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guy so given how much money
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was being exchanged i was sketched out to the max
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but after a series of back alley deals like almost literally back alley deals
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our contact managed to get us
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this a brand new imac pro logic board
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complete with CPU and RAM for 2 000 us dollars and here's the
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kicker if our contact deghostifies because right now he's sort
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of gone dark if our contact shows back up again and
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can get us exchange pricing that could actually become as low as zero dollars
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so uh oh excellent i've got a calculator so let's let's do some quick maths for
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you guys our screen and power supply replacement
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at the aasp cost was roughly 1400 us
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dollars including labor and shipping thanks to return pricing at worst we can
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add another two thousand dollars on top of that for the logic board and uh
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oh look at that 3 400 us dollars
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how much does an imac pro cost again so
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sorry haters it looks like you're wrong
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i guess if it wasn't for apple's anti-consumer
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anti-partner and possibly looking at
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what's going on with right to repair in the states right now illegal policies
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it would be possible to get the replacement parts for less than the
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retail price of a new unit only one thing remains now then
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we still don't actually know if our
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frankenstein machine works or not and i
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could get Anthony to test it but
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i think we all know what happened last time
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i can't believe that some people thought that this was intended to deceive the
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audience by the way it was clearly a csi
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style dramatic reenactment i mean look at the sparks
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we're not even good at special effects
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anyway this video is long enough already
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and i think i've got a better idea
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and some of you will probably already know where i'm going with this
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hey louis i think i've got a fun little project
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for us have you ever worked on an imac pro before
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we don't stop watching yet i have a teaser and an offer for you the teaser
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is we have a video upcoming with wendell from level one tax
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gaming on Linux it's better than you think unless you
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think it's perfect in which case it's not better than you think but don't worry about that
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also pia go check out private internet access for the vpn that does well pretty
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much what a vpn does it encrypts your traffic and makes it so that it's harder
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to track you on the internet it's great go check it out at the link in the video description
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so thanks for watching you guys if you dislike this video you can hit that
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button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed and maybe consider checking
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out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description particularly ifixit stuff i'm not sure
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if we're recommending the imac pro at this point also down there is our merch
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store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you
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should totally join