Good news.

Also -

Can anyone imagine what the impacts might be if Apple “Sherlocked” iFixIt and reviewers, and did teardowns, battery tests, etc. themselves?

I think apples lawyers would strongly advise against them publishing teardown videos.

As well as opening up liability and warranty issues when users consider those as 'instructions' to disassemble apple devices, it could also be seen by courts in some countries as publishing the design and internal details which would weaken Apples IP protections in some places.

They won’t.

Apple tells us what they want and nothing else. They don’t tell us how much RAM there is or intimate details of the processors or battery size or lots of other things.

They much prefer “here’s magic, check it out” to “here’s tons of gory details”.

Doing teardowns like this would directly contradict that message.

It's very unlikely they would do that. They might be making decently repairable devices in a specific generation but if they release guides people will expect it in future generations too, and I doubt any company wants to hold themselves to this.

The point of iFixit is being a secund/third party. They can keep helping for devices Apple discontinues and provide advice Apple might not be willing to give.

Apple should provide teardowns, but that would only minimally impact the ecosystem IMHO.

> reviewers > tests

Would you trust a company's own product reviews and tests ?