Another vote for intentional.

By the time you 1. add sw to detect repairs as mentioned elsewhere 2. don't use standard screws like posi or torx 3. make the screws similar but make sure one is longer and will short circuit the device if you put it in the wrong place (IIRC)

- then it is intentional.

They do not provide schematics to anyone outside of Apple and FOXCONN. They only provide diagnostics tools to "authorised repair shops" (which actually don't repair devices). They provide no information to repair shops on where they might be able to buy replacement chips (aside from searching the chip name on AliExpress). It's not as though they don't know how to repair devices, there is mountains of evidence that Apple gives refurbished devices (the boards they provide clearly are not new) even though they call them "re-manufactured" whatever that means.

The most glaring thing is that there are instances where third-party repair shops have figured out why a defect was occurring before Apple did (the graphics card fiascos were shown to be caused by a heat-sensitive tantalum capacitor used near the graphics chip that is damaged due to thermal stress). We know Apple didn't know why the boards were failing because they would give customers refurbished boards that would fail a few months later because they didn't fix the issue. Not to mention that Apple doesn't tell its customers about recalls of their products (which happens almost every year) which is actually illegal in Australia.

You might say all of the above is laziness, but once you have a company which specifically writes software to detect whether an "unauthorised repair" has taken place[1] then I consider them to be malicious. They've also threatened to sue repair shops, and are constantly attacking third-party repair shops (the term "unauthorised" comes from them and is not a term used in any other repair industry).

If you compare this to how other companies operate, this is completely at-odds with the entire industry when it comes to repairability. Microsoft is trying to copy Apple (in all of their negatives) but the rest of the industry doesn't work that way. You can get schematics for other consumer laptops or electronics equipment. In the automotive industry there are laws that make sure that schematics, tools, and parts are available for any third-party repair shop.

tl;dr: Apple is intentionally trying to gain a monopoly on the repairs of their devices.

[1]: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/apple-busted-m...