One of the problems is that truly 'fixing' a Macbook is impossible. If your Logic Board has water damage, 90% of the time you'll need to replace the entire board instead of the $0.50 component that's failing. That's why Louis (and other repair shops) have used donor boards to attempt actual repairs instead of just replacing your whole mainboard.
I reckon that's what Apple is going to do here, too. Of course they don't have the gall to sell consumers their Texas Instruments ICs for board repairs, it's likely they're only going to sell piecemeal topcases, Logic Boards, and if we're lucky, batteries too.
Unlikely that Apple even stocks "Texas Instruments ICs for board repairs" for their own use either.
Custom ICs (and at Apple's volume why wouldn't they be custom?) will be ordered and delivered straight to the manufacturing line. They'll know exactly how many to buy to minimize waste. A few leftovers may end up on AliExpress, but Apple is pretty tight so they probably go into the trash.
In no situation would we expect either Apple or TI to keep a stockpile of out-of-production custom voltage regulators around, unless a hardware engineer happened to have some in a desk drawer somewhere.
I assure you no one at Apple is losing any sleep over Louis Rossmann.
If they have freaky strict disposal controls over leftover components, it is because they are trying to prevent China's famous "midnight run" of the assembly line to produce counterfeit assemblies.
I wonder why Apple would even want to protect a battery charger IC? All of the interesting stuff would be in software anyway. Maybe the reason repair shops can’t buy it is more mundane. Basically it’s an expensive part, particularly to Apple’s logic board, and distributors don’t believe there are enough Rossmanns out there to sell through a 100k part factory order. When I made PCBs for a large company I had parts I could buy direct from Maxim, at 250k parts minimum, that weren’t on Digi-Key for just that reason.
Apple is selling you exactly what they use to repair their machines. If Apple shares all of the tools/parts/manuals they use to do component level repairs, the result is NULL.
This isn't anything limited to Apple, or even computers. For just about any OEM repair process for nearly any product, there's someone who will do a repair with a higher labor cost and lower parts cost. That doesn't mean it's a reasonable process for a business at scale.
I reckon that's what Apple is going to do here, too. Of course they don't have the gall to sell consumers their Texas Instruments ICs for board repairs, it's likely they're only going to sell piecemeal topcases, Logic Boards, and if we're lucky, batteries too.