Apple certified repair certification

To become Apple certified, you have to jump through some hoops—specifically, you must successfully complete Apple’s Macintosh Service Certification Exam and the Mac OS X 10.8 Lion Troubleshooting Exam, each of which retails for $150. You must score 80 percent or better on each test, and achieve perfect scores in certain areas (namely, Embedded Battery Safety and Electrostatic Discharge Precautions on the Macintosh Service Certification Exam, and any and all Apple environmental policy questions that may surface). Get full details at Apple’s ACMT Certification website, which hooks into training materials and testing centers as well.

A lot of work

Getting Apple certified is no small effort, but certification also gives you some definite benefits. First, it allows you to repair Macs that are currently under AppleCare warranty without risk of violating that warranty. Next, you’ll be able to order parts for your clients’ machines via Apple’s Global Service Exchange (GSX)—including the obscure, hard-to-find parts that are almost impossible to get your hands on via eBay or Craigslist; this kind of access can make you feel as if you’re part of the club. The prices are available at Apple’s prices, with no retail markup.

If you ever wanted direct access to an Apple employee who knows the hardware inside and out, certification and GSX access allow you to participate in live chats with Apple’s technicians. Yes, it’s a chat room format, and the back and forth involved in describing a technical issue takes a while, but this gives you a mainline to the mothership and it comes in handy if a diagnosis is eluding you.

And perhaps the most important benefit is that certification allows better access to tech jobs with Apple Authorized Service Partners, Apple resellers, or self-supporting operations such as colleges, school systems, and universities. This also helps current techies draw a better salary; you know your stuff and you now have a piece of paper from Apple that says so. It’s not unreasonable to point this out during negotiations with a potential employer. It enhances your credibility and helps attract customers should you decide to go solo and moonlight with your own repairs.

There are some provisos to consider. Becoming an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician allows credence to perform warrantied repairs, but this still runs into a bit of a gray area unless you’re employed by an SSA (Self-Servicing Account) that Apple allows for universities and institutions to serve its own products, or an AASP (Apple Authorized Service Provider), which is more akin to the tech shop structure you might be used to. Also, access to Apple’s Global Service Exchange (GSX) will require not only Apple Certified Macintosh Technician status but also employment at either an Apple-approved SSA or AASP. Apple does, on occasion, allow for remote/field access to the GSX, but you’ll have to be vetted by Apple. If you can pull it off, you’ll have access to Apple’s mighty GSX database, complete with updated technical manuals that can be accessed from any location as you work on-site with clients. Inquiries towards this can be shot over to usfieldservice@apple.com if you want to start a conversation with Apple.