Tekserve to close, Louis Rossman’s DIY repair videos likely to be removed from YouTube

It’s the end of a great era.

And you can blame one jackass landlord raising the rent to an astronomical level as well as increased competition for it.

Tekserve, the go-to third-party store for Apple product repairs in New York City, has announced that it is to close after 29 years. The service center will close at the end of the month, and the retail store on August 15th.

Tekserve had the distinction of being the Apple Store in New York City prior to the actual launch of the Apple Store.

For decades, the store on West 23rd Street in Manhattan was the place to go for Apple upgrades and even appeared in an episode of “Sex and the City”, where Carrier took her Mac for repairs after it crashed.

Competition from the six official Apple Stores, Best Buy and online sales meant that the company was no longer doing enough business on the sales side of the business to make continued operation viable.

“We love our customers, and we love what we do,” CEO Jerry Gepner said. “But there comes a point where that doesn’t make sense anymore, as much as we love it.”

Unfortunately, Louis Rossman’s YouTube channel, which offered detailed repairs of DIY repairs, may also disappear. In a somewhat vague video posted recently, Rossman indicates that they may be about to disappear.

While Rossman doesn’t say so explicitly, he implies that he has received a takedown notice for his videos and there’s speculation that Apple may be behind it. It’s unclear what might form the basis of any takedown notice, though Rossman does express strong views on Apple’s approach to repairs, and some of the videos do include Apple schematics.

Rossman also runs a MacBook repair business in NY, and the video gives the impression that this too may be under threat as he seemingly plans to fight any case that results.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via 9to5Mac and the New York Times