Will Andrew Break it?

I’m Handy but not Andy

Spoiler 😵

I’m prepping for open Mac surgery and there’s a pretty good chance my patient, err iMac is left for parts on the workbench. I haven’t had a chance to unbox the fixit kit yet - so you have to wait until next week’s issue to see! Backstory and more below including how Apple and others are working to monetize tech repairs and why all the headlines this week around the iPhone 15 launch are about a super boring charging port …

Handy Andy

I had an official Handy Andy toolkit when I was a kid and it was my favorite thing for a while. It had a chonky wood saw way too large for a child, a pair of clamps too small to clamp anything, pair of plyers and a hammer. All the tools had matching blue handles. Pretty sure I never made anything or fixed anything but man could I saw the heck out of a random 2x4 and pound a bunch of nails in it.

My mom didn’t appreciate the nickname Andy so while I progressed in my Handy abilities, I decided I was not an Andy. On the fixing front I veered from the carpentry path and forked to anything mechanical. I took apart everything electronic I could convince people to give me - accumulating overflowing boxes of wires and speakers and little motors and all manner of other parts and pieces which I would stick together in Frankensteiny mashups. I would take anything apart even by Handy Dandy hammer and while I never put them back together at least in any functional way, this laid the groundwork for a Handy future.

Is an old Mac worth fixing?

My neighbor Joe got word I could fix computers and brought his 2013 Mac computer over for a looksee. It’s an iMac which is Apples primary PC line. I turned it on and the progress bar froze after progressing tantalizingly about halfway through the loading screen with the apple logo staring up at me like a big cyclops apple-of-my-eye. Found a wired keyboard, went through a few cryptic startup key combos and I got into macOS Recovery. Alas, a bit more poking revealed the hard drive was toast. No software-based repair/reformat would save it. Joe was happy when I had him check his iPad and thanks to cloud sync/backups (iCloud of course for Mac) he found all his kids pictures. But what to do with the iMac - it’s so cute!

I have a soft spot for Apple computers. I spent all my summer work money on an Apple Mac 512Ke (precursor to the Mac+) when I was a freshman at UC Berkeley and man did I love that little computer. It was a lot of money at the time - nearly $2,000 even with my student discount. Looking back it’s a boxy boy but it was elegant for its time, and it saw me through college and grad school as well. I expanded it as well - initially it only had a single 3.5” floppy disk drive! I still have all the bits and it works perfectly; I will show it off in a future article for sure.

Joe’s iMac was built about 25 years later than mine but at 10 years old in computer terms we’re in a grey area verging on obsolete but not vintage. If you buy a brand-new iMac today the colors and finishes have changed but the design has stood the test of time. Joe’s is all chrome and glass in a curvy yet minimalistic all-in-one design that’s striking and by that standard it doesn’t look old at all. Joe’s wife had bought a new MacBook to replace the desktop so he would be happy to have a proper desktop back and it suits his needs just fine. It hurts me to throw something both useful and beautiful into eWaste so I decided to see if I could fix it for Joe.

What Tech taketh away it giveth back

Fixing computers has gotten progressively harder and harder. Early in my career I had jobs fixing PCs and I could swap out a hard drive in 20 minutes. It's partly that computers (and the computers, err phones in our pockets) are packed into ever shinier and smaller boxes but also that Apple and other manufactures aren’t motivated to make fixing old ones easy - they’d rather we buy new. This is behind a bunch of Right to Repair legal challenges. Fortunately, Joe’s iMac is a full size PC - albeit an all-in-one sealed design under a 21.5” monitor - and what broke in Joe’s is the hard drive which is a standard size and interface across all PCs. Other than the fan which isn’t always running in Macs, the hard drive and it’s constantly spinning platter is the only moving part in the whole thing.

The internets and especially YouTube have been a boon to fixers and DIYers everywhere and with a little YouTube-Fu I found an amazingly comprehensive video on how to replace the hard drive in a 2013 iMac. Lo, I could buy all the parts and tools from the same company that made the video :) Even better I could replace the drive with a solid-state drive which is significantly faster than the original and has no moving parts to wear out. I got the whole shooting match for under $75. Should I actually manage to successfully replace the drive, Joe’s iMac will be faster with a new lease on life. btw, the hardest part of this whole thing was figuring out exactly what iMac Joe had in Apples minimalist design. The only thing you can get on the actual machine (since it wouldn’t even boot up) is the serial number. Here is the site you can put a serial number in to get the model details.

Right to Repair

Recently Apple surprised a lot of people by backing California SB 244 which gives rights to consumers to fix or have their computers (and phones) fixed by someone other than Apple. Right to repair has been contentious with Apple claiming people will get blown up, chopped up and nefariously disabling features when repairs weren’t using their parts. Despite this intense lobbying several right to repair bills have recently passed. Similar to yesterday’s announcement of support for USB-C in iPhone 15, Apple decided it’s better to get behind the legislation to finesse the outcomes. Apples dominance in phones means a clear revenue opportunity in repairs. Regardless of politics and motivation this marks a shift in approach and these repairs will get easier now.

Will I Break it?

Pretty good chance I do. I give myself 50/50 odds. According to the internets it’s an expert level repair 👀 The first problem is that the screen is effectively the top cover of the computer but rather than screws it’s glued on tight. If I manage to get it off without breaking the glass then there are a number of very short connecting cables I have to pry off correctly without frying the motherboard they’re connected too. Chances I crack the screen in getting it off or on or disconnected is pretty high. Finally the new solid state drive has slightly different dimensions and connectors than the original so I may need additional bits to get it in. Wish me luck! I’ll share all the thrills and agony next week as well🤞