Inner Workings & Early iPhones

I have attempted some preventative measures on my wine-soaked Mac. whilst I didn’t want to get fully into the weeds of it all, I did pop it open to inspect the logic board (thus far, clear) and to check if any liquid remained. Aside from a faint old-wine aroma, it seems as though the bulk of the damage has been confined to the keyboard. Ideally, confined to cosmetic damage to the membrane, though only time will tell.

I was anticipating that the macbook would be more and less difficult to disassemble. Approximately thirty screws in, I would’ve required a hex tool to remove the logic board entirely. Given that I was only inside to inspect it and give it a quick wipe with 99% isopropyl alcohol, this wasn’t too much of a barrier and I was able to rotate it around the point of contact. Reattaching the casing proved to be much more troublesome, with the clip system. Having disassembled many laptops over the years, I’ve always found that casings are the problematic part. this seems intrinsic in design; make it prohibitive to repair a device & customers will purchase a replacement.

For the first time in many years, I opted not to upgrade my mobile when my contract was up. From sony ericsson with their most uncomfortable tiny joystick, to the iphone 3GS, then finally pivoting to android; I’ve played with a lot of mobile devices. The golden era of apple predates the subscription-model app store; apps were 79p for lifetime access & the jailbreak scene was in full-swing. Cydia was a glorious gateway to sideloading apps and springboard offered hundreds of themes teeming with microcustomisations. Early apple tech felt so full of possibility. Whilst android remains based upon AOSP, the 21st c. has seen efforts to curtail side-loading, anonymous app development, and encrypted private communcations. I haver between adopting a fairphone with e/os and exploring Linux phones as a serious contender. banking apps seem to be the primary hurdle for my use case, though i do enjoy the easy use of existing apps like MyFitnessPal and Spotify. De-googling my phone will likely be a much bigger hurdle than setting up the home server, from my early investigations. I’d prefer to move away from google entirely (for similar reasons as to why i advocate for firefox over brave), but there appears to be no serious non-google/non-apple contender in the market.

There is much to think about. For now though, I intend to stick with my current android device for as long as it is functional. There is no sense in wasting a functional, repaired device.

— Frost