Repasting a MacBook

Kind of a thing that isn't uniquely difficult if you've ever worked in a laptop before, hard if you've never done it.

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The ZIF connectors for those fans aren't different or much more fragile than the ones in most other laptops.

The adhesives on certain cables tend to trip people up a bit with causing them to pull more than they should and damage things.

Gently working under and releasing the adhesives on those fan cables with the spudger (or a fingernail) before you even start trying to move/unplug them will work a lot better for not tearing things than grabbing them with tweezers will.

The TouchID cable is fragile. Still shouldn't be any serious risk of breaking if you know to treat it with caution, but that would always be the one to take the most care with and watch the most closely while you're working around it.

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The secondary challenge is pretty much just making sure you have all the cables out of the way when you're putting the board back in, because you've got a dozen or more that you need to watch the positioning of and/or tape out of the way.

Honestly I think this is overstating things, most connectors on most laptops and phones are surprisingly robust. I've opened god knows how many laptops and phones, including some iPhones, and really those tiny ribbon cables have surprised me. Funny enough the one time I did break a ribbon cable it was actually the right joycon rail on a Nintendo Switch and it was quite an unreasonable amount of force I applied (by accident, of course...) I always smile a little seeing people on YouTube with super fine pliars carefully and tenderly taking off connectors, I usually use a butter knife or something like that to get them off and then replace them just using my finger. I actually worry more about carelessly creasing them too much rather than ripping them. Some of those things feel like they would require quite a lot of force to actually outright rip.

The actual issue I have with phones isn't that the connectors/cables break apart if you look at them funny, it's actually the god damn screens are insane to deal with and replace, with all of that adhesive crap.

This all to say, I think Apple is doing poorly here, their ribbon cables should probably be more robust on these often quite expensive devices. I know they can do it because I've experienced Apple devices with pretty robust internals... (and also similarly, have seen and heard of Apple devices where they've mysteriously cheaped out on components like voltage regulators and made their devices totally unnecessarily worse and more failure prone.)

I changed/replaced a bunch of things in my ThinkPad T14 without any issues, it's very easy, it is clearly made to open up and update. I wouldn't dare to do that with my MacBook Pro.

That "made to open up and update" aspect is exactly why I switched when my 2013 (Retina) MBP crapped out. I had just spent $300 CAD to replace the battery, which involved the glued-together mess of battery, top case, keyboard and trackpad. So when the charging circuit died on motherboard right after, I was not keen to spend much more to just get back to baseline. They wouldn't even countenance the idea of my giving them more money, so that I could get a board with more soldered-on RAM.

Switched to a P50 with twice as much RAM, and that's just one socket of four. Since upgraded to the max, with bigger SSD, it's still a beast.

Compare with Apple's use of glue and special screws, when Lenovo provides detailed service manuals on its web site.

A disk broke in my thinkpad under warranty. I told them I preferred to change it myself because I needed the computer. They just sent the new disk and I did it by myself.

I normally use an M3 MacBook Air, but I still have my T430 from college and I love how upgradable and hackable it is.

What I've done so far:

* Maxed out the RAM to 16GB (using lower voltage DIMMs to increase battery life)

* Swapped to a larger 9 cell battery

* Upgraded the CPU (and thermal paste) from a 2 core/4 thread i5 to a 4 core/8 thread i7

* Flashed a custom BIOS to remove the WiFi card whitelist and installed an Intel 7260 WiFi AC + Bluetooth card

* Replaced the stock 1600x900 TN panel with a 1920x1080 IPS display

* Replaced the barrel charging port with a USB-C connector (requires a 20v USB PD power supply, but those aren't super rare or expensive)

* Replaced the HDD with an SSD

* Replaced the optical drive and a 2.5" drive enclosure and installed a second SSD

Future projects:

* Flash Coreboot

* Upgrade to a faster i7

* Upgrade to a 1440p IPS panel

* Swap to a T420 keyboard

Right? That’s awesome. With a spare bay, I got an adapter for my Mac-specific SSD, so still have that working in a not-dead, fixable device.

I've opened up my MSI laptop a bunch of times - upgrading RAM, SSD, repasting, cleaning the fans. Maybe six or seven times over four years. Repasting in particular involves removing a lot of cables and screws, then lifting of the large heatsink.

I've never had any feeling that anything is going to break. Certainly not any of the cables or connectors.

I had worked on desktop computers before, but never done anything more complex than changing RAM on a laptop.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the same amount of hand sensitivity and force(/pain) perception. What may feel like an unreasonable amount of force to you may be barely noticeable and effortless to someone who normally works with things requiring much higher forces.

I literally can't be as gentle as professionals are for this exact reason. That's why I'm glad most of these things are pretty robust.

I have had trouble in the past because of this, usually not with small electronics. I busted a 4-pin Molex in a computer trying to plug it in with the pins not lined up quite right. It does require a decent bit of force, but accidentally breaking things is not uncommon for me because I just can't tell when I'm going too far. Same with screws, I pretty much always overtorque screws if I do it by hand.