Repasting a MacBook

I love "the process was quite friendly" coupled with "two of the connectors broke when I looked at them and one costs hundreds of dollars to replace".

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.)

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.