Tag: ifixit

Mac Mini SSD

Hard Disk Failure

This unibody-style Mac Mini had been displaying a flashing folder with a question mark on boot, which is a sign of hard drive failure. I put a new SSD into the Mac – and that was not easy!

On the surface, this looks like a late-2012 Mac Mini, with the two thumb ‘dimples’ on the base you can use to unscrew the bottom cover, and an antenna plate which is not the full size of the base of the Mac. So I began following the late-2012 Mac Mini teardown on the iFixIt website.

But 0nce I had removed the logicboard, I still couldn’t take the old disk drive out – and what I was looking at didn’t tally with the photos and description on the iFixIt page. So I checked out the iFixIt teardown for the late-2014 Mac Mini model too, and then I was able to navigate through the rest of the repair… But this isn’t a late-2014 Mac Mini! This Mac doesn’t have the full-size circular antenna plate, nor the ‘fusion drive’ storage configuration, with an NVMe SSD alongside a larger STAT hard disk.

Eventually I was able to remove the old drive, and install a new SATA SSD. I opted for an MSI Spatium SSD here, which has excellent reviews but is not a make or model I have personally tried before.

During reassembly, I ended up hopping between the 2012 and 2014 Mac Mini pages on iFixIt (you can see this in the video) in order to keep track of what I was looking at. Was this some kind of ‘parts bin’ Mac, built right on the cusp of the changeover from the 2012 design to the 2014 design, utilising elements of each model? Or possibly, a previous repairer has retro-fitted some parts, somehow?

OS X Mavericks

Either way, I think it’s been opened up before; the antenna plate has taken a bit of a ding, and once I had removed it I was unable to reattach it with all the screws again, try as I might. I had a go at straightening out the edge of the antenna plate where that was warped, but I wasn’t able to apply pressure in the right way without risking damage to the attena cable. You can see this in the video too. In the end, I just fixed it on with only one screw, and trusted that the bottom plate of the Mac Mini case would hold it in place well enough, considering that the Mac will live in one place and not get carted around.

Once the Mac Mini was fully reassembled (with the exception of one stubbonr retaining screw for the antenna plate, that is), I booted the Mac into the network recovery mode, formatted the new SSD, and downloaded and installed OS X 10.9 (‘Mavericks’). Once I had verified that the Mac was behaving normally and the new drive would work as an install location for macOS, I updated to my favoured released of macOS 10.14.6 (‘Mojave’).

Thoughts On Apple’s Self Service Repair Announcement

As a longtime and loyal Apple user – but one who abhors the company’s proprietary instincts and lack of transparency around parts and repairs – the announcement earlier today that Apple would soon launch their Self Service Repair programme, making specialist parts, tools and diagrams available to the public should have had me jumping for joy.

And it did! I was genuinely cheered by the news when I read it. It’s a remarkable change of tune from a company who have previously been so wildly hysterical on the topic of repair – as the iFixIt blog on the matter was quick to point out…

This move invalidates many of the arguments Apple and other manufacturers have used against the right to repair. Liability? You understand the risks, and won’t sue Apple if you damage your device, or stab yourself in the palm with a screwdriver. Warranties? Although it’s illegal to void a warranty for a DIY repair, people worry. Apple’s program should tell motivated fixers that their warranty is intact.

But there are some serious caveats, too. As the European Right To Repair campaign’s response says, the devil is very much in the details. Their website wonders whether the announcement might end up being too good to be true.

For my part, I don’t think ‘too good to be true’ is quite fair. I think this is genuine, and I think that is legitimately good news – but I think it does not go anywhere near far enough, and I think Apple’s motivations still owe more to safeguarding their market share than helping their consumers. That is their right – but it is also our right to keep campaigning for binding right to repair legislation which serves the public, not just vested interests.

Apple are releasing only the schematics and spare parts for the newest iPhone and MacBook models (at least to begin with). The message is clear: Buy our new stuff, and you’re much better off! You’ll even get to fix it, too!

But those of us who care about repair and sustainability don’t want to be forced into upgrading to new devices so we can get the cool new toys. In fact, that is exactly the type of attitude we are trying to get away from! If Apple’s damascene conversion were serious, they would want to help us keep older devices running better for longer.

What cheers me most about the whole thing is that it shows we are winning. Apple is a smart. Smart, with a carefully-honed image of slick, polished competence. In my view, what’s happening here is that Apple have spotted which way the wind is blowing; they want to get out in front of any legislation which maybe coming down the line to do things on their own terms; they want to jump before they are pushed. Well, good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still push.