Minor design flaws (yes, even Apple): Apple design criteria and goals have always been cutting-edge. After twenty years of setting design trends and bringing spectacular devices to market - many of which earned entry into museums of modern art and design - Apple now enjoys widespread recognition as the industry leader and continues to set the bar for manufacturing and product design. In the process, tho, some designs have been so exotic and unusual as to compromise certain aspects of machine function, or create special considerations that might be viewed as being flawed. One example of an Apple design considered to be somewhat less than perfect is the G4 PowerMac Cube released in 2000. This design has a 7-inch cube core, released and extracted by a spring-loaded handle with machine turned upside-down (as it was displayed during its MacWorld Expo introduction - core suspended over inverted case). While the design was as spectacular as it is unique, it had a few characteristics that proved to be something of a drawback, such as having all ports on the bottom of the machine where they were hard to access. Minor flaws, really, and easily overlooked by those who appreciate stunning design concept and execution. A handful of other designs along the way have had more significant flaws in terms of serviceability and reliability..... Major design flaws: Design flaws considered significant are those which go beyond minor irritations, lead straight to costly service, and tend to leave a dull impression. Here's one flaw so blatant as to be completely overlooked: Like all desktop computers, this machine has a PRAM battery on its logic board - a battery with a life expectancy of three to five years. When the day comes to replace that PRAM battery, owners will be in for a nasty shock: Replacing the button battery requires disassembly of cabinet and bezel, removal of shields, sub assemblies, connectors, LCD display, speakers, fan(s), drives, and removal of logic board. Just to see a $5 battery. But wait, there's more: this specific transition model also has its diagnostic LEDs buried behind a speaker. This machine's predecessor was one of the easiest to service, most elegant cabinet designs ever; next model was completely redesigned, and this transition machine got caught in the middle. Notorious TiBook hinge problem: Photo (right) shows broken Titanium PowerBook (aka TiBook) hinges, a problem all too common to this 2002 model. Damage is compounded by the fact that replacing a hinge required replacing the entire $700 display - at least as far as Apple was concerned. A cottage industry sprang up for these TiBooks, offering stainless steel replacement hinges installed to existing display for $300 - still an expensive fix. Pinched optical drive slot: This notebook's CD/DVD drive slot (from inside machine, drive removed) had its aluminum frame bent, effectively closing that slot and rendering the optical drive useless. Not really a "design flaw" per-se, ODs require a 5-inch unsupported opening. In this case, a CD was stuck inside drive with machine repeatedly trying to eject it. Optical drive was undamaged. Broken frame: Another beat-up notebook, this one with a broken frame making machine's display a little wobbly. Eventually, added stress on cables will probably cause display to fail. Pin Grid Array versus Ball Grid Array versus Land Grid Array. Modern notebooks have miniature video cards onboard, soldered to the logic board by a Ball Grid Array (pads, left). Better heat transfer, more compact, but like all new technologies there are trade-offs: If video fails, logic board goes with it. Older machines used a (detachable) Pin Grid Array with plug/socket arrangement for daughtercards (right). The third method, Land Grid Array, consists of leads fanning out from a chip's perimeter, probably the most common surface-mount technology.

Ham-handed repairs are easy to spot. In order to open and service this particular machine, all cables must be disconnected from the logic board including the display's video cable, enlarged here x5. When this machine arrived, it booted to a Kernel Panic with corrupt and/or missing Operating System files. Its monitor displayed data and backlight, but only in shades of red (green and blue video signals missing). Careless reassembly killed a 'Book. When this notebook arrived following an "upgrade" by some PC tech, it powered on to a black screen, no startup tone, and no sign of life other than fans running at full speed. Missing, loose, stripped screws, pinched and misrouted cables, loose hard drive. Photo tells all: Misplaced, too-long screw protrudes thru frame and drilled the DC-power cable dead-center. Good job! Bare copper is visible around edge of indentation, revealing short circuit direct to ground. Hard drive data was intact, but machine was 1144, DOA, toast. "Pry it open, let's see what's in there..." This next machine was still (somewhat) functional when it arrived, although its fans went on full-tilt moments after startup, and screen would blackout periodically. Kids took a screwdriver to mom's $2K notebook. Many screws were stripped, missing and broken, including a critical heat sink mount alongside processor chip (located between two screws shown). Right screw is intact, left screw is lifting heat-spreader and causing a noticeable bulge in top case and keyboard. Optical drive had apparently been removed for some reason (mounts and aluminum bezel were broken), then replaced with duct tape. We were able to repair everything, including machine's SuperDrive, but - unfortunately - damage to the optical drive ATA bus prevented drive from functioning. Machine was reassembled sans optical drive, and its repaired SuperDrive placed into an external Firewire enclosure. Do-it-yourself upgrade: The owner's goal was to upgrade his laptop optical drive to a SuperDrive, but it never happened. After obtaining a drive that might have fit (maybe), he carefully disassembled his notebook until he got to the logic board. Attempting to disconnect a tiny plug, he pulled entire connector off - traces, solder and all. We reconstructed the board's tiny copper traces and successfully repaired connector, but..... When he took his logic board home and tried to reassemble his notebook, the display was black. He attempted to fix the display, but then his notebook refused to startup. Oops. Same story, different connector. This time a ZIF connector was ripped from logic board by someone bent on saving money. Aren't many shops around that would've taken this job and fixed this notebook. Cheaper'n a new logic board, tho. Amateur hard drive replacement. Still under warranty, a new $3K notebook underwent a hard drive upgrade at the hands of its owner, a man who was so focused on trying to split the machine's cases he neglected to remove a few central screws. Resulting damage was about $500 with a bent aluminum case and broken keyboard. (He thought repairs should be covered under warranty.) Disc fishing: Slot-loading disk drives present a hazard or two that might be unexpected, including the fate of nonstandard CDs and DVDs that enter - and do not exit - these drives. Other foreign matter may find its way into that slot, too, and many a damaged drive has passed thru the shop. Once a mini-disc or foreign object has become stuck in the drive, trying to fish it out thru that tiny slot is all but impossible, as this client found out. He got ahold of drives thin, stainless steel innards and bent the daylights out of it. Sometimes factory repairs - aren't. Client brought in his wife's notebook. Said wine had been spilled on it when new, he'd paid Apple $750 to replace logic board and machine was fine - until lately. Back to Apple, he was told it needed a new logic board, optical drive and hard drive. He canceled the repair order, and the notebook was returned to him from a facility somewhere in Tennessee (at no charge) with a letter and report bearing Apple's letterhead. And now, the notebook's display was black. Odd..... First, a lump under keyboard turned out to be the Airport antenna trapped under machine's RAM shield. Bottom case and bottom shield still had substantial residue and stains. Top case and top shield were missing all retaining screws, all eight logic board screws were missing, and all but two bottom shield screws were gone. Worse: Fan was unplugged, as were display backlight, microphone and sleep light. Replaced missing screws, connected cables and machine passed all bench tests, operating perfectly, boards, drives and all. Weird.

Canadian OS, eh? What you see below is a screen dump of the Finder, showing aftermath of running out of space on a hard drive while doing some heavy lifting. A recording studio in full flight, mixing down tracks while simultaneously copying audio files and running a bunch o'other stuff in the background. "I could tell things weren't quite right," the engineer told me, "but I just had to get this one last job finished." With processors working full-tilt and a massive amount of data on the move, there wasn't time for an error message or any warning: Lights out, game over, hard drive hit the wall. After a forced restart, he was horrified to see screens full of gibberish. "I couldn't even describe it over the phone," he added. True enough. We recovered all data to a new drive, made a backup, then made repairs. (Hard drives should have a minimum of 10-15% free space available; if you're editing large audio/video files, consider using a RAID array.) Time stands still..... This machine was only about a week old when it arrived here at the shop. Owners wanted help reinstalling its Operating System - photo shows System install screen (right) - but it quickly became apparent that an OS install wasn't going to solve this problem. During installation, progress bar and video froze. Moving install window around would cause screen to refresh, but only momentarily. Video card was defective, interfering with all ops (replaced under warranty). And, to make matters worse, the OS install disk that came with it (new) was also defective (next entry). Hello, Quality Control? Defective OS install DVD frustrated owner's attempts to reinstall OSX on a new Mac; disc is missing part of its reflective metallic layer near edge, looks like a finger print. No excuse for this. Speaking of which..... Ya say your notebook won't power up? Gee whiz, I wonder why. Wanna know how much this cheapo "Chian" battery wound up costing its owner? Hate to say it, but you get what you pay for. Parts is parts. Unless there aren't any parts. This particular laptop model (below) has a display module that wasn't intended to be serviced, only replaced, and replacements were not available at the time. What you see is a notebook starting up after being dropped. The first light gray vertical lines are initial screen with logo and spinning gear. Any animation onscreen caused vertical lines to dance about like a deranged bar code. With no replacement screen, it ended up connected to an external monitor. Broken Logic Pro key: A form of copy protection, some apps require a USB "key" to be in place before the application will launch and function. We repaired this one with a USB cable/plug and some plastic. Wasn't pretty, but it worked and got our client off the hook. Internal short on USB bus: Nice to know the Mac has built-in protections for various faults, including this one. Port was damaged, shorting to ground. Non-standard discs. Here's a CD wedgie courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. Funky lil' mini-discs get shoved to the back of the drive where they stay. (Found three CDs stuffed inside a drive once, dunno how or why...) Disassembly of optical drive is the only way to remove 'em, and just getting to the drive can be difficult on some machines. Good news is, no harm done to the drive. Might wanna take a break there, bucko..... About the fifth time this guy entered his registration info on some web site only to see it all disappear with an error - again - he delivered a right cross to the screen of his girlfriend's notebook. Pretty expensive repair, but machine left here in great shape and client wasn't forced to crash on the shop sofa. Probably had to grovel some, tho ;-).

Hitachi hammer. Sometime, a sound says it all. If you know what you're hearing, you'll also know it's probably too late to do anything about it. You _do_ have a backup, don't you? Maxtor death rattle. Here's an odd one: This hard drive repeatedly tried to free its stuck read/write heads. Resulting sound is rather curious (recorded with a microphone). Toshiba thrash. By the way: If you think you're gonna freeze, heat, beat, shock or torture a drive into submission, odds are you'll only scrub data from its platters and make recovery impossible. While we're at it: Set the Wayback Machine to the mid-90s and enjoy a montage of various failure-to-boot sounds that signaled disaster on vintage Macs running System 7..... yes, each of these sounds were hard-wired error sounds.