The Lance J. Technoweb

My brother made the mistake of trying to save some big money by buying a "genuine replacement" MacBook power adapter bought on Amazon .  The replacement adapter was under $30, was highly rated, and looked exactly like the Apple adapter.  But it burnt out his Mac after a year of use.   Evil Replacement Mac AC Power Charger Huge money save?  Nope! After about 18 months, my brother's MacBook Air stopped working completely.  He asked me, the family tech guy, to take a look and perhaps repair the damage. I looked at it and immediately noticed that the MacBook's power pins were covered in carbon soot.  That's an indicator that the counterfeit charger was dumb enough to supply fully power over the small pins as the adapter was being connected to the MacBook. This is a behavior results in sparks,which chews away at the pins. Burnt Out Mac Power Pins, removed from damaged MacBook   Then I looked at the connector on the power adapter's cord.  Ouch, the p...

My MacBook (A1342 model from 2009-2010) stopped working, thanks to a cheap knockoff magsafe charger. The magsafe connector looked burnt with heat-distorted melted plastic and some black carbon surfaces.  Plugging in the charger resulted in no lights and no action.  My MacBook was dead. First I tried to clean up the connector with some Q-Tips, tooth picks and solvent, but that did little, as seen in this "after" picture (below).   The heat generated by the aftermarket charger permanently deformed and distorted the MacBook's magsafe connector.  Clearly the damage was significant. Burnt Magsafe Connector - Replacement Required! Looking at iFixIt , I determined that it would not be difficult to replace only the magsafe connector with the right tools.  I hoped and prayed that the problem was isolated to the connector assembly and not the logic board. I bought a replacement magsafe connector assembly (available from Amazon) for under $20 and started to rep...

The 2009 MacBook Pro's days are numbered.  As you likely know by now, the 2009 MacBook Pro will not be supported by Mac OS Sierra.  I have one of these beasts, and it is a wonderful machine despite 7+ years of heavy use. But that doesn't mean my 2009 MacBook Pro is dead or will become immediately useless.  Quite to the contrary, I expect to use my MBP securely for several more years. Mac OS X El Capitan will continued to be supported by Apple with security patches for some amount of time.  How long?  My research shows that Apple supports a deprecated operating system for at least two years after the release of its subsequent operating system. So if Sierra is released on October 1st, 2016, El Capitan will be supported by Apple until at least October 1st, 2018. Then what?  Well, by rights, most people should no longer use El Capitan as it becomes security-obsolete.  But some more technically-minded people might have some options: Hack Sierra on...

Even in the later half of 2016, the 2009 & 2010 white MacBook can be a fantastic laptop if upgraded with modern parts.   Here's the deal. I am responsible for maintaining a small fleet of these MacBooks, and have found that it is very easy to upgrade these MacBooks to perform in a manner competitive with a new, $1000+ laptop. 2009-2010 "A1342" white MacBook The upgrades I typically perform on these MacBooks are Memory, Storage, and Battery .  Depending on your needs, this can typically cost from $25 to $125 if you buy and install the parts yourself.   This is a great way to get another 3 or more years out of your MacBook. Let me be clear:  I am talking about the white plastic unibody polycarbonate MacBook from 2009 and 2010, as exactly pictured above.  Check out "About this Mac" under the Apple menu of your Mac to verify that you have a "Late 2009" or "Mid-2010" MacBook. Here are the details of the upgrade parts I usual...

I've installed many SSD drives in MacBooks.  Here are some answers to about the best approaches for a MacBook SSD upgrade: Q: Should I bother to install an SSD, or just get a new MacBook? New Macs can be mighty expensive, so I suggest you look into an SSD upgrade if you have a traditional hard drive. I have found that replacing a hard drive with an SSD results in a substantial increase in performance.  I guesstimate that a MacBook with an SSD "feels" more than three times faster then a MacBook without an SSD. Q: Which SSD drive do you buy or recommend for a MacBook? I think that most any good laptop SSD will do. These days, I have been buying SSD drives that are about 250 GB, as they are often well under $70.  In particular, I have installed these SSDs with great success: Crucial BX100 @ 250 GB Kingston SSDNow V300 @ 240 GB PNY CS1111 @ 240 GB    When shopping around, look for bargains.  I found a special deal and bought this great SanDi...

After a few years of fooling around, I decided to make up my own ultimate Mac Boot USB stick. My goals:  When I administrate computers, I want to have most everything I need on a single boot device so I don't have to fool around downloading, installing, or searching. My boot stick includes the software that I need most frequently.  It isn't that complicated, but it took a while to actually figure it all out.  Best of all, you can easily make your own! Required Stuff: A 32 GB (or larger) USB 3.0 "thumb drive".  These devices are inexpensive, portable, fast, and readily available.  I use something like this PNY USB 3.0 stick. What not to use: Small thumb drives.  You may be able to get away with a 16 GB device, but anything less than 16 GB will limit your flexibility.  Hard disks or SSDs.  They're more expensive, bulky, and HD's are less reliable SD Cards.  An SD card is an option, but the truth is that a standard USB 3.0 thumb ...

I'm the type that tries to get the most bang out of a computer - where many consider a 3 year old computer "end of life", I can easily double that lifespan. A lot of people ask me what I've done for upgrades to the Macs I manage.  Here are some examples of what I did. 2009 MacBook (6 years old) 1 TB Hybrid Drive (originally a traditional 120 GB drive) Seagate 1TB Laptop SSHD 4 GB memory (originally at 2 GB) G.SKILL DDR2 RAM 2009 MacBook Pro (6 years old) 250 GB SSD (originally a traditional 250 GB drive)  Kingston 240GB SSD 4 GB of memory not upgraded.  I find 4 GB to be plenty powerful. 2010 MacBook (5 years old) 250 GB SSD (originally a traditional 250 GB drive) Kingston 240GB SSD 8 GB memory (originally at 2 GB) G.Skill DDR3 RAM  Although 4 GB is powerful enough, I was upgrading it from 2 GB.  So using the principle of upgrading as few times as possible, I moved it to 8 GB. 2011 iMac (4 years old) 8 GB memory (original...

For years my cousin was suffering with the WIFI of his MacBook. His MacBook would drop its WIFI connection every few hours (or minutes), and he'd have to manually stop and start the WIFI on his MacBook to fix it. The bad behavior made web surfing, Netflix, and anything else on-line quite unpleasant. The Bad WIFI card, as pulled from my cousin's MacBook. I tried everything to try to fix the problem. I replaced his router, tweaked OS settings, and even re-installed the OS. The on-line forums weren't particularly helpful - a lot of people had a lot of ideas how to fix it with software, but ultimately none of their suggestions worked. So I concluded that the problem was with the MacBook's WIFI card. Some of you might think that the MacBook has its WIFI chip soldered onto the MacBook's main board, but that's not the case - the classic MacBook uses a fairly common WIFI card. Getting access to that card isn't trivial, but if you're able to drive...

My MacBook keyboard and trackpad has worn out to the point where it was hard to use. The trackpad and its button was behaving poorly, and the keys were less than perfect. Furthermore, the "palm rest" was stained and developed a crack. Figure 1: T he Yukky old keyboard/trackpad. Cracked, stained, and worn out. But excitingly, there is a simple fix! I've replaced the keyboard and trackpad with new ones - and it was easy to do and inexpensive! It was the best thing I've done to my MacBook ever. This article covers what I did. Figure 2: My clean new keyboard & trackpad! Awesome! Background: The MacBook Top Case design The MacBook keyboard and trackpad are integrated into a single part called the " MacBook Top Case ". Due to the MacBook's design, you just can't replace the keyboard or the trackpad - you have to replace the entire "Top Case". That sounds bad, but it really isn't, because the "Top Case" ...

The Problem: A Poorly-Behaving Trackpad Button MacBook trackpads buttons are going bad. Happily, there is a quick and technically-simple fix that may work for many MacBook owners with a misbehaving trackpad. A few months ago I started to notice that my trackpad was operating in a funky manner. The trackpad button had lost its solid click and turned mushy. As I typed the trackpad button would mistakenly register clicks, and the cursor would jump all over the place; The cursor would jump around and my words would end up jumbled. Or a button press wouldn't register at all, and I'd end up trying to smash down of the button with no response. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had with a keyboard and mouse. I tried every technique I could find on the web to try to fix my bad trackpad button – from sliding paper through the gap around button, to MacBook disassembly and vacuuming everything. Nothing made it better. My MacBook was fairly unusable, and getting worse. Af...