The iPhone 6s served me well for just over 10 years with one DIY battery replacement and screen replacement. However, with major iOS updates stopping at iOS 15, an increasing number of apps no-longer support this old system.
First impressions:
Getting used to not having a home button and switching from finger print id to face id
Slightly larger width and height, but with much more screen-space, and many more pixels
Much thicker and heavier, but not quite so slippery – less easy to drop
Streaming video is handled far more efficiently, generating no device heat and barely denting the battery
Location services, especially when using the Maps app used to quickly kill the iPhone 6s battery, but not the 17
When I upgraded the fusion drive to SSD, I opted to include the OWC in-line Digital Thermal Sensor. That sensor was the root cause of the repair needed here, and ironically, I don’t think it was ever needed in this model iMac.
Detail
A couple of years ago, I removed the 1Tb fusion HDD from my iMac 2019, to replace with a 2Tb Crucial MX500 SSD. There was some confusion at the time as to whether the iMac would depend on the drive having a thermal sensor, without which it may run the fan at full speed always. Therefore I got hold of the OWC bundle including Digital Thermal Sensor and Glue strips and installed as written up here.
After just over 2 years of faultless operation there was a loud ‘crack’ noise from behind the screen and the iMac was instantly dead – with no means of powering it up. I was pretty convinced that the power supply board was the affected component and ordered a replacement (2nd hand) via ebay, and avoided opening up the iMac until that had arrived.
I then started work cutting the screen glue with the old iFixit cutter. It felt much more difficult than the original glue a couple of years ago, and at some point I managed to break the cutter wheel.
iFixIt cutting wheel – broken blade
At which point I ordered a new cutter with spare blades via Amazon. I then made a crutial mistake… I attempted to continue working around the screen but using a pick tool. I should have just been patient and waited for the next day delivery, as the pick tool caused extra stress on the screen resulting in a chip of glass breaking free and some hairline cracks. Fortunately the worst of it is in the black bevel are, and I have simply covered with black electrical tape.
With the replacement blades the next day, I was able to remove the screen. At this point the root cause of the problem was immediately apparent. As you can see from the photo of my original work, the OWC sensor is stuck to the SSD.
Replacement drive in its mounting kit with its inline temperature sensor
With the screen removed, we can see that the sensor is nolonger stuck to the SSD, and has dropped, with the wires just long enough for the sensor to land on the power supply board. Closer inspection shows soot on the sensor board and missing components, and against one of the transformers of the power supply. The back of the sensor had lost all stick – the glue has completely denatured.
Damaged OWC in-line digital thermal sensorDamaged power supply board, close up
I did have some worry about the power supply board that I had obtained via eBay – it was from an iMac 5K 2020, and while it looked the same size, its components were in a different layout. It does turn out that the board works well in this iMac.
The different component layouts of power supplies.
However, once installed, it was apparent that the SSD was no-longer functioning. So the next step, I ordered a Crucial 2Tb BX500. This turns out to be a potential mistake. On a cold boot, the Mac shows the prohibited icon for a while. This eventually clears, but the drive performance, particularly in the time machine restore is very poor.
New BX500 SSD in place, without any thermal sensor this time
In consultation with Claude.ai, the suggestion is that the BX500 is a budget drive and has some Mac compatibility issues. However following a few weeks basic operation which only involves creating and editing a few lightweight documents and online streaming, I have not hit any noticable issues – other than on a cold boot and that ‘prohibited’ icon.
The fan has been running normally, therefore I do not believe the thermal sensor was actually necessary in the first place, and my belt and braces approach has turned out to increase rather than decrease risk on this occasion.
If you decide to install the sensor (or already have) i recommend using cable ties and routing the sensor wires such that when it comes unstuck, it cannot fall into the power supply, or touch any other metal component.
My professional focus is now firmly in a world of Product Ownership having joined a company building a RegTech platform. Outside of career interests, it it time to return to some older hobbies.
I have a growing interest in retro-computing, having grown up with most of the machines common in the retro-computing space. Indeed I still own my old ZX Spectrum, Atari 512 STFM and Mac LC. I definitely want to give the Mac LC some care and attention. I find inspiration for this from YouTube channels:
I dabbled in electronics through my youth… typically projects alongside my computing and musical interests. My main effort was in building amplifier kits and speakers. Having been in storage for a couple of decades, they’ll need a good servicing if they are ever to be used again.
Where I can make simple repairs, I can and will. I have a couple of old synthesisers which need work. Again, I find great inspiration via a number of YouTube channels:
Towards the end of 2019 as the brain switched back on to matters of career. I focussed more on Scrum and agile in general, with the PSM-I to at least reduce the barrier to entry with an Agile employer.
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Opportunities to interview were starting to improve, then, COVID-19!
Considering what the family went through last year, we can only be thankful that we didn’t have that to deal with on top of everything – and of course thinking of those having to cope in this year’s circumstances.
Of course career opportunities and those roles that were looking promising quickly dried up in March/April. Now, with lots more people entering the job market, the immediate future looks challenging. My focus remains on finding a role within an Agile/Scrum environment, where I can transfer tonnes of digital experience along with the last couple of years of learning Scrum/Agile/Product. That learning needs to be put into practice.
I got my hands on a new Mac, so I am bang up to date with OS versions and current software. The big screen is ideal for working with JIRA, Miro and Lucidchart.
So, learning and self-improvement continues, and I’ve added a reading list of the resources I have found most useful. This blog will be kept more up to date as and when I find things that I think are worth sharing.
Sunny day in the park
All said and done, long walks everyday have been a good way to clear the mind and start the day.
I admit I am writing this retrospectively in 2020 and setting the publish date back to 2019, the context of these words.
A change in work was much needed, and I turned a redundancy into a sabbatical, the last months of 2018 It was de-stressing and an opportunity to explore some tech outside of my day-to-day. I studies VR applications from a user point of view, having got hold of an oculus Go and it was fun to launch my dad into space. I spent some time working through LinkedIn Learning courses on Unity and Blender, to get a feel for the development steps involved in getting an application onto the Go. I enjoyed the experience, however the application build times were enormous on my old 2008 Mac. I wrote up a few notes at the time. I also found a fairly comprehensive Product Management course on Udemy to work through: Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job.
As we entered 2019, it became clear that my father’s cancer journey was taking a turn for the worse and after a frankly horrible time for him and those closest, we lost him this summer.
My sister especially put a huge amount of time into building the family tree on ancestry. My contribution mostly taking the form of PhotoShop restoration and repair of old family photos, many I hadn’t seen before. It was quite an emotional journey, with resulting images I am quite proud of, only saddened to be unable to share them and hear the tales first hand from those pictured. For example: An important photo including my grandad and grandmother prior to a flight to the Isle of Man on a de Havilland Rapide in 1938. I took an experience flight in a similar aircraft in May of this year, flying out of Duxford.
A note to self, looking back on my last post to see what actually was achieved since.
Step 1 – “Get some tooling” – CHECK. Applied to ageing personal web stuff.
Step 2 – “Read up Jeff Patton’s User Story Mapping” – CHECK. The key catchphrases stand up no matter what: “Build the right product”, “Shared understanding” and adding my own twist “develop the greatest effect soonest”. Definitely worth a second read and reference.
Step 3 – “Play with Docker” – PARTIAL CHECK. Our lead developer has built an excellent Docker based infrastructure at work, bringing greater reliability and efficiency. My home kit isn’t compatible yet, so Vagrant will suffice until I update.
Steps 4 and 5 – We did set about using JIRA, Confluence and Bitbucket and bringing legacy projects to them
Sadly it is time to move on from my employer, my next steps are to ensure I dedicate more time to:
Family
Exploring new tech – AR and VR of particular interest as it gains momentum as Oculus Go continues the process of bringing it mainstream
Gaining more Product Management experience, and Agile
Photography – In camera, editing and restoration – creacog on Flickr
Tidy up this blog – so much has changed in the last 6 years
Then possibly freelance until finding the next permanent role.
Personally speaking, 2018 is going to be a year of getting at least some Agile and DevOps adopted at work.
Step 1 – Get some tooling… Kicked off with Vagrant and commenced updating the brain from my previous php5 use to 7. So far so good.
Step 2 – Read up Jeff Patton’s User Story Mapping- Which does seem to stand up to it’s strap-line: “Discover the whole story, build the right product”. From reading this, “Shared understanding” will be my new catchphrase for the year.
Step 3 – Have a play with Docker…. first problem is my otherwise trusty old mid 2009 Mac Book Pro:
$ sysctl kern.hv_support
kern.hv_support: 0
So there’ll be no Docker practice on this machine.
Step 4 – Introduce work to some supporting tools: (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket)
Step 5 – Start using this stuff – Plenty of legacy work projects to migrate, and a couple of home projects.
This might be the excuse needed to justify updating my otherwise very long-lived Macs.
In that time lots has happened in the world, especially the last few weeks! So far as this blog is concerned, I’ve been in permanent employment as a Digital Project Manager for about 4 years. So there’s neem a lot less time spent programming and nearly no time with Flash. Which, for the kind of projects I was using it for, is now truly dead. Of course niche requirements remain, and major sites still use it’s video capabilities, but much of the world is coming to the El Reg way of thinking of this and pretty much any other browser plugin.
In its place we have html5, the canvas and WebGL, ironically catching up to where flash was 4 years ago – but with a much worse language. Can’t help thinking how much more advanced browser interactivity would now be had ECMA Script 4 been adopted to advance javascript. Adobe AIR never really worked particularly well for me – especially on the HTC Desire I got for the purpose of testing. So despite investing a huge amount of time and cash in ActionScript development, it will be a rare day those skills are put to direct use in the future.
Looking back over the articles published, the one with the most traffic is the one that was most off-topic, and connected to the 1980’s tech of my teenage years: resurrected my tascam porta 05
Looking forward, since flash programming is mostly off the agenda, future subjects are likely to include: * Photography * Project Management * Interactive media – websites, mobile apps, IoT etc * General bits of tech that interest me
