Snippet: How Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability ☇

Charlie Sorrel for iFixit:

Apple’s MacBooks haven’t always been monolithic, barely repairable slabs of aluminum, glass, and glue. They used to be almost delightful in their repairable features, from their batteries to their Wi-Fi cards. Powerbooks, iBooks, and especially early MacBooks showed what happens when Apple applies its design skills directly to repairability and maintenance, instead of to thinness above all. Today we’re going to take a look at the best repairability features that Apple has ditched.

I can’t argue with the premise of this article, as almost everything Apple sells today is sealed and impossible to upgrade. There are plenty of aspects that are repairable, but maybe not as easy as in the past (battery swaps, for instance.) While I’d love to see easily-replaceable keyboards on MacBooks, I also understand the chiclets-under-a-unibody-frame adds some complexity, and this has spread across the industry. It’s similar on numerous PC vendors that have MacBook look-alikes.

I had a white iBook G3 (Late 2001 model for those keeping score at home) and while it was infinitely repairable, parts weren’t always easy to find and I found that it got obsolete before concerns like a battery replacement came into play—I got about three years out of it before I wanted something more powerful. RAM still had a limit of 640MB (128MB soldered + up to 512MB added), the hard drive was a pain to access, and the AirPort (Wi-Fi) card was modular because most people weren’t adding it—I think I got one about a year and a half into owning my iBook.

Despite Apple’s wonderful industrial design of that era, those iBooks had some flex, both due to the nature of the plastic cases and that it was a case around a metal frame. The unibody MacBook era made Apple’s portables feel significantly better and I’d argue that despite the thinness, the current hardware is better in-hand in just about every way.

Aside from the rose-colored repairability glasses, the iBook G3 started at $1299 in 2001. Taking into account inflation, that’s almost $2500 in today’s money. Would you be able look past having a closed system if you can get at least three years of service at 1/4 the price?

Snippet: Boy I Was Wrong About the Fediverse ☇

Mat Duggan:

So of course media corporations became bargaining chips for the oligarchs’ actual businesses. Why fight a defamation suit when you can settle it by running favorable coverage and maybe bankrupting the media outlet you bought as a stocking stuffer? Suddenly I couldn’t find any reliable reporting about anything in the US. My beloved Washington Post became straight-up propaganda and desperate attempts to cope. “Best winter stews to make while you watch your neighbors get kidnapped at gunpoint.” Twelve dollars a month for that. […]

So in this complete breakdown of the press came in the Fediverse. It became the only reliable source of information I had. People posted links with a minimal amount of commentary, picking and choosing the best content from other social media networks. They’re not doing it to “build a brand” because that’s not a thing in the Fediverse. It’s too disjointed to be a place to build a newsletter subscription base.

I think it’s more important than ever to have resilient ways to share information and getting it from people you deliberately follow adds a bit of trust. Not everyone will act in good faith or might be quick to click the share button, but it’s still better than algorithms or zombified news organizations leaning into lowest-common-denominator filler.

Snippet: My Appearance on People and Blogs ☇

Manuel Moreale was kind enough to interview me for People and Blogs—I’ve enjoyed the series for awhile and sadly, it will tentatively be wrapping up after 150 interviews. If you’re new to the series, I highly recommend checking out the back catalog, too!

Snippet: HyperCard Changed Everything ☇

Gregory Wieber:

Before the web, there was HyperCard. It gave ordinary people the power to create, to explore – and even led to the best-selling computer game of all time. So, what happened to it?

I thought this is an excellent, dense 11-minute YouTube video that covered one of Apple’s all-time best and likely forgotten products.

Snippet: Oops, Wrong USB Hole ☇

One little item of note with the MacBook Neo is that if you connect something that requires a bit more than the second USB 2.0-only port can handle, macOS will notify you to use the other one. I had wondered how (if at all) Apple would address this, as the two ports provide vastly different experiences and many people aren’t going to pay attention to which is which.

From my work with many recent PCs, especially desktops, there’s often a variety of USB-A ports operating at USB 2.0 speeds (even in 2026) and if there isn’t explicit labeling, you have to look at the color of the plastic in the port itself (blue is often an indication of USB 3.0). We have a few recent Dell OptiPlex/Pro desktops at work and on the back, two ports are USB 2.0, two are USB 3.2. Using the slower ones doesn’t yield any sort of warning, so it sounds like Apple tried to make the best of a compromised situation.

John Gruber found out a bit more at Apple’s event:

The two ports look exactly the same — and neither is labeled in any way — but they’re different. But on the other hand, the Neo is the first product with an A-series chip that Apple has ever made that supports two USB ports. It was, I am reliably informed by Apple product marketing folks, a significant engineering achievement to get a second USB port at all on the MacBook Neo while basing it on the A18 Pro SoC. And while the ports aren’t labeled, if you plug an external display into the “wrong” port, you’ll get an on-screen notification suggesting you plug it into the other port. That this second USB-C port is USB 2.0 is not great, but it is fine.

Based on the limitation and engineering, it sounds to me like Apple went with this slower USB-C port on the MacBook Neo so one could have the option of using the other port and charging at the same time. I’d venture to guess that once someone figures out that the back one is “for displays,” this will be a non-issue.

Even with the grumblings about the MacBook Neo, this isn’t the first time Apple has had different USB-C-shaped ports on the same computer. Two examples that immediately come to mind are that the Mac mini (USB 4/Thunderbolt 5 on the back, USB 3 on the front) and the Mac Studio, but it’s dependent on the SoC (all have USB 4/Thunderbolt 5 on the back; M4 gets USB 3 on the front, M3 Ultra gets USB 4/Thunderbolt 5 on the front.)