Technical writer, teardown engineer, and occasional video host at iFixit HQ in San Luis Obispo, California.
I spend my days taking photos, making guides, doing research, and occasionally tearing down new gadgets. Sometimes I also get to work with the video team, or do some investigative journalism. I’ve been on the iFixit team since August of 2018.
The 2016 MacBook Pro’s faulty display and backlight cables
Education
Two years into my computer science degree at Utah State University in Logan, Utah I was feeling like I wasn’t going to come away from my college education with anything I couldn’t learn on the world wide web. So I decided to end my CS classes when I hit the requirement for the CS minor program, and explore alternate major options.
Enter technical writing. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and consider myself a pretty great explainer of things. The TW program at USU turned out to be amazing, and I spent the last two years of my bachelor’s degree in (almost) pure bliss, learning about communication, rhetoric, UX design, and honing my writing and editing skills.
Skills / repair background
Thanks to a lifelong tech obsession, I’ve owned more gadgets than I can count, and I’ve taken apart more than I’ve owned (don’t lend me your stuff ;). As the designated tech support kid in most of my social circles, I’ve spent most of my life accumulating myriad hardware and software repair experiences.
Peering into the heart of a lifeless MacBook Pro
My time here at iFixit has definitely swung me back to the hardware side of repair, but I do also try to stay on top of all major desktop and mobile OS updates and keep my front-end dev skills at least sort of sharp. Gotta make sure that CS minor doesn’t go to waste. ;)
What else
When I’m not on iFixit.com, I spend my time climbing, cycling, tinkering, and binging internet content. I also love dogs, even though I'm allergic to them.
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My favorite technology
- Blackberry Pearl
- 120Hz iPad Pro displays
- Intel’s NUC computers
- Pebble smartwatches
- Anything else with an e-paper display
- Nintendo Switch
- Unibody MacBook Pros
Chad, this option should still work if using a bluetooth keyboard. If you’ve paired the keyboard to the computer already, then it should connect quickly enough to register the keypresses. That said, it’s definitely less reliable than using a wired keyboard! And every bluetooth keyboard is different—one might work, and another might not. Good luck!
Now that you’ve got the SSD out, you can temporarily re-install it to a working MacBook (maybe a friend’s?) to get the data off of it, or you can purchase an adapter like this one and use the SSD as an external storage drive!
Mirav, you can use Internet Recovery to Install MacOS! We even made a guide for that very thing, in 2019: How to use Internet Recovery to install macOS to a new SSD
That’s okay! The foam padding just acts as a support for the display, so your new display might be a little more vulnerable to a crack in the future. If you’re really worried about it, you can look for a replacement midframe part with the foam still attached.
Hey Henry! The daughterboard connects to the speaker with two golden pins that rest on the contact pads that stick out to the right of the speaker. You can see them in this photo. I would recommend cleaning the pins and the pad with some isopropyl alcohol and a q-tip. If that doesn’t fix the problem, check all the pins on both ends of the big interconnect cable and its corresponding sockets on the two boards—you may have accidentally bent one of them! If that’s the case and the bend is obvious, you can try to bend the offending pin back into place, or pick up a replacement cable. Hope this helps!
The space is ~9 mm wide, so I would go with the 10 mm size and you can trim it down if you need to!
Carlos, I’m so sorry to hear this! I should have done some more research before recommending the drive to you. It does look like OWC makes a “boot camp enabler” works for some of their drives? You can try downloading that here. Otherwise, you’re welcome to return the OWC drive and try using a standard m.2 drive with an adapter. Unfortunately we don’t sell the adapters though, so you’ll have to find one on your own. :( These adapters from Sintech come pretty highly recommended in this master SSD upgrade thread from MacRumors. Sorry again, and good luck!
Hey John! You can find a replacement drive here: OWC Aura Pro 6G SSD and some instructions for transferring your data here: How to migrate data to a new drive in macOS
Carlos, aqui lo recomiendo un disco duro combatible de 480gb: OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD
Lo del bootcamp, no sé si entiendo completamente? Sí se puede seguir usando bootcamp tras actualizar el disco duro, pero yo creo que tendrá que iniciar bootcamp en el nuevo SSD primeramente, y copiar los datos del otro SSD después. Dependerá en cómo lo ha preparado en la maquina suya.
¡Que le vaya bien!
Hey David! You can find a replacement battery here: Samsung Galaxy Buds Replacement Batteries, but they’re out of stock right now. :/ You can probably find the same ones on Amazon or Ebay! Just look for the CP1254 A2 cells.
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