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
- High refresh rate displays
- Intel’s NUC computers
- Pebble smartwatches
- Anything else with an e-paper display
- Nintendo Switch
- Unibody MacBook Pros
Hi Eric! I’m so sorry you’ve gone through two bad joysticks now! If you’re not already calibrating with the joy-con connected to the Switch I would try that. If you can’t get it to calibrate correctly, you can contact our customer support team and they’ll get you a replacement. Good luck, and sorry again!
Alan, this is an excellent idea! We have had tools like that in the past, but since every device is different it’s hard to make one pick that will work for every device. You might be able to find something like that somewhere else online, I’m not sure. Another thing you can do is measure your pick and mark 1.5 mm with a marker so you have a visual indication of how far your pick should go in!
Milli, unfortunately repairing that connector is a tough fix unless you’ve got some microsoldering equipment. :( That said! You shouldn’t need to buy a whole other set of Joy-Cons. What you can do is find a replacement motherboard online, or even a cheap used Joy-Con from ebay and replace your motherboard with that one! I’m sorry about your bad luck, I hope this helps!
Emily, that is the worst! I’m so sorry. There are two possible scenarios here. 1: The phone isn’t recognizing the new screen and needs some sort of reset. Try a soft reset—hold the power button down for 30 seconds until the phone power cycles a couple times. If that doesn’t work, reattach your old display and make sure that one is still working. If it is, reconnect the new one and try a factory reset over USB (there are instructions all over, here’s one link you can try). Sometimes it takes a factory reset to get the phone to accept the new display. 2: the second, more unfortunate scenario is you may have damaged your display connector, or perhaps the replacement display is a dud. Again you can find out by reconnecting your old display to see if that one is still working. If it’s a faulty display and we sold it to you, you can reach out to our customer service team and they should be able to get you a working one in no time! Best of luck, I hope this helps.
Hey Ryan! Did you order your replacement joystick from us? If so, you can reach out to our customer service team and they may be able to get you a replacement. If not, you may be out of luck. :/ I have heard a couple people mention that their replacement joysticks from Amazon drifted out of the box, just like yours. Good luck, let me know if if you’ve got any more questions!
Eric, no one has made a guide for the right Joy-Con yet! I’ve taken them both apart and the buttons are pretty similar. I think you can use Joshua’s button guide here and this joystick guide to guide you to the buttons in the other Joy-Con! If you do end up attempting it, consider taking some photos and making a guide for future right Joy-Con fixers. :)
I’m sorry this one wasn’t up to par for you Jon! :( Could you elaborate on what you mean by more detailed? What specific things would you like to see in this (and other) teardown(s)? We’ve been doing our best to keep teardowns fun and exciting while phones are getting more and more similar, but we definitely have skipped over some important things from time to time in our attempt to avoid rehashing details. I’d love to hear your thoughts, thanks for loving our website and being a follower for so long!
Rene, usually the double-sided tape that originally held the battery in place is still sticky enough to keep it down after removal. If yours isn’t, you can apply a new strip of double-sided tape to keep it from moving around!
Sorry for the confusion, Orun! The new SSD guide shares a few steps with the general “boot to internet recovery mode” guide. If you’re installing MacOS to a new drive, you can skip this step. :)
You can wait for it to die completely! If you don’t want to though, as long as the battery is at a low percentage and you disconnect it as soon as you open the phone (as this guide instructs), you should be okay. Best of luck to you!
Sayfa 1 / 8
Sonraki