Computer Hardware

Apple has promised the next Mac Pro, due during 2019, would be modular without explaining what they mean. As I've been documenting on TechSparx, Apple's current design style is unrepairable unmodifiable machines. The sort of Pro users who would want a Mac Pro, however, want upgradeability for example to swap in new graphics cards or max out the memory. In short, the design ethos Apple should follow is precisely the 2009/2010 Mac Pro design.

Why spend megabucks for the latest Mac when you can save a lot by buying an older machine? With a few simple upgrades (maxing-out the memory, using SSD) an older machine can perform similarly to the latest models. I am typing this on a 2012 MacBook Pro with 16 GB memory and a 500GB SSD, plus a 750GB HDD, that is satisfying all my needs from writing articles to heavy-duty software development. Just because the manufacturer wants you to buy the latest, doesn't mean you must do so.

In October, Apple finally released the upgraded Mac Mini and early reviews suggest it is a powerhouse. Computationally, that is, thanks to a 6 core Core i7 CPU, but graphics-wise it isn't so hot. While the graphics chip is perfectly usable for every day use, it isn't enough for those with high-end graphics needs such as videographers. But, the port selection on the back of the 2018 Mac Mini means you can integrate an external GPU (eGPU) unit to drive high-end graphics cards.

In October, Apple finally released the upgraded Mac Mini and one leading feature is that we can again upgrade the memory. That we cannot upgrade the storage is sad, but at least we can upgrade the memory. However the picture Apple showed - that we can easily get in and change the memory - is a lie. The innards (once you open the case) look nothing like this, and upgrading the memory requires a near-complete disassembly.

Many of us like Apple's hardware but not the operating system, and prefer to run Linux or even Windows. Yeah, it's a little crazy to pay a premium price for the hardware just to run some other operating system, that's how good Apple's hardware is. It's been discovered the 2018 Mac Mini has hardware to prohibit booting unapproved operating systems.

Last week Apple unveiled a second round of updated machines, including the long-awaited update to the Mac Mini. While the upgrade is much appreciated, and one can easily upgrade memory, and it has a huge bump in processor capability, the 2018 Mac Mini simply is not what Apple needed to deliver. Intel's NUC is still far and away a better implementation of what the Mac Mini should be. Plus the Intel NUC is less than half the cost.

Apple does not make an iPhone with internal wireless charging support. Scotty of Strange Parts found a guy in China who developed a kit to add wireless charging capability inside an iPhone 7. It is a slim circuit including Wireless Charging antenna and a connector which slips into an iPhone 7 connector. It requires replacing the back, so there is a port-hole through which wireless charging signals can get into the phone.

The video attached here is a fascinating look at not only getting into an iPhone 7 and making modifications, but the hardware development environment in the Chinese electronics markets. We get to see Scotty taking apart and reassembling an iPhone 7 several times, testing and debugging, and finally getting the thing to work. Plus, we get to see Scotty negotiating with Chinese hardware developers.

The big result is that Scotty is making available kits at http://strangeparts.com/wireless

The 2014/2015 Mac Mini is still, in 2018, the "current" Mac Mini model, and its biggest problem is the great difficulty to upgrade the device. While it is impossible to replace the memory it is possible to replace the hard drive, so long as you bought the upgradeable Mac Mini. Namely the version sold with an HDD. The other, with PCIe SSD, does not support upgrading the disk. You can save some money by purchasing the HDD version and upgrading to SSD on your own, however performance is higher with the PCIe version. The videos attached to this post document the overly unnecessarily difficult process for upgrading such Mac Mini's to have an SSD. You have to remove everything just to swap the disk? And you can't change the memory? The Intel NUC is in the same class of machine, and does not require this kind of over-the-top surgery.

Scotty of Strange Parts has published several in-depth videos on building an iPhone, and building custom iPhones including adding a headphone jack to an iPhone 7. In this video he walks us through the parts required to build an iPhone from parts. This is not just the logic board, screen, battery, and case, but all the parts, as well as hints on which parts to be extra careful aboutl

Communicating data is important - your Arduino might be used as a sensor, or to control some hardware, and therefore needs to either send data to another computer, or to receive commands from another computer. The core necessity is sending and receiving data. This video is an in-depth look at how to implement NRZ (Non-Return-To-Zero) data communications using a single pin on the Arduino. Also in the video is a look at connecting a certain LCD panel to an Arduino.

Apple has declared certain older Mac computers unsupported by newer versions of macOS. In my case, I attempted to install macOS High Sierra on a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, but the installer failed in a very strange way. I constructed a USB installer using the normal process to make a macOS installer, then rebooted the computer to run the installation, but instead the screen simply went blank and the computer turned itself off. In other words installing macOS High Sierra on this mid-2009 MacBook Pro failed in a strange way. After a couple dozen macOS installs on different computers under my belt, I'd never seen this behavior. After some duckduckgoing the cause was found to be this screen capture - that the computer was not supported by High Sierra - and fortunately there was a relatively simple solution.

As a former Mac Mini owner, and a happy Intel NUC owner, I have one suggestion to Apple regarding the Mac Mini. Make it more like the Intel NUC. Apple should be completely embarrassed that Intel has made a better Mac Mini than the Mac Mini. If Intel can do it to perfection, Apple should be able to do it. But with the direction Apple is taking with its hardware design, an updated Mac Mini is going to be even more locked down than that abomination of a Mac Mini Apple released in 2014.

SSD drives are awesome, they're fast, they consume little power, they're light weight, and so on. But we all worry about whether the drive will unexpectedly die, since a truism going around is that SSD drives will just up-and-quit taking your whole computer with it. It's useful, therefore, to have fore-warning by monitoring the health of your SSD drive. A key is to ensure your drive has the S.M.A.R.T. feature (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). The next key is getting software that can query S.M.A.R.T. data, presenting it in a way that makes sense to you.

While SSD drives are awesome and give excellent performance, we all have a fear of the "Sudden SSD Death Syndrome" or that sudden "hey why did my computer just die" moment. While spinning-platter drives also wear out and die, the risk of SSD drive failure weighs in the back of our collective mind. A truism going around is that "overprovisioning" your SSD drive will ensure a longer lifespan for the drive.

Apple really screwed up the iPhone design with the iPhone 7 by not putting in a headphone jack. I don't care about their prescriptive ideas about this, we need a headphone jack dammit. This video is from the guy who built his own iPhone from spare parts he bought in Shenzen China. For this video, he'd bought an iPhone 7 in order to record better videos and found himself really wanting a headphone jack. So, he decided to launch into adding such a jack, knowing there are millions of others around the world chafing at Apple's preconcieved notions and wanting a headphone jack on their iPhone 7.

The process took 17 weeks of trial and error. He started with noting there's an empty space where the headphone jack belongs, and that it'd be vaguely possible to add hardware into that space. What took the 17 weeks is designing a custom circuit, on a flexible substrate, learning to solder flexible circuits and work under a microscope, and to learn how to assemble the result without breaking the parts. That last bit was expensive due to the large number of expensive parts he broke. But, he came out the end with success and a vow to release the design files to the public via his website, and a strong plea to Apple to add a dang headphone jack to the iPhone 8.

With a few add-on parts, you can create your own customized FM radio receiver. The attached project uses an Arduino NANO and a TES5767 radio module that can be used either with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. The display is a Nokia 5110 LCD display, but you could use any display of your choosing. The TES5767 uses an I2C interface, making it easy to integrate, and making an I2C display unit a good addition.

The most useful debugging tool many programmers have is the Print statement. They insert Print statements throughout their code, to see if the program got to certain points and if so what was the values. While there are fancy schmancy debugger packages available, the Print statement is extremely useful and simple. An Arduino presents a challenge because the software executes over on that teensy board, there's no computer display, no direct connection, where would the print statement send its output? Turns out the Arduino software stack includes a Serial console that you can view from inside the Arduino IDE. What we'll do in this article is go over a trivial example of reading an analog value to print on the serial console.

The Arduino is an extremely popular microcontroller for open source DIY hardware hacking projects. There are many flavors of Arduino, and for this project we'll use an Arduino UNO. All Arduino's have a well-defined GPIO interface supporting "Shield" boards providing customized capabilities. The GPIO pins can be connected to your DIY hardware, or to 3rd party Shields, for which there are many suppliers. That's what makes the Arduino so interesting to regular folk like you and me. There's a whole slew of microcontroller chips and boards targeted to commercial and industrial systems. That's not who we are, we're hacking away in a spare bedroom.

With this article we'll take a first step or two to get an Arduino connected to our computer, get accustomed to the IDE, and upload a couple simple programs. Down at the bottom are a few videos.

The Arduino doesn't have an intrinsically native display. Programmers frequently debug their software by printing stuff to a screen, or they need a human-machine-interface to show what's happening, and even a simple text display can be quite handy.

With this article we'll install a particular kind of LCD display, and learn how to drive the LCD display using the LiquidCrystal library. This particular LCD requires wiring up a little circuit that uses a potentiometer to control brightness. While we might yearn for a simple-to-connect-display, we do learn a little electronics along the way. At the end of the day the Arduino is about encouraging us to fire up our soldering iron and making things.

Once you've wired the display, the LiquidCrystal library makes it easy to display text on the screen.

The Arduino marketplace includes a long list of controller boards and add-on accessories. This guide shows some of the best Arduino-compatible products available.

A key step for upgrading the disk on a MacBook Pro is to install a new operating system on the new drive, and then use Migration Assistant to copy over the old data. Depending on how you went about the work, installing Mac OS X on the new system may give you a message: OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install.

This is what it looks like in the installer. Upon seeing this I went "HUH?" because the installation was from a thumb drive I'd used many times to install Mac OS X (El Capitan) successfully.