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The smallest replaceable part on a MacBook is the entire MacBook this is where the bourne comparison needs to come back into the discussion, because it depends
by monkeycantype 11y ago
The smallest replaceable part on a MacBook is the entire MacBook
this is where the bourne comparison needs to come back into the discussion, because it depends who is doing the replacing.
I, my partner and my uncle had had three recent macbooks experience sudden unintended swamping, two with water one with red wine, charlie fixed them all.
The apple geniuses - james bond company men all - carefully removed the screws from my computer, reverently placing them in actual surgical kidney dishes, then looked at me with the practiced empathy on their young beautiful faces, shook their heads slowly without breaking eye contact and said 'logic board' - the macbook cancer diagnosis.
magic charlie is the bourne in this story.
I met charlie at his office, a claustrophobic box on a suburban shopping strip, tobacco fogged,
every horizontal surface except for a few stepping stones between charlie and the door
fractalling out jagged piles of derelict dismembered macbooks, maybe about a thousand, in pieces,
some with surprisingly brutal injuries, a fist sized whole though a 15 inch retina.
I was lucky to meet him, the shop had been open a year, he was planning on closing it down and working out of home.
he got few walk in customers,
the few that did seemed unsettled by his casual disemboweling of their pristine objects of beauty
atop of a mound of incomplete repairs, crowded by ashtrays - most of them overflowing, some for screws.
Those people would leave to take their computers to apple licensed stores,
who - in violation of licensing agreements, but in obedience with the imperative of profit -
sent the work to charlie. He charged the same price either way.
If a macbook is atomic, charlie is a quarks man, I watched for about ten minutes until he kicked me out,
as he scrounged chips from the racks of donor laptops,
desoldering and re-soldering tiny components into the open heart of my machine.
The only explanations he gave of the undertaking were when he pointed a chip on the logic board and said 'sound',
then lifted the board to eye level, held at two diagonal corners in his finger tips, and slowly spun the board through a full rotation, then made eye contact for the one and only time and said 'keyboard'.
When I came back the shop was shut. For about a week no-one answered the phone.
Then I got a message from a woman on my phone "your computer's ready".
I dropped by charlie's, I wanted to speak with him a moment, to emote my awe and gratitude,
he wasn't interested, he didn't look up.
the woman, standing in one of the bare-floored stepping stones took my money, don't remember how much, but less than a hundred.
it worked and still does.
- Vexs 11y agoThat story just makes me sad. Like, from the bottom of my soul and my hacker's heart kinda sad.
- fit2rule 11y agoDon't be sad about it, there are plenty of Charlie's. I knew a Charlie in Hollywood, CA. He was an old cranky Asian-American guy, greying beard, real guru stereotype, had a big store full of hi-fi and guitar and studio equipment. Every studio engineer in SoCal knew that if they needed something fixed, fast, no questions asked, you took your synth/guitar/studio equipment to him. He looked at you, told you exactly how much, exactly when to come back, don't argue with him or leave the shop immediately. In the 90's I built my synth studio by buying cheap stuff that was considered borked - SH101's, Pro One, DX's, etc. - by some studio mishap - spilled wine, homicidal drummer, etc. All of it broken somehow, and thus cheap. A Saturday afternoon with Charlie, and it was like it was brand new. So the point is, there are plenty of 'em out there, still doing the work. The key to it is always remember one thing, and one thing only: hardware rules us all. Working hardware, even more so.
- inklesspen 11y agoAny tips on how to find a Charlie? (I'm in NYC right now, say.)