5 ms·

Back in the day when laptops still came with a CD/DVD drive by default I had a customer with a broken MacBook that didn't power on at all, and some expensive di

Back in the day when laptops still came with a CD/DVD drive by default I had a customer with a broken MacBook that didn't power on at all, and some expensive disc was stuck in the drive. Pretty much all disc drives that have been produced in the history of disc drives come with a little pinhole where you can stick in a paperclip to manually push the opening mechanism exactly for this kind of scenario, so you can recover your disc if your computer or drive fails. Except Apple computers, of course, because such a useful piece of functionality would be ugly and an abomination unto Saint Jobs, or something. So I had to spend a few hours opening up that MacBook that very clearly wasn't designed with "opening up" in mind. I was lucky this machine wasn't in warranty and dead, so putting it back together wasn't really a concern.

selykg 4y ago
Pretty sure those had a release, it just required sticking the pin in the right place in the disc drive opening.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
I have used to take CDs or 3 of drives with that hole and paperclip a great many times. Once I faced this issue with 2009 MacBook (white plastic one), I managed to pull the disk out of its drive with a very thin pliers.
mbreese 4y ago
It's not like those Macbooks were all that difficult to take apart. I know I took mine apart to remove the DVD drive to replace it with an SSD. It was something like this: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-unibody-faq/how-to-replace-optical-drive-with-ssd-hard-drive-macbook-pro-unibody.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-u...
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  It's stupid if you need to do it in the first place, and/or that you need to hire an IT person to do it for you. What if it was still in warranty? What if you wanted it repaired? If you needed that disc you were screwed until the Apple Certified™ repair centre could do their thing.

selykg 4y ago

Pretty sure those had a release, it just required sticking the pin in the right place in the disc drive opening.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

I have used to take CDs or 3 of drives with that hole and paperclip a great many times. Once I faced this issue with 2009 MacBook (white plastic one), I managed to pull the disk out of its drive with a very thin pliers.

mbreese 4y ago

It's not like those Macbooks were all that difficult to take apart. I know I took mine apart to remove the DVD drive to replace it with an SSD. It was something like this: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-unibody-faq/how-to-replace-optical-drive-with-ssd-hard-drive-macbook-pro-unibody.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-u...

Beltalowda 4y ago
It's stupid if you need to do it in the first place, and/or that you need to hire an IT person to do it for you. What if it was still in warranty? What if you wanted it repaired? If you needed that disc you were screwed until the Apple Certified™ repair centre could do their thing.