Well, a couple of years ago, my Early 2013 MacBook Pro 15" died.
A little while ago, I came across a Louis Rossman video about this problem.
The problem was that the U8900 chip (which regulates power to the GPU) has absolutely abysmal soldering, and after a while of working fine, the solder contacts come loose, and when it heats up, it loses connection due to the expansion, after which the voltage to the GPU drops, the kernel panics, the display turns off.
When I send the MacBook to Apple to fix it, as they were required to fix it as it was a manufacturing defect, all they did was put a little rubber strip over the chip, so that the chip would be pressed onto the board by the backplate beneath the logic board.
No reflowing the chip, just a fucking flap of rubber, too thin at that.
About a year after the fix, it died again. No wonder. Rubber degrades and compresses, and stops exerting as much force after a while.
So, I found a teardown guide, took the logic board out, and put in a bit of folded up electrical tape such that a lot more force is applied to the chip when it is pressed up against the backplate. It’s such a fiddly palaver and the wires and connectors are so delicate and petite I genuinely expected to turn it back on and the keyboard and USB port would be fucked or something.
But, the thing to which I owe my happiness today, is that it seems I had too little confidence in how careful I can be with my chubby, clumsy fingers.
So far, it’s working absolutely fine - and I can enjoy not using Windows and instead using an objectively superior operating system. Apple are arseholes sometimes, but fuck me do they make a good operating system. Miles better for software development in my book. No fucking about with the linux subsystem on Widows if you want bash. And no fucking about with Linux, as much as I love it, it just lacks the spit and polish of Mac OS at a user interface and software installation/availability level.
