In its hardware repair instructions and videos, Apple frequently mentions the "black stick," a plastic tool that can be used to pry things apart without damaging our precious glossy exterior finishes (or the sensitive electronics inside). The problem I've found is that nobody seems to have these, instead opting to use credit cards, pens, screwdrivers, chisels, circular saws, or whatever else is handy to crack open the case.

My beautiful girlfriend Michelle is a chemist, and she brought home a giveaway nylon lab spatula (pictured) from a trade show. I found it perfect for use as a black stick. Best of all, it was free.

Other companies sell black tools online. PowerbookMedic offers black nylon "flat probe tool spudgers" for $2.90 apiece. These, they claim, are the same style as Apple uses in its repair videos and documentation.

Stanley also offers a nylon soldering tool that works just as well, and it's less than half the price at $1.30 each.

If anyone else knows of any other ESD-safe, non damaging pry tools (especially for cheap!), feel free to share in comments.

Most people are split on the decision to buy an extended warranty on their electronic devices. Some think it's the best "accessory" that you can buy for your gear, while others think it's a total waste of money. Speaking from my personal experience with AppleCare support -- it has been a worthwhile investment.

While I have never experienced a major problem with any of my Macs, iPod, or iPhone, AppleCare has definitely been there to solve those minor glitches. Case in point: this weekend my Mighty Mouse's scroll wheel stopped working (this is the 3rd Mighty Mouse in less than one year). I simply called Apple's support and told them what was going on. "My Mighty Mouse stopped scrolling," I said. The Apple representative gave me some simple troubleshooting tips to make sure that my computer wasn't doing anything strange. I was asked to check the scroll speed and then they asked me to reset the PRAM (I don't really understand that one, but OK). After that, the representative said that my mouse was, in fact, defective (no duh), took my address and said they would have a new one out to me in "5 to 7 business days."

That was on Saturday. On Monday I got a knock on the door from a DHL delivery guy with a box in his hand -- you guessed it, Apple overnighted me a wireless Mighty Mouse! The cost to overnight the package: $70. This is just one example of AppleCare's good service.

I had to replace the hard drive in my MacBook Pro a few months ago. If you've never done it, I can tell you that after over 20 screws, a little prying and pulling and then reassembling with your fingers crossed, there's probably a moment of stomach-turning worry when you hit the power button. But some people have a knack for making things look a little less gut wrenching.

MacBook Pro owner Max Million replaced his hard drive in about 40 minutes. Working from the excellent instructions at ifixit, he put a 320 gig drive into his laptop. And while he was at it, he put together a time-lapse video of the process that's under 3 minutes long but still manages to convey the tenacity required for the undertaking. So, here's to the brave souls who have no regard for the phrase "not user serviceable". Video after the jump...

If you buy an iPhone and don't have AT&T service, it looks like Apple will be treating your iPhone as an iPod--with no 2 year service guarantee or even, for that matter, a 90-day service plan. Jake Dugard cancelled his iPhone account receiving poor AT&T reception. When his phone stopped working properly shortly after, he was told that Apple would not service his phone. Repairs depend on an active agreement.

It makes sense to me that Apple offers a much longer service time for under-contract iPhones than it does for iPods, but it doesn't make any sense that a no-contract iPhone isn't covered at least under the iPod's one complimentary support incident within the first 90 days of product ownership.

Dugard and/or his friends apparently recorded his service calls but, as an update, has now removed them for the time being from public view. If you followed the earlier link and cannot find them, that is why.

Thanks to iPhoned Home

Update: Quoting the relevant text: "iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair service coverage and up to two years of technical support during the time your wireless agreement remains active with AT&T."

Update 2: Apple 1 Year Limited AT&T warranty here. Have at it. (Thanks to Kai Cherry)

Update 3: An anonymous iPhone Product Special writes in: "During the first 90 days of ownership, iPhone customers experience unlimited support. For all active AT&T account holders, iPhone customers continue to receive unlimited support for the duration of their iPhone's 2 year service agreement. If a customer discontinues their AT&T service before the 90 days of complimentary support, they are still provided with support, and then covered by the 1 year hardware warranty, during which, if they call for support, have a pay-per-incident charge." /p>

Our pals at Engadget have turned up what appears to be the first third-party iPhone battery replacement kit. It comes from Brando, a Hong Kong company that is reasonably well known in the mobile accessories aftermarket. The kit includes the instructions, a screwdriver, a case opener, and the battery. Unfortunately, replacing the iPhone battery looks to be a considerably bigger challenge than on an iPod, as the battery is soldered to the motherboard and the iPhone is rather tougher to crack. If you want to get a sense for how difficult this will be, check out the iPhone take-apart video we posted earlier. In short, even though I've done an iPod replacement, I wouldn't even begin to think about doing an iPhone myself. Needless to say, this will violate your warranty.

The Brando replacement iPhone battery kit is available for $20.

If you've got an iPhone, but for whatever reason - you're in the military or you've got some sort of weird phobia - you need to have the camera removed, you're in luck. For just a hundred bucks, iResQ will do the job for you. The fee covers 3-way shipping (a box to you, then iPhone to iResQ and back again) and the work.

So there you go! Now you can have an iPhone, despite your career or irrational fear.

[Via Infinite Loop]

Mark at Geek Technique received a 700mhz G3 iBook with video issues. The machine would boot, but produce no image on the display or when connected to an outside source. In fact, the issue he was experiencing has been documented by Apple, and a repair program was put in place. However, the program had expired by the time Mark received his 'book. What's he to do? Set that sucker on fire, that's what.

Mark found an article that describes how the video chip becomes detached from the logic board, and how it can be re-soldered back in place. Lacking the proper tools, he tried a tea light, which didn't reach the required temperature. Finally, he burned some alcohol and White Spirit on the board, rebooted the machine and it worked! The video chip had been re-attached, and the iBook was functioning perfectly.

Well done, Mark.

Since it's a lazy summer Sunday without a lot of ground-breaking news, this story about a Dublin man's "walk of shame" may give you a chuckle. Frustrated iMac owner Karl Hayden plans to show Apple up by demonstrating that it will take him less time to walk to the nearest Apple repair center -- about 156 miles away in Cork -- than for Apple to pick up the computer for a promised replacement.

After some failed repair attempts through AppleCare, Apple apparently promised on August 14 to replace the computer. Four days later, Apple hadn't shown up to retrieve the broken iMac before shipping out the new one. Four days doesn't sound like much of a delay to me, but I guess Mr. Hayden's fuse had been burning for a while. He plans to leave Monday morning and carry his iMac with him. Want to take bets on whether he makes it to Cork before the pickup?

The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan?

Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.

Micromat today announced an update to their top-of-the-line system diagnostic and repair software TechTool Pro, bringing the utility to Universal Binary status. As a repair technician, I use TechTool daily to repair corrupted drive volumes, detect failing disks, and stress-test hardware. Although version 4.5 of the program sports no new features aside from Intel support, Micromat is not releasing an updater for previous versions of TechTool. According to the company a large number of under-the-hood changes and tweaks to the program prevents such an update from being practical.

Current owners of the software can download a public beta of the new version, and order a DVD update for $25 which will ship in July. Subscribers to Mircomat's TechTool Quarterly subscription program will automatically receive the update in the mail at no charge.

Disk Utility is a great maintenance and troubleshooting tool for those times when your Mac starts acting up. Repairing permissions can sometimes be handy (even though its true validity is in question as of late), but using the Verify and Repair Disk operations is often a more useful tactic. However, until Mac OS X 10.4.3, you had use Disk Utility to verify or repair your Mac's drive from some sort of an external source. You either had to plug into another Mac in Target Disk mode, or reboot and use the install disks that came with your Mac - not the most friendly process to your workflow. But now, With 10.4.3 and later, you can start up Disk Utility right from within Mac OS X and chose the verify option to make sure system level elements like your file catalog are all in order. One warning though: it is completely normal for your Mac to temporarily freeze or 'seize up' at the beginning of running this operation (you should get the infamous beachball), as this Apple support document explains. After a little while, depending on your Mac's speed and all that jazz, it will come out of its daze and you can continue working/chatting/surfing while it finishes the disk verification process.

This is a really handy tool, perhaps even more valuable than checking permissions, and should be a welcome addition to any Mac maintenance arsenal.

Maintenance, the Automator action that performs many system repair and clean-up tasks, has been updated to version 3.5. New features include:

• Ability to automatically restart after Maintenance has run
• Ability to automatically view the results file
• Time stamp added to results file

Also, for a few versions now, Maintenance has included an AppleScript that I believe performs the same tasks for pre-Tiger 10.4 versions of Mac OS X. Included with the download is a ReadMe PDF that explains what each task is and when/why you should run them.

Maintenance is free and available from Automator World.

I'd bet that many of us are familiar with the scenario that Don Foy describes at Macsimum News: You're listening to your iPod when it inexplicably freezes up. No amount of button pushing will get it to do anything. Or, you plug it into your Mac and nothing happens. It doesn't show up on the desktop and iTunes does not see it. How do you remedy the situation? As Don suggests, remember the five R's:

• Reset your iPod Find out how to reset your model here.
  
• Retry with a different port. Perhaps the iPod itself isn't to blame?
• Restart your computer
• Reinstall the iPod software and iTunes
• Restore your iPod Caution: This wipes everything!

This should have your little friend happy and healthy again in no time. Now, wasn't that easy?

Apple has stepped up to the plate regarding cracked screens on iPod nano's. Here at TUAW Jan reported on the screen cracking issues back in September of last year. If you have a 5G iPod and not a nano, hardware failure such as cracked screens should be covered if you are under warranty. Now it seems Apple will replace the screens free of charge on the iPod nano's on a case by case basis.

This repair coverage should be taken care of at both Apple stores and Apple certified service providers. Let us know if you hear otherwise!

[via Engadget]

It's no secret that we TUAW bloggers love Maintenance, the Automator app that runs a whole slew of maintenance and cleanup tasks. Some of these tasks are designed to be automatically run late at night by OS X, but unless you leave your Mac running 24/7 or you're crazy like me and you're simply up till all hours of the morning, you probably shut down or sleep your Mac and these tasks never see the light of day. Maintenance is great for taking care of these OS X cleanup tasks and can also run other operations such as permissions and preferences repairs - all from a slick little Automator action.

But wait, what's that? You aren't using Tiger yet? Well fret no more! With the latest update to version 3.2, Maintenance now includes a good ol' fashioned applescript for non-Tiger users. I'm sure this works on Panther, and kinda sure it could work on Jaguar too, but I can't find any documentation that specifies. If anyone knows for sure, please enlighten the rest of us.

Once again though, I highly recommend using this action as it's quick, unobtrusive, easy to use and pretty comprehensive in covering the key OS X cleanup tasks that have to be run.