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The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

downtowndougbrown.com

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Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#131

Post by extraduder_ire »

rwmj wrote: post #55
codewiz wrote: post #6

Commodore had 3 capacitors mounted backwards on the A3640, the CPU board of the Amiga 4000 with 68040 processors: https://youtu.be/zhUpcBpJUzg?si=j6UFmIJzoC-UDS6u&t=945 Also mentioned here: https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a3640

ZX Spectrum +2 shipped with transistors backwards: https://www.bitwrangler.uk/2022/07/23/zx-spectrum-2-video-fi... This even caused visible artifacts on the display, which was apparently not enough for the problem to be noticed at the factory.

I think Clive Sinclair was notorious for wanting products to be brought to market quickly, with pretty aggressive feature sets. They very well may have noticed it at the factory, but didn't want to do a fix because it was technically functional.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#132

Post by mikewarot »

I've found a ground lug in a Kilowatt Grounded Grid amplifier... that didn't ground the grid.

I found a bad solder joint that looked ok, but was intermittent, and had been that way, in a Television built in 1948 and used for decades.

Bad design and assembly goes back forever, as near as I can tell.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#133

Post by cosmic_cheese »

moooo99 wrote: post #118
ethernot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason this is an issue for repair shops is they can't sell you recycled stolen parts at bottom of market prices for a sky high mark up. On top of that the "non genuine parts", some of which really are utterly dire, show up in the OS as being not genuine parts. Buying genuine parts, which are available from Apple, eats into the margins. There is very little honour in the repair market, despite the makeup app…

> The only reason this is an issue for repair shops is they can't sell you recycled stolen parts at bottom of market prices for a sky high mark up. This is just incredibly dishonest framing and completely ignoring what the right to repair and third party repair shop issue is all about. > Buying genuine parts, which are available from Apple, It is not a margin problem, it is an availability problem. Apple does not all…

Even if Apple has room for improvement here, I think it’s still worth it to try to curb the market for stolen parts, because that’s going to exist even if Apple sold spare parts in bulk at-cost simply because there exist unscrupulous repair shops that have no qualms with charging you OEM part prices while using gray market parts that cost a fraction as much on eBay, Aliexpress, etc.

For instance, maybe Apple could supply parts in bulk to repair shops but require registration of those parts prior to usage. The repaired iPhone would function regardless but loudly alert the user that unregistered parts were used to repair it. Gray market parts naturally aren’t going to be able to be registered (either due to serial not existing in their system or having been parted out from stolen devices), and thus the user is given some level of assurance that they’re not paid for questionable repair services.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#134

Post by ChrisClark »

spockz wrote: post #120
amluto wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget “cheap”. As far as I can tell, many modern ungrounded power supplies, including Apple’s, have enough A/C coupling from the line to the output that you can feel a bit of tingling when you touch a metallic object connected to the output.

How is this even allowed? My tv had it. My MacBooks since time memorial have it. They all feel “spicy”.

My Fold 5 has that feeling along the hinge when charging too, no matter the charger I use. I guess it's considered safe, but it's weird.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#135

Post by belval »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #129
magic_smoke_ee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence by design. This class of problem is where under-regulation and lack of standards benefits only sellers and cheats buyers. PS: Also, Amazon should be required to test all of the electronic, safety, and food products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance.

I am assuming you are an ee (like myself)...I have never designed a product with a built in expiration, nor have I ever seen any app notes or write ups on the engineering of it - something engineers love to do. What I have seen done is cheaping out on parts in order to get the price as low as possible, because customers shop primarily on price. Not to lash out, but it kind of hits a nerve for me, because people think…

To be fair this is hardly limited to EE and is the issue with the race to the bottom in all product categories. Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein.

Additionally, the issue is that as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup. I don't see the cap manufacturer on the box so the 25$ light bulb might last 10 years or it might last 6 months just like the 3$ one. At least with the 3$ one I can come back and buy another...

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#136

Post by andrewflnr »

magic_smoke_ee wrote: post #125
Workaccount2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why so many LED bulbs are shit, lots of heat in a small space full of electrolytic caps.

Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence by design. This class of problem is where under-regulation and lack of standards benefits only sellers and cheats buyers. PS: Also, Amazon should be required to test all of the electronic, safety, and food products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance.

Please think for a moment not only about whether it's feasible for AMZN to run a safety testing program for all possible consumer products of our modern technological civilization, but whether you really want them to be in charge of it. Maybe they should just require certifications of testing in the jurisdictions where those products are sold?

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#138

Post by aero_code »

shiroiushi wrote: post #42
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many use cases for which a decade-old computer is still perfectly serviceable and even where they aren't, those computers can be repurposed for the ones that are. Moreover, we're talking about televisions and old Macs. TVs with higher resolutions might come out, but lower resolution ones continue to be sold new (implying demand exists at some price), and then why should anybody want to replace a functioning…

>There are many use cases for which a decade-old computer is still perfectly serviceable and even where they aren't, those computers can be repurposed for the ones that are. It depends. Older computers usually guzzle power, especially if you look at the absolutely awful Pentium4 systems. You're probably better off getting a RasPi or something, depending on what exactly you're trying to do. Newer systems have gotten m…

> Older computers usually guzzle power, especially if you look at the absolutely awful Pentium4 systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_4_proces...

The Northwood chips were 50 to 70 W. HT chips and later Prescott chips were more 80 to 90 W. Even the highest chips I see on the page are only 115 W.

But modern chips can use way more power than Pentium 4 chips:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_Lake

The i5-14600K has a base TDP of 125 W and turbo TDP of 181 W, and the high-end i9-14900KS is 150 W base/253 W turbo. For example, when encoding video, the mid-range 14600K pulls 146 W: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-i9-14900k-cpu-r...

More recent processors can do more with the same power than older processors, but I think for the most part that doesn't matter. Most people don't keep their processor at 100% usage a lot anyway.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#139

Post by qingcharles »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #127
mhardcastle wrote: post #108

Why include that capacitor at all if it doesn't matter whether it works?

Also known as the Madman Muntz theory of Engineering :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing

I never knew there was a name for this :)

When I was a demo coder my artist friend would just haphazardly go through all my assembler code and snip random lines out until it stopped working to improve performance.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#140

Post by BlueTemplar »

Filligree wrote: post #128
magic_smoke_ee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence by design. This class of problem is where under-regulation and lack of standards benefits only sellers and cheats buyers. PS: Also, Amazon should be required to test all of the electronic, safety, and food products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance.

That, and customers insisting on preexisting form factors. Fitting the electronics and LEDs into the space of a traditional lightbulb comes with compromises, such as not having proper heat dissipation on either.

Yeah, you would think they would be two separate devices by now...
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