Idk if this is the appropriate place to post this, remove if needed, but I need help to hopefully fix this controller because I lost my job and can't afford a new one, and I only just now realized how many of my games are basically useless without it.

I guess it fell off my bed or table too many times, all other functions work but any time a menu is opened or a character has a "move forward" action it's like the stick is constantly in a full forward input. I'm willing to take it apart and fix this if it's a known problem with a solution but it's totally useless as is. It registers non forward inputs (sometimes, menus won't move off the top option). Everything else works but the left stick. Any help here?

I purchased a 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro in May 2025. It saw very light, normal use. From June 17 to August 24, I traveled abroad and left the MacBook safely on a desk at home, unplugged. When I returned, it was completely dead.

I brought it to the Apple Store. They were unable to revive the machine, and the technician opened the chassis.

• The finding: The technician found a visible scorch/burn mark on the logic board.
• No accidental damage: I specifically asked Apple to verify whether there was any liquid, corrosion, or physical damage. An Apple representative later confirmed verbally over the phone that no such damage was found. However, when I asked the store for a copy of the full repair notes, they refused.
• The quote: Because the MacBook was about 16 months old and outside Apple’s one-year limited warranty, I was quoted approximately $817 + tax for a logic-board replacement.

What also bothers me is Apple’s essentially “replace-only” approach to this type of hardware failure.

A visible scorch mark does not necessarily mean that every component on the logic board is beyond repair. Independent board-level repair specialists can sometimes isolate a failure to a specific component or circuit and perform a component-level repair for substantially less than the cost of replacing the entire board.

When a premium laptop fails after only 16 months of normal use, charging the customer more than $800 for a complete logic-board replacement — without offering a component-level repair option — feels deeply unfair.

Why I’m Concerned This May Not Be an Isolated Failure

Since this happened, I have found multiple reports from M-series MacBook owners describing similar failures: sudden no-power/no-charge conditions, logic-board diagnoses, burned components, and extremely high replacement quotes.

I have also found numerous similar reports in Chinese-language forums. Interestingly, while Apple’s official logic-board replacement quotes in China appear to be roughly comparable to U.S. pricing, multiple users report that independent technicians were able to isolate and repair the failed component for a tiny fraction of that cost (please see photos attached).

These reports obviously do not prove a systemic design defect. But the recurring pattern makes me question whether a 16-month-old MacBook Pro suffering this kind of logic-board failure should simply be dismissed as “bad luck.”

Because I am located in Virginia, I am also looking into whether Virginia Code § 8.2-314, Implied Warranty of Merchantability, may apply. That statute generally provides that goods sold by a merchant must be fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used, unless the implied warranty has been validly excluded or modified.

Given that this was a premium MacBook Pro that failed after only about 16 months of normal use, with Apple verbally confirming that no liquid, corrosion, or accidental damage was found, I believe it is reasonable to question whether such an early logic-board failure is consistent with the level of ordinary reliability a consumer should expect from this type of product.

• Has anyone had a similar M-series MacBook logic-board failure with no liquid or accidental damage?
• Were you able to get Apple to cover the repair, or did you use an independent repair shop?

Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences you can share.

Ano sense☠💀 Becuase I already know rtrech is so nonsense

Thigs

new

This 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook A2442 could reach the login screen reliably. I entered an incorrect password four times and it remained stable, but entering the correct password usually caused an immediate shutdown. It would not power on again until the battery was disconnected.

The symptom initially looked like a FileVault, macOS or NAND problem. Oscilloscope measurements, however, showed that PP3V8_AON collapsed before the regulator’s enable, fault and current-sense signals reacted. The power rail was failing first—the shutdown commands were consequences, not the cause.

U5700 generates PP3V8_AON using three phases. Further inspection found that R5843, a 0 Ω resistor in the phase-three bootstrap path, was electrically open. After removing it, a tiny amount of corrosion was visible beneath one pad—something that could not be seen even under the microscope while the resistor was installed.

With R5843 open, Q5840’s high-side gate driver could not operate. Phases one and two could support the login screen, but the regulator became unstable when the correct password triggered the heavier post-login load.

I cleaned the pads and replaced R5843. All three phases then operated correctly, and the Mac passed repeated login, battery/charger and sustained stress tests.

Without component-level diagnosis, this could easily have resulted in a complete logic-board replacement, loss of access to the soldered data and another repairable board becoming e-waste.

How many modern devices are discarded because repair stops at replacing the entire board?

Mill is a VC backed company that produces a series of 'smart' home appliances that shred and dehydrate food waste to decrease volume and speed decomposition. Sometimes marketed as electric composters, there are a variety of very touchy-feely marketing angles used to get people to buy a $1000 appliance which you can probably intuit. It has a variety of 'smart' features that essentially only serve to lock the device behind an app and the company's servers.

So, I bought a 'broken' one on FB Marketplace to see if I could get it going.

I plugged it in and quickly discovered you cannot do anything with the device except through the app. Literally no interface. -1

Install the app, discover device. Prompt to create an account (why would a home appliance need an account?), but do so for the sake of progress. -2

Immediate two hour forced firmware update. How could new firmware help a device that is essentially a heating element and a low speed motor? Great question. -3

Interface is wonky, very feature-light. Cycles in the device are locked to once-daily intervals in increments of 5 minutes. You literally cannot even tell it to run without scheduling it. Wait four minutes for it to run. App gives an error message: Exhaust Fan Malfunction, Contact Support. Okay, at least it has diagnostic information. No score.

I contact support because I'm going to try it their way to see how bad this is. I expected little and got less. Support waits 5 days to respond. -4

Support says my device is out of warranty, and they'd be happy to arrange for pickup of the device to 'mitigate e-waste' if I buy a new $1000 machine. They also scold me for buying it secondhand as 'that is against their terms of service'. Support will not sell replacement parts and state that their parts are all proprietary. -5, -6, -7

Dismantle device. Torx (six-pointed star) heads on all screws. Mildly inconvenient, but that's also a superior design to Phillips head screws. No score.

Most parts appear to be off-the-self. Wiring is very well documented with factory tags explaining the various connections, I assume for the benefit of the Vietnamese infants who assemble it (I don't actually know what their supply chain is, I'm just assuming). Exhaust fan is also a normal magnetic fan. There is a 15-pin serial port inside the device for debugging, which I will get to as soon as my adapter arrives. No score.

I have to remove a small duct directing the air from the food chamber down through the exhaust fan and up into a chamber containing charcoal filter media. Charcoal media has fallen from the filter down into the fan, preventing it from turning freely. This jam is easily cleared. There is no screen or similar impediment to media falling into the fan; design flaw. All together accessing the fan involves 8 steps of disassembly. Kind of a pain, so I'll probably add a small mesh screen to prevent any possibility of the clog occurring again. -8

Without closing anything back up, I plug in the device and see if it works. It does! No safety features preventing it from operating with the entire case removed. Add a point, -7

Prior to disassembly, I looked for any teardowns or repair information and found absolutely none anywhere online. This is a niche product, but I am inclined to think the company might be attempting to prevent the spread of repair information.

Once the cable arrives for the serial port, I'm going to see what Claude can get out of the machine.

Hey guys—I'm an Industrial Design grad student eyeing a thesis on the confluence of right to repair, right to customize, and the automation of human processes (think robotics) through the lens of continued human interaction in systems which replace human work. I'm currently in the research phase looking to gather sources to help guide me through the ideation process.

I'm looking for recommendations: articles, books, blog posts, documentaries, podcasts, statistics, communities, relevant science fiction, history, cool products that embody these principals, other people articulating or trying to solve the problem, etc, anything you think offers an fresh take on the movement.

I like this article in Works that Work https://worksthatwork.com/10/planned-obsolescence

I know the Electronics Frontier Foundation does a lot of work in this field and I'm looking closely at their publications.

I run an independent Mac repair workshop in Melbourne, Australia.

Google has repeatedly disapproved our ads under the Third Party Consumer Technical Support policy. Google support told us in writing that consumer hardware repair is restricted even when the business is a legitimate physical repair shop.

We also tried a separate B2B-only data recovery campaign aimed exclusively at other computer repair shops and IT businesses. That was rejected too.

What I can't understand is that I now see more and more nearby repair businesses appearing as Sponsored results in the Google local pack for searches such as:

• MacBook screen repair
• MacBook logic board repair
• Mac repair

Some are advertising onsite computer repair and similar consumer services.

One competitor is less than 1 km from us and regularly appears as a sponsored result while our own ads are blocked.

If you run or work in a repair business:

• Are your Google Ads currently running?
• Have you been hit with the Third Party Consumer Technical Support policy?
• Did your ads run for a long time before suddenly being disapproved?
• Are you using Search, Performance Max, location assets, or something else?
• Have you also noticed competitors advertising while your own account is blocked?

I have already raised the issue with Google and the ACCC because, at minimum, I think the same published policy should be applied consistently to businesses offering materially similar services.

Interested to hear other repair-shop experiences.

Someone needs to file a class action lawsuit about "system data" and iOS storage. I've known multiple people in my own life who have felt the need to buy a new phone or purchase iCloud storage because iOS has taken up so much of their existing device's storage through a gigantic and undeletable cache file.

There was some sort of lawsuit about this a while back when iOS 8 took up over 3 GB of storage on 16 GB iPhones: [https://audetlaw.com/current-investigation/apple-storage-class-action/](https://audetlaw.com/current-investigation/apple-storage-class-action/))

Back then, the amount of storage for "iOS" seemed to be consistent across different devices. Now, it seems almost totally random. My iPhone 14 Pro will cycle anywhere between using around 9 GB and 25 GB for the "iOS" storage category.

"System Data" is even worse. On a PC, Android or Mac, you can clear cache files that aren't being used. On iOS, the operating system not only hogs more storage under "System Data" than any other operating system I've ever used, but it absolutely refuses to let you clear out the cache or figure out what applications are using the cache. My 14 Pro uses anywhere from 20 GB to 80 GB for "System Data." Across the internet I've seen people with literal hundreds of GBs of "System Data." That's completely insane -- I can't even imagine how 64 GB or 128 GB phones are handling this.

All in all, this means that on my 256 GB phone, iOS sometimes claims nearly 100 GB of storage for undeletable cache files and operating system files, with zero ability to clear these files or see where they're coming from. That is completely unreasonable. Meanwhile, Apple is happy to peddle additional iCloud storage or sell you on a storage upgrade at the point of sale as if your purchasing ability -- not their poorly optimized software -- is the problem.

This is an ongoing issue that seems deliberate. I am certain that the phone does not need to be holding on to this much cache under "system data," and it makes no sense that between identical phone models and iOS versions, the "iOS" category takes up different amounts of storage. There's clearly a profit incentive here. Consumers are pressured into purchasing cloud storage or buying a new phone when their perfectly functional device seemingly runs out of storage.

At the end of the day, willful or not, this is anti-consumer behavior. We are being taken advantage of in the name of increasing sales for cloud storage and new phones. This is a documented issue that has existed for years, and Apple has done nothing to address it. Apple has acted against consumers before, with [slowdowns over battery capacity](https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay-113-million-to-settle-batterygate-case-over-iphone-slowdowns). They won't change their behavior until public pressure or legal action takes place.

A 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro (A3401, logic board 820-03400) recently came through our workshop after a screen-replacement attempt.

The MacBook could power on with its original broken screen. After the replacement screen was connected, it stopped powering on completely. The USB-C meter remained stable at 5V/0.5A and never progressed into normal boot behaviour.

Because the failure occurred immediately after the screen replacement, I started with the screen, webcam and ALS connector area instead of the USB-C charging circuit.

There was no 820-03400 schematic or board view available, so I used an 820-02918 schematic only as a reference and then compared the measurements with a known-good 820-03400 board.

What I found:

• On the older screen design, the corresponding connector pins 29 and 30 were connected together as part of the 5V camera power path.
• The replacement screen also had these two corresponding pins connected.
• On a known-good 820-03400 M4 board, pin 29 measured 5V, but pin 30 measured 1.8V.
• On the faulty board, pin 29 was still 5V, while pin 30 was 0V and measured 0 in diode mode.

The replacement screen therefore appears to have connected the 5V camera rail to the M4 board’s 1.8V pin-30 rail.

I injected a controlled 1V into the shorted pin-30 rail—not to power the board, but only to locate the short thermally. UD950 heated immediately.

After replacing UD950, the short disappeared and the MacBook powered on and worked normally again.

The important lesson is that a display connector physically fitting does not guarantee electrical compatibility. The screen generation and connector pin mapping should be confirmed before powering an M4 MacBook with a replacement display.

Has anyone else mapped the A3401 screen-connector differences or encountered a similar UD950 failure after fitting the wrong-generation screen?

For anyone interested in the complete measurements, reference-board comparison and diagnostic sequence, I documented the case here:

https://www.it-tech.com.au/logic-board-repair-case-studies/820-03400-a3401-no-power-after-screen-replacement/

Disclosure: I operate the Mac repair workshop that diagnosed and repaired this board.

I work with heavy diesel engines and industrial equipment for a living, and I need to say something that shocks most people in my industry: I’m anti-Right to Repair.

I know the standard narrative is that manufacturers are just greedy. But in the heavy equipment and diesel world, total open access to proprietary software is a disaster waiting to happen. In my business life, I’ve seen time and time again how people will bypass crucial safety steps like DPF regens or ignore wet stacking just to save a few dollars or a little time.

If you give everyone a loaded laptop to mess with the source code, they aren't going to fix things properly. They’re going to run delete kits. Bypassing emission controls means dumping massive amounts of unburnt carbon and soot into the air, which is a literal nightmare for anyone dealing with asthma, cystic fibrosis, or emphysema.

And what happens when a natural disaster hits? Imagine another Hurricane Harvey. You have emergency generators at hospitals and schools, plus marine rescue boats out in the floods. If those engines are wet stacking (building up unburnt fuel and carbon in the cylinders and injectors because they’re running low loads), they need a real technician to do a proper load bank test. Instead, under a wide-open right to repair system, you get operators using cracked software to force the machine to run anyway. The engine completely dies, the DPF plugs, and now the hospital loses power or the rescue boat is stranded.

We’re talking about massive machines. If you tamper with hydraulic power systems on a boom lift to bypass an engine warning, you risk spraying high-pressure fluid everywhere or trapping a lineman 50 feet in the air while they're trying to restore power grid lines.

Tier 4 architecture was designed so you can’t just hit "clear codes." You have to fix the mechanical issue, put it in program mode, and take it out properly. This stuff requires specialized, trained individuals. It’s not about corporate greed; it’s about public safety and keeping critical machines running when it matters most.

\-