Macbook Pro Keyboard Replacement. Cheap isn’t always good.

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Actual photo of a Macbook Pro 13-inch keyboard replacement taking place. The keyboard of Macbook resides underneath all the components of your Mac. It is secured by numerous screws or rivets, depending on the model of the Mac. To replace the keyboard, the entire logicboard assembly has to be removed. Then close 100 screws have to be unscrewed and screwed back in. The back light and other components then have to be reinstalled. The work is very time consuming and tedious. Apple Authorised Service Providers do not just replace the Macbook Pro keyboard.

They replace the entire top case with consists of the aluminium faceplate with the keyboard screwed in place. The good thing is that it is easier and less time consuming to replace, but customers end up paying a lot more for a Macbook Pro keyboard replacement.

Macbook Pro keyboard replacement

If you have no love for your work, you can probably skip 10 – 20 screws and the customer won’t be able to tell the difference. The backlight might also be misaligned, resulting in uneven lightning of your Macbook keys. Cheap isn’t always good.

We have had a few customers who came to us because after minor replacements by other Mac repair shops run by foreigners, their Mac was not able to boot up. The shop in question charged them for the replacement part and offered no compensation or solutions as to why their Macs does not work after the repair. Another customer who brought her Mac to us because another repair service was not able to repair her Mac. After opening it, we realised that the microphone cable was broken.

At Mac Plus, we love our work. And we bother to put back all the screws by hand, without missing any screws. We are careful with your Macbook, and we don’t scratch or damage them. This is what differentiates us from the competition. If we ever do damage any components, we will replace or repair them for free. Do contact us for your Mac repair needs.

Compatible Solid-State Drive upgrades for Macs

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Compatible Solid-State Drive Upgrades for your Mac

For those wanting to speed up your Macs, Solid-State Drive upgrades for Macs to replace your traditional hard disk can be one of the best upgrade you can ever do. Macs are notoriously reliable if you take good care of them.

However, not all SSDs are provide the fastest performance for certain Macbook, Macbook Pro, and iMac particularly those with Nvidia MCP79 chipset. If you decide to install a SSD by yourself and choose the wrong drive, you could end up only achieving half the data transfer speed your Mac is designed for.

You can check which chipset your Mac has by going to About This Mac>System Report>SATA/SATA Express.

Solid-State Drive upgrades for Macs

A compatible SSD will show the same Link Speed and Negotiated Link Speed

When you have one of these Macs and you install a Solid-State Drive (SSD) with a Sandforce chipset, you might face an issues where your transfer speed decreases be half as the chipset and the drive you have is incompatible. The Mac will show a negotiated link speed  of either 1.5 Gigabit if your Link Speed is 3 Gigabit (SATA 2) or 3 Gigabit if your Link Speed is 6 Gigabit (SATA 3). Macs before 2011 uses SATA 1 or 2, and later Macs uses SATA 3, which is faster.

Mac upgraded with incompatible Solid State Drive achieving only half the transfer speeds

The Samsung 840 Evo has issues as well. It uses a MEX controller.

If you have one of those Macs, the most compatible product is Crucial. The older BX100 uses a Marvell controller. The current BX200 uses a Silicon Motion controller. We have installed a lot of Crucial users without issues.

The newer Samsung 850 Evo and newest Evo 750do do not appear to have such issues. If you have a Mac that is older than 2011, we still recommend Crucial SSDs for both reliability and cost savings.

Read more about the issue here.

Do check out our current range of Solid-State Drive (SSD) upgrades for your Mac.

We are crazy enough to rush downtown for a metal rotary tool to unscrew a stuck screw so that you can get your Mac back next day

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Call us crazy if you will but we like to think of ourselves as passionate. While doing a routine LCD replacement for our customer today, we encountered an issue that all repairers hate.

A stuck screw.

Sometimes Apple uses screws made of soft metal that are screwed too tight. The screw head gets stripped bare when we use our screwdrivers to turn them and there is no way a regular screwdriver can get it out.

So Edmond rushed down to Chinatown to get a trusty Dremel tool, prepare a vacuum to suck up flying bits of metal dust, cover up the important parts of the Mac and there you go! A deep slit was made on the screw so that it can be unscrewed (with the help of Edmond’s strong-armed Dad) with a flat head screwdriver.

Macbook repairs Macbook LCD replacement


All these were done with the permission of the customer of course.

We are not carpenters or smiths. But we are passionate enough to try all means to repair your Mac.

Dispelling the “dunk in rice or blow with hairdyrer to revive Macs or iPhones spilled with liquid” myth

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If you have a water damaged Macbook, it is ALWAYS a bad idea to put it into rice. The internet myth is that rice will absorb moisture from your gadget, and you have a chance of getting it working again.

The fact is, leaving your gadget in rice is the same as leaving it out in the open. If fact, leaving it in the open might help with evaporation even better. This method sometimes works because some people get lucky, or the amount of water spilled is minute. The fact is, most of the time, your device is too tightly sealed for water to escape throughly, and leaving it in a close container allows for corrosion to set in.

Water damaged Macbook logicboard

Eww! Corrosion on a Macbook Pro Logicboard.

Using a hair dyer is worse. The air from your dryer usually isn’t strong enough to blow the liquid off the device, especially when the covers are still on. It pushes liquid further into the crevices of the device instead.

If you spill liquid on your Mac, the best thing to do is quickly shut it down using the power button, with the lid open at 90 degrees, invert the Mac and let the keyboard rest on a cloth on the edge of your table if you are not able to send it to a repair shop immediately.

The next thing to do is to contact a reputable repair centre that specialise in repairing liquid damaged Macs.

At Mac Plus we have been able to repair almost all water damaged Macbook Pro, Macbook Air and Macbook Retina. There were two which we did not manage to repair as the owners sent in their Macs after leaving the Mac un-repaired for a month. The corrosion was too widespread and invasive.

Contact us if you need reliable Mac repairs, Mac SSD upgrades and Mac RAM upgrades. We provide Wifi signal issue solutions as well.

See our Facebook: www.facebook.com/macplus.sg for our 5 star reviews!

Yet another black sheep repair shop

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As we do Mac repairs as well, there’s a conflict of interest when we name other industry players with less honourable ethics so we can’t name them, lest we are accused of shaming our competitors. We only share the experiences of our customers because we feel that customers should be warned of such places.

This particular black sheep repair shop has 3 star ratings on their Facebook and their webpage lists several temporary operating locations in central and eastern areas of Singapore. It is helmed by foreigners.

My customer called to ask for advice regarding a Macbook Air repair that has water spillage that was supposedly repaired by that particular shop. He was charged $200+ for the repair, but after a few days, the Macbook Air was not able to charge. When we went back to the shop, they told him there was nothing further they could do because the logicboard was damaged and it needed a new logicboard, and the amount he was charged was not refundable.

I advised the customer to go back to ask for a refund instead of persuading him to bring his Macbook Air down for a repair with us as I did not want him to end up paying more for repairs without first closing his case with the first repair shop.

Another of our regular customer went to them to repair her Mac. She had forgotten that she had gotten her Mac serviced by us before and was satisfied with our service. She said she would have brought her Mac to us but went to them as she had forgotten about Mac Plus in her haste to get her Mac repaired. The company in question wanted to format her flash drive, citing that it had issues, even though the flash drive was not the component that she had gone there for repairs for.

Yet another customer called us to ask if we could diagnose his Macbook Pro Retina, as his computer could not start after speaker replacement done by the shop and they did not know what was wrong.

At Mac Plus, rest assured all our repairs comes with a no-repair, no-charge guarantee. Diagnosis is always free for preliminary checks. If further intensive diagnosis needs to be performed, we will inform you of the fees beforehand.

Yet another customer’s grave misadventure with an Apple Authorized Service Provider

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This review is base on actual experience by a customer. He wrote about his bad experience with an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP). After his bad experience with them, he decided to bring his Macbook to us for diagnosis and servicing. It turned out that the AASP made a wrong diagnosis and quoted him a hefty repair that was not needed. Below is the gist of his experience.

His Macbook Pro was not able to charge, but was able to boot into OS X. He brought it to QCD, and was charged a diagnosis fee of $130. Upon receiving his quotation for repair, he was told that his logicboard, the main component of his Macbook Pro, has issues and needed to be replaced for about $900. As the customer had some knowledge of hardware, and was not comfortable with the hefty price, he decided against the repair, and brought his Mac to us.

Upon inspection, we realised the component that failed was not the main logicboard, but a separate internal magsafe DC port connector, which is relatively inexpensive, and can be replaced without changing the whole main logicboard.

Apple Authorized Service Provider

Excerpt from our Facebook page. The customer wrote about his bad experience with an Apple Authorized Service Provider

Not only has the AASP quoted the customer for a repair of a component that is perfectly fine, but has also charged a diagnosis fee for it. It’s akin to a doctor who not only gives a misdiagnosis, but also charges high prices for an operation that the patient does not need. I thought such practices only occurs with small time dishonest repairers. I’m appalled to know such things happen to Apple Authorised Service Providers.

Here at Mac Plus, we aim to provide ethical quality repairs. We will explain to you how we arrive at our diagnosis in as layman terms as possible and will not charge for repairs that are not needed.

What to do if you spill water on your Mac?

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What do you do if you accidentally spill water or liquids on your Mac? Many people’s first response if their Mac shutdowns down and refuses to boot is that they have a  water-damaged Mac, has suffered a short-circuit, and that is it permanently damaged and requires an expensive repair, such as a logicboad replacement.

Indeed, this is what Apple Authorized Service Providers would probably tell you. They will probably tell you that your logicboard, which is the main component inside your Mac is damaged and requires a $800 – $1000 replacement.

They are not wrong per se, but the damage can be easily reversed. MacBooks that have suffered water spills may have corroded parts, but they can be easily revived by chemical washes and by doing component level repairs on the board.

Using industrial cleaning machines with the right chemicals, corrosion on the logicboard can be cleaned off. The board is then flushed with 100% alcohol to remove any water, moisture and impurities. It is then left to dry. The board is tested and any short-circuited chips on the logicboard are replaced.

At Mac Plus, we have a high rate in reviving Macs that has water spilled on them. One customer even spilled beer on his Macbook Pro Retina (ouch) and was glad he didn’t have to buy a new one!

So, what should you do the next time you spill water on your Mac, or any other gadget?

  1. Remove all power, such as the magsafe connector
  2. Wipe dry the liquid as much as possible
  3. Shut it down immediately
  4. Do not turn the device on again
  5. If you are geeky, remove the backplate, battery, and dissemble your Mac
  6. Send in it to a professional repair shop that explicitly states they do chemical washes and logicboard repairs. Some shops might offer logicbaord replacements and charge you a higher price for it.

One of our customer brought in hers, which was declared dead by the service providers. The board even has algae on it. It was eventually revived by Mac Plus.

Apple Authorized Service Providers in Singapore

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Our clients have commented on the bad service offered by the Apple Authorized Service Providers. One said that they quoted him for a a logicboard replacement costing over $900 SGD. When they came to our shop, we discovered that a small removable component costing $200 was spoilt, not the logicboard.

Another client said her brand new 2 week old Macbook Air’s OS X was corrupted. The Apple Authorized Service Provider QCD wanted to charge for reinstallation of software, even though her Mac was under warranty. They claimed that Mac’s warranty only covered hardware but not software.

One other customer sent in his Macbook Pro Retina to another Apple Authorised Service Provider for a check. When he brought it in to us at Mac Plus, I was appalled to discover that some internal screws were missing and the internal rubber fan linings were gone.

The truth is, Apple Authorised Service Providers are not run by Apple themselves. They are run by third parties who are authorised by Apple. In Singapore, we do not have Apple Stores and Apple geniuses to provide the level of service Apple is known in countries like the States.

We are not Apple Authorised Service Providers, but we are able to secure original Apple parts and brand new logicboard replacements. At Mac Plus, we provide professional and reliable Mac repairs and upgrade services. We have a fast turnaround time ranging from on-the-spot, same day, or 1-3 days depending on the issue. We also do Mac repairs at our your residential address for an additional fee.

Check our Facebook for our reviews! We are thankful that our clients have given us 5 stars reviews.

Contact us if you need help with your Macs.