Sustainability is so much more than just separating waste into their designated bins. Sustainability is, among other things, also very much about consumer behaviour such as making sure your stuff last.

My primary machine is a Macbook Pro from 2017. It works well, handles all the things I need despite being almost 6 years old. It’s not the most high end configuration, but it never really had any sort of trouble, except for its battery. The general problem with the machine is, however, that there are no DIY spare parts on the market, everything imaginable is soldered directly to the board, and swapping the battery is not recommended at all except for authorised repair shops. These cost a fortune. At some point in time, for sake of improving my mobility, I started to set my sight on an inherited defect Macbook Pro from 2011. I felt like I should give it some love before deciding to buy a new machine.

This line of models was built with lead-free soldering, which is kinda cool, except… the solder balls at the discreet AMD graphics card are not able to stand its heat, much. This forced Apple to do a recall programme running until end of 2016, which my girlfriend, the former owner, didn’t even know about. She happily used the MacBook until 2021-ish (including 1 authorised repair), when it finally refused to boot and I embraced the opportunity to put it aside for a future project.

Fast forward today, I started researching the possible problem and everything indeed pointed to a defect GPU, or… a disconnected one. The solutions ranged from micro-soldering under a microscope, through crude separation of contacts for the whole unit, to putting it into the oven.

The solution with the oven sounded bizarre. And I loved that.

The science behind it seemed solid, but there really were just 2 or 3 videos online with the process. People seemed to be more open to the geekier solutions. Nevertheless, I decided to try, and procrastinated hard in the process.

Taking a Macbook apart requires two important things - documentation and patience. Hidden connectors, hairline cables, and a lot of screws and small hardware. Tedious work, it seemed. But I managed to do all of it. I stripped the machine down to the motherboard and took pictures in the process. With every precaution, I put the motherboard on improvised stands from tinfoil, and let it bake for 6 minutes at 180 degrees celsius in our very standard kitchen oven.

After re-assembling (I was proud to not forget anything), I tried to boot. To my surprise, it really worked! For 25 minutes, at least. I was back at square one.

With a bit of science and math, I figured the process was almost right. 180 degrees seemed to be the right temperature. I just had to do one more round in the oven. I had to make sure the oven is properly pre-heated; that I put it in quickly enough to not lose much heat; and that I leave it in for about 8 minutes.

Side note: Try at your own risk and always consult the corresponding manuals

The disassembling did take much less time now. However, I wasn’t that focused and almost ripped a connector out. But lucky me, after the second round of baking, the machine booted and voila!

At this moment, I am writing this post on my shiny, 12 years old Macbook. It benchmarks even better than my 2017 machine, and has a steady battery life of 4 hours. I just have to pay attention to not overheat the AMD GPU. But there’s always the option to bake it again.

A new MacBook Pro should have a carbon footprint of roughly 394 kilograms, which should equal to 2000 kilometres of driving. These are googled numbers. What’s more important for me, however, is the fact that I weakened the consumer habit in myself.

I encourage everybody to try to weaken their #consumer selves, too. For sake of #sustainability, for sake of our #planet.