Wednesday, May 2, 2012

MacBook LCD display

Bobby's MacBook had a messed up display.  Horizontal and vertical lines converged on a spot in the lower left corner. I brought it in to the Genius Bar at our local Apple store.  They diagnosed it as a broken LCD.  They showed me how pressing the screen where the lines converged made the display change.  Pressing the screen elsewhere had no effect. Kids are rough on computers, yeah we know.

The Apple would have fixed it, for a reasonable price, except that the MacBook's internal indicators showed that it had water damage (see previous post). That being the case, they would only replace all of its innards, for a cost more than a new MacBook Pro.  So I took the MacBook home and looked it up on iFixit.com.  They have step by step instructions on how to replace the LCD, and they'll sell you a new LCD and the tools you need.  I suppose these might be cheaper on eBay, but hey, I went ahead and ordered them.  The cost was about half of what the repair would have cost at the Apple store if they had been willing to do it.

I followed the instructions and replaced the LCD.  Took me about an hour.  The MacBook works fine now.  Hooray for iFixit.com!