Tuesday 25 January 2011

Screw you Apple...

I'd had occasional problems with the scroll ball in my mighty mouse, but had always managed to fix it with some bashing on the desk and upside-down blowing!
However, after a couple of years the mouse finally stopped scrolling completely - no amount of desk-whacking, up-blowing or even feeding with alcohol would bring it back to life.

I tried gently prizing the mouse apart but to no avail, it seems apple don't WANT you to fix them! So, with my refusal to let apple (& consumerism) win, I turned to Google.
...a couple of searches later and I was following a Youtube video (of which there are many) of a helpful chap dissecting, cleaning and reassembling a mighty mouse. Pretty darn easy, though you DO need to 'break' the ring around the bottom and glue it back on afterwards.
It was easy to see why it would no longer scroll - there was thick dirt & fluff stuck to the tiny wheels (see pics below).
The whole process was a little fiddly but it worked perfectly again, just like new, in about 20 minutes.

How many of these plastic mighty mouses have been chucked in landfill so far (and replaced by a new one), when they could have been so easily fixed?

Then today in the news I saw this story of Apple attempting once again to stop customers self-fixing with the introduction of a 'pentalobe' screw: