Nick Destroys an iPad

iPad3 on the operating table

I've been enjoying an iPad3 that a friend who works at Apple gave me -- especially the Sky Guide astronomy app for locating stars, planets and deep sky objects. And it's also great for reading eBooks and pdfs in bed. Recently the touch screen has been failing to respond so I traveled to the Apple Church in Los Gatos and found that it would be very expensive to repair compared to simply buying a new one.

So I decided to try to fix it myself. The Apple Father Confessor said I needed a new "digitizer" which is a fancy word for the touch-sensitive front screen.

It's not easy to take apart an iPad. No screws. The two halves of the clam-shell case are held together with a heat-sensitive glue.

Fortunately a company called iFixit sells a kit for opening an iPad and doing simple repairs. The key item in the kit is a black sausage-shaped plastic sack of liquid which iFixit cutely calls an "iOpener". You put this sack in a microwave oven for 30 seconds, then use it to soften the glue around the edges of the iPad. Then you slowly pry open the case with the help of a half-dozen green guitar picks and a few more specialized plastic prying tools.

I bought a new digitizer and watched a repair movie on YouTube several times until I thought I knew what I was doing.

Looked pretty simple. After backing up my iPad''s memory to iTunes,  I only needed to 1: Open the case. 2: Unplug and remove the LCD (liquid crystal display). 3: Unplug and remove the damaged digitizer.

4: Plug in the new digitizer. 5: Plug in the LCD. 6: Reseal the case and enjoy my new iPad. How could anything go wrong?

Opened iPad. LCD on left; new digitizer on right

Opening the iPad was a lot easier than I expected (that iOpener really works). An important feature of the repair kit is a well-crafted set of screw drivers that you won't find at your local hardware store; and that are absolutely essential once the case is opened. The drivers include three very small Phillips bits, size 0, 00 and 000. The smallest 000 size was perfect for removing the LCD (which covers up all the connectors). The drivers also include a magnet for retrieving tiny screws as well as the fabled pentalobe driver used by Apple to make its products difficult to repair. For the iPad there was no need to deploy the magic pentalobe driver, but if I ever get my hands on an old iPhone, that driver will come in handy.

Everything came apart easily. Inside the iPad it's mostly batteries -- three big black flat rectangles that take up most of the space.  

Now to put everything back together again.

The digitizer cable has two parts which plug into two adjacent FFC (Flat Flexible Connector) sockets which I have labeled D1 and D2. These sockets are a type of connector called ZIF (for Zero Insertion Force). To remove the cable, you lift a latch which frees it; after inserting the cable (presumably with zero force) you lower the latch to lock the cable in place. The latches can be snapped open or closed with a flat plastic spatula included in the repair kit. 

The LCD cable also plugs into a FFC socket which I have labeled L1. This socket is also a Zero Insertion Force connector with a latch/unlatch mechanism identical to that of the two digitizer sockets.

Open iPad showing three flat cable sockets D1, D2 and L1

Now my trouble began. The digitizer cable plugged easily into socket D1 but would not go into socket D2. The D2 latch was snapped open but the cable only went in partway, as though the latch was actually closed. I pushed all sorts of small plastic slivers, including part of a credit card, into socket D2, trying unsuccessfully to pry it open.

As a last resort, I decided to push the cable into D2 as far as it would go and anchor it with a bit of duct tape. Since half of the flat digitizer cable was already latched in socket D1, perhaps this desperate measure might work. I also figured that maybe I never needed a new digitizer in the first place but my problem might have been due to a bad D2 socket.

With the digitizer cable fastened as securely as I could manage, I moved on to the task of plugging in the LCD screen.

Closeup of the digitizer sockets (D1 and D2) and the LCD socket (L1)

Unlatching socket L1, I pushed the LCD cable in as far as it would go. Definitely not zero force, but with a bit of effort I was able to get the cable into its socket almost as far as the white "water line" printed on the cable that indicates full insertion.

Then the socket broke.

And scattered lots of tiny gold-plated pins across the circuit board. If you look closely at the L1 connector, you can see that it is missing 6 or 7 of its little golden pins.

Whoops! Now I had converted my sophisticated iPad tablet computer into an inert lump of eJunk. The fault was in the so-called Zero-Insertion-Force connectors. Neither socket D2 nor socket L1 had behaved as I had been led to expect. Was this due to my own incompetence? Or were those sockets on the edge of failure from the start? One friend speculated that these sockets are cheaply designed for easy assembly only -- and are not expected to be reused. My guess is that quality control is very bad on these connectors and I had simply drawn two deuces in the iPad repair lottery. In any case, I had learned a lot about what's inside an Apple tablet computer and consoled myself with physicist Niels Bohr's famous saying that an expert in a field is someone who's made every possible mistake. Towards becoming an expert on iPads, I had taken the first few steps.

However three other things that happened this week more than made up for my fixit failure.

Number One: My friend KSCO radio host Dr Future gave his wife Mrs Future a new iPad for her birthday. Then dear Mrs Future kindly passed her old iPad on to me. Thank you Allan and Sun Lundell for this timely and generous gift.

Number Two: Artist, author, philosopher Michael Grosso posted on his Consciousness Unbound blog an over-the-top review of Harlot Nature, my latest book of quantum tantric verse. Thanks, Michael, for your very appreciative review of my work.

Number Three: I just found out that this year's  Kanamara Matsuri Festival of the Iron Penis will take place on Sunday, April 2, 2017. If you are traveling in Japan next week, you may want to include this unusual event in your schedule.

In the city of Kanayama, the male phallus is honored on this day in many shapes and sizes. How did this festival come about?

One story tells of a demon who fell in love with a woman and hid inside her vagina, biting off her newlywed husband’s penis, twice. She then sought help from a blacksmith, who made her a metal phallus. It broke the demon’s teeth and sent him off for good. They later enshrined it in Kanayama Shrine as a sort of commemoration.

I won't be traveling to Japan next week, but here's my humble contribution to the iron penis festivities:

Kanayama wife, instead of a locket,

Kept a demon inside her soft pocket

When inside her you slip

He will bite off your tip --

Not a Zero-Insertion-Force socket!

Festival of the Iron Penis, Kanayama, Japan