.Have you ever had something professionally repaired, only to feel like an idiot when you saw how simple the actual repair was? I had that experience recently when we took my wife’s iPhone 8 Plus to the Genius Bar. The problem was that the volume out of the earpiece was too quiet, even at full volume. We had tried adjusting various settings to no avail.I felt like a dummy when the Apple support guy pulled out a lens brush, stabbed and brushed some crud out of the top speaker (the one that looks like a line above the screen), and handed the phone back to my wife. Calls were once again crystal clear! What made me feel even dumber is that I bought her the iPhone 8 Plus to replace an iPhone 6s that had suffered from a similar problem (on the plus side, that iPhone is now a great iOS 13 test device).So I decided to see if I could fix that old iPhone 6s with a little spring cleaning, which led to a series of cleanings that fixed some long-standing hardware issues.
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Assemble Your GearBefore we get started, there are a few tools you’ll want to find from around the house or purchase. They include:. Lens brush. Lens blower. Cotton swabs.
Apr 24, 2016 What you are doing is blow the dust away from the fan (or make them no longer attached on the fan), so, the fan can perform. And when you switch on the machine again, you can manually run the fan at full speed to try to draw out as much dust as possible (assuming the.
Rubbing alcohol. Paper towels. Wooden toothpicks. Vacuum cleaner with brush and crevice attachments. Microfiber cloth. Compressed airIf you lack a lens brush, lens blower, and microfiber cloths, you can buy a for under $10. Increase Call Volume by Cleaning Your iPhone’s Top SpeakerThankfully, I happen to have a lens brush.
If you don’t have one, they’re inexpensive and handy for electronics cleaning. In a pinch, you could use a soft-bristle toothbrush, but be very gentle with it.I started by doing what I saw the Apple guy do: “stabbing” the ear speaker with the brush. That seemed to provide some improvement, but after several stabs and sweeps, it still wasn’t nearly as loud on a test call as I had hoped.Next, I pulled out a cotton swab and used it to scrub the speaker.
That resulted in black lines on the swab, which, along with some modest volume improvement, told me I was on the right track. I decided to pull out the big guns and add a little alcohol to the swab.You always need to be careful when mixing liquids and electronics, even with rubbing alcohol, since it can be up to 30% water. The goal is to have the swab damp enough to clean, but not so wet that it could drip into whatever you’re cleaning. I dip the swab in the alcohol and then squeeze it out into a paper towel, leaving the swab just barely damp with alcohol.Scrubbing with the damp cotton swab produced big black streaks on the swab. After that, I stabbed the speaker a bit more with the brush and finished by blowing the speaker out with a camera lens blower. Don’t use compressed air here, since it can leave moisture behind and damage delicate parts with its high pressure. That combination of techniques worked—the speaker once again put out full volume.
IMac: Fix Performance Issues with a Vacuum CleanerEver since installing macOS 10.14 Mojave on my 27-inch iMac with Retina display, it had been suffering slowdowns and beachballs. I wondered if CPU temperatures had something to do with it. I installed, a great utility that’s included with MacPaw’s subscription service, and was alarmed to see idle CPU core temperatures between 90º and 100º C. I haven’t been checking to see what “normal” temperatures are in this iMac, but that seemed too high for idle. (Adam Engst’s identical iMac seems to idle around 70º C and may need some cleaning too.)Over time, as fans and heatsinks accumulate dust, they don’t remove heat as well as when they were clean—the dust acts as an insulator. That heat buildup makes the CPU less stable and prone to damage, so the CPU will throttle itself in an attempt to bring the temperature down.
In other words, something as simple and commonplace as dust can make your Mac slower and less stable.In a traditional tower design like the old Mac Pro and Power Mac models, cleaning is easy: open it up and blow out the dust. In a sealed-up iMac, that isn’t so easy.
Sure, you could and clean it out, and some techno-masochists do that, but I wouldn’t recommend going that far unless there was something seriously wrong, because it’s far from simple and you could easily cause new problems.The standard advice here is to use compressed air to blow out the vents, but that’s a terrible idea since doing so doesn’t remove the dust but instead spreads it around the inside of the iMac. For a better approach, employ a vacuum cleaner.I know what some of you are thinking: vacuum cleaners can produce a lot of static electricity, which can be dangerous for sensitive computer components. However, vacuuming should be safe as long as the case is on and you’re not touching bare circuit boards.The iMac has two sets of vents. The first set, a series of slots along the bottom of the display, sucks in room-temperature air.
The second set on the back of the display, just behind where the stand connects to the display, expels warm air. You might notice some dust inside those vents if you look closely.The iMac’s rear vents.The iMac’s bottom vents.Here’s how to clean those vents:.
Power down your Mac. Disconnect all peripherals and set them aside. Clear any extra junk off your desk. Lay a blanket or towel down on your desk, and carefully lay the iMac face down on it.
Scoot the iMac so that the bottom vents hang over the edge of the desk so you can easily vacuum them. Vacuum the bottom intake vents, which extend the width of the display. A notched crevice tool is handy for this, or you can use a soft brush attachment. Vacuum the exhaust vents, again with either a soft brush attachment or the crevice attachment.
I had issues with my lighting port on my iPhone. I tried cleaning it with compressed air and even with a, but to no avail.I ended up going to the local Apple store to see if one of the geniuses could fix the problem The greeter asked me what the issue was, took a look at it, then pulled out a bent paperclip and pulled out a dust ball that was clogging the works.Since then, I just use a bent paperclip to clean out the lighting port on my iPhone. Maybe the greeter was using a special Apple brand of bent paperclip. Month or so ago I started having some flakiness. Around the time I was setting up a drive for win10. Long story short, it point me to overheating issues, something I have kinda ignored for the close to 10 years I have had my 2010 cMP. First, most of the foloks I communicate with ALL use ºC, so I have everything set up that way.
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There is an awful lot to know/learn about hse issues, my CPU seems to be in a very good range but the Northridge chip seems to run hotter than it should.The GOOD news is that my cMP has a separate “processor” tray that is not a part of the “motherboard.” Far as I know, there are no heat issues involved with the backplane (what may think of as a motherboard). These “processor trays” are definitely available for purchase and seemingly in good supply and not terribly expensive. I am awaiting one I purchased before I go to opening mine up to see if there are any correctable issues with my Northbridge.Dennis, I am sitting at ambient 86ºF, doing light duty my CPU is running 37.2ºC/99ºF. I DO have my fans spooled up over default (I use Macs Fan Control as it reads all of the sensors and allow for auto setting of the fan’s RPM based on user selectable criteria (meaning a range of temps I choose for any of the 5 major fans, PS, PCI, Intake, Exhaust and BOOST (the latter 3 are all aimed at the processor tray). Well and good to be sure the vents are clear, however, the electricity running through the board and the fan blades are dust magnets and the mother of dust bunnies.
Blowing the system out with compressed air has been the time honored way to clean computers and great if you can open them up. However on a closed device like a laptop or modern iMac it is best to blow and vacuum at the same time or you will not break the dirt hardware bond.
A screaming shop vac at the discharge port and 40 psi compressed air at the inlet. Don’t persist as you will be spinning the fan much faster than normal. That said, it is much better to open the device to clean it and if it is over heating order a new fan before opening the device and just change the fan while cleaning.
I recently saw an Apple store tech cleaning someone’s iPhone and AirPods some sort of putty. I asked him about it and he said it’s called “cleaning putty” and that it’s readily available on Amazon. He couldn’t say enough about the great uses for it.I ordered some to try and I have to say that I’m very impressed. You just take a little ball of it and press it into the crevices then pull it out along with the gunk. It’s great for iPhone, AirPod, and MacBook speaker grilles. It also works well on keyboards the seams between parts that collect dust.
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