About a year ago, I was given an iPad 4. It had been dropped a couple times. Screen was badly shattered and the four corners were all bent in. And the kicker: iCloud locked, which means "useless iPad." However, it was a lot faster than my iPad 3, so I decided to see what I could do with it.
iCloud password. The password was "123456." It took me two tries to guess it. Um. PSA: Folks, please be a little more creative with your passwords.
Now, the fun thing about the various cracks is that they were pretty hard to see if you turned on full brightness. So, pretty nice. Then my wife started having problems with her iPad 1. She said she didn't mind the cracks, so she wanted it. Fine and dandy.
A year later, she's having problems with the iPad 4. I take it back. Couldn't duplicate any problems. "Can I have your iPad 3?" Sure. I only use my iPad for three things: reading magazines, playing Plants vs. Zombies 2, and a keyboard shortcut thingy called Quadro that I've mentioned before.
So, I decided to buy a screen replacement kit. I bought a relatively cheap one -- $28 -- that had good reviews on Amazon. I could have had a repair place do it for about $150 (Apple Certified Repair place is $200), which is how much a working iPad 4 is worth, so I didn't want to go too expensive. Took me about two hours to remove all the glass shards (warning: you need eye protection) and bend the corners back into something resembling corners. Then I replace the big piece of glass, the digitizer. In the process, I rip the Home button cable. I'm not too disappointed: it's a $4 part and I can use a software-based Home button until I get the part. Hey, it also looks pretty good! I did have to struggle with the very small cables, but I eventually got them in. I show it to my wife: "Pretty!" I tell her that I still need to buy that one cable and the glass isn't snapped into place. It's just set there. I take the iPad back into my "office" and see if I can snap the glass into place. Mmmmm. *Snap!* *Pop!* Glass broke in lower left corner. Thankfully not in field of view. Looks like I didn't bend that corner far out enough. Also looks like that glass was really cheap.
Oh, well. I just taped up the corner. It works fine and it'll have a good life on my desk as my Quadro control machine.
iCloud password. The password was "123456." It took me two tries to guess it. Um. PSA: Folks, please be a little more creative with your passwords.
Now, the fun thing about the various cracks is that they were pretty hard to see if you turned on full brightness. So, pretty nice. Then my wife started having problems with her iPad 1. She said she didn't mind the cracks, so she wanted it. Fine and dandy.
A year later, she's having problems with the iPad 4. I take it back. Couldn't duplicate any problems. "Can I have your iPad 3?" Sure. I only use my iPad for three things: reading magazines, playing Plants vs. Zombies 2, and a keyboard shortcut thingy called Quadro that I've mentioned before.
So, I decided to buy a screen replacement kit. I bought a relatively cheap one -- $28 -- that had good reviews on Amazon. I could have had a repair place do it for about $150 (Apple Certified Repair place is $200), which is how much a working iPad 4 is worth, so I didn't want to go too expensive. Took me about two hours to remove all the glass shards (warning: you need eye protection) and bend the corners back into something resembling corners. Then I replace the big piece of glass, the digitizer. In the process, I rip the Home button cable. I'm not too disappointed: it's a $4 part and I can use a software-based Home button until I get the part. Hey, it also looks pretty good! I did have to struggle with the very small cables, but I eventually got them in. I show it to my wife: "Pretty!" I tell her that I still need to buy that one cable and the glass isn't snapped into place. It's just set there. I take the iPad back into my "office" and see if I can snap the glass into place. Mmmmm. *Snap!* *Pop!* Glass broke in lower left corner. Thankfully not in field of view. Looks like I didn't bend that corner far out enough. Also looks like that glass was really cheap.
Oh, well. I just taped up the corner. It works fine and it'll have a good life on my desk as my Quadro control machine.
