Kibbles & Bytes Blog

I have been moved down to Rutland from South Burlington to cover the tech position for a short duration. The queue down here is running smoothly and the average turnaround time is actually doing pretty well considering I can only be in the store three days a week and normally after hours. One repair that I ran into that took me off guard was for a brand new “Retina 5K iMac 27 inch”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/iMac/27in that just came out. It had a defective display where it displayed both vertical and horizontal bars in different colors with varying screen flickering. I ran it through normal diagnostics and narrowed it down to the actual display itself and ruled out the graphics card. The display is on order and I’m just waiting for it to come in.

I didn’t anticipate having to repair a 5K iMac so soon, but it did give me a unique opportunity to see how the internals were arranged and changed from the previous generation of iMac. Everything appears to have been shifted to the bottom of the machine, leaving open space where it tapers towards the top of the machine. Apple went back to a 3.5” hard drive in the new iMacs, where the previous two generations all used 2.5” drives. Externally it does look very similar to all the previous iMacs but internally its completely different. For example, the speakers are larger and the boards are smaller and shaped differently. It looks beautiful on the inside, a technicians dream with how modular everything is getting. The most difficult part of having to service the new(er) style of iMacs is having to deal with the adhesive that holds the display to the back housing. Having to cut the adhesive with the provided pizza-style cutter can be frustrating if the display refuses to come off the back housing, as happened with this repair.

The second worst part is putting the display back on, which requires having to get the adhesive perfect with everything aligned, because if it’s not aligned, you have to cut the display off and try again. One aspect of the new iMac that I really like is that the display isn’t screwed down to the main logic board and only has one connection internally. This makes diagnosing easier because the inverter board, which manages the backlight level of the display, is incorporated into the display itself rather than a separate board within the machine.

All in all, I can see the new 5K iMacs being an easier to diagnose machine then its predecessor but, hopefully for your sake, I don’t see too many of them!

A lot has happened for me in the past few months since my last article. I have gotten involved with corporate level security and data management, and with that comes a lot more information to digest. I have actually begun questioning the integrity of software that I have used for years. I have even begun to question the applications on my phone. Why does an application really need access to everything it requested access to? Is there a legitimate reason? Is there possibly malicious code hidden somewhere to gain access and possibly do something that I wouldn’t want it to do? I guess you could call it paranoia (and yes, I agree that it is) however how much do you truly understand what is happening behind the scenes in your electronics? I have discovered that I don’t know enough, or in some cases just enough to screw something up.

I have been following news articles about hacking and security vulnerabilities that are discovered in widely used software or operating system packages that can cause a lot of problems if exploited by those that know how to do so. When the “bash scripting vulnerability”:http://threatpost.com/major-bash-vulnerability-affects-linux-unix-mac-os-x/108521 announcement was made, people started taking advantage of that within hours. There are a lot of computers that still aren’t protected from that vulnerability. These articles got me to thinking about how easy it is for someone to start taking advantage of vulnerabilities without really learning about it. I started by looking at phones.

iPhones and iOS devices are actually pretty protected in that they have built in application “sandboxing,”:https://developer.apple.com/app-sandboxing/ which means apps aren’t allowed to communicate with anything but the internet and a few other apps. Unless you jailbreak your iPhone and put a third-party app on it, your iOS device is pretty well protected. Android is a little different, you can install any application from the app store, and the app store isn’t monitored or regulated like Apple’s is. Anyone can submit to the Android app store and if you aren’t paying attention to the reviews, you could be installing something that is capable of reading all your information or even accessing the cameras whenever they are commanded to by an outside source.

These intrusive acts can be done with mobile devices. You have to give them superuser (AKA “root”) access which means elevated privileges. I rooted an Android phone, installed a few applications and was pretty amazed at what it could do. I managed to intercept my friends WiFi connection and replace every .jpg image on every webpage he visited with a picture of my beautiful face, with his permission of course. I did this all from an Android phone with an app downloaded from the app store. Once I found that piece of software, I began to hunt for additional tools that would give anyone with a little knowledge, the ability to hijack a WiFi connection on a connected access point.

_Good morning friends,_

I hope you’ve had a great holiday weekend. The season for watching our thermostats is upon us. Like the seasons, businesses change as well. Our team has added some new members lately, and their smiling faces would be happy to greet you in our stores.

I’m Mikhael Cohen (pronounced “mi-KALE”) but you can call me Mike. To introduce myself: I’m a long-time Apple Certified Macintosh Technician, and Small Dog Pup, who has recently taken the role of Service Operations Manager at Small Dog Electronics. When not in one of our stores, I can be found running (with icicles on my face), playing Scrabble, or taking the occasional college course.

If you have a Mac, Android phone, “Internet-Enabled Refrigerator”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_refrigerator, or anything else that looks sort of like a computer, this week’s articles may interest you. Scott talks about IPv4 (your computer’s home address on the internet…for now) and Kyle talks about the black box that is your electronic hardware as well as discussing his experience operating on a new Retina 5k iMac in Rutland — our floor demo model that arrived with a bad graphics processor.

-Mikhael
“mikhael@smalldog.com”:mailto:mikhael@smalldog.com