It’s very impressive to see how well packed the machine is, and with the removal of the optical drive, there’s even space for a second storage drive inside. The machine appears to be easy to take apart too. That is assuming you have the correct tools for the job.

You can tell the rig sips power when you see the tiny power supply that keeps the machine running. The little mainboard is double-sided to get all the chips needed for the functionality onboard. The Intel CPU is on the bottom and several controller chips for various IO ports are on the top.

You can see a few pictures of the new Mac Mini’s insides in the gallery above, but will need to head over to iFixit to check out all the gory details.

The first thing they discovered when they tried to crack open the new iPad is that the entire front is held on by glue, glue and more glue – no clips, no screws. It took some heat and a plastic pry tool to pop it open, and chances are that you won’t ever want to do this yourself unless you want to kill your iPad. Leave it to the pros.

Popping off the LCD screen just required the removal of several screws. Once open, they found a set of three battery packs, just like the original iPad, but with a 25 watt-hour rating vs. the 24.8 watt-hours of the iPad 1. That means that if you can truly get similar battery life to the original, it’s all thanks to highly-efficient hardware. With a CPU that’s significantly more powerful, I’ll be impressed if real-world battery life holds up to the iPad.

A few ribbon cables later, and a few more screws, and they revealed the brains of the operation – the logic board. I’ve included a jumbo version of the logic board below, in case you want to do any chip sleuthing of your own, but iFixit has identified the core chips as follows:

• Apple 1GHz A5 Processor
• Toshiba TH58NVG7D2FLA89 16GB NAND Flash
• Apple 343S0542-A2
• S6T2MLC N33C50V Power Management IC
• A5 CPU, marked APL0498
• Apple-branded 338S0940 A0BZ1101 SGP
• Broadcom BCM5973KFBGH and BCM5974 CKFBGH touchscreen controllers (same as original iPad)

There’s also mystery Texas Instruments chip that they haven’t been able to get to yet. We also don’t know yet if there’s really 512MB of RAM on board or not. iFixit confirmed via software that the iPad 2 does, indeed have 512MB of RAM.

There’s a separate WiFi daughter board, powered by the BCM43291HKUBC, which is the same WiFi/Bluetooth/FM Tuner chip found in the original iPad and iPhone 4. They also found tiny board with an STM Electronics AGD8 2103 gyroscope and LIS3331DLH accelerometer for tracking motion and direction of movement. Both cameras sit on their own individual ribbon cables, and were relatively easy to remove for inspection.

Overall, iFixit rated the iPad 2 a “4 out of 10″ for repairability, which basically means you shouldn’t try and ever fix one yourself. On the plus side, besides the gluey mess that holds the front bezel on, most of the device is held together with Phillips screws. Too bad the display is stuck to the front panel with foam tape too, which makes it sound like you could easily crack the screen if opening it yourself – especially since the iPad 2′s glass is significantly thinner than the original.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Unsurprisingly, there really isn’t that much new under the hood of the iPad 2. Other than the two cameras, the gyroscope and the A5 processor, the other core parts (display, controller, accelerometer, batteries) are virtually the same as the original. I guess that speaks volumes about how damned good the original really was. It’s certainly why I didn’t upgrade mine today. Until there’s an app that I want that absolutely demands the CPU/GPU processing power of the iPad 2, I see no meaningful reason to upgrade.

You can check out the full teardown, with lots more pics – over at iFixit.

According the iFixit crew, Apple made this model much harder to get into than past systems, using special proprietary 5-point Torx security screws to hold the bottom part of the case on. But that didn’t stop them, nope. They got inside and exposed all the inner workings of this marvel of modern manufacturing.

Highlights of the system include the meta-battery module, comprised of six individual Lithium-polymer cells – arranged just so – and keeping things really flat. They also get a good look at all that glorious, fast SSD storage – courtesy of Toshiba, and confirmed that the Broadcom Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip is the same one from the latest MacBook pros.

They also found an incredibly flat little fan used to keep things nice and cool in that jam-packed case, as well as equally tiny stereo speakers. And here’s the money shot…

One big gotcha they discovered – the system RAM is soldered to the mobo, so you’d better go for the 4GB model right up front. There’s no way to upgrade the 2GB version due to this limitation. Their main conclusion – everything other than the SSD unit in this little bugger is custom, proprietary and non-upgradeable. But that’s all a small price to pay to have the coolest notebook on the block, right?

Be sure to head on over to iFixit for all the gory details of the teardown process, along with many more pics.

One of the most common mishaps of having an iPhone is that sometimes they fall (klutz!) and the screen breaks. A lot of the time, it’s just the glass of the display screen that breaks. Which is why this article [PDF] over at Make Magazine will help you replace your screen yourself for about $30 bucks – assuming you have an iPhone 3G or 3GS. iPhone 4 users with cracked screens will have a much harder time, and still have to rely on Apple repair because the glass is glued to the LCD panel itself, rendering them pretty much inseparable.

Kipkay has been kind enough to put together this video walkthrough of Morten’s repair article if you don’t have the patience to read the tutorial.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It’s a relatively easy process to complete, assuming you’ve got experience with DIY projects. Plus, it will cost you a lot less than $200 bucks.

[via Make:]

This crafty 10-year old named Brett repaired his dad’s iPhone with a $22 mail-order kit from 3GCrackedGlass.com. This repair was for the glass alone, the LCD wasn’t damaged.

Brett’s repair actually saved his dad from buying a whole new iPhone.  For comparison’s sake, Apple charges $200 for this same procedure.

Honestly, I don’t like messing with the insides of my electronic gadgets. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, but it’s easy to break stuff. That’s why this is really inspiring.

[CNET via Lifehacker]

Some example uses for Sugru pulled from their gallery shows it being used to fix the heel of an old pair of shoes, make a bike handle better or just make a new handle all together! Fix a wobbly chair. The uses are endless with Sugru! Its meant to repair and make stuff work better for you. This product could replace duct tape in your toolbox.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can order some packs of Sugru at their website. It goes for £7 GBP (appx. $11.18 USD) a pack. There are options for large, medium or small lumps of Sugru if you don’t want to deal with one big blob of the stuff. I’m picking up a pack just to keep in my tool box.

ClearView makes a list of rules based on a program’s “normal” behavior. When something causes the program to deviate from those rules, ClearView “comes up with several potential patches designed to force the software to follow the violated rules… If additional rules are violated, or if a patch causes the system to crash, ClearView rejects it and tries another.” And it does all of that without any human intervention. As a test, ClearView was tasked to babysit Firefox while the browser was attacked via ten different methods. On average, ClearView came up with a patch within 5 minutes of exposure to an attack. How’s that for customer service. If you’re tired of having programs die on you, read the full article at Technology Review. It may just make your day.

[via Slashdot]

Above are the flowcharts that anticipate most, if not all, of the things that can go wrong with your computer that will prevent it from starting up. Rosenthal knows how the internet works – it’s all about sharing – so he has a link to the full pdf file on his website. Rosenthal is cool with you printing the poster for personal or educational uses (I converted it to jpeg and turned out to be a massive 4500 x 4500 image). His website also has flowcharts in more manageable sizes too, like this one about optical drive problems:

Any flowchart with a step that tells you to “Laugh at self” is a good flowchart. The flowcharts on Rosenthal’s website are somewhat interactive: clicking each step takes you to a more detailed explanation of what’s going on and what you can do to fix it. You can also download a free pdf of the flowcharts on Rosenthal’s site. If you only have one computer you’d better print that ASAP, or better yet get a copy of Rosenthal’s book. It’s only $14 (USD) on Amazon. And remember: I was the first one to use the word flowchart in this blog.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

If you have a defective 360, you’ll just need to contact 1-800-4my-xbox for customer support.

Should you have a 2006 Xbox 360 that dies, I feel for you, but my old launch day 360 will be going back for repair now that this has been revealed.

If you have already spent money to have your pre-1/1 Xbox 360 repaired, they’ll even refund the money you paid (you should receive a check from Microsoft in the next 5 to 8 weeks).

[via Official Xbox Forum viaDailyTech]