On fixing hardware

There is a certain satisfaction in fixing hardware. It can be pretty trivial at times: unscrew a bunch of pieces, replace the broken bit, screw everything back together. The worst that can happen is to end up with one or two screws that don't seem to go anywhere once you put things back.

I recently fixed a Kindle from a few years ago (model D00901, aka "the one with a little keyboard"), and I had exactly this experience, minus the extra screws. I just opened it all up, disconnected the broken screen, replaced it with a new one from eBay (£16), and put it all back together - done. By then I'd already bought a replacement Voyage, but I can now give this to my kids. I was also pretty happy to get this particular model back, because it's much easier to hack than the Voyage (Amazon, wtf? I still can't change screensaver images, in 2016??)

Moral of the story - always try to fix broken hardware. It might save you a few pennies and, in the age of youtube, you don't even have to be an expert to do it.

iTunes "File Sharing" is a ridiculous pain

There is no way to programmatically access the application-specific "File Sharing" directories on iPhone from OSX. You are forced to start iTunes and manually select the phone, select "Apps", select your app, drag&drop files.

In 2013.

With a unix-based OS talking to another unix-based OS.

This is ridiculous.

No, I will not jailbreak my phone. This is something that Apple should expose in an API, either via iTunes / Scripting Bridge or via direct Obj-C calls. iCloud simply doesn't cover all use-cases (and, reportedly, it's broken anyway).

This is the frustrating side of the Apple ecosystem: sometimes, you'll be prevented from doing something very simple and very obvious, for some obscure reason nobody cares about (except Apple, of course).