Kudos to Brock Kyle for keeping the Apple specs website EveryMac going for an impressive 30 years. I don’t use EveryMac regularly, but it has long been a go-to site for me when I’m hunting down an obscure Apple spec. I first wrote about it in “EveryMac’s Ultimate Mac Sort Tool” (20 September 2011), we noted its 20th anniversary in “MacNN and Tekserve Close, EveryMac and Mactracker Carry On” (8 July 2016), and it has popped up in TidBITS periodically since. Although I also use MacTracker and Glenn Fleishman’s new Fruit Specs site, nothing compares to EveryMac’s depth and breadth, and its Ultimate Mac Comparison can be particularly helpful for identifying differences between Macs.
I find EveryMac a very useful tool when I’m buying a new Mac (and absolutely essential when buying a used or refurbished one), and want to compare specs between different models I’m considering, or different configurations for a particular model.
After after I’ve bought one, it’s nice to be able to find all the various Apple model #s / part #s / Family IDs for my new Mac in one place.
I don’t use them all that often, but when I do, they’re invaluable. I support them with a small donation every month.
One thing that would be awesome would be a site that could augment these listings with lists of parts and information typically needed for refurbishment. Things like:
List of capacitors needed to re-cap a board, and where each can be found on that board.
Maybe including a link to a saved shopping cart for a store like DigiKey
Links to people who can sell (or 3D print) hard-to find parts. Like the eject-gear in Mac floppy drives.
Ways to deal with dead internal monitors and other kinds of unobtanium
Part numbers and popular resellers for used/refurbished parts
Compatible substitute parts, including links to sites selling adapter kits to make it all fit.
Archived copies of schematics, board-views and service manuals.
Critical information for skilled repair techs diagnosing/fixing non-obvious problems
This might run afoul of lawyers, since Apple likes to keep stuff like this secret, even though that train left the station a long time ago for most vintage/obsolete models.
I realize that this is really a project better suited to a company like iFixit than EveryMac, but i do know, from numerous repair-video YouTube channels, that there are communities with this information, but I don’t think it’s been accumulated into one place where the Rest Of Us can go to get it.
Oh man, the mention of Tekserve brought back memories. While I had no idea at the time, David Lerner, one of the co-founders, actually went to the same school I did, except a few grades below me. We connected via the Mac user group back then, NYMUG, which also spawned David Pogue (he was a kind of the office manager). They were the only place that could and would do board level repairs, although that fell by the wayside when they branched out to their big store from the tiny upstairs loft they had (that was where the 10 cent coke machine started). I am also very sad to hear that David passed away last year…
I’ve also appreciated EveryMac for its entire existence, and I highly recommend the delicious novel Laserwriter II by Tamara Shopsin, who worked at TEKserve. She manages to convey the enthusiasm and absurdity of 90s Mac culture.
