I've been having a lot of hardware woes recently. And it's getting on my nerves that I've to write this, to share what I've learned so that you don't make the same mistakes as I have.

Be warned, long rant ahead...

iPad Pro

I killed my iPad Pro's charging port by using a non-Apple OEM 29W charger that I bought on eBay.

The iPad Pro 12.9-inch has a notorious reputation of slow charging with the 12W charger that came with it.

I've read that a 29W charger will charge it more than two times faster. The problem is Apple is selling that charger at SGD $68 not including the cable. I found a so called OEM 29W charger on eBay selling under SGD $18. To me, if you get the same specification chargers, they are pretty much interchangeable. Not this time.

When I plugged that 29W charger into my iPad Pro, nothing happened. No battery sign telling you that it's charging. No signal telling you that anything was being plugged in. The iPad Pro still works. It just doesn't charge anymore. When I switch back to using the original 12W charger, it doesn't charge the iPad Pro anymore. Not good.

I've brought it to a third party repair centre and they are charging SGD $263 to repair. Expensive, but not as expensive compared to $848 that Apple wants to charge.

This is one thing I do not like about Apple lately.

I noticed there's a trend of Apple removing features so that they can sell accessories, the same accessories that have huge markup. It's sickening.

With the Macbook 2016, they removed all the ports to that you have to buy adapters. They also remove the function keys when it's not proven to make you more productive. With the quad-core Mac Mini 2012, it was so good that it was dropped in favor of dual-core models. With the Mac Pro 2013 (trash can), they removed almost anything that you can upgrade except for RAM. With the iPhone 7, they remove the headphone jack, and there's no way to connect that iPhone to the new Macbook without buying another cable, hopefully Apple's.

So they put their customers in a position where they have to look elsewhere to buy accessories at a cheaper price, simply because they failed to include something that should have been there in the first place.

It's probably my fault for wanting to save some money to get a non-Apple OEM charger. But I'm definitely not happy at Apple because for a cheap charger, they even want to rip you off. It's one thing to be known as a company that makes good product, it's another to be known as a company that just want to rip you off, and I'm starting to feel that they are moving into the latter direction.

Camera lens

Problem #1
I discovered that my Panasonic 20mm lens has been infected by mould. This is a lens that I've used for years. I use it frequently so I don't bother to put them in a dry box. But apparently, recently, I've not used it often enough that it has grown mould inside.

So that's why many of my page-flipping videos from the artbooks looked like there's some white clouding effect. I wondered what that was for a few weeks before I checked my lens.

Thankfully, the camera is still working fine, and hibernating in the dry cabinet now.

If you live in a humid country, you have to put the camera into a dry cabinet. If you can't afford the dry cabinet, don't buy the camera. Use your phone camera instead.

It's inconvenient but it's going to save your camera and lens. This is not the first time I have mould problem. And each time it's because I did not use the dry cabinet when I should.

Problem 2
My second problem is with another lens that I had dropped on the the ground. It's the Panasonic 12-35mm zoom lens. It was in my bag and my bag fell from my bicycle.

That lens now focuses fine at wide angle, but has problem focusing at telephoto range.

Looks like I've got to send these two lens in for servicing.

Phone

One thing I do not like about phone manufacturers is how they like to have built-in batteries that are not removable.

For someone who changes phones regularly (not me), non-removable batteries are not going to be a problem. You're going to change your phone anyway after a year or slightly more.

But when the inbuilt batteries starts losing their capacity, you have to choose between sending it to a repair shop to replace the battery or get a new phone. As most phones get cheaper, it's usually more tempting to get a new phone instead.

The thing is most phones today as so powerful there's no need to upgrade to another phone when you can't see any significant performance increase, or when you can't see significant benefits that help make you more productive. Having inbuilt batteries helps companies make more money in the future.

My previous phone was the HTC M8. It's a great phone that's fast. Unfortunately over the years, the battery life has dropped down from 2600 mAh to almost 500 mAh. The phone still functions except I've to charge it often and when outdoors I can't use it much because I know it will drain the battery fast. The alternative is to always carry a power bank.

Anyway, I've used that phone for two years and it was about time I had to upgrade my phone so this time I chose the LG V20, a phone with removable batteries. This should save me a lot of money because I have no plans of changing phones for a long time.

Monitor

My Dell U2711 is dying.

The screen has turned yellow but it's still usable because of the Spyder 5 Pro colour calibrator. My monitor is so old that when I used the calibrator software to calibrate, it told me that my monitor can no longer reach the level of brightness required to produce accurate colours.

The other problem is more serious because now whenever I power the monitor, half of the screen shows vertical bars and the other a white screen. I've to wait 30-45 minutes for the monitor to warm up before the white section of the screen shows the login screen. That's when I have to restart the monitor to get it working. In short, I won't be able to work immediately the moment I power on the monitor. I use the waiting time to go through books I have to review. It's an inconvenience but right now I really don't think I want to spend money getting a new monitor after all the other money that I've just spend or going to spend.

The Mac Pro 2013

This is the most powerful and expensive computer Apple has to offer. I've bought a lot of Apple devices and the ones that always gives me the problem is the Mac Pro. I had the previous aluminium tower as well and had to send it for servicing several times.

Some people call this the worst Mac that Apple has created. You can't upgrade anything except for the RAM, and perhaps storage. Now, even if you want to upgrade the Mac itself, by getting a new Mac, you can't because the last time Apple had a new Mac was in 2013. Apple hasn't put out a new model for the Mac Pro for more than three years. Meanwhile, competitors like Dell or HP has been putting out desktops that go up to 24-cores and 128GB RAM. Seriously, if you're not invested in Mac OS, it doesn't even make any sense to get into the Mac. All their Macs are overpriced and can't compete with other brands -- the Macbook Pro 2016 they released recently had the same specs as a Dell Precision that was released more than a year ago -- go figure.

Back to my Mac Pro, it had problems with crashing, freezing, and most recently restarting by itself. I've sent my Mac Pro in for servicing around 6-7 times (I forgot). Unfortunately, it's not a hardware issue so Apple can't replace the Mac, and there's no easy way to reproduce the problem. So basically, I'm stuck with a flawed product because it seems that Mac OS just doesn't want to play well with the Mac Pro. Just for comparison, my Mac Mini 2012 doesn't have any silly problems like this. It's frustrating.

Not a good start to Jan 2017

I'm really push all my gadgets so it's not unexpected to see my monitor, computer, lens and phone breaking down. I admit the iPad charger thing is my own stupidity. But to have them all break around the same time is... for a lack of a better description, bad luck.

It has definitely not been a good start for me in Jan 2017.

Rant over.

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