Thought it would be nice to have a portable (as opposed to just luggable) computer again, so got out the banged-up 2014 MacBook Air 11" (now spoiled by this form factor) with a 15-minute battery and the pristine 2011 counterpart I've been saving for parts.

Spent a good while taking both apart just to find that no, I can in fact not swap the screen assembly over and just extend the antenna cables, the display cable is completely different as well.

Then spent another good while with a hot air station and spudger prying the display bezel off the 2011 in order to swap the panels, which went fine, except I'd need compressed air and double sided tape to put it back together.

Fine, forget about that for the time being, lets just swap the battery over.

Oh, never mind. Unlike the third party universal batteries iFixit sells, the official doesn't have a cable long enough to reach the connector on the 2014 logic board.

Okay, what if I'll just put the 2014 machine together and reinstall and call it a day? Nope, because it turns out it doesn't even take a charge, probably because the MagSafe connector on the newer machines sucks ass and this one's finally fried itself completely.

Okay, look online for a replacement. Find a nice-looking 2015 one, only 4 GB RAM but I could swap the 8 GB (because sometimes I need to browse the web) board from my 2014 over. But asking the seller to test, it turns out the battery is quite degraded so it's a bit too much just for some case parts, I'd still need to get another battery (that would probably be degraded NOS anyway...).

So that's most of my Saturday then.

Sometimes I wish I could just go out and get a new machine with an OS that needs to phone home every time you reinstall and be satisfied with that like a normal fucking person...