Decapitating a MacBook: Turning a Broken MacBook Air into a Headless Dev Machine
Decapitating a MacBook (2025)
A developer who avoids Apple products reluctantly buys a MacBook Air M1 with a smashed screen for £300 on eBay, removes the display, and runs it headless as a low-power dev machine for Flutter. The series covers choosing the right model, powering it from a 12V battery bank, and the challenges of using it without a built-in screen.
It’s basic respect for the user.
- jeremyloy_wt
I could not grasp the “why” here, not for the life of me. A Mac mini/studio would have been so much straightforward for the actual cited problem of “needing to develop on Apple hardware”.
Sometimes we do things just for “the love of the game” and learn something along the way but I couldn’t help scratching my head the entire time while reading this
- benbojangles
I once bought an apple silicon macbook pro logic board to use with a kvm. It was a fun adventure. Things to notice:
-laptop lid closed/open sensor.
-no lid screen at first boot was a pain to fix to external monitor.
-logic board only on first boot requires macbook pro trackpad and keyboard(case), connecting external keyboard and mouse doesn't work at login screen due to security.
Once up and running though it is an excellent, cheap compiling/local llm machine i use over ssh from another mac
- 4fterd4rk
Why the hell would anyone live like this