Decapitating a MacBook (2025)

Decapitating Macbook: An Odyssey 6 Mar '25 update 28 Aug '25 27 minute read Intro Part 1 of 11Accepting that I need a Mac if I want to develop for Apple platforms. Macbook Air M1 Headless I don’t tend to enjoy using Apple products. I want to be able to make my software available on their platforms though. To publish apps for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS, you really need Apple hardware. Also, if I am to provide software for their platforms, and especially if I want to sell my work, I need to be able to experience my apps in the same way my users will experience them. It’s basic respect for the user. Virtualisation I tried Virtual Machines, probably had half a dozen MacOS VMs over the years in VirtualBox and QEMU/KVM. Getting MacOS working in a VM is difficult, inconsistent and (at least on my machines) performance isn’t great. Apple strongly does not want you doing this, you’ll always be swimming upstream. It’s a joyless experience. Codemagic I tried Codemagic, a continuous integration/continuous delivery service which lets you publish to various platforms including the Apple ones. It’s a great service and has a free tier, but it seemed that my usage would end up putting me in a paid tier, and that could get expensive for me quite quickly. It’s also from-a-distance, and while Codemagic does allow remote login to the MacOS GUI it’s not the same as having a device in front of me, and if I want to thoroughly check the experience of using my apps on Codemagic’s remote machines (rather than just running builds) that’s going to quickly eat up any free minutes. I can certainly see this being a solution for some situations — not mine. So… For the first time in over 20 years of owning dozens of computers, I allowed myself to decide that I needed some kind of Mac. Which Mac Should I Get? Part 2 of 11Finding a Mac that I can work with.The strongest factors affecting my decision were: Cost. I wanted to spend as little as possible. Power usage. I live in a low-power environment and didn’t want to introduce a new device that was going to dramatically increase my electricity usage. Clearly Apple Silicon was what I needed in terms of power. I’ve preferred ARM processors for years and use them for as much of my work as possible. Apple’s use of specialised ARM chips and tight control over their hardware/software architecture means they’re in a good position to maximise performance-per-Watt… if I must paddle in Apple’s pool, Apple Silicon is a no-brainer. To keep it cheap, the obvious choice was to go with the first generation M1 chips. They reportedly still held up well and should get OS updates for a while (even longer with OpenCore Legacy Patcher). I don’t love laptops (I’d rather choose my own keyboard, pointing device and screen so having redundant copies of these things stuck on my computer is a waste), so I was initially attracted to the M1 Mac Mini. It’s just a computer, without Human Interface Devices that I don’t need. Two things put me off the M1 Mac Mini though: It has a fan People say it’s silent. Even if this is true (there are levels to this), fans are mechanical devices which can wear out (and develop a noise), suck/blow dust around (needing to be cleaned), or fail. They also use power. Power delivery The battery bank from which I power my home is 12V (24V or 48V would be better and I’ll upgrade when the time is right). All my electricity comes from this battery bank. I have a power inverter, meaning I can use appliances with normal/household plugs, but the inverter wastes some power in the conversion process, stepping up from 12V to 220V. To then plug in a power brick, which will again throw away some power in converting 220V back down to whatever voltage a device uses, means double wastage, and a mess of plugs and wires. I have DC 12V from the battery, and an easily-accessible 20V feed via a step-up converter. Then of course I have 5V over USB, not to mention all the exotic USB-C variants. Between all these methods I can power everything that I use regularly. Assorted XT-60 adapters When I buy a new device the first thing I do is chop off its power connector, attach it to one of the XT60 connectors I use for everything , and chuck (hoard, actually) the device’s power brick. I’ve done this with multiple laptops and small form factor PCs without issue. They usually seem to want 19V-21V and be tolerant of 20V although I’ve heard stories of people damaging stuff with similar reckless behaviour to mine so maybe I’ve been lucky. I searched for info about doing this with the M1 Mac Mini’s power brick and found some people saying they had problems. While writing this I just searched again to try to find those discussions but this time I found stuff suggesting it’s fairly easy. So I’m not sure if I used the wrong search terms before, or maybe I was just too jumpy about modding power delivery for an Apple device. Apple tends to be so unfriendly towards going off-road and they’re known for implementing measures to prevent you doing things in ‘unapproved’ ways. I didn’t want to waste money buying something I couldn’t use. For better or worse, I decided against the M1 Mac Mini. M1 Macbook Air Part 3 of 11I admit it's a modern classic.Despite its laptop-ness, I decided to think harder on the Macbook Air: It’s thin, light and particularly low-powered It’s fanless Although I’ll never prefer it, Apple (/my?) users tend to love the trackpad, so the ability to check out my apps on the M1 Air’s trackpad and make sure everything feels ok might be useful My issue with the redundant (for me) display being attached?.. this could become an advantage. People sell these machines cheaply when the displays break (Apple is… not big on right-to-repair). I could buy a Macbook with a broken screen and remove it. I checked whether this was possible (such things are a given with most laptops but with Apple I wasn’t sure what to expect). I found that this was doable, people were out there doing it. Fantastic. ‘BUY IT NOW’ I managed to find a smashed-screen, 8GB M1 Macbook Air in Rose Pink on eBay for £300. Really if I’d waited I could probably have picked one up for less. But this was a strike while the iron is hot situation… my resistance had been strong for many years, if I waited I might easily end up changing my mind. 8GB RAM? Rose Pink? I’d ideally want 16GB RAM minimum on a modern laptop, but the price difference between that and 8GB was significant, even on the second-hand market. Everyone seemed to be saying that 8GB on Apple Silicon was like 16GB on AMD64, which sounded distinctly like the reality-distortion-field in effect, but there were architectural realities such as their ‘Unified’ memory architecture to back this up (or at least the idea that you get more bang per GB on Apple Silicon). I’d decided to trust. I was mainly interested in using this machine for Flutter development, and had found several people saying they were doing that on an M1 with 8GB without issues. [Note from the future: It’s great, no worries and easily snappy enough for me] This model was Rose Pink, the colour I’d usually be least likely to choose. Considering I was buying it to immediately butcher, this somehow made it all the more perfect. It's from eBay. Does it Even Work? Part 4 of 11I've generally had decent experiences buying from eBay. But before I start chopping bits off my purchase I should probably make sure it works.Being an eBay purchase (albeit from a seller with good feedback) the first thing I needed to do was make sure that this thing was actually functional. The screen was damaged (as per the listing) and displayed basically nothing, or to be specific a few single-pixel lines of colour which hinted at whether the machine was on or off, on a black smashed background. Nothing so garish as ‘an LED to tell you when its powered on’ would be allowed on a modern Mac. These thin, single-pixel lines of colour would be my power indicator. Monitors and cables This is where I encountered my first difficulties. I have a very small, very cheap USB-C monitor. This is the only actual monitor I have. I usually run stuff headless over VNC, NoMachine etc, using tablets like my Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra as remote OLED displays. I just don’t have much need for monitors. I have a Boox Max Lumi E-ink tablet with a micro HDMI input, so that can act as a monitor but… maybe later. So I plugged the little monitor in to one of the two available ports on the characterless bravely minimal chassis (the other port would do for power). The monitor didn’t light up. A vast landscape of confusing possible states opened up before me. Was I in the wrong port? A USB-C port is not a USB-C port etc, especially where displays and power are concerned. Maybe only one specific port would power the Mac, or only one of them would output a display signal. What about the cable, both cables? Were they even providing power/pixels or did they have the wrong strands in them? Did the Macbook put out enough power over USB-C for the monitor? Did I need to plug an additional cable for power, or charge the battery some more, or plug extra power into the monitor itself? Was my monitor just not compatible? It’s a simple AliExpress generic thing, and Apple is not exactly known for its broad compatibility with 3rd-party products. Was it just not-yet-enabled in the OS? Was I even ‘in the OS’ at this point, or was the Macbook still booting… or stuck in some horrific ‘recovery zone’ where blindly pressing the wrong button might result in destroying the OS, the only solutions to be “plug it into one of the other Apple computers that you don’t have” or “take it to an Apple Store where (if somebody dressed like you is allowed inside) a Genius will go asthmatic at the concept of a headless Macbook and make you buy a new one for a thousand of the pounds that you don’t have”? After an embarrassing amount of cable-swapping (80% of my USB-C cables either couldn’t deliver enough power, or couldn’t deliver the pixels, and I’ve been