Bench Signal #013 — three things from the bench, every Tuesday.
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① This week's tip
MacBook Pro M2, random shutdowns under light load after a third-party battery replacement. Before condemning the new battery or looking at the logic board, check System Information > Power for "Battery Not Detected" or "Service Recommended."
An unpaired battery can misreport its charge state to the system. The Mac reads that as a fault condition and shuts down protectively, which looks exactly like a hardware problem but isn't one.
Check the reported status first. It's a two-minute look before you reach for a multimeter.
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② Prompt of the week
Use this to build a repair documentation template you can start using on every job:
I run an independent Apple repair lab. Build me a repair documentation template with five sections: intake condition (cosmetic and functional, checklist style), pre-repair test results, customer authorisation (what was approved, price, date/time fields), post-repair test results, and disclosed caveats (checklist of common items like non-genuine part messages or prior liquid exposure). Format it so a technician can fill it in by hand in under 3 minutes per job.
Fill one in for every job, not just the ones that feel risky.
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③ Resource this week
Documenso — documenso.com
Free, open source e-signature tool. Useful for getting a customer's authorisation on record, price and scope included, without a paid DocuSign subscription.
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That's it for this week.
If this was useful, forward it to a colleague who'd appreciate it.
— BenchNotes