- So, I found this replica
Macintosh on AliExpress and I thought it would be a
fun project to tinker with. But when it arrived, it
was in a thousand pieces. (upbeat electronic music) Hey everyone, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken. And recently, I was in
the middle of working on two other episodes,
an installation sensation and a scam-buster follow up. But The Krazy Ken Curse struck hard. The installation sensation
project went up in flames and the scam-buster
product still isn't here even though I ordered it seven weeks ago. So because of those problems, I have nothing else to do this week. So I figured I would let
you guys know what's going on with this replica that
I ordered back in February. Now just to manage expectations, I do not have any plans to do anything project-wise with this product. I'm canceling all that due to
the unfortunate circumstances. But I would still like
to talk with you today and tell you the story of
how we got to this point. So here's where it started. I saw tweet from ViolenceWorks on Twitter and he said, "Hey, there's
this ITX Mac on AliExpress." Okay, that sounds right up my alley. He said, "Somebody buy it
and tell me how it goes." Giving into peer pressure of Twitter, of course I bought it because
that's just what I do. And the listing photos looked promising. Visually, it looked like a
rather well built product. I mean, you're looking at it right now. It doesn't look too bad, right? Well, just wait and see. There's two versions. There's a version that just
functions as a monitor. You can plug in, I believe HDMI, and you can get your video
output on the screen. But the other version,
the version I purchased, has a full featured
computer on the inside. And there's this amazing comic
sans font in the listing too. Oh, I feel better
already, but don't worry. It comes with original God stress free. And I can confirm that's BS, because this project has been
anything but stress free. 360 degrees around stereo
attack and "high fideity" sound. That's right, deity. These headphones have Jesus built in. So anyway, I sent in the payment, it went through, and now we wait. But then I got a notice saying that the charge for the
shipping wasn't enough. Okay, I get it. Sometimes that happens
with international stuff. It's coming from China all
the way to my lair here. It's far away. So it ended up costing
me an extra 100 bucks that I wasn't expecting to spend but I was like, "Whatever,
just pay the guy and move on." And it arrived. It was well packed. It was in this really thick foam. So I thought, "Okay, great. You know, the box wasn't
damaged, the foam wasn't damaged. Looks good." Take it out. Visually, it looks okay. Audibly, (computer rattles) not so much. So I inspect it a little bit closer. I checked the back and
I see a little crack on the IO panel and I thought, "Ooh, okay. A little bit of damage,
nothing too serious so far." But then I noticed the
motherboard was crooked. Now I'm a little more concerned. That's a lot more serious,
but I kept investigating. Hopefully the electronics
were okay, right? But then I see loose screws on the inside. Now, typically screws
don't just unwind a bunch in shipping and fall out. Something else must have happened. The structures that hold the
screws in were all cracked. All of the internal plastic structures inside this thing were destroyed. Everything was shaking inside
of itself and breaking. This plastic, I'm not an expert, but it was probably 3D printed. I don't know exactly what
material composite it is. I'm afraid I'm gonna break it just by touching it a little too hard. It's not good construction,
which is probably why it couldn't survive
the shipping very well, despite it being packed
really well inside the box. And also when I was inspecting the inside a lot of powder came out
and I'm guessing again that's that cheaper
plastic composite material whatever it is just grinding. And it's so fragile, it just
grinds into a fine powder. So essentially none of
the structural components inside this thing were intact and all of the electronic
components were loose except for the screen and
the power supply unit. Those were actually secured okay. So I contacted the seller
to try to fix this problem and thank goodness he spoke English. And I say that because
again, I'm using AliExpress. And for those who aren't
familiar with AliExpress, it's a China based retail service owned by the Alibaba Group. And a lot of the sellers are Chinese. Now in the messaging system there is a translator
built in, which is nice. But again, thankfully
this guy spoke English. So I didn't really need
to use that feature. However, keeping up with the
messaging was kind of annoying because we're on complete
opposite sides of the planet. And time zones are a
bit of a problem there. I'm awake, he's asleep. There's sometimes 12 to
24 hours between messages. And anytime you wanna go check
your messages on the web app, you have to do this
annoying sign in code thing which is ridiculous 'cause
you get like 60 seconds to type it in and it takes like 30 seconds for the email code to get to you. So you really only have
30 seconds to type it in and you have to do
that every single time. Now you can use the app,
which is much more convenient because you don't need
to constantly re sign in and it has push notifications. So when the seller messages
you, you get notified, however, you also get notified
about a lot of other things. Maybe there's a setting for it, but I got a lot of
advertisements from AliExpress when I installed the app. So many push notifications,
it just annoyed me. And sometimes I would totally lose track of the real message notification
that I needed to tap on. But on the bright side, I got
an ad for this amazing bikini. I think it would look good. It's better than the AirPods one I did. Let's forget about that. The initial solution was to get a new case and keep the electronics. Okay, that could be a fun episode, right? Doing some surgery, just taking the guts out of this and putting
them in a new case. Brilliant. But before we do that, we need to check to make sure the
electronics actually works. So I did a test. I plug it in, power it up, and the fan spins up and it spins down and it spins up and it spins down and it just keeps doing this. It doesn't do anything else. When the seller watched my video, he noticed there's
supposed to be a blue light that turns on the front,
but it wasn't showing up. So he suggested check all the connections. Okay, maybe something was loose. Actually, when Dongle was
over and we were filming those other episodes, he
tinkered with this thing and thanks to his help, boom,
the light turned on this time but the fan still was stuck in that loop. So Dongle suggested to pull the RAM. We took the RAM out, powered
the thing up and guess what? The fan stayed on. It didn't keep turning off. This was great. But guess what? Nothing else happens. So one little problem got solved but the thing still didn't work. So at this point it just seems like the juice isn't
worth the squeeze anymore. The structural components are broken and the electronics aren't
working and there's plenty of other projects that deserve
my time and energy, right? So I contact the seller
trying to start a return. Thankfully he said yes. So once this gets returned,
I should get a refund but I'm probably not gonna be refunded for the initial shipping, maybe. And I'm likely not gonna get reimbursed for the return shipping. So I'm gonna be out about 200 bucks or so, but whatever, live and learn. It is a bit of a bummer
because I wanted to put Linux on here and skin
it to look like macOS. I also wanted do a Hackintosh with it and I wanted to have it at my booth at vintage computer festival Midwest. But again, I have plenty
of other cool things I'm working on and I'm gonna have plenty of other cool things at that booth too. So it's just time to move on from this. So as I'm prepping this thing to ship it I then realized, "Wait, I
don't have a return address." I looked on the box,
that's sitting down here but I don't see a return address on there. And even if there was a
return address on there, I probably couldn't read
it because it's in Chinese. Sorry, I don't know how to read that. So I message him. And he gives me the address
I need to send it back to, but he sent it as one long line and I don't know how to break that up because typically an
address is like four lines or something like that, but
it was just one long line. And I'm like, "I don't
understand how to format this for a Chinese return address." So I message him again. And he reformats it. It looks a lot more feasible. So hopefully when I pack this
thing up, put the label on it, it actually arrives. I've never shipped
anything to China before. So hopefully this works. I will follow up about this. Hopefully it's good news. I'll post about it on my Twitter. So make sure you're following me on there. And yeah, fingers crossed
that The Krazy Ken Curse doesn't strike and it
gets back to the place. Well, I would say in one piece but we already know that can't happen. So that's the status of this project. Sorry, it didn't work
out, but stick around for many more fun things because
I like to make new episodes about rare and retro tech, new tech, and of course, scam tech. And I release them usually
on Thursdays every week. And hey, if you like this
episode, you know what to do. Thanks, and I'll see you next time. Catch the crazy and pass it on. (upbeat electronic music) Let's see China, China, where's China? It's the one shaped like a boot, right?
