iPhone 4S iFixit repair

My son has an iPhone 4s whose power button failed. iFixit has a repair guide for it and sells replacement parts. A million little screws and many hours later:

and I've got it apart:

It was pretty tough going and iFixit comments like "This repair will destroy your soul. I would not recommend even attempting it without even more specialized tools (eye loupe, headlamp, preternatural patience) as it is extraordinarily easy to ruin your phone with one quick misstep. I've thrown in the towel after weeks of attempting the job." are much more understandable now.

The reassembly starts out challenging but got easy once the power button, earpiece and logic board were back in. Firing it up revealed that half of the digitizer no longer worked. The left hand of the display sensed my finger but the right half was dead. I'm guessing the the cable was damaged as it was in the way of one of the power button screws.

I have a lot more respect for how the iPhone is assembled but don't think it's weekend repair material.

Converting VirtualBox VMs to Parallels

I sometimes get VM "appliances" in VirtualBox format. I prefer Parallels and thankfully the conversion isn't difficult.

To convert the VirtualBox .vdi file to an .hdd file:

• Start Parallels as it's services will be needed
• From the command line run: 
• /Applications/Parallels\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/prl_convert .vdi --allow-no-os

This created a "naked" disk that doesn't have the wrapper virtual machine definition that Parallels needs. To make the wrapper, in Parallels:

• Add a new virtual machine
• Install from a DVD/image file
• Continue without a source (iso)
• Select the OS for the wrapper (Ubuntu)
• Name it and select customize settings before installation

Even though you're only part way through the definition of the VM, the disk files are already there. Find the Parallels .pvm file in the Finder and show contents. 

• Move the .hdd you created from the convert step into it
• Choose hardware—>Hard Disk 1
• Change the source to the converted .hdd
• Set other options to suit

Boot your new VM and install Parallels tools.