Stop Him Before He Modifies Again!
Here is a short piece I wrote a while back about
Keita Suyama, the Japanese modder who I mentioned in yesterday's
news.__________________________________
TOKYO
- You might say Keita Suyama is obsessed with modifying Macintosh computers.
His office is strewn with various tools, electronic parts, and partially
disassembled computers. He grinned sheepishly as he talked about his most recent
project - a black flat-panel iMac. [If
you're reading this in a browser, you may need to click "Permalink" below to
read the rest of the article.]
"I'm not entirely satisfied with the way it came
out," he said, but his face was that of a proud parent. Turning the white iMac
black entailed disassembling the entire computer, removing the paint on the
inside of the clear plastic shell with paint thinner and repainting it - a
technique that Suyama perfected when creating blue and orange versions of the
new iBook. "I can't really recommend doing it - it was really tough," says
Suyama.
In fact, once he had put the
machine back together, it wouldn't start up. "Actually I don't think it was my
fault," he explains. "This kind of thing has been known to happen with some of
the first flat-panel iMacs, but you can't exactly send in a black iMac for
warranty service and say it just stopped working." Since spare parts for the
iMac were not available at the time, he had no choice but to buy a second
machine for parts in order to fix the
first.
He started innocently enough --
upgrading hard drives and memory on desktop machines - but then found himself
taking apart his PowerBook 520c and then his PowerBook 2400.
"At first it was a little scary - like
I was doing something I wasn't supposed to. But luckily I work near the
electronics district in Tokyo, so I was able to practice with some used
computers, and I found it wasn't as difficult as I had thought. Eventually I
started modifying new machines as
well."
Suyama works at his father's
company designing and fitting hearing aids, but he spends much of his time
using, writing about, and modifying his Macs. His tendency to work on his
projects at the office has earned him the nickname "Japan's least hardest
working man." In reality his job demands that he spend long hours at his
office, and he works on his projects whenever he has free moment.
His company web site only occasionally
refers to hearing aids - Suyama uses it mostly to display his recent projects
and Mac related news. He regularly travels to the US - sometimes for trade
shows or symposiums in his field, but more often than not it is to attend the
two annual Mac Expos. He posts detailed reports about the shows on his web
site, but the real center of attention is usually his latest
modification.
Listening to him talk,
you can tell he loves what he does. Even the smallest detail can be the source
of a project or a section for his web site. He spent weeks trying out various
possibilities for cooling the new iBook, even going so far as to use a
thermographic camera and scientific thermometers to obtain accurate readings.
He tried out a variety of third-party external fans, as well as ones of his own
design. Suyama's love of detail and precision shows up in many of his projects.
To see how loud the fan in the new flat-panel iMac was he took it to an Eckel
Industries soundproof chamber (the result was a quiet
36db).
Suyama gives a variety of reasons for why he
does what he does. "Part of it is just a desire to make things more convenient
and more personal," he explains. "Once you buy something, it's yours. If you
can change it to make it work better for you or look more attractive, then why
not do it? I suppose part of me also likes to surprise people and to do
something that has never been done before." After thinking a bit more, he
continued. "The truth is that I'm not really sure why I do it, but I can't seem
to stop."
Posted at 09:01 PM | Category:
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