The owner of a busy local restaurant came to us about their Apple Mac Mini 2010 computer. 2010! Yes, you heard that right.

The computer might be a 13-year-old machine, but it serves a specific and important purpose for his restaurant: to keep his diners entertained.

The sole purpose of the Mac is to play streaming videos and music to lighten up the atmosphere of his venue. And the computer has been doing just that, very well for 13 years.

He walked to our store when the computer’s WiFi had stopped working and the computer had also been running very slowly that he wanted to improve its performance.

Given the age of the computer, Apple stores and many others would have written it off. They don’t work on “vintage” model computers. Finding a replacement WiFi card for a 13-year-old Mac Mini would be a challenge.

I had 2 solutions in mind after inspecting the computer. Either way, we could get it back to working order.

To make it more challenging, he needed it to be fixed on the same day.

Below is a photo of the computer.

I’ve known the owner for quite some time. His restaurant is just across from our store. I’ve dined at his place several times. His restaurant is his life. I didn’t want to leave him out of options.

I told him it would need the WiFi card and hard drive to be replaced. The work would take 4 or 5 hours. He asked if we could do it in 2 hours. I said I’d work on it straightaway but 2 hours wasn’t possible because there were 2 parts to be replaced.

We finally agreed on a price with “neighbour” (aka “steep”) discounts and I started working on it.

Apple stores and many other technicians don’t work on “vintage” computers, leaving customers with no solutions rather than paying 10x more to purchase a new computer and adding it to landfill.

We got the computer’s WiFi and hard drive replaced within 4 hours on the same day.

The customer picked up the computer and called us to confirm it was up and running in his restaurant. He was able to continue keeping his customers entertained.