Hi guys,

Been calling around the city today trying to find somewhere that will sell me parts for older Macs. Seems that this is harder than it should be. I'm wondering, other than iFixit or eBay, where you guys get your parts. In particular I'm looking for a fan for an old MacBook, but it seems to me that there SHOULD be a reliable place to get all the Apple parts you could ever need right here in Toronto. If I'm not going to find anything bricks and mortar, I'd be fine with shopping online as long as it was a Canadian company!

I'd love your recommendations!

Was this a dumb question? A search on here didn't seem to turn up any helpful info. Surely someone out there is buying Apple parts from somewhere in Canada....

Not a dumb question, but I suspect others and myself just don't do that level of repair on our Macs. I know, for me, it's not worth my time to diagnose and fix it myself.

not sure of others but i started buying broken macbooks a while ago trying to frankenstein one together to 1) get one cheap and 2) say I did it. after a while you just end up with spare parts for them. I understand what hayesk is saying but I enjoy troubleshooting and learning what makes them tick, besides the fact that they have no warranty left.

I generally try to find a shop that repairs them and make an offer on the part. The larger Apple retailers are usually hopelessly overpriced for parts, but I've had reasonable luck at places such as iUpgrade and iRepair.ca.

I think he may be looking for actual service parts like logic boards, power supplies etc...?

If so, these are generally proprietary parts that only Apple makes. Best bet if you want to DIY, is finding a half dead machine on eBay that has the working part you need.

I think he may be looking for actual service parts like logic boards, power supplies etc...?

Yes, that's where I find parts like power supplies.

Yes, that's where I find parts like power supplies.

Hey Macfury... sorry, you get parts like power supplies from iUpgrade and iRepair.ca, or from eBay from half dead machines? :)

Unfortunately Apple doesn't sell parts so you are at the mercy of the overpriced certified repair people. I generally look for donor machines, but more often than not I can find a replacement part on ebay. They mostly come from China but I've never had a problem.

edit:post was redundant now

Unfortunately Apple doesn't sell parts so you are at the mercy of the overpriced certified repair people. I generally look for donor machines, but more often than not I can find a replacement part on ebay. They mostly come from China but I've never had a problem.

If I were to label one of the two companies in the repair equation (those being Apple and the repair place you've gone to) I would label Apple as the overpriced part of that equation. They charge ludicrous amounts of money for many of the parts. Most repair places that I've dealt with don't even up-charge on the parts due to this.

Maybe I've just been lucky so far ... but I've seen the prices that Apple charges to the repair places, and yowza! If you have to point a finger I'd start with Apple. Most of those places are just trying to get their hourly rate for their techs doing the actual work.

Haven't been around these parts for a while, so I didn't see this take off!

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll try iRepair and iUpgrade and see if they have the particular part I need.

So the one thing I don't quite understand is which parts are exclusively available from Apple through the certified repair network? In theory these parts should be available wholesale to repair shops and electronics shops everywhere, shouldn't they?

And assuming they DO have their parts supplies limited, which parts do 3rd party manufacturers not reproduce? I would imagine the logic/mother board would be a tough one to rip off, but what else can't I get freely?

Basically, I feel like there should be a single place in TO to get any part that I need for any of my Macs. I'm kinda getting that that's not possible.....