Some of us like to tinker around with our Macs – upgrading, modifying, even pushing the machine well beyond what it was ever meant to do. As a longtime technology enthusiast who likes to explore and experiment, I’ve tried tons of impractical things with my Macs over the years.

Sometimes to attempt adding new functionality, whereas other mods were for plain aesthetics. This isn’t anything posted here already like the eGPUs in the iMacs, either. In no particular order, here are some of the most unusual modifications I’ve done to Macs over the years – now out in the open!
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1. Crystal LED ON indicator for Mac Pro 1,1

In December 2015 I basically superglued a plastic crystal on top of the front LED of my 2006 Mac Pro. There was nothing to it, just something nice to look at while it was on, thought it looked really cool. The superglue could hardly stick to the aluminum, nothing was damaged, but it was aesthetically pleasing for the month and a half it hung on.

(Above: My desktop setup in Late 2015)

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2. Actual glass screen protector for iMac G4

Chuckling a little as I type this. Did this my freshman year of high school October 2010, when I used an 800 MHz iMac G4 for a little bit as a daily driver. I basically took double sized tape and put a piece of glass in front of the iMac G4, made it heavy. Also had the audacity to replace the OEM fan with a blue LED one.

• Also, do you notice anything off about the Titanium PowerBook G4, and the iBook?

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3: Touchscreen ON a Power Mac G4

Don’t know where I was going with this or what I was going to expect beyond a touch screen flash drive. It was partly aesthetics and part of me wanted to see what could be realistically done with this.

Being a severely limited device, so I ended up removing it rather quickly. I also superglued a fake sapphire to this Power Mac G4 because it’s called sapphire. It’s still on there today in 2025.
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4: Red Backlit Keyboard

Using a red-color plastic insert for the backlit keyboard, it turned into a nice shade of red. This was done in Late 2015 on a 17-Inch 2007 MacBook Pro, which was my laptop daily driver then.
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5. iBook G3.. uhh.. tablet?

It’s not touchscreen, you need an external mouse and keyboard. It was already broken to begin with, this came out of the piles of iBook G3 parts I had between 2010-2015. The point was it ran Fliqlo or could be mounted onto something and be a compact portable iMac G3 of sorts.

6: Mac Medium

Screen doesn’t work? No problem! Just stick it under the table face-side up, now it’s a Mac Medium.
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