I have an Apple Magic Trackpad that suffered battery failure. It’s been replaced and I was holding the old one over the trash when I realized there’s some potentially neat stuff in there… anybody want to play with it?
- Other than the battery (which has been disposed of) it’s in good working order. If you source a replacement battery it should be good as new (less the bottom cover, which was damaged).
- On USB power it works fine as a trackpad but haptic feedback is disabled. I assume it’s something to do with overcurrent protection; I couldn’t say if it just knows not to run the haptics amps without a battery present, or if there’s some kind of reactive anti-brownout that could be circumvented with a beefier supply. Come to think of it, haptics would probably work if you apply power to the battery connector instead of USB; I didn’t try it.
- The lightning connector appears to be a convenient module with mounting screws and a flex cable.