It might be my age showing but what type of Li-Ion supports charging up to 4.35 ? (I mean .. there’s the type that goes up in flames but .. ?)

I really wish there wasn’t a camera hump to hold securely ..

Hey Mike, usually the outer sleeve is indeed always GND(or -), and the inner wire VDD(or +); there still is a very small change they flipped those, but ... I'd estimate that - esp. in Apple's case to well under 1% xD. [the safest way however is to do it my way (ha!) and not unsolder the wires completely, that way, irrespective of polarity, you're connecting stuff up the way it was before]

Kicking your mac around shouldn't have any noticeable effect on the hard drives - if you drop it from 1m every once in a while then yes, otherwise not really - remember iPods had hard drives for quite a while. Your computer sees hard drives and ssds the same way, you can have as many of either as you can fit

I really don't get which side you're on .. Given how pristine your spelling is I'd say mine though .. Welcome aboard !

You could try getting a neodymium magnet and run it across the earpiece grill. In my father's case, a lot of metal powder was in there, pressing in the speaker membrane; the alternative is cleaning it (which does require opening the phone using Eric's very nice guide). The alternative to those is ordering an earpiece online - but usually those are really bad quality, so trying to fix the original one would be advisable

Thanks - now I realised it too :))

I would strongly advise against it

The metal part that crimps the wire would have been removed whilst carying out the first part of this step :)

Do NOT do it sparingly - as then it won't be able to properly fuse the wires in the adapter with the wires of the outside cable; it shouldn't make more than a few milimeters rigid