sirovenmitts / golden_delicious

Get some tasty info about an Apple serial number

GoldenDelicious

Tasty info about an Apple serial number

Apple tries really hard to make it impossible to know anything about a serial number. Additionally, Apple uses about 5 different ways to identify a computer. This gem aims to make things a little easier.

NOTE: Every time you use this gem you make at least 2 HTTP requests.

Usage

I only want information about a serial number

Well then, just do this:

serial_number = GoldenDelicious::SerialNumber.new SERIAL_NUMBER

You'll get back an object with the following information:

serial_number.location	The code for the plant this computer was manufactured at.
serial_number.year	A code indicating what year this computer was manufactured.
serial_number.week	The week this computer was manufactured.
serial_number.id	The unique identifier for this computer.
serial_number.mode	The computer's model identifier (e.g. Z5W or 1AX).

### I really only care about the computer's model

If you already know the model identifier then just do this:

model = GoldenDelicious::Model.new MODEL_IDENTIFIER

You'll get an object with the following information:

model.memory	Information about the RAM that this computer uses.
model.storage	Information about the hard drive in this computer.
model.identifiers	Most of the identifiers Apple uses for this model.

Please see lib/golden_delicious/model.rb for more information - it's really simple, though quite ugly.

If you DON'T know the model identifier but you have a serial number:

device = GoldenDelicious::Device.new SERIAL_NUMBER

This object has all of the information that SerialNumber AND Model have! It's awesome!

Help?

This is just a gem I need for work projects, but if you want to help me, please feel free. Right now my tests woefully brittle: I don't have any serial numbers to test edge cases (older computers, iPhones, iPods, etc.). Please feel free to send me your serial number; I won't do anything weird with it - just put it in some tests to ensure that this gem does what it's supposed to.

golden_delicious's Issues

Parse all relevant information from Apple serial numbers

Apple embeds several pieces of information in a serial number such as:

• Where the computer was manufactured
• What year it was manufactured
• What week of the year it was manufactured

These values are encoded differently for the old style (11 digit) and new style (12 digit) numbers.

Currently GoldenDelicious doesn't do anything with the values it extracts, and so the raw encoded values are returned for SerialNumber#year and SerialNumber#week. I want to decode this information and provide an estimated manufacture date (week and year) as a Date object. Additionally, I want to find a list of Apple plants and match the code to the location; then I can return a string with the name of the plant.

Handle AppleInfo service being down

If there is an error with the info service, throws back a HTML page. Which is not valid JSON

• (this one) https://selfsolve.apple.com/Sorry.do?caller=WC_DEPR_CALL

not sure if this portal is just down or perhaps gone! Anyway, it should throw an Error instead and perhaps continue on to try and find from other sources

Provide a link to an icon for the computer

Apple's selfsolve website (selfsolve.apple.com) shows an icon for a serial number. These icons are stored in a CDN in a well known location (based on the model identifier). I want to provide a link to the icon, if it's available, as a URI object for easy fetching.