Apple’s new 13” and 15” MacBook Pros sport a Touch Bar - a multi-touch enabled strip of “glass” built into the keyboard that replaces the traditional function keys and taskbar. It adds a touch control to a non-touch screen.
iFixit has done a teardown of the 13” model and awarded it a one out of ten for repairability and questions a few of the MacBook Pros fundamental designs.
For example, the RAM is DDR3, not DDR4 as expected with an Intel 6th generation Core CPU and it is soldered to the motherboard making it impossible to upgrade. The SSD is slower SanDisk NAND (four x 64GB chips for 256GB etc.) again soldered to the motherboard and not upgradable.
On the plus side, it has adopted USB-C 3.1 (Thunderbolt compatible) for data and charging ending the MagSafe connector era.
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In trying to disassemble and reassemble the device, iFixit broke the Touch Bar as the OLED panel (display) separated from the digitiser.
The 49.2Wh battery replacement was also difficult being heavily glued into the chassis and hard to get to. The five cells are wired (2 x 2 in parallel) to be the equivalent of three 3.8V cells in series.
It concludes
- Proprietary pentalobe screws continue to make working on the device unnecessarily difficult.
- The battery assembly is entirely, and very solidly, glued into the case, thus complicating replacement.
- The processor, RAM, and flash memory are soldered to the logic board.
- The Touch Bar adds a second, difficult to replace, screen to damage.
- The Touch ID sensor doubles as the power switch and is paired with the T1 chip on the logic board. Fixing a broken power switch may require help from Apple or a new logic board.
Comment
While iFixit is perhaps a tad perfectionist, its teardown reflects the fact that modern notebooks etc. in their quest for thin and light, have a high level of integration and a low level of upgradability or reparability – that is not unique to Apple.
Anyway, to the techie types iFixit teardowns are a must read. Enjoy.
