Just a few hours after the first teardown of Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook, iFixit has done its usual excellent job in providing clear photos and commentary on what it found inside the new super-svelte machine …
No surprise that iFixit gives the machine the lowest possible rating of 1 out of 10 for repairability.
The company does a nice job of identifying many of the chips on the diminutive double-sided logic board. As a space-saving measure, the 256GB SSD comprises two 128GB chips, one on either side of the logic board.
The battery assembly is entirely, and very solidly, glued into the lower case. The Retina display is still a fused unit with no separate, protective glass. If the display needs replacing, it’ll cost a pretty penny. The processor, RAM, and flash memory are soldered to the logic board.
Replacing glued-in batteries is never a trivial job, but in this case the precision alignment of the layered cells (which Apple achieves using high-speed cameras) “doesn’t bode well for the ideas of battery replacement,” says iFixit, with such delightful understatement I felt like declaring them honorary Brits.
We also got a closer look at the Force Touch trackpad, which is even slimmer than the one found in the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Check out the full tear-down over at the iFixit site.
