Latest Apple MacBook Pro Laptops Get Lowest Repairability Score After Teardown [VIDEO]
iFixit is a web site that tears apart the latest gadgets to determine how easy or difficult it is to put back together. It simulates upgrading or repairing a device with new components. Mac is infamous for being difficult to repair and iFixit confirms this often.
It is no surprise then that the latest Macbook Pro laptops did not fare well in its most recent teardowns. The 13-inch and 15-inch with Retina displays did even worse. On a scale of 1-10, the latest MacBook Pro received a score of 1 for ease of repairability, which means it has been the most difficult to fix since iFixit started doing this.
The difficulty lies in Apple's combination of proprietary parts and its components glued directly to the logic board or chassis. The MacBook Pro lithium polymer battery is glued to the case, making it harder to extract. The trackpad cable is covered by the battery makes it worse as it could be damaged if the battery is removed. The laptop's RAM is soldered to the motherboard so memory is not user-replaceable.
Apple now uses its new PCIe-based SSDs and offers upto 1TB of storage. However, the drives are not a standard 2.5-inch format that makes swapping an issue. However, it is a separate daughtercard, making upgrades possible in the future. Cables such as the MagSafe 2 and speaker wires could be easily removed.
The MacBook Pro's Retina display assembly is completely fused. There's no glass protection so if anything falls inside it, the entire assembly must be replaced.
Apple fans will say they have no interest in opening up their MacBooks anyway but the inability to get inside the machines leaves customers more dependent on Apple to repair ailing systems.
The updated 13-inch MacBook Pro is thinner at 19mm and lighter at 1.62kg. The refreshed 15-inch MacBook Pro model weighs 2.02kg and measures 18mm deep. It has improved graphics with the new Crystal Iris Pro chip. This means less time using the optional discrete GPU, adding up to decreased power consumption even while doing taxing tasks such as video processing. However, it is reported to not quite have the graphics potency to live up to the "Pro" name expectation.
Source: YouTube.com/iFixitYourself