at last month I watched centric event
Apple announced its new laptop the
MacBook weighing in at even less than
the MacBook Air having only one USB C
port and having a totally redesigned
keyboard battery and trackpad this new
machine certainly piqued our interest
well it's been a long wait since the
MacBook was announced and we finally
have our hands on it
so that means it's time to tear it down
hi I'm Kate would I fix it in four
Gwendoline who is on temporary leave and
today we are tearing down Apple's brand
new MacBook size-wise the new MacBook is
close to the 11 inch MacBook Air
measuring in at twenty eight point zero
five centimeters wide 19 point 65
centimetres deep and at its thickest
only 1.31 centimeters high
the MacBook weighs in at 2.0 three
pounds and in case you're wondering that
is less than half the thickness and
almost three pounds lighter than its
2009 ancestor it's no surprise that
getting into our brand new MacBook is
going to require the use of our
pentalobe driver but fortunately for us
we came prepared
opening the MacBook carefully was a good
idea as we spotted some cables connected
to the rear case disconnecting them
required some fancy lifting and prying
that was reminiscent of the touch ID
cable we saw in the iPhone 5s opening
the MacBook all the way revealed that
the lower case is home to the battery
and logic board
after discovering that Apple has most
likely hidden the battery connector
underneath the logic board we brought
out the big guns in the form of our
newly minted battery isolation pick
these picks help to keep the power away
from the logic board while we dig around
some more there are three cables we need
to disconnect to separate the upper case
from the lower first up under a bracket
held in place by some annoying try wing
screws we find the three-in-one display
power and i/o cable that runs to the
USBC port next up was the display
connector and finally the audio board
connector just like that we have
achieved separation now we can turn our
attention to the logic board
there are only a couple screws holding
it in place and once those are removed
we carefully lift the logic board out of
the case this little board is home to
the dual-core Intel Core M processor
with integrated intel HD graphics 5300 8
gigabytes of elpida micron lpddr3 Mobile
RAM and the 256 gigabytes of Toshiba
made NAND flash storage after a tip from
an antic we took a closer look at the SK
Hynix made SSD Bram wery flowed the RAM
chip off the logic board to expose the
SSD controller layered beneath it looks
like apples 2011 acquisition of Israeli
flash memory controller designer and a
bit is starting to bear fruit and this
SSD has a custom Apple made controller
next up we fired up our I open errs in
anticipation of a lot of heating and
trying to get the battery out and we
were right this new Terrace battery is
firmly and totally glued in place and to
complicate matters the battery sits down
in a well making prying it up trickier
than ever this is a 7.5 5 volt 39.7 1
watt hour and 5200 63 milliamp hour
battery that is just a hair more than
what you get in this year's 11 inch
MacBook Air which had a 5100 milliamp
hour battery we got our first look at
the force touch trackpad in the 13-inch
MacBook Pro released last month and here
it is again this is a slimmer and
danger' version of the trackpad we saw
last month but has all the same features
including the taptic engine if your here
is to see how exactly the force touch
trackpad works be sure to check out our
video that we posted the last time we
saw one where we walk you through all
the details of the new trackpad the
keyboard on this MacBook has been
completely redesigned and the keys pop
off easily enough after some prying with
our pick these keys now use a butterfly
mechanism and use a single assembly
instead of the traditional scissor
mechanism that most keyboards use now
this is said to provide the keyboard
with more stable and responsive keys
lastly we remove the Retina display and
USB C port that is wedged underneath the
display hinge
the display is a 12 inch Retina display
with a resolution of 2304 by 1440 and a
pixel density of 226 pixels per inch
with the display removed we can finally
get at the most controversial aspect of
the new MacBook it's single port the
USBC port is your all-in-one data
transfer power and video output port and
hopefully you won't need to do more than
one of those things at any given time
because you only have one port just the
one and we've come to the end of our
teardown which means it's time to talk
repairability
here at iFixit it's our mission to teach
people how to repair everything so that
means whenever we get a device to tear
down we give it a repair ability score
between 1 and 10 10 being the easiest to
repair and 1 being the most difficult
the MacBook scored a 1 out of 10 and
here's why
proprietary pentalobe screws continue to
make opening the device unnecessarily
difficult and the new cable routing
makes the procedure even trickier the
USBC port is secured by tri wing screws
and buried under the display brackets
complicating replacements also being the
only port it will experience more use
and wear than a typical single purpose
port 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 and lastly the
processor RAM and flash memory are
soldered to the logic board for the
complete teardown including tons of high
quality beautiful images head on over to
ifixit.com
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