13-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Teardown: At Least The Battery Comes Out!

13-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Teardown: At Least The Battery Comes Out!


iFixit just finished a teardown of Apple’s new 13-inch retina MacBook Pro, and the findings are a mixed bag of good and bad news for folks who like to fix their own gear. Compared to the 15-inch retina MacBook Pro, the smaller model should be marginally easier to tinker with. But it’s still pretty much impossible to repair.

Remember how the battery in the last 15-inch retina MacBook Pro was glued into place? Well, this time around, Apple’s placed some of the cells into a metal tray held into place with screws — iFixit managed to remove all six battery cells without destroying the anything. There’s hope there, at least, for a replacement.

But that’s where the good news ends. The iFixit teardown reveals that the new Pro is locked up by the same proprietary petalobe screws that’ll keep you from opening it up, the RAM is soldered to the logic board so you can’t upgrade the memory ever, and the display assembly is basically impossible to deconstruct, which means that you can’t fix a cracked screen yourself. So much for self-sufficiency. if you were wondering if you should get Apple Care for your shiny new MacBook, the answer’s almost definitely yes. [iFixit]


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