Apple's new MacBook / MacBook Pro get torn down in style

Ah, the natural progression of hot new releases. First comes the wow, then comes the hands-on, and now comes the tear down. The masterful gadget surgeons over at ifixit have taken the time to carefully (and let us reiterate, carefully) undo all the hard work done on the assembly line to put these together, and we just know you're anxious to see what's really inside the new machines. Have a look below, and don't forget to pause and appreciate the scenery.

Read - MacBook tear down
Read - MacBook Pro tear down

[who? @ Oct 15th 2008 11:32PM]

The Horror!!!!!!

But I love the trackpad/button combo.

[c-dub @ Oct 15th 2008 11:38PM]

co sign on the trackpad..kinda cool how they got it to work..thought it was gonna be craptastic engineering, but its pretty fuckin awsome..not bad

[Nate @ Oct 16th 2008 12:47AM]

No blu, no buy.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez @ Oct 16th 2008 1:07AM]

@ Nate,

Apple's notebooks, which they sell in 95% of all their machines, use 9.5mm optical drives. BD don't even exist in this svelte size.

The best you can find is a 12.7mm BD from as low as $550 with the low, low speed of 1x burn to the $999 with a 2x burn at FastMac.com, which is rossly overpriced. The problem is, only the old 17" MBP and 24" iMac take these 12.7mm drives.

Panasonic "announced" plans or releasing a 9.5mm BD sometime in the future. Engadget blogged about it amolst a year ago, but they don't exist. So imagine how much a BD will be when Panasonic does get their their rumoured 9.5mm BD out to market? Even if it was just a combo drive (Blu-ray player/CD & DVD burner) would still be "at least" $800 retail price.

Beyond, it just makes no sense in so many other ways in a notebook that is less than 1" thick. If you want BD then get a dedicated appliance for $150 from your living room. If you want it as a poor storage medium over HDD and Flash then get an external drive. If you want to play the files the DRM has been hacked so copy the file to your HDD and use considerably less power. Even with the 5 hour rating I wonder if you get through Iron Man on an MacBook Pro on battery power before the machine's battery would drain from the power eating optical drive. It's an obsolescing tech, and you'll see optical drives removed completely from Apple's next notebook revision in 3 years. By then putting your OS boot files on a 16GB USB flash drive will easiest method, while reducing the size and weight of the notebook.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez @ Oct 16th 2008 1:12AM]

@ Nate,

I hope that the HDCP allows for an external BD to be used externally with these new Mac notebooks, since they have the HDCP built into the chipsets. I know that DisplayPort fully supports it, I just don't know if it extends to FW800 or USB2.0, which may be considered too "loose" a specification by the studios to offer full quality 1080p. If it is offered, it will allow for a much cheaper BD solution with a considerably faster optical drive than Apple could ever offer.

[Rascal @ Oct 16th 2008 9:19AM]

All I want to know is if the CPU is soldered to the board. If they aren't, they may get my money yet. Quad-Core Macbook anyone?

[Jason @ Oct 15th 2008 11:35PM]

"Torn down" and "style" don't go together imho.

[Joshua.JWilliams @ Oct 15th 2008 11:37PM]

I really want to use on of these guides to remove the palm rest on my MacBook to upgrade my Combo drive to a Super. But it's just cheaper/easier to get a simple exterior DVD+-RW writer.

Still, IFixit guides are pretty good, gotta give them credit.

[wickedpheonix @ Oct 15th 2008 11:37PM]

wow, only a few comments so far?

[vvtopkar @ Oct 15th 2008 11:39PM]

Dude, it's been 8 minues, calm down...
Sheesh

[Ian @ Oct 16th 2008 12:46AM]

Lame ass iEye isn't here yet.

[msm @ Oct 15th 2008 11:38PM]

hard work on the assembly line? well apparently not if this unibody business is up to par...

[Ruben @ Oct 15th 2008 11:48PM]

No kidding.

This seems like its geared towards lowering Apples manufacturing costs. The benefit to the consumer (which can only be revealed over time, now is too early to make a call on it) seems like a by-product.

[Jonathan @ Oct 15th 2008 11:44PM]

Really cool to see the guts. If I had another $2000 I would take it apart too...

Jonathan

[mike @ Oct 16th 2008 12:02AM]

they... showed us the guts during the fucking keynote. and it was the driest part of the whole pres.

[BobTurbo @ Oct 15th 2008 11:49PM]

And after that comes the harpoon test, and then all is complete and we can finally buy the product as informed consumers.

[willj778 @ Oct 15th 2008 11:54PM]

No...More....Apple...News......for the love of god make it stop.....

[Sirius @ Oct 16th 2008 1:48AM]

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=NruNDIYf3BGe7iZ_l7okhQ&_render=rss

I just checked it out.. it's not perfect (some posts w/o the word "apple" got through or something) but there sure isn't as much apple stuff there..

more choices here..

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/20/tired-of-iphone-and-or-apple-news-on-engadget/

[Dan @ Oct 15th 2008 11:55PM]

Wow, if anyone ever wanted to change that keyboard, that would be a lot of unscrewing to do.

[paul @ Oct 15th 2008 11:59PM]

thats a lot of fucking screws on one damn keyboard

[thethirdmoose @ Oct 16th 2008 12:01AM]

Welcome to the world of apple laptops, gentlemen.

[phil @ Oct 16th 2008 12:06AM]

Yeah, the connectors are incredibly easy to break as well. If you do, it's $300+ for a new top case.

[Alan @ Oct 16th 2008 12:24AM]

Yeah if the keyboard breaks, you're screwed.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez @ Oct 16th 2008 1:25AM]

I've never had to change a keyboard on a Mac. I have on other notebooks from spills, but not on a Mac, but I suspect that changing the keyboard is an uncommon task and one that is "more likely" to be done by a professional anyway. Even with my background I've messed up a couple of those "nastily design" keyboard ribbons changing out bad keyboards.

But the important thing is that they made the most often changeable items easier to get to, while making the case design stronger. I'm talking about the battery (unlock one latch), and the HDD (1 screw on the MB; 4 screws on the MBP). The RAM is now 8 screws, but the insertion of the RAM isn't as difficult as it was on the MB, but how often do you change out the RAM?

It's the HDD and Battery that I tend to swap, though I wish the battery didn't have a cover case on it as it makes it adds another piece to handle when switching batteries on a Coach flight (too cheap to pay for Business Class with would give me power adapter).

The only other option is to loose the aluminium frame crisscrossing so you could pop the keyboard out from the top and even access the RAM. But that would weaken the uni-body structure and alter the aesthetics in some un-popular ways. Overall, I think the pros far outweigh the cons with the new design, but I'm going to wait until these NVIDIA chipsets and GPUs get benchmarked and well tested before buying as I don't trust NVIDIA much these days. Plus, this new Unibody construction will probably still need some minor but important alterations before being "perfected".

[nikster @ Oct 16th 2008 9:07PM]

@Bender - xactly. I changed the hard disk in my MacBook Pro 3 times so far, and it was a huge pain every time. I want to change it again now, but holding off b/c it's such a PITA, and having it done at the local Apple dealer is not an option b/c last time they screwed up my logic board in the process and wouldn't admit to it.
BTW reasons I changed/want to change: switched to 7200RPM Hitachi, back to the original after that fried, back to a 320GB 5400 for performance, then to a 7200 320GB from Hitachi. Now I want to swap it out against the 5400 / 320 because it turns out the 7200 gets too hot at times. It didn't fry yet but it crashed a few times and it's scary.
In the new ones, I'd get one today and swap for a SSD as soon as those are reasonably priced and come at a reasonable size.

So from me, a triple hurray!!! for the easily swappable hard disk. That was my biggest gripe with the current MBPs. I am not just talking either, I am going to get me one of these as soon as they become available here in Asia. Can't wait.

[afro_pro_duct @ Oct 16th 2008 12:52AM]

question: soldered cpu?

[jollyllama @ Oct 16th 2008 1:05AM]

As someone that's upgraded a few MBP hard drives, I am absolutely enamored with Apple right now for making the hard drive so accessable on this one.

[nikster @ Oct 16th 2008 9:15PM]

Yes!!! In the old MBP you had to take apart the entire top case, then fiddle with tiny plugs and cables so thin they break if you look at them too hard. This is a huge, huge plus, especially considering that this time next year, cheap, fast SSDs might be widely available.

[peacefulpony @ Oct 16th 2008 1:30AM]

I still don't get what the big deal is with having a unibody casing. The Macbook Air has had it since Jan, and Apple didn't make a big splash about it then. Sure, it's obviously more rigid and compact.. and... oh god, that's what she said.

[WickedEast @ Oct 16th 2008 1:08PM]

This is Apple after all. Superlative is obligatory. Everything "new" is a big deal. That frameless glass display is, and I quote some articles, "elegant" and "dramatic". And we are talking about the same display design some other laptops had for at least over a year.

[jaycalgary @ Oct 16th 2008 2:01AM]

Does that really look like its machined out of a block of aluminum or cast?

[Eric B. @ Oct 16th 2008 6:31AM]

AAAAAAAaaaa...... every windows fan to see another mac gone!

[Katie in AL @ Oct 16th 2008 8:33AM]

Everytime I see you guys dissect those laptops I wish you'd give it me instead!

[Daniel @ Oct 16th 2008 11:13AM]

You know they go right back together, right? :)

[heffeque @ Oct 16th 2008 9:27AM]

I just read "subwoofer" there. Is this a new thing or did MB and MBP laptops have that before too?

[Digital @ Oct 16th 2008 12:03PM]

Yes, previous MBs and MBPs have a 3 speaker setup, which include a subwoofer.

[heffeque @ Oct 16th 2008 2:36PM]

Interesting. I didn't know that my MBP had a sbuwoofer. I did notice that the sound was better than most of my friends laptops, but I would have never guessed that part of it was because of the subwoofer :-P

[Derek @ Oct 16th 2008 11:44AM]

I guess my question would be this: Do you now void the warranty when you upgrade your RAM, now that you have to take off the whole back plate?

[Derek @ Oct 16th 2008 11:45AM]

I retract my question, page 42 of the manual actually tells you how to do it..... SOOO much easier than my previous generation MBP as far as upgrading is concerned.

[Big Bad Bun-gee Cord @ Oct 16th 2008 12:15PM]

tear it down, throw it in the trash....

No firewire? Mini-display port you need a 100 dollar cable to use? 4 gigs of ram? I dont care what the size of the DVD drive is, Apple should make Blu-ray fit at these prices. What did they give us? A new graphic card? a stronger case? Can i get a coffee cup holder and cigarette lighter as well?

Lets compare the 17in Pro:

17in Mac Book pro:
processor: 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
hard drive: 320 gig @ 5400
display: 1920x1200 LED
DVD drive: CD/DVD burner
ram: 4 gigs
graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB
ports: NO HDMI, mini display port
PRICE; $2,800


16.4in Sony FW:
processor: 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
hard drive: 320 gig @ 7200
display: 1920x1080 LED
DVD drive: Blu-ray Disc Read and Write Drive
ram: 4 gigs
graphic card: ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3650 with 512MB vRAM
ports: HDMI out, DVI
weight:
PRICE: $1900

Other then the NVIDIA card, all advantages go to to the $900 LESS Sony FW.
You can take the 900 dollars savings and buy another laptop, how about a 13in Mac Book?

[Nexus @ Oct 16th 2008 1:21PM]

im sure the mobility 3650 is a little bit better than the 8600m gt

[Jake @ Oct 16th 2008 12:24PM]

It would be amazing if the MacBook Pro I ordered on release day would actually SHIP!

Anyone else frustrated by the delayed shipment?

Current scheduled delivery date is Oct 24 (and I paid for express shipping).

[travis @ Oct 16th 2008 12:36PM]

I don't know if the MacBooks differ from the MacBook pro's as far as when they ship, but I ordered mine on Tuesday and it came on Wednsday morning!

[kb2zuz @ Oct 16th 2008 4:24PM]

So did they find the missing firewire on the MacBook? Guess not, it's worthless to me and I'm not paying a premium to go to the MBP just for something that's always been there.

[Pelonius @ Oct 16th 2008 4:05PM]

Ifixit says that the chipset is 32-bit. I have Vista x64 dual booted
on my MB Pro though. It can use all 4 gigs. Unlike my 32-bit PC
which can only use a little over 3.
Why is that?

[ash @ Oct 17th 2008 4:21PM]

what really doesn't make sense to me is why you would build a stronger body but then slap glass on the touchpad and the screen...

http://lemonlimedesigns.ca/blog/why-you-shouldnt-get-new-macbook-pro