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iFixit pulls apart the 16-inch MacBook Pro and sees little has changed

The batteries are bigger, but you won't be able to fix it on your own.

After Apple unveiled the 16-inch MacBook Pro last week, iFixit quickly pried off a few keys to give us a look at the return of the scissor switch mechanism, but what about the rest of the laptop? Now they've completed a full teardown of the latest machine and rather unsurprisingly, it has a lot in common with MacBooks Pro of years past.

Beyond the revamped keyboard, the biggest changes in this 2019 model have to do with its thermal management system and the battery cells. The exhaust holes are bigger than those of the outgoing 15-inch model, while inside the new fans with bigger blades allow for more performance. Also, the batteries are similar to previous cells, except they're each just a bit thicker, all contributing to an extra 16.2 Wh of energy capacity.

The bad news arrives for anyone hoping that this model would allow for easy servicing by anyone other than authorized Mac repair techs. Unlike the latest laptops and tablets from Microsoft, Apple has continued to avoid making its designs more modular or easily accessible. If that's part of your purchasing decision then you'll have to wait and see if it changes in a future revision, otherwise you can just find out what the inside of this laptop looks like simply by clicking through.