That was confirmed at the key note, what controversy?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2018 MacBook Air Teardown Confirms Improving Repairability With Adhesive Pull-Tabs Under Battery and Speakers
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That was confirmed at the key note, what controversy?
It is definitely not wrong to want something beautiful. Including beauty and artfulness in everyday life is a very good thing.
Interesting design - you'll notice the fan doesn't directly pass over heatpipe fins, but rather there's just a small block heatsink on the CPU while the fan ambiently draws air through the chassis. As I speculated it appears they went for a semi-passive design like the Matebook X Pro, with a backup fan to prevent a sharp drop to base clocks like on the 12.
Probably why that floor rep was confused, attempted-passive but with a fan.
Probably why that floor rep was confused, attempted-passive but with a fan.
What was said:
What they were (hopefully) thinking:
Diving deeper, iFixit discovered that the two Thunderbolt 3 ports in the new MacBook Air are modular, something shamefully overdue, deviating from Apple's near-sighted user-unfriendly design consideration. "This MacBook is finally righting some long-standing wrongs as far as we're concerned," they wrote. "All the ports sit on their own boards and are easily replaceable even if stingy in their count."
Continuing the veering away from Apple's myopic repair-unfriendly trend, iFixit uncovered ten pull-to-remove adhesive tabs securing the 49.9 Wh battery and speakers.
"The mere presence of stretch-release adhesive generally means that Apple was finally shamed towards considering repair and disassembly situations," the teardown says. "Are you there, Apple? It's about time your genius designer took a break from blaring white noise in his (non-corded) headphones and was shamed into acting on our pleas."
What they were (hopefully) thinking:
Diving deeper, iFixit discovered that the two Thunderbolt 3 ports in the new MacBook Air are modular, something shamefully overdue, deviating from Apple's near-sighted user-unfriendly design consideration. "This MacBook is finally righting some long-standing wrongs as far as we're concerned," they wrote. "All the ports sit on their own boards and are easily replaceable even if stingy in their count."
Continuing the veering away from Apple's myopic repair-unfriendly trend, iFixit uncovered ten pull-to-remove adhesive tabs securing the 49.9 Wh battery and speakers.
"The mere presence of stretch-release adhesive generally means that Apple was finally shamed towards considering repair and disassembly situations," the teardown says. "Are you there, Apple? It's about time your genius designer took a break from blaring white noise in his (non-corded) headphones and was shamed into acting on our pleas."
Must be pulling air from one side of the case instead of pushing air over the heat sink. I imaging a 7w chip not getting too hot but would like to know if it thermal throttles.
Good to hear Apple practising what they preach on recyclability and repairability. Hopefully this trend continues into the future!
Although iFixit didn't highlight it, there appears to be a third SSD chip on the opposite side of the board from the T2. This explains how Apple achieves a 1.5TB capacity option - three stacks of 0.5TB each. I wonder why the lower capacity machine has a third chip/stack. Perhaps it is an empty dummy package? Perhaps Apple is mix and matching partially defective chips? Perhaps it is extra storage for the T2 software and i5 boot ROM image?
I can walk to my local hardware store and buy a Torx set, but not a pentalobe driver. My father has a set of like 60 different drivers, it includes a full set of Torx, no pentalobes. My grandfather can fix just about anything, but doesn't even know what a pentalobe is. I think their point is that it's not a bit that anything else uses—the average person has to go out of their way to find a pentalobe driver. Other laptops (Dell, HP) can be opened with tools I have sitting around in my house. Yeah, it's not a huge deal, but it's just one more obstacle for the average person.
actually WIHA is selling pentalobe screwdrivers, one of the best tool company on the market, if you can't find in local store, maybe you should change the store
Order online, next day you have it, so still....non issue.
Your grandfather is getting old.
(No offence, jk)
Sorry, but it isn't illogical at all, because splitting a motherboard would violate the classical manufacturing efficiency mantra of parts count minimization, plus it increases the component count on each board. Granted, Apple did violate this rule on the 'Trash Can' but that was being dictated by the tubular outward form.
Its been a good 30 years since I can recall a PC manufacturers actually using 'modular motherboards' like you are effectively describing. The company "Wyse" was one such example, on their 4.77MHz 8088-based IBM XT clone. They did this because they were sourcing different subsystem components based on lowest supplier cost, not realizing (or caring) that it was a kiss of death to handwritten code which was bypassing the APIs to gain more performance.
For RAM being in sockets vs soldered, this is also evidence of design-for-manufacturing cost minimization, as the soldered-on approach has a lower parts count and less touch labor during assembly. Being a fully solid state component, the base reliability is good enough to take the risk of not needing to replace it under warranty, especially if you had specc'ed burned-in material from your supplier to mitigate your risk on the left side of the classical "Bathtub" reliability curve of electronics.
But then again, just what do I know about such things? /S
Thanks to the people who fought for "the right to repair" being, now, legal.
And Apples changed their ways.... Wish they would change it 100%, but 50% is still good.
Because you can't do this yourself?
"but Apple will be providing Apple Authorized Service Providers with tools to remove the battery and reinstall a new one with no top case replacement required.:
If it was full DIY then perhaps a 5 But Apple wants you to go back. I guess this also means "more control" Apple can decide who gets these 'tools', thus, who is authorized to remove the batteries.
I reckon Apple can, will, limit this to "not all Authorized stores" but only some. That'll tick users off.
And Apples changed their ways.... Wish they would change it 100%, but 50% is still good.
Because you can't do this yourself?
"but Apple will be providing Apple Authorized Service Providers with tools to remove the battery and reinstall a new one with no top case replacement required.:
If it was full DIY then perhaps a 5 But Apple wants you to go back. I guess this also means "more control" Apple can decide who gets these 'tools', thus, who is authorized to remove the batteries.
I reckon Apple can, will, limit this to "not all Authorized stores" but only some. That'll tick users off.
Last edited:
Thanks for prooving my argument which is “they are not using socket ram to save money”. I just don’t understand why you believe you disprove it, I never said modular is cheaper to produce, it’s cheaper to repair tho since the original user suggested that this was the only reason they did it.
So yeah it cost more to have socket and they did it anyway because they wanted to offer this capability full stop.
Which is fine for the low weight or small devices. There should be also be a workstation laptop from Apple. Without it Apple is pushing away highly loyal fans.
Yep, if all you do is email, tweet, Reddit, and have a large, large amount of free space, that might be true. Other uses not so much. SSD life is directly related to usage pattern. Just because your usage pattern is very light does not mean mine is. Apple does not, that I have seen, publish SSD life estimates. A normal office user writes about 30 to 40 GB per day. For a typical drive (non-commercial 70TBW) with this write usage, the failure would occur after about 5 years.
As a developer it is not uncommon for my backups to exceed 100+ GB per day, not including any video or audio work. That gives my drives a 2.5 year life under the same circumstances. Moving hot bits around with lots of free space can extend that life, but no one knows how much.
In addition, when they do break, there is not a very good way to recover them.
The only reason to have SSDs soldered in is that Apple expects you to replace your computer as soon as Apple Care runs out. Do you seen any correlation between the 2.5 year life for my example and the 3 year Apple Care coverage. You should.
[doublepost=1541720836][/doublepost]
Or perhaps it is just not enabled if you don't pay for it.
There were plenty of posters here who looked at the picture and said “we won’t really know if that is a fan until the iFixit tear down.”
It was a legit controversy for some people.
Backups are incremental, so there is no way you copy over your disk daily, plus that is only read no write, but a part from that if it’s work related stuff and it’s worth something (like really sonething) then probably your bigger concern should be to get a mirroring raid HD solution as the cost of the hardware is really the last concern but prevent data loss isn’t. You are approaching the problem in the wrong way.
I agree that 128 doesn't seem like much for the price of the machine but 128 seems to be where most machines are starting at for some reason, like the Surface laptop. The 128 doesn't bother me that much since I use Apple Music while on the go and store my music collection on an external hdd attached to my Mac mini. I use music as an example because that's what takes up the most space on my machine, I don't store much on the local drive of my current MacBook Pro but of course that is just my work flow. I fully agree with you about the removable SSD but Apple is doing exactly what Steve wanted when the Macintosh first came out, not a computer but a non-serviceable appliance.
it's not about the tools, it's a about access to the genuine parts which 3rd party services aren't allowed to obtain
reparability should be 0/10 because no access to the genuine parts for users and 3rd party services, for every repair you have to go to Apple or AASP
My classic MBP is still chugging along. But I have never opened it after I upgraded the internal components (RAM, SSD, second drive in DVD bay) right after purchase.
Apple does publish SSD lifespan data, and it even tracks and tells you that in system information. You sure didn't do your homework haha!
Third party do, obviously you need to be certified but most of repair center are in fact third party companies.
Can you get a genuine APU from sony for ps4? I even struggle to find genuine samsung battery on amazon since most of the third party sellers sells fake original battery
