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Base 2019 13-Inch MacBook Pro Teardown Reveals Larger Battery, Soldered-Down SSD, and Updated Keyboard Material

Plutonius said:
I'm not arguing against Apple repairs.

What I'm arguing is that Apple designed the laptops to require that a large portion of it be replaced for even the simplest repairs.

This makes it cost prohibitive to repair / own after the warranty runs out.
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If you get a flat tyre on your Apple Car you'll need to replace both axles and the transmission.
 
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racerhomie said:
Soldered parts do make them more robust. Less moving parts mean less permanent harm from physical damage.
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My MBP battery has swollen twice and needed to be replaced. It is glued down. Apple don't change batteries, they only change the bottom (or is it top?) half of the computer, it would cost a lot and would take two weeks (where I live) for them to "replace" it. And if the laptop was one year older they would just refuse (because.. vintage). The third party repair shop could do it for half the price, in 30 minutes.

Also the repair shops confirm that the amount of glue and the strength of glue Apple uses have little to do with "moving parts" and everything to do with making it hard to replace. The same with soldered down parts. I've never heard of people getting the RAM to fall off, before Apple decided to solder it down.
 
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LordVic said:
I can swap a dead lenovo keyboard in about 30 minutes and have a user back up and running. I can swap the SSD storage on any of our lenovo's in about 10 minutes if need be.

if a laptop dies and needs to go to warranty, I can yank the drive out, put it into another laptop and the user continues working while we repair the machine without any change to data or workflow.

replacement and fixes can be done at just about any repair centre and take usually 1-2 days tops.


this is regular required work in an enterprise. And we're only talking about a small 200-300 person financial institution.

If I had to tell the CEO that if her laptop had a hardware failure the only solution was to be without her data or computer for 1-2 weeks while we send it in for repair, heads would roll. Especially if those repairs cost more than 1/3rd of the cost of the device in the first place. (we can get replacement keyboards for our lenovo's for about $50)

These new round of Mac laptosp arne't bad laptops. But the way they've been designed is clearly consumer focused first and not enterprise and not intended for long term large scale enterprise use. The lack of any sort of repairability means the turn around time should something go wrong is extended with additional risks of data loss should there be a problem. (replacing the motherboard shouldn't require replacing and losing all data)
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Exactly! That's the point I was trying to make. Personally, I think the MacBook Pro is slowly becoming less "pro" over time.
 
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I keep telling people that Pentalobe screws are available, as are the screwdrivers. They’re not common, like other security screws, but you can get them. The screwdrivers are available almost everywhere, certainly online.
 
Khedron said:
Does it make a difference though since the T2 chip means your data is unrecoverable in the event of failure anyway
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couldn't you just pull the ssd blade out if it wasn't soldered, and put it in an external enclosure to recover files?
 
More than an Update is a Downdate.

Sodlered RAM and SSD
Glued battery
Same bad keyboard

Apple needs to understand that users will NOT buy computers that are NOT upgradable, are not repairable and simply generate more trash.

Thanks, but No thanks.
 
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Robnsn2015 said:
It's the iPad-ization of laptops. I guess people just don't care.
[doublepost=1562937144][/doublepost]

It's one thing to have RAM soldiered down. It's another when you can't remove the battery. I find that very problematic. For example, what happens if the battery starts expanding within the computer?
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A Genius tells you your out of warranty repair would cost the same as a new laptop. So you buy a new laptop. And you give your old one to Apple to recycle, at which point they resell it as refurbished with a 5% discount.

Rather than sell you a battery they get 2 more laptop sales. Think of the margins.
 
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racerhomie said:
The elitists over in Macrumors & other tech sites are hilarious. They never stop to amuse me. Only 1-3% of Mac owners in the mid 2000s ever touched the machines' insides. The data is collected independently with 1000s in sample size & is not from apple. Majority of people want machines to be more integrated, as this allows for machines to be less error prone & more robust.This goes for MacBooks as well. MacBook batteries last 3-4 times longer than 2009, their motherboards have gotten more efficient, and native SSD storage is much faster. I get it some elitist geeks want to touch the insides, and move things around, but that wont happen with Apple. Please make your own laptops or desktops or go to another brand.
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That's about the same amount of people that take full advantage of the TouchBar...
 
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ETJ said:
My MBP battery has swollen twice and needed to be replaced. It is glued down. Apple don't change batteries, they only change the bottom (or is it top?) half of the computer, it would cost a lot and would take two weeks (where I live) for them to "replace" it. And if the laptop was one year older they would just refuse (because.. vintage). The third party repair shop could do it for half the price, in 30 minutes.

Also the repair shops confirm that the amount of glue and the strength of glue Apple uses have little to do with "moving parts" and everything to do with making it hard to replace. The same with soldered down parts. I've never heard of people getting the RAM to fall off, before Apple decided to solder it down.
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Firstly your experience is anecdotal. Don't forget that. You are not the mojority. Most people's batteries dont expand.You can make choices from your experience.Secondly I disagree with your statement about battery replaceability.When a battery is user replaceable it needs to be larger for users handling it making it less efficient.Plus the space inside machines cant be used properly like in modern MacBook & Air. Amount of glue, I am not sure. But making batteries non user replaceable has definitely had positive consequences for majority of users.
 
Robnsn2015 said:
The majority of "people" perhaps, but not the majority of businesses (especially enterprises). There's a reason why brands such as Latitudes and Thinkpads are so popular with enterprises and other large organizations: repair-ability. And soldiered parts don't necessarily made them more robust.
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Majority of businesses run Windows and always will. I think Apple cares more about iOS in enterprise than the Mac.
 
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cube said:
Would this work if it was a TPM instead?
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I believe so. we use bitlocker here for all our devices and the tpm module. and while there is a little work to transfer key over, or unlock the drive in a different machine, it is possible which means the data is accessible as long as we have the drive

my understanding is this is NOT allowed or even possible with the T2. Even putting in a brand new blank drive would cause the machine to fail and reject it. Moving the drive to another machien would be totally unusable. it's all hardware keyed together. At least that's my understanding.

But it's kind of moot point right now. Aside from the imac and Mac pro lines, Everything else is now soldered. hich means if your storage chips go, you're looking at a full system board replacement and a complete loss of any data on those chips.
 
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My laptop only continues to exist because the battery, ram, and storage were replaceable. Two of them more than once.

That longevity is one of the reasons I’m still looking at Apple laptops. Except, it’s no longer the case. So why am I still shopping Macs? Might be time to move on...
 
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LordVic said:
I believe so. we use bitlocker here for all our devices and the tpm module. and while there is a little work to transfer key over, or unlock the drive in a different machine, it is possible which means the data is accessible as long as we have the drive

my understanding is this is NOT allowed or even possible with the T2. Even putting in a brand new blank drive would cause the machine to fail and reject it. Moving the drive to another machien would be totally unusable. it's all hardware keyed together. At least that's my understanding.

But it's kind of moot point right now. Aside from the imac and Mac pro lines, Everything else is now soldered. hich means if your storage chips go, you're looking at a full system board replacement and a complete loss of any data on those chips.
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But if it soldered and uses a TPM, a repair shop could recover the data if the SSD and TPM are not toast.
 
tmmacops said:
A lot of manufacturers are going the soldered route, at least with the ultra-portables. I know Lenovo is doing it with their X1/Carbon, and I believe the Extreme...? Even the Lenovo T series [480/490] have memory soldered, and an open slot to add more, but upgradable drives.

I think DELL XPS series are similar, but not positive. Unfortunately, this is the path a lot are going to keep the revenue stream rolling along. They don't want people buying entry level, and doing their own upgrades. Doesn't make sense to me, but then again I don't sell them
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With the sales and thin profit margins that Dell and other PC OEMs have to fight over in the global PC market, they either have to start soldering components to cut down on manual labor costs and increase reliability or they are going to have to start raising prices to maintain profitability. Having replaceable components leads to higher repair and technical support costs when (and if) a user manages to damage their computer while it is still under warranty. Laptops, convertibles and 2-In-1s are the natural place for PC makers to start and I really can't blame them. The harder issue to address is the lack of real substantive gains in CPU horsepower that make buying a new computer more attractive than simply updating a new one. That issue is all on Intel.
 
Robnsn2015 said:
The majority of "people" perhaps, but not the majority of businesses (especially enterprises). There's a reason why brands such as Latitudes and Thinkpads are so popular with enterprises and other large organizations: repair-ability.
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The majority of people in the businesses line up with the supposedly 'consumer' only viewpoint. Quite often this position by business is really the viewpoint of the folks attached to the repair service function inside the company. The viewpoint of from that subset is a bit skewed as it as at least as much to do with generating a 'value add' (and hence organizational need/demand) for the position as it has a value to the user base inside the organization.


And soldiered parts don't necessarily made them more robust.
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That cuts both ways. For example, old 'tube' TV were not particularly more reliable than the new far more integrated circuit solutions now. Soldered RAM chips probably have a much lower failure rate than DIMMs sockets that have been mechanically damaged ( no moving parts versus moving ). etc.

The real core issue with soldered SSD is more so something that most folks offer up zero data on; whether the failure rate of storage drives in Macs has been trending down or up with the move to T2. If the repair costs go up on an order of magnitude fewer failures than that would be a relatively reasonable trade-off if looking at the entire user base.
 
cube said:
I will not buy a computer with any soldered RAM or storage.
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I wish for RAM as well, but it's becoming harder. Especially if you want an ultrabook or ultra thin. My personal daily driver right now is a Razerblade stealth. it has a swappable NVME SSD, but the RAM is soldered. I can sort of understand the space limitations (SODIMM slots are thicker than NVME, though that means time for a new SODIMM standard that's thinner like an M.2 slot).
 
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