Here's a Look Inside the New M4 MacBook Air

[MacRumors]

Repair site iFixit today disassembled the M4 MacBook Air for one of its traditional teardown videos, providing us with a look inside of the machine and giving some insight into its repairability.

There have been no changes to the design and opening process this year, and Apple is continuing to use the same chassis as the M2 model that was introduced in 2022. While Apple implemented iPhone battery adhesive that releases with electricity, the same change hasn't been brought to the Mac lineup yet. The MacBook Air's battery is held in place with traditional adhesive strips that need to be carefully removed.

The USB-C ports, a frequent point of failure, are still easy to access with not too much effort or danger of damaging other internal components. The display, the keyboard, and the Touch ID button remain difficult to access.

iFixit didn't note any changes to the arrangement of internal components, which is not surprising given that the only updates were to the webcam and the Apple silicon chip.

The site said that the MacBook Air has the potential to earn a good repairability score thanks to Apple's extensive product manuals and parts option, but there continue to be issues with parts pairing and calibration when using components not bought directly from Apple. Overall, iFixit gave the MacBook Air a repairability score of 5 out of 10.

Article Link: Here's a Look Inside the New M4 MacBook Air

 

[G5isAlive]

so let me get this straight, in computers one year apart, that look identical, that have mostly the same parts except for the CPU and camera, have the same screen, the same chassis ... you open it up and inside , no major differences? wow. who would have guessed.

 

[Johnny907]

Parts pairing continues to be the biggest bunch of BS from a company already famous for its consumer unfriendly proprietary BS.
Imagine if car makers did this. You can buy a battery or an oil filter through a third party that are every bit as good if not better than OEM, but if you dare install either without paying the Apple tax, your entire vehicle is bricked.
Now defend Apple’s parts policies.

 

[Spock]

Parts pairing continues to be the biggest bunch of BS from a company already famous for its consumer unfriendly proprietary BS.
Imagine if car makers did this. You can buy a battery or an oil filter through a third party that are every bit as good if not better than OEM, but if you dare install either without paying the Apple tax, your entire vehicle is bricked.
Now defend Apple’s parts policies.

If the car is specifically tuned for a a certain air filter, I would want to purchase that filter from the manufacturer to make sure that it was calibrated properly for the best performance.

 

[FlyingDutch]

That’s always Apple making Mac disposable devices…

 

[citysnaps]

Looks nice!

 

[Johnny907]

If the car is specifically tuned for a a certain air filter, I would want to purchase that filter from the manufacturer to make sure that it was calibrated properly for the best performance.

… it’s a sedan, Spock, not a formula one race car or Mars One.

 

[Howard2k]

Thanks for the reminder to change to MagSafe!

 

[sw1tcher]

If anyone's curious about M4 MacBook Air 256GB read/write speeds vs prior M-series MacBook Air 256GB

M1 write = 2221 MB/s
M2 write = 1584.3 MB/s
M3 write = 2108.9 MB/s
M4 write = between 1919 MB/s and 1966 MB/s (based on 2 people)


M1 read = 2910 MB/s
M2 read = 1576.4 MB/s
M3 read = 2880.2 MB/s
M4 read = between 2882 MB/s and 2891 MB/s (based on 2 people)

 

[HJM.NL]

If anyone's curious about M4 MacBook Air 256GB read/write speeds vs prior M-series MacBook Air 256GB

M1 write = 2221 MB/s
M2 write = 1584.3 MB/s
M3 write = 2108.9 MB/s
M4 write = between 1919 MB/s and 1966 MB/s (based on 2 people)


M1 read = 2910 MB/s
M2 read = 1576.4 MB/s
M3 read = 2880.2 MB/s
M4 read = between 2882 MB/s and 2891 MB/s (based on 2 people)

So in all these years the M4 is slower in read/write than the M1?

 

[JPack]

SSD upgrade is possible:

视频 - 微博

t.cn

 

[sintra1]

Parts pairing continues to be the biggest bunch of BS from a company already famous for its consumer unfriendly proprietary BS.
Imagine if car makers did this. You can buy a battery or an oil filter through a third party that are every bit as good if not better than OEM, but if you dare install either without paying the Apple tax, your entire vehicle is bricked.
Now defend Apple’s parts policies.

Really poor analogy these days . Try changing any none consumable on a modern car with a management system and with out bimmer or similar coding machine and watch your $75,000 car get immediately bricked !

And with EVs that INCLUDES the Aux batteries 🪫

 

[sleeptodream]

Parts pairing continues to be the biggest bunch of BS from a company already famous for its consumer unfriendly proprietary BS.
Imagine if car makers did this. You can buy a battery or an oil filter through a third party that are every bit as good if not better than OEM, but if you dare install either without paying the Apple tax, your entire vehicle is bricked.
Now defend Apple’s parts policies.

Playing devil’s advocate: If car theft was easy and rampant, and the cars were being parted out, it would be a good way to cut down on thefts if those parts were tied to the original car and couldn’t be resold, and the entire car was bricked when it was stolen

 

[FasterQuieter]

Is the camera really 4K? I haven't seen that anywhere. That would be very useful with center stage. As long as you are in a bright place of course.

 

[pksv]

so let me get this straight, in computers one year apart, that look identical, that have mostly the same parts except for the CPU and camera, have the same screen, the same chassis ... you open it up and inside , no major differences? wow. who would have guessed.

And yet between M2 and M3 generations even though superficially they were identical, there were some changes inside.

 

[Siliconguy]

So in all these years the M4 is slower in read/write than the M1?

Not surprising. The CPU is not the bottleneck, the SSD is the rate limiting component.

In the hard drive days, a faster hard drive improved performance because the CPU was not the limiting factor.

Are there faster SSD chips? Or has Physics said, "No?" Or has Physics said, "Sure, more speed is possible but will cost $$$ and use x times more watts than now." and Marketing screamed in agony and decided what they had was good enough.

I have noted the state of the art gaming PCs are shipping with NVME heatsinks now. Is it Marketing again, or do they really need to keep them from overheating? I don't know.

Edit:
I found this interesting article. Yes indeed, the fastest NVME drives use 10 W or more, more than a 2.5" spinning rust drive. Speed has an energy cost. no surprise there.

SSD Power Consumption: What should you expect?

Check out our free SSD power consumption calculator which gives you the total daily and yearly power consumption numbers along with the cost estimations based

storedbits.com

 

[G5isAlive]

And yet between M2 and M3 generations even though superficially they were identical, there were some changes inside.

Major? So amazing that people ever mention them when discussing the two? The big one was two versus one ssd for the 256 configuration going back to the m1 mba. You made my point for me.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Not surprising. The CPU is not the bottleneck, the SSD is the rate limiting component.

In the hard drive days, a faster hard drive improved performance because the CPU was not the limiting factor.

Are there faster SSD chips? Or has Physics said, "No?" Or has Physics said, "Sure, more speed is possible but will cost $$$ and use x times more watts than now." and Marketing screamed in agony and decided what they had was good enough.

I have noted the state of the art gaming PCs are shipping with NVME heatsinks now. Is it Marketing again, or do they really need to keep them from overheating? I don't know.

Edit:
I found this interesting article. Yes indeed, the fastest NVME drives use 10 W or more, more than a 2.5" spinning rust drive. Speed has an energy cost. no surprise there.

SSD Power Consumption: What should you expect?

Check out our free SSD power consumption calculator which gives you the total daily and yearly power consumption numbers along with the cost estimations based

storedbits.com

They do need to keep them from overheating. They get very hot very fast.

 

[picpicmac]

no major differences? wow.

Because if Apple had to make a new design and new parts for each model every year, the thing would be too expensive.

How hard is this to understand?

 

[Otwer22]

Because if Apple had to make a new design and new parts for each model every year, the thing would be too expensive.

How hard is this to understand?

Someone who understands manufacturing, reuse and keeping costs under control. 👍

 

[G5isAlive]

Because if Apple had to make a new design and new parts for each model every year, the thing would be too expensive.

How hard is this to understand?

Did you read the whole conversation I was having, I was NOT complaining about the lack of changes, quite the opposite. If anything i was teasing those that expected any big changes. Read more carefully before you ask someone how hard is it to understand lol

 

[0186279]

If the car is specifically tuned for a a certain air filter, I would want to purchase that filter from the manufacturer to make sure that it was calibrated properly for the best performance.

If we’re talking ram, hard drive and battery, there’s zero reason for what you’re saying. There’s just no defending the fact that they decided to stop letting people upgrade these.

 

[Chancha]

Is the camera really 4K? I haven't seen that anywhere. That would be very useful with center stage. As long as you are in a bright place of course.

The camera spec is listed as 12 megapixel, so above 4k.
If 4:3, it is 4000 x 3000
If 16:9, it is 4616 x 2600

But I think at least with the native FaceTime app, it is always in crop so you never really use all of that 4k sensor, unless center stage detects 5 faces in frame and try to zoom out as much as possible. It is for this reason that Apple never advertise these cameras as 4k, despite the sensor spec already is.

 

[Fuzzball84]

I plan to get a battery service for my M2, it has 3 to 5 more years of useful life left at least

I just wish there was a 12 inch version of this machine

 

[svish]

Nice to see the internals. As expected there are no changes as the design continues to be the same. Also good to see that the base model continues to have dual NAND chip.