Cool, now make the iPhone battery removable like the good old days!
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iFixit Teardown: MacBook Neo Has Most Accessible Mac Battery in Over a Decade
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Please allow me to be selfish 😉 Best case scenario - that some really really really smart people "in the future " learn how to replace the motherboard as a unit with newer ones when they are released for earlier models. One can always hope .....
The internal design of the MacBook has always been an abomination. As if it was intentionally designed to make repairs as difficult as possible. (They wouldn’t do that would they??)
Nice to see that insanity relaxed a bit on the Neo.
Nice to see that insanity relaxed a bit on the Neo.
KENESS
macrumors 6502
Wait wait wait, 41 screws for the keyboard? Did I read that right or misunderstand something? I mean, I'm thrilled it is so much more accessible than other MacBooks, I don't mean to poo poo on that parade, but... 41 screws for the keyboard?! WHY?
Because it's screwed directly to the Neo's chassis like the 2009 MacBook.
It reduces keyboard flex and does not require a thick backing plate to do so.
Not necessary as evidence by Swiss mechanical watches.... Its absolutely insane you can't take off the iPad's back to the change the battery without first softening the glue which holds it together.. It's not an example of good design at all. I agree however that user swappable batteries like we saw which you could pop off the back of old phones would mean those batteries would be smaller as a result.
Ikea is one company which proves good design leads to lower costs and repairability, since you literally put it together yourself. So I think this is a good development..
KENESS
macrumors 6502
No I get that, but 41 is still just such a MASSIVE number of screws for something that is only like 10 inches wide and 4 inches tall... That's like a screw in every inch in every direction.
Again, I'm happy it is all just screws and no adhesive or anything. I don't mean to sound negative. That just seems like SO MANY screws just for the keyboard.
Like all things in life, there is nuance. There are pros and cons to constructing laptops 100% reparable, and there are pros and cons to the EU getting involved.
I wish the eu would apply some of its “walled garden” rules to games consoles and e-book readers, not to mention car companies who are moving to the John Deere approach… now there is a company that has a ‘real’ impact on our cost of food and farming. Makes a 7/10 MacBook seem pretty trivial!!!
I wish the eu would apply some of its “walled garden” rules to games consoles and e-book readers, not to mention car companies who are moving to the John Deere approach… now there is a company that has a ‘real’ impact on our cost of food and farming. Makes a 7/10 MacBook seem pretty trivial!!!
It is insane, really. On many business laptops (e.g. some Lenovo Thinkpads), a keyboard replacement is no more than three screws away. And those keyboards are far better as keyboards than anything that Apple has ever made in a laptop form factor.
I would say thinness is a benefit itself. And probably most costumers care more about thinness than memory upgradability.
I’ll be the first in line. It’s ok to hope that it becomes a standard; it’s not ok to force it as a standard against the wishes of most customers. The Framework exists, and it’s not precisely a success.
This is EU regulation in action. Apple would never have improved this if they were not forced by the EU to make their products repairable. Capitalism has no answers to modern problems.
EU overregulation is why they are falling further and further behind. Now the EU just wants to drag the rest of the world down. The likelier explanation is that Apple designed this with the education market in mind. Their market research told them that repairability will help them sell more of these to schools. I think it’s highly unlikely we will see this degree of repairability across the line. The EU so far has mandated removable batteries, which of course will have the effect of making devices larger.
The European Union sucks. The regulations are a big part of it. they dragged down their own economies for the sake of… Absolutely nothing.
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Wanted797
macrumors 68020
I agree. I feel Apple is going more for this now.I think Steve would have insisted on more color perhaps though.
Apple_Robert
Contributor
watakoola
macrumors 6502
I disagree in this instance - a great outcome for repairability of the Neo laptop.
Thinness with "just" enough ram to run (comfortably) through just about 3 MacOS updates (2012 4GB MacBook Air)
Yep basically one in between every key.
As a teacher who might wind up doing repairs in some of these when some of the kiddos inevitably drop one or two of them, I’m glad that they are relatively easy to repair.
cult hero
macrumors 65816
Also a tough day for the people who think these regulations aren’t a really good idea in general.