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iFixit Tears Down the New 15-Inch MacBook Pro, Finds Few Major Changes

Maybe it's just me, but the inside of Mac's are amazing! I can clearly see the craftsmanship of a perfectionist in the design inside and out.
 
striatedglutes said:
Did I read somewhere that the speakers now have subwoofers on the 15 and 17 inch models? 😕 Or has it always been that way?
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The Powerbook G4's have subwoofers. The only time I notice the sub is during the startup "bong". The iBooks aren;t as deep of a bong.

s.
 
dlastmango said:
Id love to be able to swap out my 13" battery for a newer higher capacity battery.... Is this possible? How can i find thw part number of the new battery?
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Its possible, but you need to change the case to 15 or 17 inch, screen to 15 or 17, and 15 or 17 logic board
 
Ed91 said:
There's not a huge scope for change, really. Good to see that Apple are constantly trying to refine their internal designs too.
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Really? - If you check out all the photos from the iFixit site you'll see the MASSIVE space being consumed by the optical drive.

I'm no engineer, but I reckon if you took the optical drive out you could chuck in a SSD + HDD, and a much larger battery. Is there anyone here who would not like a huge increase in performance?
 
mr.steevo said:
The Powerbook G4's have subwoofers. The only time I notice the sub is during the startup "bong". The iBooks aren;t as deep of a bong.
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Yes, that's the way it's been for quite a few generations. I think the other poster was referring to the fact that it's probably questionable to call anything that size a sub-woofer.

Typically, a sub-woofer would generate frequencies less than about 60-100 Hz (although there may not be a standard definition, that's the way most audio people would see it). I doubt if this particular little speaker is going to do much below 100 Hz.

I would call it a woofer, but even that's a bit of a stretch (particularly since there are only 2 pairs of speakers. Tweeter/woofer makes more sense than tweeter/subwoofer). But, then, that doesn't sound as good to the marketing people as sub-woofer.
 
I would really love it if ifixit or someone else could try putting this new 77.5 watt battery into the previous 15" MBP. The mid 2009 15" used a 73 watt hour battery and I would be ecstatic if anyone could tell me if the new battery would fit and work with the previous MBP. I would also like to know the mAh rating on the new battery. I would greatly appreciate if anyone could check with coconut battery or run "ioreg -w0 -l | grep Capacity" in terminal.

Sure I don't expect the 4.5 Watt hour increase to give me the same battery life as the new MBP, but if it can give me an extra 20-30 minutes it would be great. I wouldn't go out of my way to upgrade just now, but I would within a year from now when my current battery will probably last only 4-5 hours. I am currently getting only about 5-6 hours now, 6 hours is the best I can get now even with extreme energy conservation. When my MBP was new I could get slightly better than 7 hours with extreme conservation.
 
jragosta said:
Yes, that's the way it's been for quite a few generations. I think the other poster was referring to the fact that it's probably questionable to call anything that size a sub-woofer.

Typically, a sub-woofer would generate frequencies less than about 60-100 Hz (although there may not be a standard definition, that's the way most audio people would see it). I doubt if this particular little speaker is going to do much below 100 Hz.

I would call it a woofer, but even that's a bit of a stretch (particularly since there are only 2 pairs of speakers. Tweeter/woofer makes more sense than tweeter/subwoofer). But, then, that doesn't sound as good to the marketing people as sub-woofer.
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I'm such an obtuse bastard sometimes. 😉

Purists say subwoofers should be below (sub) the range of woofers which is typically in the 20-40hz range. Realists say anything that is below 100hz-150hz is OK as it avoids directionality. Given that people have been able to pick out the location of the "sub" on MacBooks and MBPs, I would argue that that particular aspiration has not been met. Furthermore, iven the size of these things, I doubt they produce anything below 100hz. Not even a woofer, let alone a "sub woofer". But, yeah, they're still there.
 
BlizzardBomb said:
Apple has dramatically reduced this machine’s power consumption, and we expect it to run quite a bit cooler than the previous model.
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Yet Anandtech said it was noticeably warmer. Should probably try and use it before you tear it apart iFixit 😉
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Maybe they reduced the power consumption and decided to use more passive heat dissipation, running the fans less (which would further reduce consumption - since fan motors drink juice).

Lower power means less heat generated, but doesn't necessarily mean that the body will be cooler to touch.
 
Great design indeed, but still pretty expensive; now count the number of parts.. only a hand full... and $600 profit for Apple. Amazing job.
 
No doubting the superb design of the aluminium case but for looks my 'old' 2007 MBP still beats it hands down, largely to do with the keyboard 😉
 
HLdan said:
I would rather Apple charge the price they are charging if what they are doing is just refining rather than completely redesigning, thus making for a whole new notebook with growing pains. This is a better service to the customer.
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I wonder what you will say when in, say, six years iFixit opens MBP and tells us that the internals are still the same. Also, unchanged design is probably one of the reasons we did not get options for Quad Core i7 or modern graphic card. I guess you are happy about this too because this is a "better service to customers". You are a funny guy 😀
 
upgrade battrey

I want to know if i could upgrade to the 2010 battery from my 2009 version.
I've got apple care and that, and i bought this laptop in march 2010, any body able to shed some light?
 
ValSalva said:
It there a reference to plastic hinges in the iFixit teardown? I couldn't find it.
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Well the Unibody's always had plastic Hinges. The reason was because they put the WIFI and Bluetooth Antenna's there. Now the Antenna's are removed and places next to the DVD drive, but as far as I know the Hinges are still black plastic 🙁

With kind regards,
Bas
 
firestarter said:
Maybe they reduced the power consumption and decided to use more passive heat dissipation, running the fans less (which would further reduce consumption - since fan motors drink juice).

Lower power means less heat generated, but doesn't necessarily mean that the body will be cooler to touch.
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Yes my lap has been a good form of passive heat dissipation for my MBP for a while now. I need to get me some asbestos pants. But I suspect you may be right - running the fans less may be a big part of it.
 
I hope that having a thinner camera cable was not deemed more important than WiFi signal strength. I'm really interested to know how the new machines fare on reception compared to the previous.
 
Kevenly said:
I hope that having a thinner camera cable was not deemed more important than WiFi signal strength. I'm really interested to know how the new machines fare on reception compared to the previous.
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In a way it was important. Multiple of my friends had problems with non working WIFI and/or webcam after 2 years of use. I guess this was weak point, which most likely is solved with this. However it is odd that the Hinge still remain from plastic. Personally I always found that the ugliest part of the unibody's

With kind regards,
Bas
 
Forget about swapping batteries, I want to know if I can upgrade my Rev A 15” Unibody screen to a high res display.

I remember back a few years ago someone managed to graft a MBP display onto their G4… if they could pull that off then swapping Unibody displays should be a piece of cake, amirite?

Edit: Now that I think about it, such an upgrade would probably cost 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of a new computer… why bother, right?
 
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