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Teardown of Retina MacBook Pro Finds Low Repairability with Custom Components

runonthespot said:
Proprietary seems an inevitable step and it's obviously been a lesson learnt from iPad, where if you think about it, almost everything is proprietary.

My only concern with this new laptop is that SSD drives fail. Some say a lot. I guess this makes Apple Care a requirement. My question is, though, without Apple care, if after 1 year and 1 day, your hard disk fails, what would happen? Presumably you'd still need Apple to fix it. While it's somewhat reasonable to say, require someone to pay up to fix something that breaks, it's clearly not reasonable to have to throw the whole laptop away for this or some other minor, otherwise repairable failure. Now I'm fairly sure that failure to provide a means to fix it would open up Apple to class-actions etc, and certainly the extremely friendly replacement policy for non-Applecare ipad holders, out of warranty that I've experienced will mitigate it.

I think as long as Apple continue to realise that their quest for perfection in size and features means they need to continue to be graceful when people experience issues, I think everything will be ok.

Sigh. It is a bad day to already own a (relatively) new Macbook Pro 15 :)
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Really great post thank you!!!!


To add - I think it is the case of 'deal with the devil' make the best, get the MOST of the people - don't be graceful 'cos we got the market by the cojones!

???
 
Shame they don't have accidental damage coverage, like other laptop manufacturers offer. But, really, due to the usage model of laptops, a 3 year warranty makes sense.
 
I hear moans of soldered ram.
Ram is not needed for 99% of operations and with an SSD you don't need ram anyway.

I hear moans of non-replaceable batteries.
If you know about charging or have owned any RC heli or high performance rc car, these batteries need looking after but will work for many years with little or no capacity reduction. Never totally discharge, charge fully and leave to balance/trickle charge once over 100%. People who experience poor battery performance are buying a crap laptop like a dell or raping the battery to it's last and causing voltages to drop too low. I'm more concerned about people messing with these types of dangerous batteries at all, too right they should be in accessible and protected against idiot users.

I hear moans of SSD's not being upgradeable.
Sorry but they are still removable they just need a new connection, 3rd parties will be on it and you'll have upgrades if you need but again if you are maxing out your laptop memory you are probably filling it with junk.

I hear moans about general repairs.
If any laptop i bought stopped working for no reason i would expect a new one, apple will give you a new one too. If you broke it then you broke it and i would not expect anything but apple will usually sort a deal out to keep you happy. If you really want to tinker with anything inside these days you are living in cloud cuckoo land you nutter.

The computer market has not really moved forward relying on the normal intel etc to develop new smaller parts. Apple has obviously reached limits with current parts to improve the overall package so has decided to forge ahead and make new standards, i'm sure this will encourage other makers to reduce the size of replaceable parts for samsungs HPs etc. It's a great step by apple and you can't expect the first proper next gen laptop to have 10 year old laptop crap in it!
 
It's interesting to note that the RAM chips (can't say "sticks" anymore ;)) are square in the teardown. If I recall, didn't the video at WWDC feature rectangular RAM chips in a 'parquet floor' pattern? If you count, there's 16 of them here... does that make them 32GB each? (16x32=512). You have the option of a 256GB, 512GB, or the less common 768GB SSD. I doubt they're 16GB RAM chips, and they can't be 64GB RAM chips. I wonder, depending upon the configuration, if Apple implements different size chips (i.e. for smaller SSD storage, larger chips; for larger SSD storage, smaller chips).

Seems like an awful lot of space to take up (at least with where the tech is at) by using smaller chips sizes to make up a total SSD.
 
Clubber said:
It's a give and take. If you want newer, slimmer, lighter form factors, the manufacturer needs to break away from the designs we've been seeing the last 10 years. I'm all for it, I quit fiddling with the physical aspects of computers a long time ago.
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THEY COULD HAVE STILL MADE THE RAME REMOVABLE THEY JUST DECIDED NOT TO.. IM GUESSING FUTURE MODELS WILL HAVE REMOVABLE RAM.. I am glad they are still selling the regular mac books with upgraded performance
 
For everyone complaining about Apple's rip off upgrade prices, check the aftermarket prices for 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and 768GB SSDs.

Apple is a bit more expensive on the RAM front but not by an huge amount but the only thing close the their 768GB SSD I found is the OCZ 1TB at $2500!

Suddenly Apple's $500 charge doesn't seem too steep!
 
Celf said:
Mine had little over 400 cycles and lost half of the capacity. 45 minutes max between charges. battery was tested in a store and they said they couldn't do anything about it. 170 USD for a new, user replacable, battery.
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This may be apples to oranges, but my Fall '08 Macbook has not had a battery problem and reads, if Im seeing it correctly, 1233 cycle counts after nearly four years of use. What are you all doing to damage these batteries so quickly ?
 
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Monolithic board = FAIL

Every Apple model that has employed what I call a 'monolithic' logic board - onboard GPU, RAM, I/O, etc - everything - has had a major issue down the road and IMO caused early failure at the 3-5 year mark instead of the 5-7+ that used to be typical of Mac. Onboard RAM seems to be particularly bad, I'll cite iMac G5 iSight, iBook G3, iBook G4 as examples. RAM has a life expectancy too, just like batteries and hard drives. The iBook G3 had insufficient cooling for the GPU (G4 too really) and they would peel off the board or melt the solder. iMac G5s (every variety) had cooling issues too and the GPUs would fail, not to mention capacitor issues. If this is a sign of where Apple is headed, things are looking bad for me, a professional repair tech who pays his mortgage by doing repairs. I don't want to just replace the entire enclosure, just to put a new battery in, the keyboards in current unibody models were already expensive enough. Don't get me started on the Mac Pro NON-update.
 
I already had a MacBook Air previously,and was very happy with it (2010 model, actual package). So custom components is not that bad.

Afterwards I sold it because of RAM limitation. 4GB was not enough for me, but more important was the 13" form factor. I needed (and have) a 15" one.

What really matters me most on the new MacBook PRO is the glued battery. Now, this is really a concern to me and a real deal breaker. If on the Air they placed (and very well) a screwed battery, why on Hell they had to put a glued one on such otherwise spectacular machine. It just breaks my heart :(.

Sincerely yours,
Paulo Neves
 
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basesloaded190 said:
Being members to a tech blog like we all are, I think we forget there are a lot of people who have no desire to open up their machine to tinker with it, and will be more than satisfied with what comes in the box.
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The opposite is also true.
MOKHAN said:
Aw, I figured as much when seeing how thin it was. I'm curious as to how Apple will be replacing components for users who have defective/damaged machines.
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Replace the whole logic board.
Thunderhawks said:
Complaining about not being able to get into this MBP is silly.

Just don't buy it. It's not the machine for you!
Stick with the other MBP's which in time will have retina too.

When my kids used to whine about stuff I would always say:

Okay, if you whine everything is off or you won't get this!

Wish that worked here:)
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It's not complaining its discussing the merits of non user serviceable/replaceable components in a "pro" machine.
 
beebler said:
If people want a LEGO computer, they'd buy a box. If people want slim, nice, eyc, they'd buy a Mac. This news really shouldn't affect Mac-buyers.
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Hate to tell you, but mac buyers have been upgrading thier macs for a very long time! We prefer to be treated as tech savvy, not techtards.

The nice thing about owning a mac was, that after a few years you could upgrade the ram and HDD to get more life out of it, at much lower costs. Now you get slugged up front at high prices to futureproof your purchase.
 
TheBeastman13 said:
This may be apple to oranges, but my Fall '08 Macbook has not had a battery problem and reads, if Im seeing it correctly, 1233 cycle counts after nearly four years of use. What are you all doing to damage these batteries so quickly ?
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Nothing special. Actually I used the battery the way alexgowers describes (post 128). In the Apple store they told me that a battery starts losing capacity between 400 and 600 full charging cycles. Because mine was 400+ I had to buy a new one.
 
maflynn said:
For laptops - applecare was always justifiable.
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This...

A 2010 study found that even the most reliable brand (Asus) saw a 15.6% chance of failure in the 3 years after purchase, Apple was at 17.4%.

While the build quality at Apple has certainly improved, you're still buying a powerful machine crammed in a space and heat dissipation constrained enclosure (Every time you launch a Game or a GPU Intensive app you have a serious heat gradient around the GPU), then again you're supposed to move around with it (less of a problem in the SSD Retina / Air-like machine but still) etc.

I personally had a a first generation core 2 Duo laptop that failed twice, so ALWAYS take the Applecare guaranty so you're sure to at least deaden the price over 3 years.
 
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Oh boy, once the PC trolls get a hold of this information they're gonna go into full retard.

Packing this much horsepower into such a slim design warrants some trade-offs and the PC types will *never ever* understand.

So they live with 2" thick plastic monstrosities and secretly wish PC makers would come out with something just like Apple while retaining upgradeable this and that which of course will never happen because none of them are capable of designing a machine with this many custom parts. They'd rather use off the shelf parts for everything.
 
Celf said:
Mine had little over 400 cycles and lost half of the capacity. 45 minutes max between charges. battery was tested in a store and they said they couldn't do anything about it. 170 USD for a new, user replacable, battery.
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Then your battery was faulty and you should have complained.

Consumer protection in the US is pretty crap though so i doubt you would get anything.

At least in the UK we get up to 5 years on expensive items.
 
The things most important to me as I waited for the new Macs were (in no particular order):

Ivy Bridge
USB3
Ethernet port kept (Pro feature with no superior technology to replace it a cost that would be justifiable)
Optical Drive
Additional Thunderbolt Port
Retina Display
Keeping design from 2011 MBP. Works well, thin enough, light enough, no need to change it.
Good repairability
Upgradeable RAM and HDD/SSD

So the features that I want are spread between the two MacBook Pro machines Apple offers (if the Retina machine can even be called a "Pro"). Sadly I doubt Apple will release the machine I want. If they were going to offer a Retina display upgrade to the old design they would have done so on launch.
 
chiefsilverback said:
For everyone complaining about Apple's rip off upgrade prices, check the aftermarket prices for 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and 768GB SSDs.

Apple is a bit more expensive on the RAM front but not by an huge amount but the only thing close the their 768GB SSD I found is the OCZ 1TB at $2500!

Suddenly Apple's $500 charge doesn't seem too steep!
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It's hard to price compare RAM for the updated Airs and the new retina Macbook, since they use the new DDR3L memory, which is low voltage at 1.35V. Not many manufacturers make them currently, let alone offer it at the high end of 1600MHz.

As for Apple's SSD offerings, they are pricy. Upgrading 128GB to 256GB, you're looking at $300 (or $800 going from 128GB to 512GB). So that's $300 for 128GB. I know 128GB SSDs have reached almost dollar parity (1GB:$1) among many manufacturers.
 
Celf said:
Please define "future proof"

I've bought computers were it was an option to upgrade the harddisk to a whopping and future proof 40 Mb!!!! ;)
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On the other hand ... the worst mac I've bought had a replacable processor with "Zero Insertion Force" connection ... the Mac IIvx. The whole supporting architecture held back any advantage to a faster processor. Now they solder the darn things in.

Just because you can replace parts doesn't necessarily improve it's future.
 
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medazinol said:
Oh boy, once the PC trolls get a hold of this information they're gonna go into full retard.

Packing this much horsepower into such a slim design warrants some trade-offs and the PC types will *never ever* understand.

So they live with 2" thick plastic monstrosities and secretly wish PC makers would come out with something just like Apple while retaining upgradeable this and that which of course will never happen because none of them are capable of designing a machine with this many custom parts. They'd rather use off the shelf parts for everything.
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Or, we don't care about the thickness that much. Oh, and my (workstation-class, not crap gamer-class) "monstrosity" has some plastic... but it's 1.4" thick, not 2", and it also has a magnesium frame, and some of the plastic has titanium mixed in, or is carbon-fiber reinforced. I wouldn't mind thicker for a better keyboard, actually, but I can always plug in something better to a USB port (and I often do).

You assume that we secretly want ultra-thin machines, and that we don't get the tradeoff. Myself, I do get the tradeoff, I just don't want to be on that side of the tradeoff, and I don't want an ultra-thin machine if I have to accept those compromises.

But, I'm also a display snob, and my display snobbery makes me choose between the MBPR, and my ancient ThinkPad - literally, my ThinkPad is the newest machine that can compete, and it's 5 year old tech, so slow that an entry level MBA with RAM maxed can beat it badly in performance, even on graphics performance. That's why I'm going to order a MBPR.
 
People are already complaining about the base price... and to have to add another $350 for Apple Care? :|
 
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