Filed under: How-tos, Reviews, Macbook Pro
MacBook Pro Complete Disassembly guide
Have you received your MacBook Pro? Are you saddened by OWC's lack of instructions on how to rip apart said new
machine? Don't be sad, rejoice, for iFixit (the site formerly known as PBFixit) has released a
screw-by-screw guide to Performing Complete Disassembly of a MacBook
Pro.Each page of this guide to MacBook Pro destruction has pithy commentary on hardware you may find inside your new lappy using only iFixit's guide, a #0 Phillips screwdriver, a T6 Torx screwdriver and um, a Spudger.
If this bare-circuit-board guide doesn't knock your mad scientist socks off, frankly, I really don't know what will.
[via Slashdot] [pictured to the right is the MacBook Pro's nekid logic board via iFixit's guide]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Timmay said 8:19AM on 2-24-2006
Sick, i cannot wait for one of my company's to have no more warrenty and fuck around with! That'll be in three years :P
Timmay
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Christopher said 8:22AM on 2-24-2006
Wow, that didn't take long!
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Mark (UK) said 8:48AM on 2-24-2006
Btw my MBP turned up this morning at 11:20am. Us UK folks are a bit behind you colonials,
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Fabienne Serriere said 8:51AM on 2-24-2006
Mark (UK): I actually live in Berlin, so not _all_ of the TUAW crew is in the States.
Cheers,
fbz
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thatboomguy said 11:00AM on 2-24-2006
From a Mac 19+ year Devotee: WHY WOULD I WANT TO BUY A MacBook? Why would I want to spend all that money on a Mac when I can buy a cheaper PC!?!? I've been working on a Mac for over 19 years and before now, wouldnt even have considered owning a PC...until 13 days ago. I purchased an iTunes Video ("Sacrifice"/ Battlestar Galactica) on my G3 Firewire Powerbook w/500mhz and 640RAM for $1.99 and had a problem watching it. It played like CRAP. As a test, I tried playing iTunes Movie Trailers on my $3,000+ Powerbook, and I was surprised when they played like crap. After a week of trying everything in the book to try to watch my iTunes purchase on my $3,000+ powerbook, I switched to my fianc?' CHEAPER, AVERAGE (and what I believed to be inferior) DELL Insperion 600m (1.60 Ghz and 512mb RAM). What I found out was, IT WORKS GREAT!!!!!!! I am kicking myself in the ass!!!! Also, I'm upstairs in my office, now, about 41ft from my souped up router, and my powerbook has intermittent reception. The DELL is 45ft away and it has excellent reception. I'm working on it right now!!!! I am PISSED!!!! She only spent (about) $1,200 on her DELL!!! LESS THAN HALF OF WHAT I SPENT ON MY MAC!!!!! Why would I buy a MacBook after my eyes have been opened?!?!?! I can buy a PC tablet and a digital SLR (camera) and the PC version if Adobe Photoshop CS2 for the price. As far as I concerned, Steve Jobs and Apple don't want my business. Not when I can't look at his $1.99 iTunes Videos on one of his computers with all the up to date software.
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Jon Hendry said 1:28PM on 2-24-2006
"Not when I can't look at his $1.99 iTunes Videos on one of his computers with all the up to date software."
And how old is your $3,000 powerbook? What is it, an 800MHz G4?
Why don't you compare the performance of a $1200 iBook?
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tnkgrl said 3:31PM on 2-24-2006
Mmmm... Early morning (for me) pr0n! Yummy :)
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thatboomguy said 7:23PM on 2-24-2006
"Why don't you compare the performance of a $1200 iBook?" Well, for starters, I don't own a $1,200 iBook to compare. I do, however, own a $3,200 G3 Firewire Powerbook to compare to a much cheaper, better performing DELL Insperion 600m laptop. Besides, you could probably buy a comparable PC for $500 to $600. For a little more ($1,700) you could get a Tablet PC.
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reinharden said 1:57AM on 2-25-2006
A G3 Firewire Powerbook? So that's at least 5, maybe 6 years old, right?
If we applied Moore's Law to the Dell, we'd be looking for a machine about 1/8 to 1/16 the current Dell's performance.
Hmm...I bet it wouldn't work that great either.
reinharden
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thatboomguy said 10:23AM on 2-25-2006
The point that I was making was/is, that pc's have caught up with the Mac. Mac was king year ago. I bought into it in a BIG way. Now, the performance is just average. While the price is not. The fact is, it's not worth the price when you can get a cheaper platform thats just as good if not better. A $1,200, year old pc kicks the A$$ of a 6 year old Powerboook in my side-by-side "compatition". as I said before, the PC has caught up with the Mac. I will give Mac credit for "branding"/advertising. They are the kings at that.
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Eric Swinson said 11:30PM on 2-26-2006
There is a serious flaw in your logic but I'm not going to get in to it. Because all my iTunes videos play exceptionally well on my $3000+ 17" Powerbook G4 that is only six months old but ironically they don't play at all on my $6000 Mac II that is almost 19 years old.
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thatboomguy said 12:27PM on 2-27-2006
"There is a serious flaw in your logic but I'm not going to get in to it. " Then why take the time to post? iTunes Video/TV Shows does not work/play well on a 6 year old, G3 Firewire Powerbook. 6 years ago, I wouldn't have expected a cheaper pc to even attempt to play at all. But, today, in 2006? I am surprised that a cheaper pc plays the $1.99 iTunes Video/TV Shows without a hitch while my G3 will not. How is my logic flawed? The fact that I would dare speak what pc users have known all along? Pc's (now) work just as well as any Mac for less money?
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Eric Swinson said 3:42PM on 2-27-2006
a cheaper powerbook or iBook plays them just as well. So what is your point?
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thatboomguy said 4:27PM on 3-03-2006
"a cheaper powerbook or iBook plays them just as well. So what is your point?" Funny. There are no 'Books that cheap/inexpensive that do as well as a pc notebook. For example, in a newspaper ad today: Celeron M 360 1.4Ghz, 14.1"in WideScreen, 256MB(upgrade to 512MB)/40GB, CDRW/DVD,(upgrade w/ internal wireless) Standard warranty, Corel Wordperfect, XP Home $449 after $100 rebate. (upgrades seem to total $50) This all seems to be for under $600.
What 'Book can be had for that price? Is there a 'Book that can compete with that pc and still be had?
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Matthew said 1:00PM on 4-13-2006
You get what you pay for. I am the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro and the performance is incredible plus I can dual boot the baby into Windows XP sp2 if I have to. What PC notebook can boot and run Mac OS X and the awesome apps that you get with that OS? The price is high however I just was on Dell's site and to but a comparable laptop on their site would cost me about the same price. When you consider that I have a 2.16 GHz processor with 667 MHz bus speed, 2 Gig's of DDR2 Ram, 7200 rpm hardrive at 100 gigs. Go ahead and compare apples to apples (no pun intended) and you will find that the price diff. is not that great. You are obviously uninformed and do not understand the hardware that makes up a laptop. Start making legitimate comparisons in hardware and you will see that they are very similar in price. Thanks
Matthew
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Matthew said 1:03PM on 4-13-2006
Sorry, In my last post I forgot to add that it comes with an ATI x1600 graphics card with 256 mb of memory on it. This MacBook Pro is a screaming mimi!!!
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Brian said 4:20PM on 4-27-2006
"G3 Firewire Powerbook" hey, I had one of those, but then that was new (and over 3 grand) back in April of 2000. After the work out it got in grad school, and then in law school for my wife, it got sold for money towards a much faster, and less expensive (I can't bring myself to call it cheap, that implies it is like a PC, a piece of c---., like the PCs I work on and do some tech support on) iBook. If you consider I went from a 400MHz G3 to a gig G4, at between a third and half the price of the G3, maybe you should think about the iBook the others keep mentioning. Heck if you consider that most computers are obsolete within 6 months of being released, you really can't ask the Pismo to run as well as a new Dell, regardless of the price difference. A six year old Dell, no matter the original price would be just as slow. With your logic, you might as well get mad at my original Mac SE (8MHz, 4 meg of ram upgraded from 1, and 20 MEG hard drive (also over three grand at the time) for not running Halo! What absolute trash Apple puts out, why doesn't a machine from very late 80s, maybe 1990, work better than current Dells? get me Steve Jobs' phone number, I'm going to give him a call and tell him I'm switching...
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Brian said 4:36PM on 4-27-2006
that reminds me, can someone buy me a 17 inch MBP, it looks like a great machine, and I can't buy one until my wife pays of law school student loans (sometime next decade). I'll just pretend it is my powerbook reincarnated, I think I'll lovingly refer to it as PISMO... what a nice name... whatever happened to naming them....
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A realist who wants to point something out said 4:06PM on 5-08-2006
Hi, I would just like to add my little mark here to say that it is infact not a $3000 powerbook. Through depreciation, and current market value, it is infact at most a $180 powerbook.
Thanks ^__^
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A realist who wants to point something said 4:10PM on 5-08-2006
*Sorry, meant that to be 180, or about $350...
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