iFixit tears down the 11-inch MacBook Air
Less than a day after the new 11-inch MacBook Air hit shelves, iFixit's already dissected it. The repair site gave the new MacBook Air a repairability rating of 4/10, with 10 being easiest to repair. Two major obstacles face any user trying to do their own repairs on the MacBook Air. First, the screws involved in a MacBook Air teardown are T5 Torx screws for the internals and five-point security Torx on the outside, so you'd better either have those types of screwdrivers or be prepared to file down a flatblade like iFixit did. iFixit notes that once you get those screws out, servicing the MacBook Air is relatively easy, but the second obstacle is more insidious to DIY repairers: the MacBook Air takes the phrase "no user-serviceable parts inside" to a new level. Nothing inside the MacBook Air is "off the shelf." RAM is integrated into the logic board, the six-cell battery is in a weirdly customized configuration, and the flash memory the MacBook Air uses in place of a hard drive is proprietary.Aside from the serviceability issues, the MacBook Air's internals are pretty impressively put together. Once dismantled, there's barely over a dozen major parts to the entire computer, and it's clear that not one cubic centimeter of space was wasted. However, the multiple-cell design of the battery looks a bit odd compared to the integrated batteries of the MacBook Pro line, and it'll be interesting to see what impact, if any, this has on battery reliability.
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Less than a day after the new 11-inch MacBook Air hit shelves, iFixit's already dissected it. The repair site gave the new MacBook Air a...
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Why are they called iFixit, when the only thing they do is iOpenit.
October 22 2010 at 10:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI was so tempted to pull the pin on this as a replacement for my '09 Macbook Unibody. Then I went onto Ebay and managed to blag myself a brand new 13" Pro 2.66, 4Gb RAM for £940. Costs £1250 on the Apple store so I'm feeling quite pleased with myself... until the guilt of spending so much sinks in.
October 22 2010 at 1:09 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI would certainly dig one of those high res 13.3 inch panels in my unibody macbook.....
October 22 2010 at 12:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySo, for forever you haven't been able to boot Apple computers off USB (Firewire: yes, netboot: yes, cd: yes, usb: you had to some crazy funky things). With the inclusion of the bootable USB drive in the air, does this mean the air (and other future Macs) can finally be booted using, say, linux off a USB? Or is this Mac OS X only?
October 21 2010 at 11:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyMacs have been bootable off of external USB drives for a while:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/18/mac-101-yes-intel-macs-can-be-booted-from-an-external-usb-drive/
According to the commenters on that article, this only works with OS X on the external drive, not Linux or Windows.
All Intel macs can boot from a USB drive.
October 22 2010 at 4:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThey said that Apple would never sell a "netbook." The 11" Air IS the Apple netbook, if you strictly define the netbook as a small laptop that primarily will be useful for getting on line wirelessly.
Apple just made sure they had one designed that they could sell for 1000 large.
It'll be interesting to note how odd this looks on the xray machine at your local airport. Nothing like a non-standard battery configuration to look like components for you a know what.
October 21 2010 at 8:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWouldn't be the first time the TSA's super-sleuths got confused by the MacBook Air:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/07/how-a-macbook-air-baffled-airport-security/
5-point Security Torx on the outside, not standard T5s. Never seen a bit like that before. Looks like standard Torx on the inside.
October 21 2010 at 8:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIn fairness to iFixit, those are some pretty weird, non-standard Torx screws on the MBA.
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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