New MacBook Air SSDs are replaceable

No sooner had the new MacBook Air models shown up in Apple Stores than the iFixit team grabbed one for dissection. The site always does a teardown of the latest in Apple technology for the benefit of repair technicians and for hobbyists who love to see what's inside their Macs. The 2011 13" MacBook Air teardown shows how Apple engineers cram so much power in such a tiny computer.

One of the nicer things to come out of the teardown was the news that the internal solid-state drive isn't soldered to the logic board, meaning that MBA owners who would like more storage and don't have an issue with invalidating their warranty can open the computer and install a drive with more capacity. While Apple's MacBook Air storage solutions max out at 256 GB, OWC has faster SSDs with capacities up to 480 GB.

With more powerful processors (up to a 1.8 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 CPU) and the ability to bump up the SSD capacity, it's a pity that none of the MacBook Air models are able to take more than 4 GB of RAM. It's soldered onto the logic board, which is why iFixit notes that "it might be worth it to buy the nicer model (4 GB) from the get-go."