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MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar Teardown
- f_allwein 10y agoRepairability score: 1 out of 10. No big surprise.
- gutnor 10y agoThey could have done 2 if the SSD was user replaceable. You have to carefully planned your MBP configuration, unfortunately SSD upgrade are terribly expensive. An extra 25% of the price to go from 256GB to 1TB. Actually that's probably fine for a professional machine, as you will be alright with a smaller disk until you replace the MBP anyway. For a power-user machine that you plan to keep several (5+) years, that's another story.
- maxxxxx 10y agoThe fact that you have to plan your disk and RAM configuration years ahead is really annoying. Especially for a laptop that's on the high end of the price range.
- revelation 10y agoThey sure as hell sacrificed a lot of battery for those useless stereo speakers.
- louhike 10y agoThey might be useless for you, but some people use them. This design decision might be coherent with their main target audience.
- stinos 10y agoThat's always a bit double. At one point I appreciate they try to improve the sound (and maybe succeed? didn't hear the last model yet), on the other hand I loathe the marketing 'best sound ever'-like phrases and hope not too many people fall for it, as it is in fact physically impossible to get anywhere near proper source reproduction whith such small speakers placed behind a cover. Then again, as you say target audience might not care about that.
- asmosoinio 10y agoFor me video conferencing on a laptop is a very usual use case, and improved audio makes that better. I don't think I'm the only one.
- 1123581321 10y agoI can only speak for myself, but I use my laptop speakers daily. I have a MBP and bought Boom 2 to make it a little louder when listening to people speaking. I'd certainly rather have them natively play that loudly. For me, the battery life tradeoff is worth it as six hours is about how much battery life I tend to use. That said, I recognize that having ten or twelve hours would change my behavior and expectations.
- trymas 10y agoI am surprised by few things after newest rMBP teardowns - Battery takes less space, than I thought, just eyeballing it but it seems that in (classic)rMBP battery takes more volume percent-wise. - Battery is smaller by ~10% than non touch bar model (49.2 Wh vs 54.5 Wh) and significantly smaller than the classic rmbps. - Two fans, classics had 1. - Touchbar has speakers speakers under palm rest, and not under grills, thus it has slits on the bottom whereas the non-touchbar has not. - Visually speakers are bigger in the non touch bar version - Touchbar has ssd soldered and non-touch bar - removable ssd - Touchbar has more gaps and unused volume - mainly in battery area. Maybe there will be major reconstruction inside rMBP13 next year? Just like 2012 vs 2013 rMBP13? 2012 model was a mess (by Apple standards) inside. Like the comment in iFixit, maybe rMBP13 was not designed for touchbar in the first place? It was decided later to make it?
- static_noise 10y agoNow we need a someone to drop it in an aquarium and collect the bubbles to show just how much air is in that device.
- eriknstr 10y agoIf you did that, recorded it and the video got popular you could earn back the money you spent on the device multiple times over in ad-revenue. Of course, the crux is that if the video does not get popular you'll just be yet another fool who wasted a bunch of money doing something stupid.
- beojan 10y ago> 49.2 kWh vs 54.5 kWh That would be quite the battery. Really, it's 49.2 Wh and 54.5 Wh, not kWh.
- trymas 10y agoThanks for mentioning. Edited.
- unwind 10y agoMods: there's a wonky "smart quote" in the title, that would be great to fix.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoThe correct symbol for the inch is the ″ (DOUBLE PRIME).
- jlebrech 10y agoI would have preferred an iphone dock where the touchpad resides, just replace the supplied touch pad with your iphone and you get and additional screen. but they gave us this useless touch screen.
- bakadana 10y agoBefore I saw leaked photos of the touchbar channel, I had convinced myself that Apple was going to put a screen under the track pad. Oh well.
- mthoms 10y agoI have a gut feeling that this is still in the works and the main reasons for the trackpad size expansion that no-one in particular was asking for.
- rasz_pl 10y agoI told you SSD will be permanently soldered to the PCB, received downvotes in return :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826005 Apple finally decided with this round of macbooks to shift from producing laptops into content consumption appliances like iPhone. Next step of this internal plan involves processors.
- audunw 10y ago".. content consumption appliances like .." That's still quite a hyperbole isn't it? Is 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 for content consumption? Is 3.1/2.1Gbps SSD for content consumption? Edit: Is a super accurate and wide color gamut screen for content consumption? "Next step of this internal plan involves processors." What exactly are you alluding to here? Apple designing its own processor? x86 or ARM? Do you think Apple will go through another architecture switch on macOS? Laptops are going to become even more integrated. That's just physics. Long, wide traces are not good for either power consumption or bandwidth. But how that will manifest in future MacBooks is hard to say. They could still go for off-the-shelf components and packages (probably Intel will start to deliver processors with stacked or silicon interposer bonded RAM). But it would make some sense for them to design their own processors. Though Intel is still really far ahead in semiconductor process and processor architecture. I'm not sure they can come close enough to justify it.
- anonymfus 10y ago>Is 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 for content consumption? Considering that using USB3 bandwidth disables WiFi[1], yes. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYVjIjBMx6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYVjIjBMx6o
- pilif 10y agoI'm sure this is intentional design and working completely as intended /s Have you considered that there could be a hardware- or software issue causing this that could be fixed later on?
- 10y ago
- spacehacker 10y agoI'm wondering what necessitates the second fan. The 2016 function keys MBP only has one fan.
- alfanick 10y ago2016 MBP FK has processor with lower TDP
- seanwilson 10y agoCould be so they can spin two fans slowly instead of one fan quickly to reduce noise.
- ulfw 10y agoA TDP that's almost twice as much (28W) compared to the one fan model (15W) does that for you.
- n1000 10y agocan anybody tell me why Apple didn't try harder to max out the battery?? apparently the 15" version has even more unused space: https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/15/2016-macbook-pro-non-removable-ssd-small-batteries/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/15/2016-macbook-pro-non-removabl... if this is really a compromise to hit some weight target I will have to join the "Apple don't care about the Pros anymore" camp...
- ctz 10y agoLithium ion capacities are limited by the FAA to 100Wh per device, so it's not that.
- mprovost 10y agoThe FAA limits batteries to 100 watt-hours. I'm not sure why they haven't maxed it out on the newer macbook pro like they did on the older one though. https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/macbook-pro-october-2016-battery-life/ https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/macbook-pro-october-2016-batter...
- n1000 10y agoI can see the marketing storyline: 3.0 pounds sounds cooler than 10+h battery life. Because: 10 hours = 1 working day = enough
- edvinbesic 10y agoExcept that you only get 10 hours browsing the internet, so unless your work consists of reddit and hacker news you can't really meet that target and I think most professionals would prefer more.
- reacharavindh 10y agoI use a 2014 rMBP. I need to keep Virtual desktop client running all through the day, Outlook for corporate email, and Safari for everything web-based. I can go though 70% of my day without needing to plug in. I really really really wish Apple add little more capacity so I don't need to be anxious about spending a work day on the move.
- _ao789 10y agoHow do you perform a power reset without an actual button?
- tempay 10y agoYou can do it the same way as any other mac as the touch id sensor is still a physical button.
- kalleboo 10y agoI love the fake speaker grilles that don't even go all the way through the machine... Form follows function, minimal design indeed.
- marvindanig 10y agoI hate to admit this but I'll bite. Apple is being steered by fifty shades of Steve Ballmer now. Colored and extra-large iPhones, death to magSafe, stupid mini-iPads that have no reason to exist other than being a marketing offer. Decisions for the sake of making decisions.
- doomtop 10y agoI agree on all points except re: the mini iPad. I have no use for a full-size iPad, but I have the 9.7" Pro and Mini 4, which are perfectly sized, in my humble opinion.
- marvindanig 10y agoThis wasn't said lightly. Steve Jobs revolutionized many industries -- music, mobile, laptops, animation and so on… he wanted to revolutionize education as well. That aim was best served with the original 9" tablet iPad. It stoked the way kids and kids-in-adults would consume content -- learn / read / watch videos before going to bed/sleep or in the classroom. A slate-like form functionally draws a better parallel to the stone slates we used to have in schools back in the day! iPad Mini on the other hand makes people lose their focus from the original intent of the product i.e. revolution of education. It does fit the palm but doesn't help the cause at all. iPad proper is easy to tap/touch, carry, flip pages on: more or less like an evolved form of Kindle but a lot more (also the reason why iPad Air still does better than the rest). We already know to whom this product appeals the most. Another reason why Jobs was dead against letting in the porn usecase on the iPad was because he wanted to start with children on board -- again to push for revolutionizing education. Child-safe and all that. This CEO has failed that goal objectively. Tim (and his team) don't even know what they want -- their launches signal that they have nothing on their minds except making more money in the name of some marketing revolution. And when something will do well they will surely hide behind that success (like the touchbar MBP) because really deep within they are running blind. Apple will continue to introduce more product lines to open up additional revenue streams and that is all there is to it. My 2 cents/opinion: Tim Cook, with all due respect, is just a salesman. He thinks revolutionary products are about tech, design, form and function whereas those are merely a few vectors that lead to a revolution but not the revolution itself. I don't think their heart or mind is in the right place.
- bwindels 10y ago> Repairability 1 out of 10 This is my main reason to stop buying Apple hardware, not so much the lack of an Esc key. The Mid 2012 model still scored 7 / 10.
- maxerickson 10y agoI have used 1 Apple device in the last 15 years, an iPod shuffle I got as a gift (I shorted it out by sweating near it). Are other manufacturers doing much better? On my older laptop, the HDD is 2 screws to access. On the laptop my mom used previously, you had to take the CPU fan assembly out after removing the keyboard to get at the HDD.
- vollmond 10y agoMy one-year-old Dell gaming laptop has one screw holding the entire bottom panel on, with ram/hdd/ssd/etc all easily accessible once it's off.
- EpicEng 10y agoWas the HDD soldered in place once you got there?
- maxerickson 10y agoI gave up when I looked at the procedure.
- Shivetya 10y agowell let us all be honest here, laptops have always been difficult to repair if at all regardless of manufacturer due to custom parts required just to meet the form factor. Desktops only if your not an all in one design are repairable if that is describable but costs of new hardware being so low its usually for many to just replace the whole machine. I don't even worry about tablet/phone repair. On my iPhone4 I did replace the back glass a bunch of times and was more happy when they changed to anything but glass backs
- korginator 10y agoThis is really an iPad running MacOS, with everything soldered on, zero upgradeability and near-zero repairability. That's the antithesis of a "professional" machine. I wonder if we'll see a similar trend with the mac pro if Apple doesn't decide to scrap it completely. We run quite a few mac pros and macbook pros at work, so this has us thinking hard.
- kalleboo 10y agoThey already have an iPad they call "Pro". "Pro" doesn't mean anything to Apple anymore. (unless you want to go cynical and say it means Profits)
- hellofunk 10y agoAt least in the iPad, the "Pro" actually means something. The iPad Pro is more powerful than any laptop by any manufacturer made before 3 years ago. For the same size and weight, you can get a non-Pro iPad Air 2, which is cheaper but lacking in that ridiculous processor and graphics power The "Pro" iPad, in addition to these considerable spec improvements, also supports their proprietary stylus for graphics professionals. I think the "Pro" word is not as clear in the Mac line now as it is in the iPad line.
- wodenokoto 10y agoI imagine the majority of professionals that use computers as part of their professional work don't even know what an SSD is or has given any thought to its upgradability.
- 8draco8 10y agoI will copy very interesting question from ifixit: > How do you do a power rest if the machine hangs? Before you held down the power button for a few seconds. Would that work with a touch ID button? Any ideas?
- midgetjones 10y agoThe touch bar is a separate computer isn't it? So you'd have to do a lot to get both to hang at the same time. And the power button on the laptops has been part of the keyboard for years now.
- werdnapk 10y agoThey do also say in the article about the Touch ID button: "That button also doubles as the power button, so fixing a power button may be a more costly affair than it once was."
- bdz 10y agoThe mid 2012 Pro still got 7/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Teardown/9515 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+...
- agumonkey 10y agoI wonder how much cost their fingerprint scanner btw.
- dubcroster 10y agoCould anyone tell me why there is a three-microphone array built in to the touchbar? My privacy-sense is tingeling like crazy over this.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoWell microphone arrays are directional. Is that the question? It allows an app to home in on the speaker, avoiding background noise.
- joezydeco 10y agoProbably necessary to make Siri more reliable.