iFixit Teardown Of The New MacBook Pro, Describes It As Un-Repairable

At this year's WWDC event Apple launched the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Not wanting to waste anytime playing with it the guys over at iFixit have already done what they do best. They tore it apart!

Image Courtesy iFixit

I don't know how the guys over at iFixit get their hands on devices so quickly, but we are certainly glad they do. Earlier this week theu got their hands on one of the new, ridiculously powerful, ridiculously expensive MacBook Pros with Retina Display, and of cours promptly posted a MacBook Pro with Retina Display Teardown.

The good news, iFixit seems to agree with Apple, who has already proclaimed that this is the "best computer Apple has ever made." The bad news, aside from how pretty and well-made everything is, it is seemingly "the least repairable laptop iFixit has ever taken apart."

Some lowlights: As with previous Apple devices Apple has again gone above and beyond in making it difficult for consumers to even crack open their devices. The MacBook Pro with Retina display is guarded by Apple's proprietary pentalobe screws, which iFixit is well equipped to handle but most consumers might not be.

After prying the case open the news just gets worse. Apple has saw to it that the RAM is soldered down. This means that you won't be able to add RAM, nor would you be able to service the RAM if it fails. So anyone looking to go cheap and add-on later might rethink that idea and max their systems out at 16GBs now. To make matters worse the proprietary SSD isn't upgradeable either (yet), as it is similar but not identical to the one in the Macbook Air. It is a separate daughtercard, that is an Apple only design that so far no one has been able to find or replace.

To add to a DIY'ers misery is the surprising fact that the lithium-polymer battery is glued rather than screwed into the case, which increases the chances that it'll break during disassembly. The battery also covers the trackpad cable, which tremendously increases the chance that the user will shear the cable in the battery removal process. So if your battery goes bad, you'll have to ship your MacBook Pro off rather than risk breaking something else.

Last on the list is the display assembly is completely fused, and there’s no glass protecting it. If anything ever fails inside the display, you will need to replace the entire extremely expensive assembly. That means really bad news for those of us that are always breaking things!

For more details on what iFixit found checkout the full MacBook Pro with Retina Display Teardown.