MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar Teardown

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Well, you knew it was just a matter of time before the folks at iFixit got their grubby little mitts on a MacBook Pro 13" with a Touch Bar and tore it apart. How did the latest and greatest from Apple rank? On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the best, it scored a one. Ouch. :eek:
 
lol glue. Was this the result of arts and crafts in a chinese 3rd grade class room?
 
To be fair, that is the repairability score and almost all the Apple stuff scores a 1 or 2.

Still got a kick out of this:

"Nearby we spot a water damage indicator sticker, waiting patiently for the day you spill iced tea on your Touch Bar and it can fulfill its purpose in life by turning pink."
 
That's crazy that the entire computer (cpu, memory, storage, wifi, the works) fits and is routed through an awkward mustache shaped motherboard.
 
Cosmetic speaker grills, lol. Even I think that's ridiculous.

Reminds me of the old white/black plastic MacBooks that had a screw on the left side simply to keep it symmetrical with the left, it didn't do anything, just a screw to nowhere, at least there is some crazy attention to exterior design detail, too bad it isn't always carried over to the internals.
 
serpretetsky said:
That's crazy that the entire computer (cpu, memory, storage, wifi, the works) fits and is routed through an awkward mustache shaped motherboard.
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What's crazier is that if any part of that motherboard goes bad you can kiss your soldered on SSD data goodbye...
 
So.. this is basically a supped up phone or tablet in regards to assembly/disassembly.

Thanks for reminding me again why I really dislike Apple computers.
 
Thank goodness it's an apple product and their stuff never breaks........

Maybe that's why they have so many genius bars around, it seems like it would be really needed here.
 
The 2012 i7 MPBs will forever reign king...

Two cores at 2.9GHz, upgradable to 16GB of DRAM, ability to put two SFF drives inside, USB 3.0....etc...

They are nice and cheap on ebay too and not hard to rebuild if anything is wrong with them.
 
"they" charged me $115 bucks for a 4TB external hard drive

if you can't afford that, and if you aren't backing up your data regardless of platform, you deserve whatever comes your way, imo
 
I'm really a big fan of Apple products, but between this goofy design (they feel insanely flimsy) and their new iOS I am about to start looking elsewhere for mobile products (including laptops in that category)

I genuinely hate the design choices they have been making. It's almost as if they are trying to fix problems that don't exist. Trying to make things thinner for the sake of just being thinner doesn't appeal to anyone I really don't understand the thought process behind green lighting these
 
In an interview with Phil Schiller (senior VP at Apple), he made the comment about why would people want to use old equipment? Apple is proud that you can recycle most of their devices. They don't want you to repair it or keep it around for a while - buy a new damn device you cheap bastards. (I may not have quoted him accurately).
 
steakman1971 said:
In an interview with Phil Schiller (senior VP at Apple), he made the comment about why would people want to use old equipment? Apple is proud that you can recycle most of their devices. They don't want you to repair it or keep it around for a while - buy a new damn device you cheap bastards. (I may not have quoted him accurately).
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Heh, I've ripped the logic boards out of one 2008, and two 2010 MPBs that were suffering the infamous bad solder/GPU issues and had them re-flowed with new solder. These things are tanks and are plenty fast for around-the-house desktop machines. I added SSDs and new batteries to all of them and can crank 10 hours out of a charge easily.

I'll probably have them forever at this point =P
 
And this is a prime example of why Apple products are overpriced. They are extremely over-engineered to the point that they require twice as much time by qualified people to repair. Their design philosophies to make things look good means parts are all inclusive and if one small part fails you have to replace 5 other parts at once. This isn't a simple tablet or phone where other restrictions require these design philosophies, this is a top of the line laptop where standardized design philosophies have been around for DECADES.

So that inflated price pays for the over engineering, re-training the factory workers to assemble such a beast, creating special tools just to assemble it, all the extra parts that get replaced that don't need to be when something fails, and the overpaid Apple tech's that are far from geniuses who seem to be the only ones qualified to fix them.

If people want to pay to buy into this game, go right ahead since that's capitalism. I am staying way the hell away.
 
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CaptNumbNutz said:
And this is a prime example of why Apple products are overpriced. They are extremely over-engineered to the point that they require twice as much time by qualified people to repair. Their design philosophies to make things look good means parts are all inclusive and if one small part fails you have to replace 5 other parts at once.

So that inflated price pays for the over engineering, re-training the factory workers to assemble such a beast, creating special tools just to assemble it, all the extra parts that get replaced that don't need to be when something fails, and the overpaid Apple tech's that are far from geniuses who seem to be the only ones qualified to fix them.

If people want to pay to buy into this game, go right ahead since that's capitalism. I however, are staying way the hell away.
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I definitely do not like that many OEMs are going to soldered non-user serviceable parts. Even ThinkPads are going that direction :/
 
0ptional said:
I definitely do not like that many OEMs are going to soldered non-user serviceable parts. Even ThinkPads are going that direction :/
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And soon ThinkPads will be overpriced over-engineered pieces of bad artwork just like Apple. I know the special snowflake Apple fanboys will be triggered by my post thinking that I'm singling them out, but I'm with you and completely against ANY manufacturer doing this type of design for high end machines that should be serviceable. It's like they are setting a new high bar for what they consider "throwaway" product thus forcing increased demand through additional purchases. These aren't small devices like tablets and phones that require these type of designs to be cheap and easily portable.
 
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This is NOT eco-friendly, Apple. One little thing breaks and it seems like the whole computer is garbage. Isn't fully integrated parts supposed to mean cheaper, not more expensive.
 
Dk975 said:
This is NOT eco-friendly, Apple. One little thing breaks and it seems like the whole computer is garbage. Isn't fully integrated parts supposed to mean cheaper, not more expensive.
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You mean recycle material =)

I have lots of places here that love to recycle stuff like this and will give you money for it. They will give you extra money if you personally separate the case from the components too.
 
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