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back to article Apple's 13-inch Retina MacBook torn asunder for your pleasure

Mere days after Apple announced the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the good folks at the parts, tools, and repair-guide website iFixit have torn one apart – carefully, carefully – and found some interesting innards. Not only that, but they also ratcheted up the teardown's cuteness level by including the globally …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Really disappointed

    I prefer the 13" size - I have a 13" MBA. However, this machine just isn't value for money. I'd rather pay a few hundred extra quid for the basic 15" MBPr which is a much better machine and much better value for money. Suffering the extra pound or so in weight over my MBA is no big deal.

    If the weight really is an issue for some people, fair enough, but it's priced way too high for me.

    2 1
    1. ThomH
      Reply Icon

      Re: Really disappointed

      Assuming we're talking just amongst retinas, I can easily see your point of view. Take the stock 13", add the build-to-order 256Gb storage upgrade to give it storage parity with the stock 15" and you're only $200 away. But for moving up you get a quad core CPU rather than a dual core and a discrete GPU, no doubt more than making up for the 0.2Ghz drop in CPU clock speed.

      Relative to the price of the machine as a whole, that's a bargain.

      2 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Really disappointed

        If you take the 256GB 13" MBPr, add the i7 and Apple Care you are £200 away from having a 256GB 15" MBPr with base CPU, 16GB RAM and Apple Care. The 13" really isn't worth it for the price difference to me. The 15" is the best MBPr and, indeed, probably the best laptop available now IMHO albeit a tad expensive.

        I may be talking myself into buying one on Black Friday if Apple knock 5% off or so.

        1 1
        1. solidsoup
          Reply Icon
          Devil

          Re: Really disappointed

          So am I. I was hoping to see it smashed to bits. At least that's the pic I had in mind when I read 'torn asunder'.

          1 2
          1. Ted Treen
            Reply Icon
            FAIL

            Re: Really disappointed

            Why?

            If you don't like it, then don't buy one.

            Or are you omniscient, thus everything you dislike is unworthy of existence?

            Or are you just a twat with an undeserved and unearned sense of superiority?

            1 5
  2. Richard Cartledge

    If the batteries are duff in 3 years time (how long they lasted on my pre-retina) I'm sure no-one will mind ripping them out with a pry bar.

    1 0
  3. Michael Xion
    WTF?

    Cannot unsee.....

    Ha, ha. Angry robot face is angry. Check out the first pic. I have to say the internal arrangement of parts is quite aesthetically pleasing.

    3 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cannot unsee.....

      Oh wow - hadn't caught that... looks a bit like an angry Johnny 5

      0 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Johnny

        NO DISASSEMBLE!

        5 0
  4. AJ MacLeod

    More bad "design" from Apple

    It's sad to see devices getting less and less repairable for no good reason... worse than that, they are clearly deliberately being made difficult to repair so that they become expensive disposable items.

    It's high time that companies like Apple learned that real design begins with function and if done right ends up with something nice to use, nice to look at and nice to maintain.

    "Thin" does NOT equal good design, and as there is absolutely no worthwhile functional advantage from the kind of reduction we're talking about here it's all the more pathetic. Please, get over the "thin" thing now, we'll all say how massively clever you are being able to make something 0.02mm thinner if it keeps you happy - just grow up and start producing sturdy, elegant and repairable devices and I might consider buying one again.

    4 5
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More bad "design" from Apple

      More whining from people who would never buy the product because it's from Apple, pathetic really.

      9 5
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: More bad "design" from Apple

        > More whining from people who would never buy the product because it's from Apple

        He has a point.

        I stopped buying Apple gear when a battery failed on an out of warranty MacBook. It was a lot of trouble to obtain the specialist tools and to actually replace the battery. I decided having an Apple product simply wasn't worth it. Especially since they appear to be making it more and more difficult for users to replace parts.

        I've still got a couple of Apple products (Mac mini and an iMac) but once they break down I will replace them with something that has user serviceable parts.

        5 2
      2. AJ MacLeod
        Reply Icon

        Re: More whining?

        As a matter of fact I bought a MBP a year ago... not that facts will ever change the opinions of the deluded worshipers in the Cult of Apple.

        It's not a bad laptop, though it did go faulty within the first few months... won't turn off, only sleep. Of course, in your mind I'm clearly making that up as Apple products never go wrong, but it really is another of those awkward facts I'm afraid...

        1 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More bad "design" from Apple

      > "It's high time that companies like Apple learned that real design begins with function and if done right ends up with something nice to use, nice to look at and nice to maintain."

      Apple do know that - witness the Mac Pro desktop - but they just disagree with you when you say the function of a portable computer depends more on its DIY repair-ability than it does its, ahem, portability. They have a point.

      5 0
      1. AJ MacLeod
        Reply Icon

        Re: More bad "design" from Apple

        Oh, come on... this is not some wearable computer, it's an ordinary laptop. Not even a netbook... within reason, the thickness is completely irrelevant to portability. The previous generations of MBP were pretty much ideal in their dimensions in my opinion.

        This change is purely fashion driven.

        0 0
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: More bad "design" from Apple

          Good luck configuring wireless access points with this one. Maybe you could solder a CAT6 into the motherboard after using a Dremel? ;)

          0 0
    3. Ken 16 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: More bad "design" from Apple

      I recently (for no good reason) stuck a new OS on my old IBM Thinkpad 240x. Every single part of it is designed for access to Field Replaceable Units like memory, battery, hard drive, while the outside is lined with ports (USB, PCMCIA, modem, serial, parallel, IR, floppy, sound). It's certainly a different design paradigm, but depends on how you use your toys. I'd imagine someone buying a MacBook isn't going to want to tinker with it very often or keep it 15 years.

      1 0
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cruel

    Tut tut. Glueing a kittens nose to a MacBook just for a publicity shot is just plain cruel.

    6 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cruel to which?

      Obvioulsy you're not an Apple fanboi, or you'd have said "Glueing a MacBook to a kitten's nose"

      5 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cruel to which?

        And, if you were someone who could spell, you'd have said "Gluing".

        0 1
  6. Dan 55 Silver badge

    iFixit should be happy then

    After all, if it weren't for the intrinsic difficulty of repairing Apple devices they wouldn't exist.

    1 0
  7. Britt Johnston
    Coat

    Black Friday

    < [I'm]buying one on Black Friday if Apple knock 5% off or so >

    3.5% knocked off the share price this week, charge up your credit card...

    0 0
  8. hugo tyson
    WTF?

    What are those things?

    I see 6 anonymous black things in there. Are they all cells of the battery?

    0 0
    1. Andrew Lobban
      Reply Icon

      Re: What are those things?

      Yes, those 6 black enclosures hold the battery. High res screens need a lot of power, this 13" retina battery has an extra 10.5 watt-hours (74 instead of 63.5) compared to the non-retina 13".

      0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Funny how things change...

    ... I still recall the days where we used to rage at Dell for using custom components and enclosures that we couldn't use third-party items in.

    Now it's Apple's turn. :-)

    1 0
  10. phuzz Silver badge
    Happy

    Ha ifixit, you think you can make me look at your site justAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW KITTEH!

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