iFixit has just gotten their hands on one of the new MacBook Airs, and have just recently finished doing what they do with every new toy they get – they tore it apart! By taking the new MacBook Air apart piece by piece, they’ve managed to learn a few interesting things about it.
The new machines pack new ULV Sandy Bridge processors and an SD card slot, come pre-installed with OS X Lion, can restore their own operating systems from the internet, and feature Apple and Intel’s powerful new Thunderbolt I/O technology, as well as something less expected – bluetooth 4.0!
Following Apple’s decision to discontinue the white MacBook, the $999 11″ MacBook Air has just become the new entry-level MacBook. This is both a good and a bad thing. While this does mean that people purchasing the entry level will now have a much lighter load to carry, it also means you won’t be upgrading or servicing your computer in the near future.
It’s good, because the MacBook Air is thin, light, and fast, has an amazing battery life, can be carried anywhere, and represents a number of future trends in computing that consumers will need to get used to: The inclusion of an embedded SSD and the lack of an Optical drive.
It’s also a bad thing, however, because it turns out that the new MacBook Airs are very difficult to repair by yourself, meaning that you’ll have to take it in to Apple every time anything goes wrong with it, and unless you spend the money for AppleCare, you’ve only got one year to use it before any problem that might occur could suddenly become very, very expensive to fix.
For one, all of the MacBook Air’s main components, except for the SSD and battery, are attached to the logic board. This includes the RAM – so if anything goes wrong with your MacBook Air, the entire logic board has to be replaced.
Among the good things that iFixit learned are that, contrary to rumors, Apple has not soldered the SSD to the logic board, and OWC will also be offering upgrades to the SSD, allowing you to upgrade your MacBook Air with up to 480GB of storage (although this will void your warrantee. Further, while the SSD and the battery are both removable, they require a special pentalobe screwdriver to perform the task.
You can learn more and view all of the photos and notes from the teardown over at iFixit, but in the meantime, why not allow iFixit’s own charming MJ summarize it for you by watching the video clip below?
