The fine folks at iFixit, they of the disassemble fetish, have taken it upon themselves to teardown the new 12-inch Retina MacBook, and as usual, they’ve done a fine job of showing us what makes it tick.
To no great surprise, iFixit found a 1.1GHz processor, 12-inch Retina display, 256GB of flash storage and Intel HD Graphics 5300 under the hood. However, there were a few surprises to be seen.
The unit’s battery connector, hidden under the logic board, has more in common with Apple’s iPad than previous versions of Apple’s venerable laptop lineup.
iFixit found Apple’s new array of tapered battery cells to be a bit of a challenge to remove, as they are glued in fairly tight. Once they finally pried them out, they found a 5263 mAh battery, just slightly more powerful than the 5100 mAh powercell found in the 11-inch MacBook Air.
The team also took a close look at the laptop’s new Force Touch trackpad, which is a “slimmer, daintier version” of the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s trackpad. A little closer look showed a Broadcom BCM5976 touchscreen controller, ST Microelectronics 32F103 ARM Cortex-M based microcontroller, and Linear Technology LT3954 LED Converter with Internal PWM Generator working to run the new trackpad.
The MacBook’s logic board contained the following:
- Elpida/Micron FB164A1MA-GD-F 8 GB LPDDR3 Mobile RAM
- Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF NB2953 128 GB SLC NAND Flash memory (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
- NXP 11U37 microcontroller; 128 kB flash, 10kB SRAM
- SMSC 1704-2 Temperature Sensor
- Texas Instrument SN6508 (probably power converter related to SN6501)
The 12-inch Retina MacBook scored a whopping 1 out of 10 repairability score, (10 is easiest to repair), due to Apple’s proprietary pentalobe screws holding on the case, the hard to remove batteries, and the CPU, RAM, and flash memory all being soldered to the logic board, and the Retina display being a fused unit with no separate, protective glass.
As always, iFixit’s most recent teardown is recommended reading, delving into all the details of what makes Apple’s latest MacBook tick.
