Saturday, June 17th 2023
iFixit Not Impressed with Apple 15-inch MacBook Air Repairability
iFixit has released their teardown and evaluation video covering Apple's brand new M2 MacBook Air model. This 15-inch screen variant was announced at WWDC 2023 and was released to retail soon after. The test unit has an A2941 model number and looks not too far removed from the 13-inch equivalent externally and internally, but the fifteen-incher is 22% heavier. Initial impressions are good thanks to more screen real estate, increased pixel density, large trackpad, a six-speaker sound system and smart battery tech. Things turn sour almost immediately upon starting disassembly—iFixit described their experience of disconnecting the internal battery as "miserable," and added that it was even more of a challenge to extract the laptop's logic board due to the force-canceling speakers/woofers getting in the way.
The team had to contend with plenty of connector brackets, ports, pentalobe + miscellaneous screws types and covers adding to their collective headache. The 66.5 WH-rated battery only becomes accessible at the tail end of a truly frustrating teardown process, although the reviewer notes that it was very easy to remove the cell assembly—only having to deal with "neato" pull tabs and clip-securing posts. These positives aspects are almost entirely negated by overcomplicated preceding steps. iFixit awarded a repairability score of 3 (out of 10) to the Apple M2 MacBook Air 15-inch model, and concluded that this premium laptop is "a heavy unrepairable beast (hidden) under (its) skin deep beauty."
iFixit's video description states: "The M2 MacBook Air has grown up and has a 15" summer bod to show off, with a hefty 22% more bulk, 26% more pixels, and a mere 0.2 mm increase in thickness. No butterfly keyboard, extra speakers, huge trackpad, and all-day battery life—plus speedy charging with a 65 W adapter—and you're ready for a day at the beach. But sand, as we all know, is rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere—so let's see just how repairable the MacBook Air 15" truly is."
Sources:
iFixit YouTube Video, iFixit, GizChina
The team had to contend with plenty of connector brackets, ports, pentalobe + miscellaneous screws types and covers adding to their collective headache. The 66.5 WH-rated battery only becomes accessible at the tail end of a truly frustrating teardown process, although the reviewer notes that it was very easy to remove the cell assembly—only having to deal with "neato" pull tabs and clip-securing posts. These positives aspects are almost entirely negated by overcomplicated preceding steps. iFixit awarded a repairability score of 3 (out of 10) to the Apple M2 MacBook Air 15-inch model, and concluded that this premium laptop is "a heavy unrepairable beast (hidden) under (its) skin deep beauty."
27 Comments on iFixit Not Impressed with Apple 15-inch MacBook Air Repairability
My desktop PC one im on right now is from 2012 and still working fine core i7 3770K 32 GB ram I upgraded to some more SSD space but still runs like a champ.
Juice
Tea
Pea
My favorite was I accidently ran it over but some reason it won't come on
Do you always go away as far as possible to the machine when drinking something?
In regards to the battery replacement, I wonder how many people actually do it or want to do it in modern laptops. We've had a Lenovo for 6 years now, and we've never replaced the battery, and at this point it's so damn slow it's not worth the trouble. At least with Apple, you can trade it in towards your next upgrade. Even if it's broken and worthless, they'll recycle it for free.
I'm amazed people still que up to be taxed by Apple for the rest of their digital lives. I put it down to there being no really tough times since 2009...
You can do the same without the apple logo and pay half or even less.
But it needed for most some real skills :/
But otherwise yes, only Apple could sell people this "oh no, the F key doesn't work anymore... you'll have to pay for a full motherboard replacement". And have their customers be smug about it.
They were all of those things still, but only to the same extent that other big players like Intel/AMD/Nvidia are today.
The Apple of today is ten times worse. Go and watch some Louis Rossman videos, or look at how Apple are butting heads with congress, the EU, and various other governing bodies for profit above rational societal benefit.
It's a fact that Apple has made a series of choices that strip away customer's right to repair and they have integrated many parts that technically should not be integrated for no reason other than to circumvent the ability to repair.
And back to you, while I'm sure you care about the environment (what sane person doesn't?), the choice to support Apple is not, imho, a testament to that.They aren't. Like you said, Apple isn't listening anyway. The harshest critic is the one that stops buying. The rest are either sheep (and I don't use this term lightly) or forced to use Apple hardware somehow.