MacBook Pro with Touch Bar gets reparability scale of 1/10 from iFixit

The iFixit teardown of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with integrated touch bar reveals the stunning fact that the touch bar integrated with the laptop is difficult to repair. The iFixit team has tagged the MacBook Pro reparability scale as 1/10.

As with any other gadget, the team ripped the notebook in detail to know more about the internals. The team said that there are significant differences when compared with the 13-inch Macbook Pro.

MacBook Pro speaker grilles not covered by speaker

The speaker grilles of the MacBook will not cover the speaker. The team noticed that the grille holes are not exact holes and are more or less cosmetic dimples. They are few tiny dots exclusively reserved for a pair of tweeters. Upon inspection, the iFixit teardown team found that the sound from the laptop is directed via vents on the sides of the laptop.

In the new MacBook Pro, the USB Type-C hardware can be easily replaced separately. Moreover, the USB Type-C port on the left side provides support for Thunderbolt 3. The copper pads are dedicated for the positive and negative terminals of the battery.

No removable SSD in MacBook Pro

The new MacBook Pro doesn’t ship with a removable SSD. If you check the internals, you will view that the processor, RAM, and flash memory are soldered to the logic board. It is possible to replace trackpad and headphone jack easily. If you want to perform any other work, you need to remove the logic board, which is time-consuming.

The Touch ID sensor doubles as the power switch, and is paired with the T1 chip on the logic board. Fixing a broken power switch may require help from Apple, or a new logic board.

Furthermore, the fragile glass of the Touch Bar is very difficult to remove. Hence, iFixit has given a 1/10 rating on the reparability scale. The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is 20 grams lighter due to the size of the battery. Even though trackpad can be dismantled without removing the battery, there are so many negative points.

Remove the logic board to place faulty power switch in MacBook Pro

The report published by iFixit also reveals the fact that if you want to fix a faulty power switch, you will need to replace the entire logic board. Hence, you will be required to wait a long time to get a replacement board.

Except for the easy removability of trackpad without damaging the battery, rest of the factors are turning out to be bad for the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. The scale of 1/10 indicates how difficult it will be to repair if your MacBook Pro gets damaged.

The new MacBook Pro features a 13.3-inch LED IPS retina display, 2.9 GHz Skylake dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, Intel Iris Graphics 550 graphics, 8GB RAM, up to 1TB SSD storage, four Thunderbolt 3 ports and Touch Bar with integrated Touch ID sensor.

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Anand

Anand Deb

Anand is a social geek blogger and tech enthusiast. He loves writing about technology and photography. He specializes the field of Internet Marketing and interested to dig deeper into the world of media and social networking.