Teardown Reveals New MacBook Pro Models a Bear to Repair

Good luck if you ever need to service a new MacBook Pro model that isn't under warranty. The fine people over at iFixIt did what they do best with one of Apple's newly refreshed laptops, promptly gutting the device with a detailed walkthrough. What did they discover along the way? That's it's not so easy to repair. In fact, iFixIt gave the new MacBook Pro a measly 1 out of 10 'Repairability Score', the worst possibly score a gadget can get.
There are multiple reasons why the MacBook Pro is a crummy machine for do-it-yourself (DIY) repair types. It starts with those annoying pentalobe screws, which are specifically intended to keep you from cracking it open with your presumably bumbling fingers. But that's not all that makes it difficult to work on. The lithium-polymer battery is glued, not screwed, into the case, which means you're likely to break something during disassembly, iFixIt surmises. RAM is soldered to the motherboard, the SSD isn't upgradeable (not yet, anyway) as it's a separate daughtercard, and the display assembly is completely fused with no glass protection. Should something fall inside while performing a repair, you're looking at a costly replacement, as you'll need to swap out the entire assembly.


The model iFixIt tore into was a 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with LED-backlit Retina display, Core i7 processor (Ivy Bridge), 8GB of DDR3L RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics. Apple announced the upgraded model at WWDC on Tuesday.