It's fall, and time for our favorite Apples: 2021 MacBook Pro teardowns! We're excited to tuck into these fruits from a branching 2016 timeline—the MacBooks that could have been. While more ports, a durable and usable keyboard, MagSafe, and swapping the Touch Bar for practiced ol' function keys all bring the nostalgia, at that place's besides futuristic Apple tree silicon and super-retro instance stylings. These MacBooks are so cool they blew correct past "Plus" on their mode to Pro and Max.
This teardown has been updated with the teardown team'southward latest findings. If you're looking for the Polishing Textile teardown, it's later on all the shiny new stuff.
Correct off the bat these Macs are serving early aughts and we are hither for information technology. If the repairability scores friction match the directly-walled aluminum cases, our piffling logroller hearts will surely grow three sizes.
But look at those ports. With so many places to plug things in and so many dongles scorned, Jony Ive must exist rolling in his …. Ferrari. MagSafe too makes a triumphant return to the MacBook, despite its iPhone moonlighting—happy news for all the impuissant string-kickers, the pet owners, and well, virtually anybody.
Just we didn't come hither to ogle the blueprint. They say truthful beauty is on the inside, so let's see if information technology'south true.
Ten-ray! X-ray! Read all virtually it!
But before nosotros intermission out the tools, here's a run across-through preview of the 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro (great names, Apple, so piece of cake to keep track of these things), from our friends at Creative Electron. The X-ray might look like an angry owl, just don't worry, it won't bite. Or … peck. Any owls exercise.
Zoom in on this X-ray and count the 33.7 billion transistors in the M1 Pro package under the heatsink. Go ahead, we'll look.
Okay, yous can't count the transistors from hither, but you lot can clearly come across there is a lot going on in that package. Elsewhere you can run across the faint outline of the metal keyboard frame, with stabilizers over the long keys, as well as the nighttime magnets in the speakers, trackpad, and fans.
Avengers, disassemble
Can you lot hear angelic music, or is that just united states of america? Sure, the rear instance is still secured by discouraging pentalobe screws, simply there's even so no adhesive this far in—and the clips are even less terrifyingly tight! Cross your fingers (and spudgers) that the trend continues.
Please deed surprised, even if y'all already saw Apple's stylized renders of the internals during their keynote. I mean, nosotros started this whole "teardown" matter outset, plus our imagery includes all the gritty details, like keyboard and backlight cables. We proceed information technology real, Apple tree.
It does wait like we're "missing" a couple fries, or, rather, y'all'll note some empty solder pads where additional storage would go. Spoiler warning: we didn't spring for the superlative-tier specs (We blew most of the budget on polishing cloths). Compared to the 2019 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro, these models seem to make even better utilise of interior space. Speakers and batteries fill every cozy cranny, without sacrificing a robust-looking cooling assembly.
Major differences between the xiv" and 16" models seem pretty few and far between: dissimilar rear comprehend clips, scrap arrangements, and swivel bracket shapes. Feel free to spot the differences on your ain, just to our eyes these look like nearly identical designs at dissimilar scales. And of course, they look fantastic as e'er—it's basically a work of fine art in there—just, the miserable MacBooks of butterfly and Touch Bar fame shame looked nice in early teardown images, too. It'due south fourth dimension to become excavating to acquire more than.
You always want to kickoff by disconnecting the battery—if y'all can figure out how. Afterward a footling exploratory surgery, we constitute the battery final hidden under the large trackpad cable. From there we'd normally leave the battery for final, because removing recent MacBook Pro batteries requires infinite patience, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and an optional canteen of homo-friendly alcohol. Only as we peer into the guts, nosotros discover something unexpected. The wind carries a whisper of iii words, a faint utterance that makes our hair stand up on end: battery pull tabs.
Y'all really aren't ready for this bombardment reveal
The four outer bombardment cells all sport subtle but noticeable pull tabs, a.one thousand.a. stretch-release adhesive—those sparse white strips nosotros know and beloved from the iPhone and MacBook Air. If your technique is right, you just pull on these things to stretch out the adhesive, and, in theory, whatever'south attached to information technology falls correct out.
Fifty-fifty better, information technology appears this battery isn't trapped under the logic board. That could enable straightforward battery swaps without removing all the brains first—a procedure nosotros've been dreaming almost for a while.
But wait, nosotros don't see whatever pull tabs on the two heart cells, and they refuse to budge. Are we screwed—or, worse, glued? (It wouldn't be the start time we've institute some promising-looking pull tabs, but to be allow downwardly.)
This stumped u.s.a. for a flake, until we had the desperate vivid idea to remove the trackpad. Nosotros hoped for a better wait underneath the battery, merely got something amend.
It turns out at that place are pull strips nether the remaining battery cells, accessed through precise cutouts in the chassis, below the trackpad. What exercise you know—some smart person gave repair and access some thought.
And just like that, the battery is jettisoned. No alcohol. No pry tools. No ceaseless cursing.
Batteries all spec'd out
This twelvemonth's xvi-inch MacBook Pro packs a 99.six Wh bombardment (eleven.45 V, 8693 mAh)—a close second to the 99.viii Wh battery in the 16-incher from 2019. The 14-inch Pro meanwhile has a smaller, 69.half dozen Wh battery (11.47 V, 6068 mAh)—bravado correct past the M1 MacBook Pro battery from last year, which clocked in at 58.two Wh (eleven.41 V, 5103 mAh).
The icing on this battery cake? Our tests confirm that bombardment replacements are fully functional and warning-free! (Yes, nosotros ponied upward for actress 14" and sixteen" models to endeavour some parts swaps for you, because we care.)
All eyes on screen
Slack isn't just on your MacBook desktop these days, it's in the computer. In the display cables, that is. On the manner to detaching the display, we found these cables have been redesigned with roughly 100% more slack—will flexgate truly be a thing of the past? (We need to start a bingo card for all the issues these new MacBooks seem to fix.)
Display replacements have also been streamlined, physically anyway—in that location are fewer fussy screws, springs, and cables to dispatch, and no more than divide display board to excerpt. But a cursory downer earlier we go along: our tests ostend that DIY display replacements will impale True Tone part. It'south not a foundational feature like Face ID on an iPhone, but information technology's however a bummer to lose functionality while trying to restore your device through repair. If you want a 100% complete repair, you'll have to pay Apple tree their exorbitant fee (or else demand your right to repair exist enshrined in law).
Speaking of Face ID, if you thought surely it would fit right into that display notch, we take news. Hither'southward a Face up ID module from our recent iPhone 13 teardown, aslope the MacBook Pro's brandish for comparing. These sensor modules have literally been reaching new heights, and seemingly won't be squeezing inside that uber-thin display hat anytime soon. That said, there's a curious amount of infinite carved out here for a unproblematic webcam. Check out this X-ray of the notch internals:
In this epitome you lot can clearly see the camera sensor at the eye, with its indicator LED simply to the right. At left is (presumably) the ambience calorie-free sensor. And then, vast stretches of additional notch to either side. The notch itself remains a somewhat divisive blueprint choice (as it has since its introduction in the iPhone X)—especially considering how slow Apple tree was to implement the necessary UI accommodations … and still is.
Hello M1 Pro
The logic board—and the accompanying heatsink and fans—are bulky, to say the least, and this isn't fifty-fifty the M1 Max model. Both M1 Pro and M1 Max characteristic custom organisation on a chip (SoC) packaging similar to last year'due south M1.
The M1 Pro is flanked by two memory modules (four on the M1 Max), soldered upwards close and personal to the SoC for maximum bandwidth. These memory modules make up Apple's "unified" memory, meaning they can be shared between the CPU and GPU simultaneously, dramatically increasing the puddle that both can depict from.
What does all this fancy-pants unification mean for repairability? Well, nothing great, and we've said information technology before: long-term repair options—or even removal of parts for salvage or recycling—are slim. Everything is on the lath. Hereafter-upgradeable RAM? Nada. Better beat out as much as you tin afford up-front. Time to come-upgradeable storage: maybe technically possible, but highly impractical. You'll either need to put those zippy Thunderbolt 4 ports to piece of work with an external drive, or information technology's the cloud for you, baby.
All the Apple fries you can eat
As well known as Flake ID:
Front side highlights (ROYGBIV guild):
- Apple tree APL1103 M1 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC)
- Samsung K3LKYKY0EM-ZGCP 8 GB LPDDR5 SDRAM Memory (16 GB total)
- Kioxia KICM225UZ0460 2×128 GB NAND Wink Retentivity
- Apple APL1098/343S00515 Ability Management
- Intel JHL8040R Thunderbolt 4 Retimer
- MegaChips MCDP2920 DisplayPort-to-HDMI Converter
- Genesys Logic GL9755A Card Reader Controller
Rear side highlights (ROYGBIV club):
- Kioxia KICM225VF9081 128 GB NAND Flash Retentivity
- USI 339S00912 Bluetooth/WiFi Module
- NXP Semiconductor SN210V NFC Controller w/ Secure Element
- Texas Instruments CD3217B12 USB Blazon-C Port/Power Delivery Controller
- Renesas ISL9240 Li-Ion Battery Charger Controller
- Cirrus Logic CS42L84A-CWZ Audio Codec
- Texas Instruments SN012776B0 Sound Amplifiers
If you lot're still hungry for chip ID, customs member C. Chin has helpfully identified over 75 chips on the motherboard and touchpad! You tin can discover his full flake ID post hither.
Bobbing for the residue of the bits
The port situation looks as skillful on the within as it does out: almost of these ports are highly modular, including the much-loved MagSafe. If they fail, you can swap them out individually, without an expensive lath repair. The merely exceptions are the SD menu reader and the HDMI port, which are quite thoroughly soldered to the logic board. Damage to them means a pricey repair, full lath replacement, or else a render trip to Dongletown.
We're also big fans of the cooling setup, simply not every bit large as these ones. Reviewers say you can barely hear them, but it'south nice to ostend they be and your laptop isn't waiting to throttle or cook itself. (Pro tip for reviewers: unplugging the trackpad cablevision prompts the fans to spin similar crazy.) For at present, the MacBook Air remains the only Apple tree notebook with no bodily internal fan. In the in a higher place photo, the larger Nidec-made fan is from the xvi" model, and the other from the fourteen".
A keyboard caution
The just affair on this keyboard that's somewhat convenient to replace is the power button/Affect ID philharmonic, but fifty-fifty and then y'all won't exist keeping Touch ID without paying Apple their fee. The residual of the keyboard remains problematic to supercede; Apple stores and AASPs volition likely go along replacing your unabridged top case rather than bargain with the hassle of repairing their own keyboard design. (Thankfully it's non a butterfly affair anymore, so repairs should exist far less frequent—just be certain to go along a tight grip on your latte.)
We peeled upward the backlight layer to check the keyboard—still screwed and riveted down. The new black keyboard surround isn't a split module that drops in, like we hoped—it'southward just a new anodized finish, probably purely for cosmetic purposes.
Repairability
Apple'southward M1 silicon is rocketing the industry forward in a bunch of ways, and it's unfortunate repairability isn't advancing as quickly. Still, this design represents a major move in the right direction. The battery replacement process, while far from piece of cake—and certainly very far brusque of the driblet-in simplicity you get in a Framework Laptop or even a Dell XPS—is still vastly improved. May we never again relive the nightmare of surgically removing faulty cemented-in batteries from a "Pro" laptop.
We've too griped about soldered memory in the past, and while nosotros still don't love it, information technology's hard to debate with the performance and battery life advances Apple has engineered here. It's possible you couldn't go anything quite similar this from a socketed blueprint. (Although we'd be curious to know if that was fifty-fifty considered.)
The biggest blight on this auto? Soldered-downwardly, not-removable storage—a major bummer for repairability, upgradeability, security, data recovery, and overall flexibility. This would exist difficult to justify in whatsoever consumer production, but for professional use it seems like an even bigger misstep. And forget most removing the bulldoze to protect your data during repair or when you sell information technology; you've gotta shred the whole logic lath if you lot want failproof security.
In the end, the new MacBook Pro earns a iv/10 on our repairability scale (10 is easiest to repair):
- Battery replacements are reasonably well prioritized, if not exactly easy.
- Display replacements have been greatly streamlined.
- Many other components are modular and can be independently replaced, including the trackpad, most I/O ports, and fans.
- Repairs are hindered by pentalobe screws, a riveted keyboard, glued-downwardly speakers, and some software barriers.
- Permanently soldered storage is a huge detriment to a "Pro" laptop.
- No service transmission or replacement parts are available from Apple at time of publishing.
One more affair…
While our chief teardown team spent the week hard at work on the MacBook Pro, our other teardown team was just as busy. The black ops team. They have no names and no budget, and they tear downward only the best, the trendiest, the most unobtainable products on the planet. So naturally they went for …
The Thinnest Apple Device Yet: Polishing Fabric Teardown
If you lot didn't notice (merely who are we kidding—you lot did), Apple tree quietly released their own "Polishing Fabric" for $19.
The cloth feels identical to the inner lining of an iPad Smart Encompass, which features a thin layer of microfiber on the inside. Both have a distinct constructed leather feel to them with a hint of fuzziness, similar to Alcantara.
What else could y'all purchase instead of a singular (su)premium polishing cloth?
- A dongle.
- A Moray Commuter Kit.
- Ii of our cleaning bundles.
- Eight of our slightly less cool cleaning cloths.
Upon closer inspection, it'south actually two cloths glued together! If y'all experience a bit underwhelmed by your $nineteen purchase, pull both layers apart and all of a sudden you take two cloths, each costing only $ix.fifty.
Merely let'southward go a bit deeper.
Under a microscope the premium quality of Apple tree's polishing fabric comes to life. On the left, you lot'll see a apparently old cleaning cloth. Boring. On the correct? Miniscule fibers intricately woven together, uniting to become not only a tool for cleaning, merely an object of beauty worthy of being cleaned itself. Amidst the beauty, a thin line delicately traces the form of mankind'southward foundational fruit: an apple tree.
Wait a minute, this is a piece of material. What are we doing hither? Where did this come from? And where did our 20 dollars get? It's time to get back to the Mac(Book).
The new Apple Polishing Textile earns a 0 out of 10 on our repairability scale, for distracting us from a very important MacBook Pro teardown and not going back together after we cut it into pieces with scissors.
