
Retina Macbook 2015 Teardown - lisper
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841
======
a_bonobo
Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst
"repairability" score:

>The MacBook 2015 Repairability Score: 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)

There are several reasons why this happens; the optimist says that to save
space Apple had to glue and solder so much, the pessimist says it's so that
Apple can charge more for repairs/replacements.

But I think both can agree that this generates more e-waste than necessary,
and I wonder whether this may be an incentive for the EU to step in. They've
already standardized mobile chargers - starting 2017, all mobile chargers in
the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste.

I wonder whether a similar law for PC/laptop components could work and how it
would look like...

~~~
ghshephard
My understanding is that Apple is one of the leading companies when it comes
to eWaste. Also, this is the one of the rare Apple product that that _only_
has industry standard ports/power chargers on it.

You can't critique them on building a product that is hard to repair (and wow,
this one looks next to impossible for your average non-technician) - but the
ewaste/standard charger concerns don't appear to be valid.

~~~
revelation
Only if your understanding of "leading companies in ewaste" is that their
products tick a bunch of boxes for materials used to be easily recyclable.

But that is not the _essence_ of the term. To avoid ewaste, you should avoid
creating any in the first place. Creating products that will be useful for 10+
years instead of _until the next model cycle_.

~~~
xienze
> Creating products that will be useful for 10+ years

Well that's just a matter of opinion, isn't it? Nothing's going to stop you
from running this laptop 10 years from now just like nothing's going to stop
you from running a PC laptop 10 years from now. The question is _are you going
to want to_ continue using a 10 year old laptop? That's an eternity in
technological terms.

Sure you can upgrade a PC laptop to squeeze a longer life out of it, but there
are practical limits to that to (i.e., it's unlikely that a 10 year old
chipset is going to support the amount of RAM that we would consider "bare
minimum" in 10 years, likewise for the CPU).

I agree with your argument in principle but "10+ years lifetime" is not really
a good point to argue.

~~~
mwcampbell
Then we software developers need to get better at using hardware resources
efficiently, so that the amount of RAM that's considered adequate today is
still adequate 10 years from now. As I've said before, why isn't a PC with a
366 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM (the laptop I used in college) good enough
any more?

~~~
CPLX
Why should it be?

You present this as a normative argument, that things _should_ be a certain
way. But do you have a cogent argument for why we should be retarding the
growth of memory and speed with our personal computing devices?

------
keeran
I'm not sure why this is an issue any more. It was a nice ideal when laptops
were just PCs put into smaller boxes, but as manufacturers put the effort and
investment into satisfying our demands for smaller, faster, lighter, I don't
think the expectation of poking around inside them is reasonable.

We don't see people complaining about the repairability of their R-Pis,
Chromecasts, SoC systems etc. That's the way hardware is going - because
that's what we've asked for.

~~~
masklinn
> It was a nice ideal when laptops were just PCs put into smaller boxes, but
> as manufacturers put the effort and investment into satisfying our demands
> for smaller, faster, lighter, I don't think the expectation of poking around
> inside them is reasonable.

A big part of the annoyance with Apple is their tendency to explicitly take
steps against repairs: insane amounts of glue, multiple "weird" screws (the
macbook here uses pentalobe, torx, philips and tri-wing in a single machine),
non-standard formats & connectors (I don't expect them to ever swap their non-
soldered SSDs for M.2, even though they've altered the connector and format
multiple times).

Having the machine be "hard to repair" because it's highly integrated is one
thing, taking decisions which deliberately hinder repairability and have
basically no other advantage is quite another.

> We don't see people complaining about the repairability of their R-Pis,
> Chromecasts, SoC systems etc.

Nobody complains about the repairability of an RPi because no specific step to
make it harder to repair for no value were undertaken.

------
doe88
Seems that the major unknown is about the SSD controller [1] to know if it
uses a custom controller or not.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9173/more-pictures-
of-2015-mac...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9173/more-pictures-
of-2015-macbooks-applebuilt-ssd-controller)

~~~
ksec
Look at the size of it compared to the Intel CPU. That thing is huge. What are
the usual node size SSD controller manufactured in? 28/40nm

~~~
raverbashing
Here's something that might be surprising to some: package size is related to
the number of pins mostly, not to the size of the silicon - and more pins if
the consumption is higher

(Usually bigger silicon has more pins, and vice versa, but not necessarily)

~~~
std_throwaway
Usually yes. There is even a little PCB between the mainboard and the chip to
get enough area for the thousands of pins.

But this is not the case if they stack the flash chips with the controller
chips. Then only a few external pins are needed for communication and power.
But the flash chips actually need the silicon area for all those tiny flash
cells.

------
jhull
For New Yorkers reading this: interesting to hear about the New York Digital
Right to Repair bill. Didn't realize that the support provided to non
manufacturers was being stifled.

Read more here:
[http://newyork.digitalrighttorepair.org/](http://newyork.digitalrighttorepair.org/)

------
markild
"NXP 11U37 microcontroller; 128 kB flash, 10kB SRAM" [1]

Does anyone have an idea of what this is used for?

[1]:
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841#s89811)

~~~
platinum1
Based on location and size, I'm guessing it's used for the USB type C port -
specifically implementing the CC sideband communication protocol.

------
KuchenKerze
I really appreciate the use of a NVM SSD Controller. I wonder if and when
Apple will release Bootcamp driver for those.

------
lisper
The submission to the original iFixit article only has five points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384791)

Something is badly broken here, and it's not just the fact that you can't
repair the new MacBook. :-(

~~~
dang
Too many submissions appear on HN for randomness not to be a leading if not
dominant factor. That's why a small number of reposts are ok, if the article
is good for HN and hasn't had attention yet. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

We changed the URL on this submission from
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/04/surprise-ifixit-says-
yo...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/04/surprise-ifixit-says-you-cant-do-
much-to-fix-or-upgrade-the-2015-macbook/) to the article it points to, as we
normally do.

~~~
lisper
But now I am getting the submission credit that rightfully belongs to
chaostheory, who originally submitted this link. (And to top off the irony, my
comment is being downvoted into oblivion despite the fact that it's my own
submission I'm criticizing!)

Here's a constructive suggestion on how to fix the problem:

1\. As long as the article is not on the front page, give the Nth upvoter K/N
karma points, where K is the number of karma points the article eventually
gets.

2\. When an article not on the front page gets an upvote, put it back at the
top of the New page (i.e. sort the New page based on most recent upvote, not
submission time).

This would provide an incentive for people to browse the new page and be early
upvoters of quality articles. In order to prevent people from simply upvoting
everything, you would need to:

3\. Charge one karma point to upvote an article

and in order to start everyone on a level playing field

4\. Give everyone 100 free karma points (or allow karma to go down to -100
before users lose their upvoting privileges, at which point they can only
redeem themselves by submissions)

and to prevent submission spam:

5\. Limit users with low karma to 1 submission per day or something like that

I'll even offer to implement this for you if you think you might make this
change.

------
hahainternet
$1300, what an absolute joke.

~~~
hahainternet
Aaaand lovely proof that HN is broken. It's a $1300 netbook but this comment
is not allowed to be seen.

~~~
rsynnott
Netbooks typically used Atom (OEM price: ~$30). This uses a Core M (OEM price:
$281). That's more expensive than most netbooks all on its own; it's a
slightly different class.

------
yagop
читать в России!

------
hollerith
>Apple has opted to transition from using a row of LEDs with a light guide
panel, to installing individual LEDs beneath each key.

That's progress. Now, Apple, please replace each LED with an infra-red or a
visible-light sensor, so that someone can write software to put a
representation of the keyboard onto the screen that shows which keys have a
finger hovering over them, so that the user never has to look at the keyboard
except when the keyboard needs cleaning.

~~~
s_kilk
> so that the user never has to look at the keyboard except when the keyboard
> needs cleaning.

The user should learn to touch-type.

~~~
hollerith
So you can hit the - key or the ] key without looking at the keyboard as
quickly as someone who is looking at the keyboard?

You just reach over and press the key and you never press an adjacent key by
mistake?

~~~
s_kilk
Pretty much. I never look at the keyboard, and rarely mis-type. If I do then I
don't need to look at the keyboard to correct myself, as I know the position
of every key, I just backspace and hit the key I intended to hit in the first
place.

And, as another commenter also mentioned, I don't use the layout that's
printed on the keys anyway, so looking at the keyboard would not help.

None of this is particularly uncommon for anyone who can touch-type.

~~~
Someone1234
What's actually funny is, a lot of people who look at the keyboard actually
can touch-type, they just don't realise it. They continue to look out of habit
more than necessity. If you've used a computer for ten years and you still
look, you too might fit into this category.

You can fix it, it just takes a few weeks, just cover your hands with a cloth
or other barrier so looking down won't help you reposition, and fix any typos
using touch rather than looking. If you're in a real rush do the same thing,
but now spin up a copy of Typing Of the Dead or similar typing tutor.

PS - Also, yes, your speed will decrease initially. It slowly returns and will
eventually overtake your looking speed.

