
MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Late 2013 Teardown - kjhughes
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Teardown/18696/1
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rayiner
I get that repairability is their shtick and all, but I dislike the way they
present it without any reference to the underlying engineering tradeoffs. E.g.
they kvetch constantly about laminated LCD's, but I'd never buy a machine
without a laminated LCD it this price point. Getting rid of the air gap does
huge things for contrast and clarity. Also, they fail to distinguish between
compromises to repairability that do or do not carry their weight. E.g. the
Chromebook Pixel is similar in size to the rMBP, but the rMBP fits a
substantially bigger battery (74 Whr versus 59 Whr).

Also, Apple will replace your battery for $99 (iPad), $130 (MBA), or $200
(rMBP). Lenovo charges $150 for a replacement battery for the X220. If you
replace the battery midway through a 4-year service life of the machine, how
much is the non-repairability costing you? $100 over four years?

~~~
tenfingers
I agree, though not about the battery. There's a world of difference between
being able to instantly replace the battery with a spare and not being able to
do so and sit on the charger. To me it's the difference between a device made
for actually traveling, and a device that you can only use during a commute.

~~~
matthewmacleod
To some extent - but if you've got a battery life of 9 hours (rMBP) or up to
14 hours (Air), then the distinction starts to melt away. There can't be that
many people who won't have access to power in that timeframe.

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salgernon
This is really self serving nonsense. Of course its going to be harder to
repair a computer that is made up of fewer and fewer discrete parts - the
batteries bonded to the case means that the case itself is the battery and
should be considered the minimal replacement part.

When my volvo died on the freeway, the "fix" was to replace the engine control
unit, not some part of that computer.

This would be like complaining that just because you could replace the MMU on
a Mac II in 1988, apple screwed you over by using a 68030 with on board MMU.

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myrandomcomment
Who cares. I do not care one bit if I can replace or repair my MacBook or
MacBook Air. You know what I care about - the fact that it is very light and I
can use it on the flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. Everyone that cares
really need to get over themselves. Welcome to the world of solid state. Heck,
if it made them more reliable and run longer they could fill the inside with
gel for all I care. I buy this because it works and when it does not Apple
fixes it. Just to be clear I no longer fix or repair my:

1\. car 2\. LCD TV 3\. stereo 4\. every other piece of electronics made after
2006 or so

They are just to complex anymore and I just do not care.

~~~
swah
I wish my country had enough capitalism to live like that - its not the
reality yet, though.

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oleganza
"The proprietary SSD has changed to a PCIe format, but still isn't a standard
2.5" drive."

Still? It never will be because Apple tries to make MacBooks as small as
possible.

~~~
amalag
mSATA is an industry standard and very small. But I think SATA could be a
bottleneck which is why they moved to PCIe

~~~
oleganza
What I mean is that they will try to print bare chips on their own motherboard
to save space and weight. They can afford ordering custom chips without
industry standard enclosure in volume - why not do that if it saves space.

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wil421
This is what's stopping me from upgrading. Right now I have a non retina
display with an ssd and an HDD in the optical drive spot. Im about to upgrade
my RAM to 16gb so I can run my windows VM with more than enough RAM.

I like to upgrade the internals without paying an arm and a leg. You can
almost upgrade your ram and ssd for what apple charges to go from 8-16gb of
RAM.

~~~
Udo
I have the same setup with my 15" MBP, that was probably the last upgradeable
Apple laptop ever.

I'd love a retina display, but I'll be holding on to that outdated MBP for as
long as I can. I don't really care for the reduction in thickness and weight
these mono-block designs have purportedly made possible. It's not even about
them overcharging me for parts I can easily upgrade myself for half the price,
although they do.

For me the main problem is the fact that as these machines are mere appliances
now, their capabilities are fixed from the moment of purchase. There is no way
to upgrade RAM, or to replace a damaged part. Now, any kind of defect means
the device is bricked. And I will never be able to extend it beyond its
original functionality.

This is _not_ OK for a device that costs € 3000+ and has an expected service
life of 2-3 years. These devices are simply too expensive for a design that
treats them as mere disposables. Because that's what they have become.

If those tightly-integrated hunks of plastic were getting cheaper, I'd say
this is just the way things go: a rapid buy-and-replace cycle with a solid
recycling process behind it. But that's not the direction Apple is going. They
seem to be focusing on customers for whom a frequent multi-thousand dollar
expense is no issue.

Increasingly, I just get the sense that Apple is screwing me and the profit
margin on those devices is a good indicator for that.

~~~
wil421
They are turning their product lines into ipad/iphone like, they are not
upgradable. Even a broken iPhone 5 front glass screen requires a whole new
panel.

I am horrified to think what will happen if I get a new rMBP and a year later
something breaks. I dont buy apple care, so will I be stuck paying 1,000 for a
whole new logic board because all the pieces are soldered on?

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dzhiurgis
Realistically, you can only blame them for glued in battery and and soldered
in RAM. But then, RAM upgrade is an (overpriced) option. And it's not like
there are number of options to upgrade to 32 or 64 GB.

The score is arbitrary value, which is dictated by the market. And we all
pretty well know what the market is like.

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cdi
Separate ARM SOC in Apple laptops always puzzled me. Does anyone know why it's
there?

~~~
zrail
Which component? I imagine these are for all of the little things that need
GPIO, like power and under-keyboard lights, the lid close sensor, etc. There's
no use powering up the main CPU to slowly strobe the power light at you when
you can offload that to a component that sips power.

~~~
cdi
>Which component?

Cypress Semiconductor CY8C24794-24LTXI Programmable System-on-Chip

~~~
zrail
If you look at the datasheet for that component[1] you'll see that it's
actually a really slow (24MHz) "M8C" core, which turns out to be a MIPS
core[2]. It's got a ton of GPIO and various other interfaces (I2C, SPI,
serial) as well as USB. I would bet that that chip drives a bunch of the
little stuff.

[1]:
[http://www.cypress.com/?mpn=CY8C24794-24LTXI](http://www.cypress.com/?mpn=CY8C24794-24LTXI)

[2]: [http://eessential.blogspot.com/2010/11/survey-of-
microcontro...](http://eessential.blogspot.com/2010/11/survey-of-
microcontroller-cpu-core.html)

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jimmytidey
Article seems to imply that there is no way to replace the headphone jack
because it's soldered to the pcb, but presumably someone with the right
equipment could unsolder it and put a new one on?

~~~
matthewmacleod
I'm also a bit confused by that. Surely headphone jacks are _usually_
soldered?

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mattdotc
On a lot of laptops, the jack is mounted to the case with a single screw and
connected to the motherboard via a short pigtail connector. This eases in
repair since you can very easily swap in a new connector without having to do
any desoldering.

~~~
matthewmacleod
That's pretty clever - I'd never noticed, despite having been in the guts of a
number of machines over the years.

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ddoolin
Does anyone else read these just for the awesome pictures?

~~~
oleganza
I do. Their comments about repairability sound very ancient.

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rdl
Since they're making it harder and harder to do any repairs or upgrades
yourself, I don't think I'd buy a Mac laptop without AppleCare. For
iPad/iPhone, AppleCare+ may or may not be a good deal (I'm more likely to
upgrade in a year, and have amex coverage on some damage, and think theft is
more likely than damage due to using a case, so unclear). I'd probably get it
for a Mac Pro, but maybe not for a personal-use Mini.

The problem is the useful life for an iPad/iPhone is usually more like 2-3y,
vs. 1-2y, and for a computer, maybe even up to 5y vs. 3y. I guess if it breaks
after AppleCare, as long as you have backups, you just buy a replacement
early. I miss the 5y service contracts with onsite service from IBM, though
(and even _better_ than Apple for take-in service in non-US countries; there
aren't Apple Stores in every country, but there were IBM ThinkPad service
locations essentially everywhere).

The loophole where you used to be able to buy valid applecare certs for about
half price on eBay seems to have closed, so now they're only 20-30% cheaper
than Apple.

~~~
gws
As a general observation on extended warranty programs (without claiming this
is the case for Apple, I have no idea), it might not be uncommon to time the
program length shy of the expected breakage time of the device. To look at it
from another perspective the companies providing them need to make money out
of the extended warranty services after all

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nathancahill
Bring back the matte display!

~~~
rayiner
Yes, take my high-resolution laminated LCD and put a film over it to make
everything grainy:
[http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1744879](http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1744879).

~~~
simias
Depends what you use your screen for I suppose.

I guess shiny displays and vibrant colours make sense for watching movies and
the like. For working however I'm more than willing to trade sharpness for
comfort.

I mean, from your link, look at this:
[http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o139/callsign_vega/PICT00...](http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o139/callsign_vega/PICT00082.jpg)

Which side of the screens looks best for coding honestly?

~~~
rayiner
I don't know what's "comfortable" about staring at text through a cheese cloth
all day. I find the graininess to be fatiguing. The best setup is a non-matte
display with good anti-glare coating and good room lighting.

The best display I've seen for coding is probably the one on the Surface Pro,
which is optically bonded to further increase clarity and reduce reflections.
I haven't spent much time with an rMBP though.

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teilo
They show a single heatsink because this is the first 15" retina model without
a discrete GPU.

However, the high-end model also has a GT 750M, so would presumably be almost
identical to the previous model.

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jemeshsu
MBP has a newer Thunderbolt 2 compare with iMac, and iMac will not see an
upgrade until next spring. So the notebook is more powerful than desktop in
this respect.

~~~
Fomite
This has often been true for the Powerbook/Macbook Pro line vs. an iMac.

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josephlord
Hmmm maybe I had better pay the extra for the AppleCare.

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static_typed
Just when you thought they could not make their hardware any more repair
unfriendly, they find a way.

I think iFixit needs to start having a minus score on the repairability score
- this can earn a one, it surely has to lose that for extra soldered and glued
parts alone.

~~~
seiji
Compare it to the user serviceability of a 1950s muscle car versus a 2013
Tesla.

They're not making it one piece to say "screw you, HN user who wants after
market RAM!" \-- they're doing it because it makes the machine physically
smaller and lighter.

If you don't like their new work, you can still go to HP and buy a laptop with
a DVD drive, a bluray drive, two VGA ports, a PS/2 port, and a proprietary six
inch wide docking station port.

~~~
stiff
Things like proprietary screws are there to make the machine smaller and
lighter?

~~~
seiji
Well, iFixit says even _trying_ to remove most things from inside the machine
has a chance at breaking other parts irreparably (e.g. removing the battery
(which takes 30 minutes of practice) has a good chance at slicing your
trackpad I/O cable).

The user hostile screws are just trying to say "Look, we're trying to save you
from yourself. There's nothing in here you can fix without ripping cables and
rendering your machine into an ineffective boat anchor."

~~~
jlgaddis
I bought a new ThinkPad W530 back in May along with an SSD and 4x8GB sticks of
RAM to upgrade myself. I spent five minutes looking over the service manual
and another five minutes doing the upgrades, thanks to the standard screws
that Lenovo chose to use.

When I bought my last MBP, I had them (at the Apple Store) upgrade the RAM,
which meant I had to wait around for 90 minutes for them to do it.

~~~
drewrm
To be fair, changing RAM and putting in an SSD in a unibody MBP would only
take a few minutes if you did it yourself too. The only "tricky" piece was
disconnecting the battery (not strictly necessary), and that only needed a
triwing screwdriver.

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af3
well shit. Cannot upgrade anything =(

