MacBook Neo Teardown Reveals a Highly Repairable Laptop ⇥ youtube.com

Earlier this week, I linked to iFixit’s exploration of ways Apple used to prioritize repairability in its laptops. The headline on the article is “How Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability”, but the <title> tag reveals a more incendiary thesis:

Macbook Neo Shows how far Apple’s repairability design has fallen – iFixit

That is quite the bold statement for an article published just a few days after the MacBook Neo was announced and nearly a week before it became available.

Luckily, the good people at Tech Re-Nu in Melbourne got their hands on a Neo on launch day in Australia, and took it apart. They found modular internals held in place with dozens of screws. They only found adhesive on the back of the trackpad — hardly the end of the world. It is a far cry from the glued-in battery of the MacBook Pro. (Warning: that link goes to a page where Apple has decided to use PNGs for photographs instead of JPEGs, rendering the guide hundreds of megabytes large. Embarrassing.) Tech Re-Nu does not entirely disassemble the Neo, but it is possible to remove the keyboard for repair without replacing the entire top case.

This does not entirely invalidate iFixit’s argument, of course. Apple’s laptops used to have replaceable memory and storage, but none of that can be changed post-purchase. But the Neo is way more repairable than I think iFixit expected it to be. I wish that were true for the other laptops Apple introduced last week, both of which still use adhesive to secure the battery, and seemingly do not permit replacing the keyboard independently of the top case.

Also, it is always worth putting iFixit’s advocacy in the context of a company that also sells parts and tools. A conflict of interest, to be sure, but not invalidating — just something to be mindful of.