Apple products are not known for being the most repairable. However, the company has made progress lately, as evidenced by the latest video uploaded by iFixit. The repairability specialist examined the MacBook Air M3s just announced by Apple to see how their guts were arranged.
Apple abandons glue
Not surprisingly, Apple’s new computer is not exactly easy to open, the fault of a rear chassis very firmly held by 4 screws and numerous plastic clips. You will need to arm yourself with a suction cup and a piece of rigid plastic to pop them one by one. Good news though, not an ounce of glue holds the chassis to the rest of the machine’s body.
Inside, it’s the same thing. Most of the removable parts are held in place with a few screws and a few connection cables. Only the battery is glued, but using adhesive strips specially designed to be removed by pulling on it. A refreshing bias when we compare it to that adopted by the iMac M1, held in place by kilos of glue.
To change the other parts, however, you will need to show a lot of patience and dexterity. In fact, each small component is held in place by screws and metal supports which must not be lost and must be carefully put back in the same place during reassembly. A procedure not exactly simplified by the fact that no key indicates the location of each part.
Repairability is a complex matter
And this is perhaps Apple’s biggest mistake on the subject. Unlike a manufacturer like Framework which numbers the disassembly steps and labels each screw and each component using a number or color code, here you will have to remember the order of assembly and disassembly of each component so as not to risk an accident. Fortunately, Apple now provides disassembly guides for most of its machines, but it would have been nice to see the company make the task easier by giving clues directly on the body of the machine, especially that the guides for the new machines are not yet available at the time of writing.
A repairable machine is not just a matter of standard screws and components that are not drowned in an ocean of glue, it is also a machine that is not intimidating to take apart. And if Apple has made progress on this in recent years, we would like to see the manufacturer go even further in this direction. A few stickers and a few Framework-style QR codes would make the operation much more reassuring without harming the company’s sacrosanct fixation on the design of its machines.
As has become a sad habit at Apple, don’t hope to increase the RAM or change the storage, everything is soldered directly to the motherboard, making repair or upgrade impossible. With all these considerations taken into account, the MacBook Air M3 inherits a temporary score of 5/10 on the iFixit scale. It remains to be seen, as iFixit points out, whether the various components are serialized or whether recent legislative efforts on the subject have ended up cooling Apple’s enthusiasm on the issue.