Hasta La Gadget!

Our buddies at iFixit took their screwdrivers to a brand-new, 11-inch MacBook Air, and quickly reduced it to its component parts.

Quickly, that is, once they found a way past Apple’s unusual five-point Torx screws, which seem to be designed with one purpose in mind: To keep you out.

Apple uses very unusual five-point Torx screws throughout the MacBook Air, starting with the screws holding the bottom case cover on and extending to the screw used to hold this flash memory board onto the logic board. iFixit’s crew had to file down a couple of Phillips screwdrivers to get inside.

That “keep out” mentality extends to the rest of the MacBook Air’s interior, it appears, with a host of beautifully-designed, carefully-engineered parts that are in principle removable, but in practice almost entirely non-upgradeable.

For instance, the 64GB flash drive that stands in place of a hard drive in this system “would be easily user-replaceable,” notes iFixit, if you ignored the Torx screws.

Also, it’s a completely custom part, meaning there’s no way to order a replacement. Flash drive fried? Your only alternative will be to go through Apple support.

Same goes for the 2GB of RAM or really any of the other components.

It’s an impressive feat of engineering, but, we have to conclude, not one that invites maintenance, upgrades, or hacks and mods by the customer.

For the full disassembly, including details about which parts go where, see iFixit’s MacBook Air 11-inch model teardown.

Photos courtesy iFixit.

See Also:

• Droid 2 Teardown Reveals Beefed-Up Processor, Few Other Changes …
• Nokia N8 Teardown Shows Tough Phone, Great Camera
• Exclusive Gallery: 1983 Nintendo Family Computer Teardown
• Teardown Shows Apple TV, iPad Share Similar DNA
• iPhone 4 Torn Down and Tested: Slower Than iPad, Faster Than 3G …

Surprise, surprise. The iFixit team have cornered themselves a dark grey Nokia N8 and have proceeded to do the one thing that comes naturally to them: disassembled it. It’s mostly good news all around with this teardown, which found the BL-4D battery cell was only two Torx screws away from being user-replaceable, while the overall N8 construction was praised as being the “beefiest” of any phone this year. There are plenty of bodacious highlights within, including the massive Xenon flash and the pair of camera modules — which are regrettably not removable from the main board. The touchscreen controller in the N8 is the same as has previously been used on the Kin Two and BlackBerry Torch. Perhaps that’s not the best pedigree in the world, but the (complete in one case, and relative in the other) lack of success of those phones was never really about the screen’s responsiveness. Hit the source link for a full gallery of images and the complete deconstruction guide.

Nokia N8 teardown reveals easily replaceable battery, ‘beefy’ construction originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another week, another well-detailed tear down from the kids at iFixit. Blessed with an eight out of ten on the repairability index, the PlayStation Move was said to be one of the easiest devices yet to break down and reassemble, so there’s a good chance that any novice DIYer with a steady hand and a Phillips screwdriver could accomplish what’s shown in the link below. No huge surprises were found once the PCB’s clothing was removed, but we were told that the Move controller contains a great many components that are found in today’s modern smartphones: a processor, accelerometer, gyroscope, Bluetooth transmitter, vibrating motor, and even a MEMS compass. The sphere at the top can flash any color thanks to the included LEDs, and the integrated Li-ion battery can be disconnected (and thus, replaced) from the device without any soldering. Hit the source for the nitty-gritty, and hop on past the break for the highlights. Oh, and as a reminder, you can grab your own Move starting today if you call North America home.

Continue reading PlayStation Move gets broken down — so easy, an end-user could do it

PlayStation Move gets broken down — so easy, an end-user could do it originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With a blast from a heat gun and a quick twist of a plastic spudger, the iFixit team found themselves inside the new, slim iPod Touch. First, the question you’re all asking: how much RAM does it have? The new Touch has just 256MB, the same as the iPad and half that of the iPhone’s 512MB. That means a lot less can be held in memory at once, which in turn means that any apps running in the background will wink out of life much quicker.

The super-slim body is the reason the Touch has such a crappy camera: the iPhone’s 5MP cam is just too big to fit. There are some additions to the case, though: the Touch now has a real speaker-grill, presumably to make FaceTime calling possible, and it loses the little plastic RF window on the back which used to let the Wi-Fi in and out. Now the antenna is near the glass panel.

The vibrator, which was revealed in FCC photographs and also pimped as a FaceTime alert on Apple’s own site, has disappeared like an out-of-favor politician from a Stalin-era photo. My guess is that it was pulled to keep the price down to $229 in the base model.

The other big change is of course the retina-display, which quadruples the number of pixels on the screen. Right now it is unknown whether it shares IPS (in-plane-switching) tech with the other iDevices and recent iMacs. IPS is what gives a screen an almost 180-degree viewing-angle.

It looks like Apple has squeezed a lot inside, while simultaneously boosting battery-life and making the sliver of a iPod even thinner. I have a perfectly good last-gen Touch but, dammit, now I want one of these.

iPod Touch 4th Generation Teardown [iFixit]

See Also:

• Photos: iFixit Rips Open iPad 3G
• Punked: iFixit Tears Down 'Apple Tablet'
• Exclusive Gallery: 1983 Nintendo Family Computer Teardown
• iPod Shuffle Gets Naked, And It Wasn't Easy

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

We still have memories — some would say nightmares, but we digress — of hanging out at a neighbor’s house and taking turns playing matches of Mario’s Tennis, our biological ocular displays assimilated into a rubber mask that engulfed our brains and left us in a permanent state of viewing the world in red wireframe. Crude 3D though it may be, it’s still a part of history we must accept, and if you happen to own a Virtual Boy, we have just two things to say to you. One: we’re insanely jealous. Two: if you ever need to know how to rip it to shreds for repair / stress relief, iFixit’s got you covered. In the world of Man with Screwdriver vs. Game Console, yet again Man wins. Seems a perfect ending to a week that featured Atari 2600, Nintendo Famicon, RCA Studio II, and Magnavox Odyssey 100. Check out highlights in the gallery below, or hit up iFixit for the whole shebang.

iFixit celebrates Friday with teardown of Virtual Boy, the greatest game console man has ever known originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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