iFixit’s teardown of the 2012 MacBook Pro revealed some disturbing information about Apple’s flagship laptop – it is Apple’s least repairable laptop to date. In fact, it seems that Apple went out of its way to make it next to impossible for users to repair or modify their machine.
Apple has kept things locked down beneath the 15.4-inch Retina Display and the super-svelte .71-inch frame with lots of glue and pentalobe screws. The RAM is soldered to the logic board, the SSD is not upgradable and the lithium-polymer battery is glued in – a perfect storm to prevent DIY upgrades.
That fancy Retina Display is part of the problem as well. Layers of the display are built into the case – which helps to reduce glare by removing the need for a cover screen, but makes a broken screen a potential laptop killer.
iFixit gave the MacBook Pro with Retina Display a repairability score of 1/10 – in contrast to a score of 7/10 for last year’s model. For me, that almost amounts to a deal breaker [Source]
