As screwdrivers for this particular Torx variant is considerably uncommon, the iFixit team apparently had to resort to filing down their flathead screwdrivers just to gain access to the Macbook Air’s internals.
Upon disassembly, iFixit confirmed what many of us had initially suspected: almost nothing in the new 11-inch Macbook Air is replaceable with standard off-the-shelf hardware components. For starters, the RAM is soldered on to the Macbook Air’s mainboard, a trait which it inherited from the earlier 13-inch Macbook Airs. But there is more: iFixit also claims that the SSD used in the 11-inch Macbook Air is of a proprietary nature, taking the form of a single long stick (which looks suspiciously like a DIMM stick with a proprietary interface) with the Flash memory modules soldered onto it.
Last but definitely not least, the Broadcom WiFi/Bluetooth combo card uses a custom interface that is neither mini-PCIe nor mini-PCI. And yes, this means that switching out the Broadcom card for any other WiFi card from Atheros or Intel is virtually impossible.
Simply put, Apple designed the new Macbook Air to be almost entirely unserviceable or upgradable by most end users. However, that does not change the fact that the new notebook is still very much a work of art, considering just how tightly integrated the hardware meshes with the notebook’s design.
For the complete disassembly guide and walkthrough, please visit iFixit’s site here.
Source: iFixit
*all hardware and disassembly images used in this article are the property of iFixit. NPower IT cannot, and will not claim any credit for them.
