iFixIt Teardown of the New MacBook Pro

iFixIt has posted their teardown of the new MacBook Pro ranking it a 7 out of 10 for repairability.

We got our hands on Apple's newest MacBook Pro 15" on February 24, 2011. This is Apple's first laptop to sport a quad-core processor, and also adds a brand-new I/O technology with a Thunderbolt port.

Notes:
● You can chain up to six Thunderbolt devices. That's not a problem today as we're not even aware of six products that support Thunderbolt yet. If the connection becomes widespread, the six device limit might be a problem for some people. In comparison, FireWire supports 63 devices and USB supports up to 127 devices.
● The wireless card received a makeover and now includes four antennas instead of three.
● Broadcom BCM4331 wireless chip provides "three transmitting and three receiving streams of data in both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. Increased number of streams and antennas results in faster speeds, longer range, fewer dropped connections, and better overall wireless coverage."
● AMD Radeon HD 6490M GPU (labeled as AMD 216-00809000)
● Samsung K4G10325FE-HC04 1 Gb (128MB) GDDR5 SGRAM graphics memory, a total of 2Gb (256 MB)


Repairability Score: 7 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair).
● Easily removable bottom panel and readily accessible battery connector allow for easy repair of most components without touching the battery screws.
● Unibody design allows for easy access of most components with minimal amounts of extra work needed to get to them.
● Absurd amounts of pre-applied thermal paste may cause problems down the road.
● Tri-wing screws limit the average person from replacing their own battery.
● LCD replacement is still very tricky, which could easily result in shattering the front glass panel.

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