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Posted by GeekyBear 4 hours ago

Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks(arstechnica.com)
103 points | 52 commentspage 2
oybng 3 hours ago|
Just 20 steps and 18 screws to replace a battery, easy!
tpmoney 2 hours ago||
The guy in the linked video up thread tore the whole computer down in 6 minutes. I'm pretty sure most people can manage to find 12 minutes out of their life every 5 years to replace the battery if they want. But if that is too arduous, you can pay Apple to do it for you for a mere $149, with the battery included in that price. Given that a comparable battery from iFixit will cost you $80-$100, that's just ~$50 to have someone save you the hassle of having to remove 18 screws from your laptop every 5 years.
cromka 1 hour ago||
Bingo. People will go lengths to find a reason to complain about things they would otherwise never be actually bothered by in their lives.
SoKamil 2 hours ago|||
But no adhesive under the battery. That’s huge.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago||
[flagged]
ryandrake 2 hours ago||
I'll take it over the plastic pieces of garbage that flex and bend and creek, and feel like they were taped together by a 6 year old, which is most other PC laptops in this price range.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago||
[flagged]
ryandrake 1 hour ago|||
This is part of what's plagued the PC laptop industry for decades: Obsession with specs and measurements and geekbenches and similar things, over "does this feel like a cracker jack toy?" and "will the hinge break if I open the lid?"
rogerrogerr 1 hour ago|||
It's functional to have a laptop you can pick up from a corner without waking anyone sleeping in the same building.
wvenable 1 hour ago|||
Probably could get the battery directly without all the other disassembly steps...
kotaKat 39 minutes ago||
Apple’s official illustrated guide shows you only need to pop the 8 case screws, 2 screws holding down the battery connector, then route the cables away and remove the 18 battery screws.

Not bad, not terrible?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126157

charcircuit 2 hours ago|||
The MacBook Neo has a rechargeable battery. By the time the battery goes bad from too many charge cycles people will want to upgrade to a newer one.
alwillis 1 hour ago||
The Neo’s battery is rated for 1,000 charge cycles, same as the MBP.
SirMaster 43 minutes ago||
Right, but his point is the battery last like 2-3x longer than most other similar laptops, so the charge cycles wear out 2-3x slower.
Clamchop 2 hours ago|||
I mean, yes, it is easy. No adhesive and just a couple of clips on the case. You could replace the battery in 20 minutes with little anxiety that you're going to cause damage getting to it.
crooked-v 2 hours ago|||
As it turns out, once battery life hits a certain baseline, people prefer devices where the battery is harder to replace but larger over devices where the battery is hot-swappable but smaller.
throw737458t8t8 2 hours ago||
And xray, microscope and soldering station to replace ssd.
newsclues 3 hours ago||
I'm not sure if it's possible, but an aftermarket battery with closer to the MB Airs KW/h specs would be a very interesting modification.

The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).

pfortuny 2 hours ago||
FYI: KWh (it is a product).
hyperhello 1 hour ago||
Yeah, that would be an interesting modification, wouldn’t it?
jajuuka 2 hours ago||
I'd bet dollars to donuts that it either treats any battery connection like the stock battery or it fails over to a run like crap mode like third party batteries in their phones.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago||
[flagged]
entropicdrifter 4 hours ago|
I feel like "most repairable macbook" is a bit like saying "most edible dirt". While it's good that there's progress, it's pretty telling that they need to only compare it within the same company's products.
Someone1234 3 hours ago||
I'd suggest you watch a teardown video. The Neo is absurdly repairable compared to just about anything in its category. It is extremely modular, and uses screws.
ProllyInfamous 2 hours ago|||
Repairability examples:

modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad

Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).

MBCook 33 minutes ago|||
Keyboard that doesn’t require half the computer to be thrown away to replace it!

That probably bit them HARD during the butterfly days.

mmmlinux 25 minutes ago|||
Most laptops back then were filled with tons of screws.
edhelas 2 hours ago|||
Wow screws. Crazy. So the industry standard for many years. But I guess it's Different™ this time.
lallysingh 2 hours ago|||
Yeah, I mean I'm looking at frameworks/thinkpads on one side and chromebooks on the other. Not charging up to $440 (!) for a keyboard isn't a great act of engineering or generosity. This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating. The goal markers have moved so damned much.

Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.

tpmoney 1 hour ago||
> This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating.

So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.

Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.

0_____0 3 hours ago||
I've replaced a battery, screen, hinges on a macbook (2015). Did they get considerably worse at repairability after that? Because while there were a fair number of steps, it's not like they required exotic techniques to pull off.
Rebelgecko 3 hours ago|||
Yes
shrubble 3 hours ago|||
Yes they did. Reminder: your experience is 11 years ago and several Intel and ARM generations old. Also it’s more than $3 Trillion in revenue ago.
alwillis 1 hour ago|||
Not $3 trillion in revenue; a $3 trillion market cap.
Jtsummers 48 minutes ago||
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue

Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.

ceejayoz 3 hours ago|||
They’ve gotten largely more repairable since then, including adhesives you can electrically debond.
malmeloo 2 hours ago|||
That's a relatively recent development. Repairability has been very poor for quite a while, but now they're finally starting to improve the situation somewhat.
the_biot 2 hours ago|||
...electrically debond, are you serious? More details please, this sounds very interesting.
05 2 hours ago||
Video (use SponsorBlock): https://youtu.be/M6jBXI6CR9s?t=156

Article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/100352/we-hot-wired-the-iphone-1...

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251