"Apple decided that this 'svelte and sexy' MacBook Air will replace the 'simple and serviceable' white plastic MacBook," which Apple unceremoniously discontinued on Wednesday. "Although today is an exciting day for Apple, it's a sad day for consumer repair," iFixit's Miro Djuric said via e-mail. IFixit awarded the new Sandy Bridge-powered MacBook Air a 4/10 for repairability-the same as the preceding model-due to its use of largely proprietary parts and pentalobe screws meant to keep the average user from getting inside the machine. A new ribbon cable connects the the LED array to the logic board to provide power for the backlighting. That chip has been replaced with an Intel platform controller hub labelled "E78296 01PB10 / E116A746 SLJ4K." Information about the particular part isn't on Intel's website, but iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens told Ars that it likely includes an integrated Thunderbolt controller.įinally, the keyboard now contains a series of LEDs and optical channels necessary for the return of a backlit keyboard to the MacBook Air line. With graphics now handled by an on-die Intel HD 3000 IGP, there is no longer a need for the NVIDIA 320M controller with integrated graphics. 5 The MacBook Air was the first laptop to implement Apples. ' It is positioned as the most portable in Apples MacBook family and was introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. According to iFixit, the newer Bluetooth standard offers improved security, very low latency, and less power consumption. The MacBook Air is a kind of Macintosh laptop computer designed by Apple, known as the 'worlds thinnest notebook. An updated wireless module includes a Broadcom BCM20702 Single-Chip Bluetooth 4.0 Processor with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support. Speaker enclosures, battery, cooling, and the overall logic board are also the same. And RAM remains soldered directly to the motherboard. The new Airs use the same small, blade-type SSDs as last year's model, so it's possible to upgrade on your own if you like. Inside, things are largely the same as well. The same ten pentalobe screws hold the bottom plate on the carved aluminum unibody, so with the right screwdriver it's as easy to access the internals as the previous models. IFixit noted that the only identifiable change in the exterior is the "lightning bolt" that denotes the new MacBook Air's Thunderbolt port. Though its insides and outsides are barely different from the last-generation Air released last October, a couple internal changes were necessary to add support for the backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 4.0, and Thunderbolt. Apple's latest MacBook Air has already made its way to iFixit's labs, and it's currently in 12 pieces.
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