1409 iFixit has disassembled the MacBook Air, and posted lots of cool photos and notes on their Website.

But first, here's a shot of the MacBook Air perched atop a regular MacBook. Wow, it really is alarmingly thin!

Photo courtesy iFixIt

This first look also contains high resolution photos of the MacBook Air's internals, including Intel's custom low-footprint Core 2 Duo processor. This guide adds another installment to iFixit's revolutionary do-it-yourself laptop repair manuals, the Fixit Guide Series. Fixit Guides are available for Apple laptops, iPods, and the iPhone. All Guides are available free online at: http://www.iFixit.com/Guide

The Air's hard drive is an industry standard PATA 5mm 1.8" Samsung drive. The MacBook Air only has 5 mm of vertical space allocated for the hard drive, so it will not fit the 160 GB 8mm drive shipping in the iPod Classic.

And answering a question on a lot of prospective MacBook Air purchasers' minds, iFixIt discovered jands-on that although Apple claims the battery is not user-serviceable, battery installation is surprisingly easy, requiring only a Phillips screwdriver, albeit the necessity of removing and replacing 19 screws. iFixit anticipates that the demand for user-replacement of MacBook Air batteries will be significant. I agree. Happily, aside from the relatively low-aggravation tedium of dealing with all those screws, the battery replacement issue shouldn't be a deal-breaker, although it isn't something you would want to tackle on an airline flight.

Photo Courtesy iFixIt

iFixit also discovered that Apple's new trackpad technology uses the same controller chip used in the in the iPhone and iPod Touch. There is a Broadcom BCM5974 touch controller chip on the trackpad interconnect board. This may give Apple more options when adding touch functionality via software updates, just as they have done with the iPhone.

And here's the MacBook Air completely disassembled. Hope they were able to put it back together again (just kidding!)

Photo Courtesy iFixIt

Thanks again to iFixIt for this tremendous service to the Mac portable community. besides supplying their excellent, free illustrated guides to disassembly of most Apple PowerBook, iBook and MacBook models iFixit also sells a full line of Apple laptop, iPod, and iPhone parts. For more information, visit:
http://www.iFixit.com

or call
1-866-61-FIXIT.

Charles W. Moore

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