The gang at iFixIt, which tears apart devices to examine their innards, has torn down the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (look for my review soon). Teardown highlight include:
- Just like its little brother, the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Tool Barfeatures a plugged-up connector to nowhere. Based on a previous teardown, iFixIt speculates that Apple included an access port for the integrated SSD. Not a bad idea when it’s impossible to physically salvage your data out of a damaged machine.
- Compared to the merely supersized trackpad in the 13-inch MBP, the 15-inch trackpad is a figurative Big Gulp. Apple threw in an extra Broadcom touch controller IC to handle all of that extra touchable glass.
- Just like its smaller brothers, most of the 15-inch MBP’s speaker grille holes are cosmetic and don’t go all the way through.
- Just like its smaller Touch Bar-wielding friend, the 15-inch MBP doesn’t have a removable SSD or upgradeable RAM. Also just like it, the battery is very solidly glued down, greatly inhibiting repair and recycling. This earned the 15-inch MBP the same score as the 13-inch model—a 1/10 on the iFixIt repairability scale.
