Cupertino’s latest skips iPhone repair gains, iFixit says
Anyone hoping Apple’s latest MacBook Air might inherit the iPhone’s recent repair-friendly tweaks is in for disappointment, iFixit’s teardown crew has found.
Introduced earlier this month, the M4 MacBook Air brought none of the repairability improvements iFixit hoped to see in a new generation of Apple laptops.
« We’re sad to report that the M4 MacBook Air didn’t get any real repairability upgrades, and many of the welcome improvements to the iPhone repair experience haven’t made their way to the MacBook yet », iFixit director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain said in the teardown report. « It’s largely business as usual: a mix of good intentions and frustrating limitations that continues to fall short of what consumers deserve in a premium laptop. »
By « good intentions », Chamberlain largely meant the release of the M4 MacBook Air’s full service manual on release day, along with access to select parts via Apple’s Self Service Repair store. Beyond that, there’s not much in the way of good news for iUsers hoping their new device would be easy to maintain.
Sure, there are easily accessed and replaced MagSafe and USB-C ports that aren’t glued to the logic board, which iFixit describes as « nearly best-in-class », and the battery isn’t all that inaccessible – but that’s about it.
