iFixit Teardown: 11.6-inch MacBook Air Reveals Its Most Inner Secrets

Tweet

As you already know by now, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air is the netbook-like notebook launched yesterday during the Back To The Mac event. And as always with hot product releases iFixit, the guys that can dismantle pretty much any gadget out there and show its inner components have already gotten an 11.6-inch MacBook Air and put it through their regular teardown process.

For those of you still unaware of this smaller and slimmer MacBook Air I’ll remind you that it comes with a choice between 1.4 or 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB or 4GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of Flash Storage and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics. Unlike other MacBook Air models before it, the new generations also happen to have a MacBook Air Software Reinstall Drive in the box, which is basically an 8GB drive containing Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) and iLife 11.

But unlike previous MacBook models this Air is apparently sealed tight as Apple doesn’t want anyone getting inside it. Luckily that didn’t stop iFixit and they were able to blow past the 5-point Security Torx used to attach the lower case.

Once inside the first thing we notice is the battery of the 11.6-inch MacBook Air. It doesn’t quite look like what we’ve seen live, during yesterday’s keynote. While the battery is still made by six individual lithium-polymer cells, their overall display doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen so far in pictures. iFixit notes that we’re looking at a 35 watt hours battery as opposed to previous Air batteries which were 37 or 40 watt-hour batteries.

Besides the battery’s design we have one new piece of hardware available in the new Air, the SSD, or, better said, the flash storage that’s found right on the logic board. Is it hard or easy to replace? Well if you have what it takes to get inside it and you have the extra flash storage then I suppose you could do it right at home, not that we’d recommend you to proceed in that direction anyway.

The SSD is made by Toshiba and has six chips on that custom board, which might make it a little difficult to replace since those kind of boards aren’t available in other products, or as standalone products, are they?

Everything else is exactly what you’d expect: a Broadcom Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip just like the MacBook Pros, then we have a single fan for dissipating heat, a Cirrus Audio audio controller, the USB and MacSafe ports and the RAM, 2GB to 4GB, but since the RAM is soldered to the logic board is not user upgradeable. Fun times!

The logic board comes with the Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4 GHz processor, the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card and the RAM. Last but not least we’ll note a Broadcom chip on the back of the trackpad, which is probably the general in command of multitouch abilities.

These are the MacBook Air’s most inner secrets. Do you have any comments on it? Have you purchased any of the new Air laptops?