Apple’s MacBook Pro with M2 the chip is essentially the same laptop as its predecessor, the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1, as a teardown of the new laptop revealed – not that it should come as a surprise.
Of course, the similarities are obvious, and it certainly looked like it from the outside, with the exterior design unchanged between the two generations of laptops, the only real difference being the upgrade of the M1 SoC to M2as well as the option to choose more system RAM (24GB if needed).
But now, thanks to an iFixit teardown, we know that the inside of the M2 MacBook Pro is indeed largely identical to the M1 version, with the same body, display, touchpad, and internal layout, save for a few tweaks.
Essentially, Apple took the 13-inch MacBook Pro from the M1, removed that SoC, and then inserted the M2 to replace it, with only some minor updates to the other smaller internals.
The iFixit teardown video shows that all the cables, racks, screws, ground pins and so on remain the same – there’s just a different logic board and some changes to the heatsink (it has square corners instead of the rounded ones seen on the M1 version).
In fact, there are almost no changes, although, unfortunately, there is one negative difference. Namely, the storage on the entry-level M2 MacBook Pro actually slower than the M1 MacBook Pro due to the different SSD configuration (this is only true for this base model, but not for any of the higher-end versions).
In theory, you’d just be able to pop an M2 board into an M1 MacBook Pro, and iFixit went ahead and successfully made that swap — except the laptop didn’t work, or specifically the trackpad, keyboard, and Touch ID sensor no longer worked. functioned post-swap.
In short, iFixit concludes that this is “a blatant attempt to block repairs and replacements with software locks” on Apple’s part.
Analysis: Overshadowed and a missed opportunity overall?
It’s a shame that, as iFixit pointed out, Apple couldn’t take advantage of a situation where the better repairability and durability of the design could have been used with the M2 MacBook Pro.
As a result, this new 13-inch laptop feels rather uninteresting and distinctly backward-looking, and that’s not helped by the fact that the other laptop shown next to it on WWDC most recently, the M2-based MacBook Air that appears Pre-orders are expected soon – is eagerly awaited by many and represents a complete redesign of the portable device.
Interestingly, at WWDC, Apple named the 13-inch MacBook Pro as its second-best-selling laptop after the company’s best-selling MacBook Air — and given that, it seems rather surprising that such little effort was put into pushing the new model here.
This may be due to supply chain issues – of course we have theorized before that the MacBook Air coming later than the existing 13-inch Pro may be due to manufacturing defects (related to recent lockdowns in China). But in any case, the positioning of the new M2 MacBook Pro and the design issues surrounding the machine are certainly causing a lot of problems.
https://www.techradar.com/news/m2-macbook-pro-teardown-confirms-what-we-suspected-about-the-laptop-all-along/
