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The MacBook Air after the teardown.
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iFixit didn’t find much in the way of a thermal management system in this machine.
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An X-ray reveals the new speaker system.
The M2 MacBook Air has been arriving to those who pre-ordered it over the past few days, and repair supplies vendor iFixit is among those who received a unit. If you’ve been tracking iFixit’s work after other Apple launches over the past several years, you know what that means: teardown time.
Like the 24-inch iMac before it, the MacBook Air is mostly full of… a lot of empty space. The battery dominates the device’s interior, but beyond that, we’re mostly just looking at mechanisms for the trackpad, keyboard, and a small logic board.
The teardown revealed thermal paste and graphite tape, but no active cooling and not even a heat spreader. iFixit notes that the machine will likely run hot, which we found in our throttling tests.
Otherwise, it’s mostly business as usual for Apple laptops inside there. iFixit notes that it appears to have an Apple-made Thunderbolt 3 driver instead of an Intel-made one, though, which is interesting. Curiously, there is also an accelerometer, but it’s not clear what that is used for in the laptop.
The M2 MacBook Air has a different speaker design than its predecessor, and iFixit got a glimpse at the new system. The new Air lacks the perforated speakers on either side of the keyboard that we’ve seen before and instead pumps sound out through little slits between the case and the display. iFixit also notes that the speakers look “small.”
The main purpose of these teardown articles and videos is to judge repairability, and there are some good signs here: For example, you only need to work four screws to get into the device. But there’s still a harrowing tugging process at the start, and you must handle it carefully.
For more photos and details, head over to iFixit’s teardown.
Listing image by iFixit
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1868182