M2 MacBook Pro teardown shows it’s eerily familiar — with one catch

By Arif Bacchus Published July 1, 2022

In a roughly five-minute-long video, the repair firm iFixit finds that Apple’s latest flagship 13-inch laptop with M2 Chip might be eerily close to the previous version, but with one small catch.

Overall, the teardown showcases that the new M2 MacBook Pro design isn’t all too different from the original MacBook Pro with an M1 chip. The chassis, touch bar, and display are all identical, along with the internal components like cables and grounding pins that connect them together. Only the logic board, and heat sync, are visually different, with heat sync having rounded corners on the M1 and the M2 having square corners.

The m2 Macbook Pro on top of the m1 Macbook pro. — iFixit

iFixit also tried to swap out the logic board from an M2 MacBook and put it in an M1 MacBook Pro. The fit was perfect, and the machine with the M1 chassis and newly placed M2 chip did boot but it did not read the trackpad or the keyboard and Touch ID sensor. This suggests that Apple has some kind of software block to prevent swapping components, despite size considerations not being an issue.

Recommended Videos

“We find the decision to disable the trackpad and keyboard baffling, if intentional. The parts are clearly cross-compatible, and we’re again faced with what seems like an attempt to block repairs and replacements with software locks,” said iFixit during the teardown.

As for the documented read/write speed and performance issue with the solid-state drive onboard the new M2 MacBook Pro, iFixit confirmed what many suggested might cause the issue. The teardown confirms the choice of Apple only using one NAND chip on the M2 Macbook Pro’s solid-state drive, versus the two on the original M1 MacBook Pro. IFixit said that this makes perfect sense, and suggested this could be to the supply chain issue set forth by the global pandemic.

Overall, iFixit believes that the M2 MacBook Pro is a missed opportunity for Apple to have introduced an upgradeable device. This is not too surprising though, as Apple has been known to use software locks on components on its products. That’s why it launched the self-repair program, which lets users buy official parts and tools to repair their own products at home.

Former Computing Writer

Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…

Topics

Computing

Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt

The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.

The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits.

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price.

Computing

Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school

One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.

Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Computing

OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns

OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.