Although smartphone and many other electronics manufacturers would love for us all to throw away our devices every year and upgrade to the latest and greatest version, along with the push for renewable energy and recycling, many people want to make their devices last longer than they have in the past. With that in mind, how easy a device is to fix can really factor in to people’s purchasing decisions.
So the fact that Apple’s latest peripherals — Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, and Magic Trackpad 2 — are not particularly easy to repair could put some people off.
To figure out how easy they are to tweak and put back together, iFixit did what it always does: it took them all apart. Unfortunately all of them were found to come with many of the internal components glued to one another or the frame using a strong adhesive. This means that replacing any of those parts requires careful picking and prying to get them loose without damaging them further.
It was so bad in the case of the Magic Trackpad, that those conducting the teardown described its interior as akin to “Shelob’s lair,” the mythical giant spider from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Another thumbs down from the iFixit team was that none of the items in question have a service manual included, which means taking them apart at this early stage requires a lot of trial and error. Of course we can now benefit from this tear down and any others that come in the near future if we wish to dismantle ours, but it’s a shame that there is no official documentation.
However, while a lot of glue was found inside the Apple devices, we also know a lot more about their internal hardware now. For example, within the Magic Keyboard, there are the following on the device’s logic board:
- Broadcom BCM20733 Enhanced Data Rate Bluetooth 3.0 cingle-chip solution.
- ST Microelectronics STM32F103VB 72 MHz 32-bit RISC ARM Cortex-M3.
- NXP 1608A1 Charging IC.
- Texas Instruments BQ24250C Single Input I2C/Standalone switch-mode Li-Ion battery charger.
Within the confines of the Magic Mouse 2, its logic board packs the following:
- Broadcom BCM20733 Enhanced Data Rate Bluetooth 3.0 single-chip solution.
- NXP 1608A1 Charging IC.
- Texas Instruments 56AYZ21
- ST Microelectronics STM32F103VB 72 MHz 32-bit RISC ARM Cortex-M3.
In comparison, the Magic Trackpad 2 has but a single chip on its touchpad: the Broadcom BCM5976 touch controller, which is part of the series of chips used in the above devices.
