One of the big selling points for a Windows PC versus Apple hardware has always been that the former can be stripped open and fixed if needed, without the need to take it to some “geniuses” to sort it for you. Granted that doesn’t always carry over to notebooks, which are their own fresh hell for those trying to fix a system for an elderly family member, but good luck if you have to do the same with the new Macbook, as it is proving to be one of the hardest ever to fix up yourself.
Thanks to the combination of Apple’s pentalobe screws, overuse of glue for holding in certain parts and the fact that many key internal components are actually soldered to the mainboard, iFixit ultimately gave the new Macbook a mere 1/10 for its “repairability,” which as you might expect, is just about the worst rating it could have received. Only a handful of PCs have ever scored as poorly, including the Microsoft Surface pro.
To put this into context, even most iPads are easier to fix than that.
The Macbook’s score is so bad that it doesn’t even have a single plus point in the conclusion. If you had to find one positive in the rough, you could argue that the fact you can get into the laptop’s internals through the keyboard is a bonus, though it’s not clear if that was intended or just a happy coincidence.
The sad part about the Macbook pulling a score like this is that Apple described it as the “future of the notebook.” Here’s hoping it’s not the blueprint for every laptop that the fruity firm produces in the future. The least it could do is use some more typical screws.
How important is the ability to fix a laptop when it comes to your purchasing decisions?
