iFixit Tears Down 13-Inch M2 MacBook Pro

Apple last week launched the first M2 Mac, the 13-inch Mac­Book Pro, and repair site iFix­it picked up the new machine to do a tra­di­tion­al device teardown.

Design wise, there’s not a lot for iFix­it to say about the ‌M2‌ Mac­Book Pro because aside from the ‌M2‌ chip, it is iden­ti­cal to the pri­or-gen­er­a­tion Mac­Book Pro. It fea­tures the same chas­sis, Touch Bar, and dis­play, with updates focused under-the-hood.

As expect­ed, iFix­it found almost every com­po­nent to be the same, and could­n’t iden­ti­fy any out­ward-fac­ing changes. Inside, some of the chips and small­er com­po­nents have been updat­ed, but the rest of the inte­ri­or is identical.

iFix­it was able to pull the M1 and ‌M2‌ boards out, fit­ting the ‌M2‌ board in the ‌M1‌ Mac­Book Pro case. Though the boards could be swapped, the ‌M2‌ chip would not func­tion in the ‌M1‌ chas­sis because of the com­po­nent swap. The track­pad, key­board, and Touch ID sen­sor fail to func­tion when the ‌M1‌ and ‌M2‌ chips are changed out.

As the ‌‌M2‌‌ Mac­Book Pro com­po­nents phys­i­cal­ly fit inside the ‌M1‌ Mac­Book Pro, iFix­it claims that Apple is mak­ing a “bla­tant attempt to block repairs and replace­ments through soft­ware locks.”

Pre­vi­ous argu­ments for the lack of upgrade­abil­i­ty between gen­er­a­tions have cen­tered around size con­sid­er­a­tions with­in the chas­sis or cost con­sid­er­a­tions or man­u­fac­tur­ing lim­i­ta­tions. So how do we explain this?

iFix­it con­firmed the design of the SSD, which has led to slow­er SSD bench­mark per­for­mance on the 256GB ‌M2‌ Mac­Book Pro com­pared to the 256GB ‌M1‌ Mac­Book Pro. Apple is indeed using a sin­gle 256GB SSD chip in the ‌M2‌ Mac­Book Pro, while the ‌M1‌ used two 128GB SSD chips. Two SSD chips allow the sys­tem to read and write up to twice as fast because oper­a­tions can be per­formed at the same time. It’s not clear why Apple made this change, but iFix­it spec­u­lates that it is the direct result of com­po­nent shortages.

All in all, iFix­it says that Apple missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce its first upgrade­able device in a good long time, and that the com­pa­ny also missed the chance to set the tone for repairabil­i­ty and eco-friend­ly design by restrict­ing interoperability.