Science/Tech

Teardown of Apple Macbook Pro 2016: SSD Removable In Entry Level Macbook Pro?

By Debaleen Sengupta | Update Date: Nov 01, 2016 07:25 AM EDT

A recent teardown of the Apple Macbook Pro without the Touch Bar suggests that there might be more to the laptop than originally thought. The teardown was brought about an aftermarket Mac storage solutions firm from OWC and revealed that the new Macbook Pro has a removable SSD module.

While removing the panels to remove the SSD module itself is quite cumbersome, it can be done. This, however, means that users may be able to swap the SSD for other market options.

The design is a change from Apple's 12-inch Macbook with Retina display where the flash memory is attached to the logic board itself.

The teardown process was detailed by OWC in their blog post. During the teardown they also noted that the Macbook Pro's bottom cover panel was increasingly difficult to remove, compared to the previous Macbook generations. The panel is tightly shut by six pentalobe screws, making the bottom cover stick to the upper unibody chassis.

There are latches on the left and right sides of the cover which also meet with corresponding metal posts installed on the frame.

Aftermarket specialists can access the SSD slot only after removing the bottom cover and disconnecting the notebook's left speaker array from its slot. The SSD's interface port is sealed shut by strong tape. This has been done to protect against disconnections due to jerking.

While it may be possible that the other versions of Macbook Pro also follow the similar internal hardware design trend, they haven't still been opened to confirm the same. This comes as good news for customers, who can upgrade their SSD after purchase, and are unwilling to pay the extra Apple price for space upgrade.

Apple's Macbook Pro with Touch Bar comes with a standard inclusion of 256 GBs of SSD. This can be increased to 512GB for a $200 price tag, and a 1TB option costs $400 to upgrade.

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