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New MacBook Pro Teardown Reveals 'Shoddy Assembly'
CWmike writes "Apple's new MacBook Pro shows some build-quality problems that shouldn't be seen in a notebook that costs $1,800, a teardown expert said on Monday. iFixit.com found several signs of substandard assembly while disassembling a 15-in. MacBook Pro. Among them: A stripped screw near the subwoofer enclosure and an unlocked ZIF (zero insertion force) socket for the IR (infrared) sensor. '[These] should not be things found inside a completely unmolested computer with an $1,800 base price,' iFixit said in the teardown description. iFixit also spotted an unusual amount of thermal paste applied to both the CPU and the GPU. 'Holy thermal paste! Time will tell if the gobs of thermal paste applied to the CPU and GPU will cause overheating issues down the road,' iFixit said. The refreshed MacBook Pro models launched last Thursday in what one analyst called a 'ho-hum' upgrade."
The first-generation Macbook Pros were nothing special in terms of build quality, but up until now, the unibody machines had been rather good. If you're not paying for build quality, what ARE you getting (hardware-wise) for the extra money, given that most of Apple's components are industry standard now? I suppose this is a good reminder that regardless of the brand, most electronics are coming out of the same crappy Chinese factories.
You now have to be a fan-boy to buy Apple products? They are no longer available to the public? Since when? Do I need a badge? To join some kind of club?
Oh wait, maybe Apple came around your house and clubbed your puppy to death? No?
Perhaps take a deep breath and relax. People are free to choose Apple, Linux and even Windows. Each has strong points and reasons why they are good at what they do, so no need to start dropping both your IQ and elitist tech wang on the table by throwing the term 'fan-boys' around.
A complex/intricate design makes one tend to strip screws and leave ZIF sockets open? Sounds more like a lazy assembler to me.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I asked a friend; he said the line between this one data point and his preconceived notions shows a definite trend.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
They found a bad apple. So that makes our sample size is n=1 so far. Can anybody cite evidence of additional issues, or is this being hyped up like the iPhone 4 antenna story?
Well, they found at least 3 independent problems on a single sample. Since each of these problems is possible separate from each other, the fact that all 3 show on a single item could indicate that the rate each problem is fairly high in general. There are other possibilities besides high problem rates, but it does raise the chances that this isn't just a single isolated incident.
Yes, but you are a fanboi, that's what you're *supposed* to do, for God's sake - in fact, how you escaped the hypnotic clutches of Steve's Charisma Beam and lasted two years without an upgrade is probably worthy of some deeper investigation by the clerics of the Holy Church of Apple.
The problem with the Apple haters here is the rampant hyperbole. He upgraded his two year old computer, but you have to spin it into some sort of insanity. It's strange that you first call him a "fanboi", then note that he somehow managed to avoid this imaginary mystical superbeam emanating from Cupertino which would have made him a fanboi.
In other words, you just called him a fanboi while noting that he wasn't a fanboi. Fantastic!
Look at it from my perspective - if I proudly crowed about standing outside queuing in the rain the day before a new Dell Laptop or Ubuntu Linux 11.04 was released, you'd call me a sad loony!
Ignoring the fact that he didn't say anything about lining up in the rain a day in advance for the new MacBook Pro (in fact, no one has ever done this, the lines have only been for the iPhones and iPads, more on this in a sec), yes, you would look insane waiting for Ubuntu or a Dell laptop.
Why do people line up for iPhones and iPads? Because demand far outstrips supply. People in line know that if they don't line up, they will have to wait some uncertain amount of time before they can get one. Has this ever happened with a Dell laptop? Is this even possible with Ubuntu?
On the other hand, there have been plenty of geeks downloading Ubuntu (and other distros) the day of availability. Haven't you ever tried to download an ISO on release day only to find download speeds horribly slow? Do you hurl the same "fanboi" insult at people who line up for video games, concerts, movies, etc?
But no, only Apple users are "fanbois", because, well... "Fuck you, that's why"? That's all it really boils down to. What sort of insecurity leads someone to throw about effeminate insults to someone who upgraded his two year old notebook? What is it about other people's computer choices that bothers you so much?
Thermal paste increases thermal conductivity between chip and heat sink.
Overclocked your first gaming rig, huh? No. Thermal paste is a crappy conductor. From Wikipedia:
So, "good" silver compound will be approximately 1% as conductive as aluminum. The only thing near a CPU less conductive than thermal paste is air. You want to use the bare minimum necessary to fill the minor imperfections in the surfaces of the CPU and heatsink. Any more than that and you might as well wrap your processor in a nice cozy wool sweater.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I don't know if lazy is really the appropriate word to use when talking about cheap labour.I think it's much more likely that they're actually hard-working people who are overworked and underpaid.
And we have 5 Macs (3 iMacs, 2 MacBooks/Pro) that have never been in the shop. Out of the about 30 different Mac owners that I personally know and interact with regularly, only one has had his Mac in for repairs. My anecdote is just as valid as your anecdote. Further, based on my anecdote, I can argue (just as validly as you argued) that the build quality of Macs has at least remained stable or even increased.
My point with my reply is that when we look at objective data (I'm not commenting on the quality of these data but they have to be better than your anecdote and my anecdote), Apple computers are the most reliable: http://www.rescuecom.com/2010-annual-computer-reliability-report.html
Here are some somewhat subjective data (but still data with a larger sample size) showing Apple on top: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368167,00.asp
Maybe Apple's build quality has gone down but objective data don't seem to show that at all.