Most people haven’t even touched Apple’s new 11.6-inch MacBook Air, but that didn’t stop iFixit from getting their hands on one and stripping it down to its frame. Inside they found a little circuit board and lots of batteries.
Most of the new MacBook Air’s body is filled with six lithium-polymer batteries, leaving just a small space near the back for the tiny circuit board that includes the processor, system memory and solid state storage. This laptop doesn’t have room for an internal hard drive, so Apple when with flash memory, just like the iPad.
iFixit’s gutted MacBook Air
The tiny laptop’s circuit board also makes room for a single fan, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 1.4 GHz, an NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor, the USB controller, and 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips.
Don’t plan on upgrading anything on this laptop yourself. Most all of the components are soldered in place, although Apple is offering a battery replacement service for US$129.
So far, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air looks like a great option for on-the-go work where an iPad isn’t enough, but a MacBook Pro is too bulky. If anything goes wrong with the computer, however, plan on a trip to your local Apple Genius Bar.