Teardown of Apple's 11.6-in MacBook Air shows six internal batteries
The inside of Apple's new instant-on, lightweight 11.6-inch MacBook Air has six separate lithium-polymer battery cells, accounting for most of the device's size and weight.
iFixit on Thursday posted its typically thorough disassembly of the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Inside, they found the six battery cells which "dominate" the space inside the thin-and-light machine.
The internal components are slightly different from those found in the 13.3-inch model, a prototype of which was spotted before the device was even revealed on Wednesday. That larger MacBook Air has four separate batteries, which are bigger and provide up to 7 hours of active battery life.
In its teardown, the solutions provider found that the onboard 64GB of flash storage easily disconnects from the logic board, but the part is completely custom, meaning an off-the shelf part cannot be used to replace it.
The unique 64GB of onboard memory is made up of six main chips -- four 16GB flash memory chips and a solid state drive controller from Toshiba, and a Micron OKA17 D9HSJ DDR DRAM cache. The proprietary solid state drive is just 2.45 mm thick and weighs 10 grams, while the previous MacBook Air's hard disk drive was 5.12 mm thick and weighed 45 grams.
The new MacBook Air also uses the same Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip found on the current MacBook Pros. However, to fit into the tiny frame of the MacBook Air, it comes in a different form factor.
All of the cooling of the new notebook is accomplished with just one, tiny internal fan. Ribbon cable connection points found inside were also discovered to have epoxy on them that acts as an insulator, perhaps to prevent issues if their protective plastic wears out over time.
Included on the logic board are the MacBook Air's Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz processor, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics, and 2GB of Elpida J1108EFBG RAM. Just as with MacBook Air models, the RAM is soldered to the logic board, making it not upgradable.
For more, see the full teardown at iFixit.
iFixit on Thursday posted its typically thorough disassembly of the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Inside, they found the six battery cells which "dominate" the space inside the thin-and-light machine.
The internal components are slightly different from those found in the 13.3-inch model, a prototype of which was spotted before the device was even revealed on Wednesday. That larger MacBook Air has four separate batteries, which are bigger and provide up to 7 hours of active battery life.
In its teardown, the solutions provider found that the onboard 64GB of flash storage easily disconnects from the logic board, but the part is completely custom, meaning an off-the shelf part cannot be used to replace it.
The unique 64GB of onboard memory is made up of six main chips -- four 16GB flash memory chips and a solid state drive controller from Toshiba, and a Micron OKA17 D9HSJ DDR DRAM cache. The proprietary solid state drive is just 2.45 mm thick and weighs 10 grams, while the previous MacBook Air's hard disk drive was 5.12 mm thick and weighed 45 grams.
The new MacBook Air also uses the same Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip found on the current MacBook Pros. However, to fit into the tiny frame of the MacBook Air, it comes in a different form factor.
All of the cooling of the new notebook is accomplished with just one, tiny internal fan. Ribbon cable connection points found inside were also discovered to have epoxy on them that acts as an insulator, perhaps to prevent issues if their protective plastic wears out over time.
Included on the logic board are the MacBook Air's Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz processor, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics, and 2GB of Elpida J1108EFBG RAM. Just as with MacBook Air models, the RAM is soldered to the logic board, making it not upgradable.
For more, see the full teardown at iFixit.
Comments
In its teardown, the solutions provider found that the onboard 64GB of flash storage easily disconnects from the logic board, but the part is completely custom, meaning an off-the shelf part cannot be used to replace it.
But a future version of the part, using higher capacity memory chips, could be used (by an Apple repair person) to replace it, right?
Anyone else think that having 6 batteries strewn about is weird?
I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.
One could conceivably have a 5.25" drive bay with nothing but this connectors for flash memory too for tower configurations.
Another possibility is to have this storage format on future iMacs where the drive "bay" is on the bottom of the monitor in the same area where their current RAM dimms are.
Lots of possibilities for even thinner iMacs too!
The inside of Apple's new instant-on, lightweight 11.6-inch MacBook Air has six separate lithium-polymer battery cells, accounting for most of the device's size and weight....
Actually, it's one battery with six cells.
It doesn't take that much effort to report things correctly you know.
Apples own video on the MacBook Air clearly shows 4 (identical to the leaked photo)...
The production team probably didn't have access to the final version. Video was probably a week ago...
Does anyone know if the new MBA comes with iLife '11 included? Thx
Best
Apples own video on the MacBook Air clearly shows 4 (identical to the leaked photo)...
Actually, the photos on Apple's site shows the 13" MacBook Air which has 4x Large batteries or a large battery of 4 cells. The 11.6" has the six small ones.
I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.
Perhaps this way when one of the cells fails, you can replace only the failed cell.
Beautiful....
Does anyone know if the new MBA comes with iLife '11 included? Thx
Best
Nope, but you get special pricing when iLife '11 is available.
Anyone else think that having 6 batteries strewn about is weird?
Not at all, you now have much more surface area to dissipate the heat.
Nope, but you get special pricing when iLife '11 is available.
Thanks, Dude...appreciate the answer to my question.
Best!
I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.
I think it's probably a thin issue. Battery packs tend to be flat and it looks like the ones at the front are thinner and the ones in the middle don't reach the edge.
When we look at the machines, we look at how they could build one machine; when they do it, they have to think about how they build millions of them so they have to consider the parts available to them and associated costs.
They probably tried a number of configurations.
Not at all, you now have much more surface area to dissipate the heat.
Yep! And in addition, one huge bulky battery is a lot more difficult to place inside such a thin piece of hardware. I wonder if other companies came to similar solutions to this. But probably apple is once more playing a solo game.l
I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.
I thought that as well. Must be some technical reason they did it this way instead of as one big battery....
edit: Found it at Ars.
Beautiful....
Does anyone know if the new MBA comes with iLife '11 included? Thx
Best
Nope, but you get special pricing when iLife '11 is available.
In the presentation, on October 20, Steve said, "iLife '11 is available today. So you can get it today"
I believe that the new MBAs come with iLife '11 preinstalled.
Beautiful....
Does anyone know if the new MBA comes with iLife '11 included? Thx
I believe so. Look at the top right corner (near Select your 13 inch MacBook Air) on this link: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...ly/macbook_air