M2 MacBook Air teardown reveals accelerometer, simple cooling system

AppleInsider

The repair experts at iFixit have completed a teardown of the new M2 MacBook Air, revealing a very simple chip cooling mechanism, an accelerometer, and other details.

MacBook Air with M2

In a YouTube clip posted on Tuesday, iFixit walks viewers through disassembling the new MacBook Air model. Although not a full teardown or repair guide, the four-minute clip reveals several interesting details about the new device.

For example, as we've already discussed, the MacBook Air with 256GB of internal storage sports a single storage chip instead of a pair of 128GB chips as found in the 2020 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 processor.

Other Logic Board components seen in the video include the M2 chip itself, a proprietary Thunderbolt driver, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, and an accelerometer. It isn't clear what the accelerometer is for, and Apple has not yet revealed a use for it.

Cooling is another aspect of the MacBook Air that's relatively unclear. iFixit did not find any heat spreaders, and describes the built-in heat shield as "super thin" and unable to help much with heating similar to how the M1 processor is cooled in an iPad Pro.

While the MacBook Air has "a lot of thermal paste and graphite tape," and is an efficient device, iFixit notes that it isn't clear on how exactly the device maintains the proper thermals.

"Maybe the M2 Air is secretly an iPad, or maybe Apple is just letting it run hot," the site wrote.

There are some aspects to the device that should make repairs and replacements a bit easier. Like the M2 MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air sports adhesive pull tabs on the battery and ports that aren't glued down. That should make swaps simpler and faster to remove.

On the other hand, the M2 chip and the SSD are soldered onto the board. That means both components aren't easily replaced except by technicians with the proper tools.

The full teardown is available to watch on iFixit's YouTube channel. An in-depth repair guide is likely soon to come, too.

Read on AppleInsider

tht

Much better to turn the audio off while watching the video. Don't know what to say. I feel dumber after listening to that. Will have to wait for the still photography.

lam92103

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

edited July 2022

regurgitatedcoprolite

tht said:

Much better to turn the audio off while watching the video. Don't know what to say. I feel dumber after listening to that. Will have to wait for the still photography.

Yeah, I don’t appreciate the sarcastic tone and attitude either. Just show me how to take it apart, the different parts, and let me make a judgment about the design and quality 

strangedays

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

Is today opposite day? Apple absolute does care about thermals, which is why their systems run so much cooler. Contrast with my Dell work laptops which constantly run their hairdryer fans under moderate or near idle loads. 

I don’t know anyone who is claiming the Intel MBs were better than Apple Silicon, except maybe for Windows virtualization. Quite the opposite. Many reviewers noted how much cooler the M-series MBs are while resting on your lap. 

edited July 2022

strangedays

tht said:

Much better to turn the audio off while watching the video. Don't know what to say. I feel dumber after listening to that. Will have to wait for the still photography.

Yeah just skimmed it - very clear the iFixIt people still do not get Apple and the type of products it focuses on. Hint: it ain’t upgradable notebooks. They are painfully modern-day neckbeards. 

tht

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

I think you really have the wrong take here. Apple cares most about thermals out of any OEM out there. It's not even close with perhaps the small shops specializing in silent PCs. And dollars to donuts, the thermal design of Apple's laptops is better than any other OEMs.

The goal of the MBA is to create a thin, long lasting, noise-less laptop. The lack of a fan is a feature, and doesn't demonstrate that they don't care about thermals. Being fanless is the number goal for the MBA. The M2 is about as performant as a 30 to 45 W TDP x86 processor, is housed in a 11 mm thick laptop, doesn't make any fan noise, and lasts longer than competitors. It's the best laptop for basically 90% of the market. It's not even close.

Lots of sturm and drang with the release of the M2, and it's always best to ignore it. Like Maxtech's thermal pad mod. They did it with the M1 MBA too, which kept the temperatures of their M1 and M2 MBA lower for a little longer. Just your usual higher thermal capacitance soaking up a little more heat for a little longer - the pad was in contact with the bottom aluminum panel - before the system got into equilibrium and the chip reached its maximum allowed temperatures. Maxtech seemed proud of this but it's a shit take. They said it themselves: it came at the cost of bottom panel being hotter, and probably too hot to touch. They felt it was ok because they were using the MBA on a desk.

Guess who would not be ok with that? People using it as laptop, on their laps, holding it with their hands. Basically the purpose of a laptop. No OEM would do that. Even gaming laptop OEMs won't do that. This is not Apple not caring about thermals. It's Apple prioritizing thermals for how the product will be used, and they designed it as such.

Random Internet takes are not worth 2¢. They are negative information, a negative 2¢ as it were, and 99.9% of the time is not correct.

tht

StrangeDays said:

tht said:

Much better to turn the audio off while watching the video. Don't know what to say. I feel dumber after listening to that. Will have to wait for the still photography.

Yeah just skimmed it - very clear the iFixIt people still do not get Apple and the type of products it focuses on. Hint: it ain’t upgradable notebooks. They are painfully modern-day neckbeards. 

No. They are not stupid. They know exactly what they are doing. The audio was a written script they were reading from. It's not some extemporaneous line of thought. In the best light, the words said weren't precisely written down, and they were riffing off a set of bullet points. So, maybe it wasn't like a scripted TV show.

They know precisely why Apple designs and builds the computers they do. In their videos and teardowns, the "theme" is always prepared in some fashion. 

netrox

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

I have the last generation of Intel MacBook Pro and it runs extremely hot and drains battery fast. I hate it. I will have to sell it soon because it's really that bad. 

emoeller

This inventive "hack" seems to greatly improve thermal throttling for 13" MBA laptops.  However it will most assuredly void the warranty on your new M2 Air....                               https://www.macworld.com/article/814023/m2-macbook-air-overheating-thermal-pads-diy.html

bageljoey

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

Dramatic much?  It’s not “horribly handicapped” as much as it is designed for its target user. That target user is the one who spends most of their time surfing web pages, reading and writing email, typing on word processors. 

That may be 80% of the laptop market.

Sure, it’s got an M2 and can handle video and photo editing, but if you are a professional with a processor heavy workflow, than yes, this may be the wrong choice for you. 

Why is it so hard for people to understand that not everyone (or even most people) needs a pro computer?

sflocal

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

Do you even have an Intel-based MacBook or just whining for the sake of it?

I've owned several Intel-based MBA's and MBPs.  The new Mx-based systems are on a whole-next level in terms of heat-management.  

Get a clue.  You're either bitter or trolling.  I question if you've ever even owned a Mac laptop.

filemakerfeller

tht said:

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

I think you really have the wrong take here. Apple cares most about thermals out of any OEM out there. It's not even close with perhaps the small shops specializing in silent PCs. And dollars to donuts, the thermal design of Apple's laptops is better than any other OEMs.

The goal of the MBA is to create a thin, long lasting, noise-less laptop. The lack of a fan is a feature, and doesn't demonstrate that they don't care about thermals. Being fanless is the number goal for the MBA. The M2 is about as performant as a 30 to 45 W TDP x86 processor, is housed in a 11 mm thick laptop, doesn't make any fan noise, and lasts longer than competitors. It's the best laptop for basically 90% of the market. It's not even close.

Lots of sturm and drang with the release of the M2, and it's always best to ignore it. Like Maxtech's thermal pad mod. They did it with the M1 MBA too, which kept the temperatures of their M1 and M2 MBA lower for a little longer. Just your usual higher thermal capacitance soaking up a little more heat for a little longer - the pad was in contact with the bottom aluminum panel - before the system got into equilibrium and the chip reached its maximum allowed temperatures. Maxtech seemed proud of this but it's a shit take. They said it themselves: it came at the cost of bottom panel being hotter, and probably too hot to touch. They felt it was ok because they were using the MBA on a desk.

Guess who would not be ok with that? People using it as laptop, on their laps, holding it with their hands. Basically the purpose of a laptop. No OEM would do that. Even gaming laptop OEMs won't do that. This is not Apple not caring about thermals. It's Apple prioritizing thermals for how the product will be used, and they designed it as such.

Random Internet takes are not worth 2¢. They are negative information, a negative 2¢ as it were, and 99.9% of the time is not correct.

About two years ago I did a bit of idle research about building my own PC. I wanted to see if I could make a fan-less desktop with reasonably high-end components. The best case I could find was US$1700. For just the case.

Today, you can get something like "The Beast" from MonsterLabo (https://www.monsterlabo.com/page-d-articles/the-beast) starting at EUR790 (again, for just the case) or pick an already-assembled PC from, say, SilentPC (https://silentpc.com/fanless-pcs/) with prices starting at US$1340 for a minimally-expandable Ryzen 5600G system. Compare that to the M1 Mac Mini with the same 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD drive (the Ryzen system comes with a DVD drive) and a base price of US$699.

Apple cares a great deal about thermals and provides better performance for less power and a lower price than anything on the PC enthusiast side of things when you want a system without the noise of fans.

tht

bageljoey said:

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

Dramatic much?  It’s not “horribly handicapped” as much as it is designed for its target user. That target user is the one who spends most of their time surfing web pages, reading and writing email, typing on word processors. 

That may be 80% of the laptop market.

Sure, it’s got an M2 and can handle video and photo editing, but if you are a professional with a processor heavy workflow, than yes, this may be the wrong choice for you. 

Why is it so hard for people to understand that not everyone (or even most people) needs a pro computer?

It is fine for most heavy single logic heavy workflows. That is, if a workflow is mostly CPU, or mostly GPU or mostly ML, it is perfectly fine to run it hours on end. 

It is obviously fine for MS Office workflows, which are what, 90% of PC market? It will be fine for most programming (Python, Web site development, C based, Swift), and associated workflows. It will be fine for most web based workflows, especially with appropriate amounts of RAM. If a user has tens of Chrome windows and tens of Chrome tabs open, they definitely need more RAM, not necessarily CPU. A normal user, 8 GB RAM is fine. 

If your workflow can make use of high core counts, and if you want less time, pay up and get more computer. All these video reviewers and gamers think their workflows require a lot of computing performance? It isn’t that much. Perhaps it’s a lot for a desktop computer though, but even with that it isn’t as much as it used to be. Not many comments of needing to run a job overnight anymore. 

jdw

tht said:

Lots of sturm and drang with the release of the M2, and it's always best to ignore it. Like Maxtech's thermal pad mod. They did it with the M1 MBA too, which kept the temperatures of their M1 and M2 MBA lower for a little longer. Just your usual higher thermal capacitance soaking up a little more heat for a little longer - the pad was in contact with the bottom aluminum panel - before the system got into equilibrium and the chip reached its maximum allowed temperatures. Maxtech seemed proud of this but it's a shit take. They said it themselves: it came at the cost of bottom panel being hotter, and probably too hot to touch. They felt it was ok because they were using the MBA on a desk.

Guess who would not be ok with that? People using it as laptop, on their laps, holding it with their hands. Basically the purpose of a laptop. No OEM would do that. Even gaming laptop OEMs won't do that. This is not Apple not caring about thermals. It's Apple prioritizing thermals for how the product will be used, and they designed it as such.

Random Internet takes are not worth 2¢. They are negative information, a negative 2¢ as it were, and 99.9% of the time is not correct.

I think that is way WAY overly critical.  Keep something cooler for even a bit longer has a benefit that is worth far more than 2¢, and so long as the use of a thermal pad in that manner does not negatively impact the longevity of the machine. Hot legs be darned, I see such "mods" as being "mods," and therefore not worthy of condemnation.  It's silly to condemn mods because people who care about the bottom not being too hot for their bare naked legs probably aren't the people who will be doing such mods in the first place.

Indeed, I would say we need to applaud the mods because modders often are thinkers who do sometimes come up with some pretty neat ideas.  Folks in the vintage Mac community do mods all the time.  It upsets the purists, but the mods please the majority of us.

This is true regardless of how one feels about MaxTech.

tht

jdw said:

tht said:

Lots of sturm and drang with the release of the M2, and it's always best to ignore it. Like Maxtech's thermal pad mod. They did it with the M1 MBA too, which kept the temperatures of their M1 and M2 MBA lower for a little longer. Just your usual higher thermal capacitance soaking up a little more heat for a little longer - the pad was in contact with the bottom aluminum panel - before the system got into equilibrium and the chip reached its maximum allowed temperatures. Maxtech seemed proud of this but it's a shit take. They said it themselves: it came at the cost of bottom panel being hotter, and probably too hot to touch. They felt it was ok because they were using the MBA on a desk.

Guess who would not be ok with that? People using it as laptop, on their laps, holding it with their hands. Basically the purpose of a laptop. No OEM would do that. Even gaming laptop OEMs won't do that. This is not Apple not caring about thermals. It's Apple prioritizing thermals for how the product will be used, and they designed it as such.

Random Internet takes are not worth 2¢. They are negative information, a negative 2¢ as it were, and 99.9% of the time is not correct.

I think that is way WAY overly critical.  Keep something cooler for even a bit longer has a benefit that is worth far more than 2¢, and so long as the use of a thermal pad in that manner does not negatively impact the longevity of the machine. Hot legs be darned, I see such "mods" as being "mods," and therefore not worthy of condemnation.  It's silly to condemn mods because people who care about the bottom not being too hot for their bare naked legs probably aren't the people who will be doing such mods in the first place.

Indeed, I would say we need to applaud the mods because modders often are thinkers who do sometimes come up with some pretty neat ideas.  Folks in the vintage Mac community do mods all the time.  It upsets the purists, but the mods please the majority of us.

This is true regardless of how one feels about MaxTech.

I'm fine with what the modders are doing, at their personal level. It's their machine, do as they will. The implication that the OEM doesn't know what they are doing? That's definitely the implication, right? That is definitely a shit take bereft of any sense whatsoever. Maxtech may not even have meant for it to go this way (leading to misinformation), but they definitely should know better. They do not live with the constraints nor the responsibilities of the OEM, and that sort of stuff only serves to mislead people on why things are done.

And, nobody talked about the consequences of having a hotter bottom panel, nor what it really buys. What does it really buy a user? A tinkerer gets some joy points for the feat. That's great for them. The remaining 99.9%? I think it just makes them more misinformed. There is zero need for that 99.9% to even think about it. Maybe if Maxtech explained what the thermal pad was doing, I'd be more understanding, but this is their 2nd go around. They know precisely what it is doing (creating a heat conductance path to the bottom panel) and heating up the bottom panel. As it stands, a lot of people think the thermal pad is black hole for heat, basically magic.

This ifixit video with all its snark is a variation of the same here too. It really is best to listen with the audio off. Too many cliffhanger drama style questions. Questions that they know the answer to. If they don't know the why of this or that, do the work to find out.

indiekiduk

The cooling secret is usually on the inside of the bottom case panel which they neglected to look at.

sbdude

indiekiduk said:

The cooling secret is usually on the inside of the bottom case panel which they neglected to look at.

You get more clicks if you just say "magic".

dewme

tht said:

bageljoey said:

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

Dramatic much?  It’s not “horribly handicapped” as much as it is designed for its target user. That target user is the one who spends most of their time surfing web pages, reading and writing email, typing on word processors. 

That may be 80% of the laptop market.

Sure, it’s got an M2 and can handle video and photo editing, but if you are a professional with a processor heavy workflow, than yes, this may be the wrong choice for you. 

Why is it so hard for people to understand that not everyone (or even most people) needs a pro computer?

It is fine for most heavy single logic heavy workflows. That is, if a workflow is mostly CPU, or mostly GPU or mostly ML, it is perfectly fine to run it hours on end. 

It is obviously fine for MS Office workflows, which are what, 90% of PC market? It will be fine for most programming (Python, Web site development, C based, Swift), and associated workflows. It will be fine for most web based workflows, especially with appropriate amounts of RAM. If a user has tens of Chrome windows and tens of Chrome tabs open, they definitely need more RAM, not necessarily CPU. A normal user, 8 GB RAM is fine. 

If your workflow can make use of high core counts, and if you want less time, pay up and get more computer. All these video reviewers and gamers think their workflows require a lot of computing performance? It isn’t that much. Perhaps it’s a lot for a desktop computer though, but even with that it isn’t as much as it used to be. Not many comments of needing to run a job overnight anymore. 

I'm glad you responded exactly in a way that I was trying to find a way to respond. Every time I see some of these nonsensical comments about how a product like the MacBook Air or any of the non-Pro labeled iPads being little more than a netbook or Chromebook "web surfing" or "word processing" appliance all I can do is shake my head and wonder what WTF planet these people are living on.

I'd really like to see and hear about the actual "pro" applications that they are running and a summation of how they are being materially limited, in a monetizable dollars and cents, billing hours, delivery deadlines, etc., way because one of these "non-Pro" products in question is simply not able to hack it for them and is costing them - something other than bragging rights among the online benchmarking obsessed technorati.

Sorry, but coming up with fictitious use cases that only 0.00001 percent of the computing population care about, like needing to maintain 150 open tabs in Chrome, are total BS. No sane person other than a tester (most of whom are mostly sane most of the time) are going to open 150 tabs in Chrome. Hell, I can only manage a handful of tabs at most and trying to find the 1-in-150 tab that I'm looking for would take far more time than simply typing in a URL.

Yeah, I'm venting, but anyone who's been using personal computers for more than few years knows that real people have been solving real problems, really big problems in fact, and getting real non-trivial work done, making non-trivial amounts of cash for many decades using computers that pale in comparison to what is considered to be a  "entry level" computer in the past several years. I'm not talking web surfing, email, or doing PowerPoints. 

I do remember a time when doing a full system build would take an entire weekend, but the efficiency, effectiveness, and intelligence of the tools (and system architectures) have advanced to such a degree that even a computer with modest contemporary hardware can breeze through system builds that are several orders of magnitude larger in seconds or minutes, not days. A lot of what we do with personal computers has gotten a lot smarter. It's not all brute force. In fact, to really put a lot of stress on modern computing systems (for the vast majority of applications) you basically have to resort to using brute force, i.e., dumber, techniques.

I'm not saying there aren't applications that demand massive computing capability and resources, because there are. But most of these are on the fringes of the normal curve and aren't even candidates for running on entry level or mainstream systems, unless you are very patient.  Time is money, so I'd be interested to hear what kind of money we are talking about that steers regular computer users who work/play with computers (people other than benchmarkers) to make a choice about which model of computer to purchase. If my needs were limited to web browsing, word processing, small spreadsheets, and Python programming a $50 Raspberry Pi 4 hooked up to a spare HDMI port on my TV would more than fit the bill. Relegating a MacBook Air for these tasks alone would be like using a 25 lb sledge hammer to drive a brad.

applepoor

Well stated

tht

FileMakerFeller said:

tht said:

lam92103 said:

Apple doesn't give a shit about thermals. According to them the plebs that cannot purchase a MacBook Pro deserve something that is horribly handicapped. No wonder people are still holding onto their Intel Macs

I think you really have the wrong take here. Apple cares most about thermals out of any OEM out there. It's not even close with perhaps the small shops specializing in silent PCs. And dollars to donuts, the thermal design of Apple's laptops is better than any other OEMs.

The goal of the MBA is to create a thin, long lasting, noise-less laptop. The lack of a fan is a feature, and doesn't demonstrate that they don't care about thermals. Being fanless is the number goal for the MBA. The M2 is about as performant as a 30 to 45 W TDP x86 processor, is housed in a 11 mm thick laptop, doesn't make any fan noise, and lasts longer than competitors. It's the best laptop for basically 90% of the market. It's not even close.

Lots of sturm and drang with the release of the M2, and it's always best to ignore it. Like Maxtech's thermal pad mod. They did it with the M1 MBA too, which kept the temperatures of their M1 and M2 MBA lower for a little longer. Just your usual higher thermal capacitance soaking up a little more heat for a little longer - the pad was in contact with the bottom aluminum panel - before the system got into equilibrium and the chip reached its maximum allowed temperatures. Maxtech seemed proud of this but it's a shit take. They said it themselves: it came at the cost of bottom panel being hotter, and probably too hot to touch. They felt it was ok because they were using the MBA on a desk.

Guess who would not be ok with that? People using it as laptop, on their laps, holding it with their hands. Basically the purpose of a laptop. No OEM would do that. Even gaming laptop OEMs won't do that. This is not Apple not caring about thermals. It's Apple prioritizing thermals for how the product will be used, and they designed it as such.

Random Internet takes are not worth 2¢. They are negative information, a negative 2¢ as it were, and 99.9% of the time is not correct.

About two years ago I did a bit of idle research about building my own PC. I wanted to see if I could make a fan-less desktop with reasonably high-end components. The best case I could find was US$1700. For just the case.

Today, you can get something like "The Beast" from MonsterLabo (https://www.monsterlabo.com/page-d-articles/the-beast) starting at EUR790 (again, for just the case) or pick an already-assembled PC from, say, SilentPC (https://silentpc.com/fanless-pcs/) with prices starting at US$1340 for a minimally-expandable Ryzen 5600G system. Compare that to the M1 Mac Mini with the same 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD drive (the Ryzen system comes with a DVD drive) and a base price of US$699.

Apple cares a great deal about thermals and provides better performance for less power and a lower price than anything on the PC enthusiast side of things when you want a system without the noise of fans.

It's been a while since I looked in fanless or low noise PC designs. Thanks for the links!

If I actually had a use case for a PC, I would seriously give some thought to that MonsterLabo "The First". Small footprint. I don't mind the cost as you aren't going to fine such huge sinks for less. It looks like you will need to add a fan if you want good performance out of a GPU or a high end Alder Lake, though. With both the SilentPC and MonsterLabo, they can't go all the way fanless with higher performance components. If the system was less than 100 W or 200 W depending on the case, fanless without too much compromise. An i9-12900 and a RTX3060, looks like they will be Watt limited unless you add the fan.

That's if you are interested in having a high Watt computer in your room. I have zero interest in that now. I will be happy with an Mac mini with an M1 Pro or M2 Pro in it, and with an 8 to 16 TB of OWC miniStack drives on top. 30 to 50 Watts max, or less.