What The M2 MacBook Pro Teardown Confirms

Ever wondered what the M2 MacBook Pro teardown confirms? The teardown of the new notebook has revealed that Apple’s MacBook Pro with M2 chip is essentially the same laptop as its predecessor, the MacBook Pro 13-inch M1.

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Of course, the parallels are clear. And from the outside, it appeared that the only substantial differences between the two generations of laptops were the upgrade from the M1 SoC to an M2. And also the availability of greater system RAM (24GB if needed)

The M2 MacBook Pro is actually nearly identical to the M1 model on the inside. It comes with the same chassis, display, Touch Bar, and internal layout, with a few minor changes, according to an iFixit breakdown.

In essence, Apple has taken the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 SoC, removed it, and installed an M2 in its place. Other smaller internal components have only received modest changes.

 

What the M2 MacBook Pro teardown confirms

All the cables, stand-offs, screws, grounding pins, and other components are still present. This is with the exception of the altered logic board and some modifications to the heat-sink (it has square corners, rather than rounded as seen on the M1 version).

So there hasn’t really been much of a shift, albeit one unfortunate alteration has occurred. Specifically, the fact that the storage on the entry-level M2 MacBook Pro is slower than the M1 MacBook Pro due to a different SSD arrangement (this is only true for that base model, though, not any of the higher tier versions).

Theoretically, you ought to be able to simply slide the M2 board into the M1 MacBook Pro, and iFixit went ahead and achieved this swap – except the laptop failed to work, or more particularly, the trackpad, keyboard, and Touch ID sensor no longer worked after the swap.

In a nutshell, iFixit comes to the conclusion that Apple is using software locks to “blatantly attempt to thwart repairs and replacements.”