Roger Fingas
A teardown of Apple's latest Mac peripherals shows that the devices have many things in common with each other — including difficulty of repair — while borrowing some technologies from other Apple products.
The devices share many of the same chips, and use similar lithium-ion batteries, repair firm iFixit commented on Friday. All of them for instance sport the Broadcom BCM20733 Bluetooth 3.0 chip, even though the Trackpad 2 officially requires a Bluetooth 4.0-capable Mac.
The Magic Trackpad 2 is said to rely on the same Force Touch technology in current MacBooks, including four strain gauges for measuring pressure, and a similar Taptic Engine. The Trackpad largely only scales the technology up to a bigger size.
The Magic Mouse 2 is allegedly virtually identical to its predecessor, but with a Lightning port, and a lithium-ion battery in place of the AA slot. One oddity is that the Lightning port is on the bottom of the device, making mouse input impossible while charging.
Finally, the Magic Keyboard is descibed as borrowing the 12-inch Retina MacBook's layout and low-profile keys, but with a scissor mechanism in place of the MacBook's butterfly switches. Nevertheless the new peripheral's keys have just 1 millimeter of travel, according to iFixit, and press completely flat.
All three products scored just 3 out of 10 in iFixit's repairability ratings. The amount of adhesive used makes them difficult to open, the firm noted, and it may be possible to damage vital components in the process.
Christine McKee
Stephen Silver
Charles Martin
Amber Neely
51 Comments
Does iFixit tear down anything other than Apple products? And while some geeks might be interested in these teardowns, who repairs their own stuff anymore, especially mice, keyboards and trackpads. I wish iFixit would do away with these stupid and meaningless repairability scores.
Imagine buying a car with the battery welded inside the frame all but preventing the owner and many independent repairs shops from replacing it without damaging the vehicle. The manufacturer expects and hopes that when the battery goes dead in a few years, you'll just buy a new car.
I'm quick to defend Apple products, I drink their "Kool-Aid", and I suppose I could be considered a "fanboy" (or "fanman"). However, I'm not feeling this "sealed for life" technology. I have a problem when a $2,300 iMac is held together with double-sided tape.
seems like 1) a month battery life is pretty poor. should be able to do better than that...AA batteries can. 2) lightning connector on the bottom???? total fail. so un-apple like.
seems like
1) a month battery life is pretty poor. should be able to do better than that...AA batteries can.
2) lightning connector on the bottom???? total fail. so un-apple like.
1) You don't have to toss out alkaline batteries or remember to buy them, also I never got a month of battery life from that thing.
2) Where pray tell would they have put it. The bottom is the least visible area. Also what is so "un-apple" like about that.
seems like
1) a month battery life is pretty poor. should be able to do better than that...AA batteries can.
2) lightning connector on the bottom???? total fail. so un-apple like.
1) No, because as long as a rechargeable lasts some reasonable amount of time – and a month is way more than reasonable – there's no advantage to it lasting an extra long time.
2) And no, because operating a lithium battery device while float charging it at 100% shortens battery life expectancy. Putting the connector on the bottom deliberately prevents it being used in that manner. And if the mouse's ability to pick up 9 hours worth of usage with a 2 minute charge isn't good enough, then that would be an ADHD disorder beyond anyone else's scope.