New MacBook Pro uses battery pull tabs for easier replacement

Apple's redesigned 14-inch MacBook Pro battery swaps glue for pull tabs, a change that could make parts replacement and repair a more user-friendly process.

Discovered in repair firm iFixit's ongoing teardown of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, battery pull tabs, or stretch release adhesive tabs, allow for secure installation and easy removal of parts without screws or glue. The design consideration is used in iPhone and other Apple devices, but has not transferred over to Mac beyond recent MacBook Air models.

While pull tabs for MacBook Pro's four outer battery cells are easily accessible, extracting the two central cells will take a bit more finagling as they are situated beneath the trackpad. Removing the part reveals cutouts in the top case that provide access to the battery cells' adhesive flaps. Further, iFixit notes that the logic board no longer appears to obstruct battery access.

Apple's professional laptop line once incorporated replaceable batteries that could be swapped out through an easy-access panel. That was more than ten years ago. In 2009, the company made the switch to built-in batteries that were initially held in to the device's unibody top case by screws. The company moved to glue in 2012, making home repairs a difficult and risky operation.

iFixit's disassembly is still underway and it is unclear if the battery pull tab design extends to the 16-inch MacBook Pro model.

Early customers offered sneak peeks into Apple's 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros on Tuesday, revealing an internal design largely borrowed from 2019. There are obvious differences, however, including thermal system tweaks for Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, speaker adjustments and consideration for additional ports.

12 Comments

entropys 4302 comments · 13 Years

About 3 years ago

This really is a return of Macintosh greatness, after half a decade of frankly disappointing hardware.

replaceable battery! Awesome. Does that mean the M2 MBA will also have it, and maybe, just maybe, upgradeable storage?
[enters swoon dream]

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

entropys said:

This really is a return of Macintosh greatness, after half a decade of frankly disappointing hardware.

replaceable battery! Awesome. Does that mean the M2 MBA will also have it, and maybe, just maybe, upgradeable storage?
[enters swoon dream]

No on storage. Apple has integrated storage in a way that replaceable storage can’t compete with. Same with memory. I don’t see how Apple could add the ability to use replaceable NVMe storage that would run in the 5000MB/s range unless they provide multiple sockets with hardware RAID. I think this, along with the ridiculous bus speed, might be how Apple gets that storage speed. Best way to add storage is through Thunderbolt.

Or an SD card slot. Bulk secondary storage doesn’t have to be super quick.

bobolicious 1173 comments · 10 Years

For consideration: "Seagate FireCuda 530 1TB Solid State Drive - M.2 PCIe Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.4, speeds up to 7300 MB/s" www.gamingpcbuilder.com/best-m-2-nvme-ssd

I've replaced batteries in a couple of iPhones including one with adhesive pull tabs that both broke. The latter I found by design a much tougher and arguably riskier process given the phyical stress required to remove the battery. www.robsonforensic.com/articles/lithium-battery-fire-expert-witness

crowley 10431 comments · 15 Years

rob53 said:

entropys said:

This really is a return of Macintosh greatness, after half a decade of frankly disappointing hardware.

replaceable battery! Awesome. Does that mean the M2 MBA will also have it, and maybe, just maybe, upgradeable storage?
[enters swoon dream]

No on storage. Apple has integrated storage in a way that replaceable storage can’t compete with. Same with memory. I don’t see how Apple could add the ability to use replaceable NVMe storage that would run in the 5000MB/s range unless they provide multiple sockets with hardware RAID. I think this, along with the ridiculous bus speed, might be how Apple gets that storage speed. Best way to add storage is through Thunderbolt.

The integrated storage doesn't have to be replaceable, but an extra NVMe m.2 slot to add an extra drive would be a really cool move for Apple. That can be plenty fast, and while Thunderbolt expandability is great, packing extra storage into a notebook is far better.