No sooner than Apple has announced a new 13-inch plastic unibody MacBook than some bright spark tears the machine apart to see exactly how Cupertino's product engineers have put the latest Mac laptop together.
And the big news about the new MacBook? You are mainly looking at a notably improved battery and battery-life (Apple is claiming 7-hours) and the loss of a Firewire port (which might prove to be a considerable pain for business users and video-editing purposes).
iFixit's teardown also shows that the new MacBook's battery and hard drive have swapped places. Otherwise, the machine's gizzards look very similar to that of its predecessor.
What's disappeared?
In terms of what Apple has removed: "FireWire is gone! If you need FireWire, now only a MacBook Pro will do. Also gone is an IR port for a remote. As far as we know, that makes the MacBook the only currently shipping Apple laptop that doesn't support a remote. Apple has also replaced Mini-DVI with Mini DisplayPort, and replaced the two audio jacks with a single audio in/out port."
And in terms of the most important improvement, the battery, the new MacBook battery is is 60 watt-hours, the same capacity as the 13" MacBook Pro.
iFixit notes: "The previous plastic MacBooks featured a 55 watt-hour battery and claimed a 5-hour run time. Apple has added 5 watt-hours of battery capacity and two hours of run time. Either this machine is substantially more efficient than its predecessor (thanks to the LED backlight?), or Apple's new battery life claims are overly optimistic."
You can see iFixit's YouTube video slideshow below.
