According to a team of technicians making a living out of tearing down and repairing electronics, Apple’s newest MacBook Pro computers are poorly assembled.
Such observations have escaped
iFixit teardowns of Apple products in the past, but
this time, the tinkerers were forced to throw in negative remarks in their in-depth analysis of how Early 2011 MacBook Pros were made.
Among the list of things that were noticeably out of place in a $1,800 notebook were a stripped screw near the notebook's subwoofer enclosure, an unlocked zero insertion force socket for the infrared sensor, and unusual amounts of thermal paste applied to both the central processing unit (CPU) and the graphical processing unit (GPU).
The technicians wonder whether “the gobs of thermal paste applied to the CPU and GPU will cause overheating issues down the road.”
The new MacBook Pros,
launched by Apple last week as a typical product refresh (rather than a revamping of the notebook line), include enhancements like Thunderbolt I/O, enhanced dual-core and quad-core processors from Intel, a new FaceTime HD camera, and new graphics from AMD for the higher-end 15-inch and 17-inch versions.
Starting at $1,199, the 13-inch MacBook Pro features Intel Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors up to 2.7 GHz, and Intel HD Graphics from the 3000 series.
The base system ships with a standard 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive spinning at 5400-rpm, and 7-hour built-in battery.
It remains to be seen whether or not all new MacBook Pro units have been poorly assembled, though it is fair to assume that iFixit simply got its hands on just one of such few machines out there.
Apple prides itself on offering the best of quality, and goes to great lengths to supervise both part suppliers and assembly lines working around the clock to build its products.
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