Jul 22, 2011 11:57 GMT  ·  By

Notorious for their comprehensive hardware tear-downs, the tinkerers at iFixit have gotten hold of a new-generation MacBook Air and took it apart to determine what’s changed since Apple last revised the ultra-thin family of notebooks.

Readers shouldn’t get too excited as few components have been altered / replaced in the MBA since last year's update (except for the already confirmed enhancements), but there are a few observations to be made nonetheless. For example, the solid-state drive (SSD) is not soldered to the logic board, just like with the mid-2010 MacBook Air.

“Thankfully this means you can upgrade the SSD for more storage, but you're still out of luck if you need extra RAM,” says iFixit.

The technicians say the RAM is not user-serviceable, therefore “it might be worth it to buy the nicer model from the get-go.”

With the exception of the base 11-inch model, all MacBook Airs come with 4 gigs of RAM.

“Although this battery is rated the same as last year's model, it has a different model number: A1405. Last year's 13" battery was model A1377,” iFixit adds.

Moving on to the fans, the electronics repair shop noticed a substantially large oil slick beneath the fan shaft, leading them to conclude that “Apple was concerned about fan lubrication.”

By contrast, Apple toned down the use of thermal paste between the processor and the heat sink.

“This is a nice departure from Apple's recent trend of assaulting processors with gobs of thermal paste,” iFixit notes.

In addition to featuring more powerful CPUs, RAM, and more SSD, Apple’s newly revised Airs have also backlit keyboards.

The back-lighting is achieved via a couple LEDs that “transmit light through fiber optic channels to evenly illuminate the keys on the keyboard.”

The audio system is largely unchanged. That’s mainly because audio was already an impressive aspect even in the older MBAs.

“We've been impressed with the audio quality in Apple's mobile devices lately. High sound quality from such small speaker cones can be attributed to carefully tuning the speaker enclosure to maximize sound output,” iFixit stresses.

Finally, their teardown also reveals the lack of a FaceTime HD camera (currently present on all Macintosh computers that have a built-in cam).

The reason for this omission was “the thickness restriction of such a thin display,” iFixit concludes.