I love "the process was quite friendly" coupled with "two of the connectors broke when I looked at them and one costs hundreds of dollars to replace".
volkl48
Kind of a thing that isn't uniquely difficult if you've ever worked in a laptop before, hard if you've never done it.
-----
The ZIF connectors for those fans aren't different or much more fragile than the ones in most other laptops.
The adhesives on certain cables tend to trip people up a bit with causing them to pull more than they should and damage things.
Gently working under and releasing the adhesives on those fan cables with the spudger (or a fingernail) before you even start trying to move/unplug them will work a lot better for not tearing things than grabbing them with tweezers will.
The TouchID cable is fragile. Still shouldn't be any serious risk of breaking if you know to treat it with caution, but that would always be the one to take the most care with and watch the most closely while you're working around it.
-----
The secondary challenge is pretty much just making sure you have all the cables out of the way when you're putting the board back in, because you've got a dozen or more that you need to watch the positioning of and/or tape out of the way.
danieldk
I changed/replaced a bunch of things in my ThinkPad T14 without any issues, it's very easy, it is clearly made to open up and update. I wouldn't dare to do that with my MacBook Pro.
jchw
Honestly I think this is overstating things, most connectors on most laptops and phones are surprisingly robust. I've opened god knows how many laptops and phones, including some iPhones, and really those tiny ribbon cables have surprised me. Funny enough the one time I did break a ribbon cable it was actually the right joycon rail on a Nintendo Switch and it was quite an unreasonable amount of force I applied (by accident, of course...) I always smile a little seeing people on YouTube with super fine pliars carefully and tenderly taking off connectors, I usually use a butter knife or something like that to get them off and then replace them just using my finger. I actually worry more about carelessly creasing them too much rather than ripping them. Some of those things feel like they would require quite a lot of force to actually outright rip.
The actual issue I have with phones isn't that the connectors/cables break apart if you look at them funny, it's actually the god damn screens are insane to deal with and replace, with all of that adhesive crap.
This all to say, I think Apple is doing poorly here, their ribbon cables should probably be more robust on these often quite expensive devices. I know they can do it because I've experienced Apple devices with pretty robust internals... (and also similarly, have seen and heard of Apple devices where they've mysteriously cheaped out on components like voltage regulators and made their devices totally unnecessarily worse and more failure prone.)
axoltl
I'm actually very surprised this happened. I've dis- and reassembled dozens of iPhones (from the iPhone 4 all the way up to the iPhone 16) and I've never torn a single flex cable.
You just have to be careful not to pull on the flex, but the connector instead. This logic applies as much to pulling a plug out of a wall socket as it does a thin flex with a board-to-board connector.
That said, would I characterize disassembling any Apple product as "quite friendly"? No. Do not attempt unless you're either familiar with how things go together or you're willing to spend the money to replace the parts you broke. If those aren't options, find a local repair shop.
diffuse_l
I tried to repair a macbook air, and did manage to tear the microphone cable, because I didn't notice the connector :|
Like you said, you need to be careful, but you better be prepared to pay dearly (or manage without) for your mistakes...
diggan
To be fair, compared to the typical Apple experience of modifying stuff, that is quite friendly.
Although author seems to have broken the TouchID sensor and button in the process, which is less neat and maybe not so friendly even for Apple.
pier25
> that is quite friendly
Maybe if you're referring to iPhones and iPads.
The Intel Macbooks were always super easy to open for cleanup or replacing parts. I did it for years and never broke anything.
diggan
> Maybe if you're referring to iPhones and iPads.
Or the new laptops ;) They're no longer Intel Macbooks, and compared to laptops from other brands, the new Apple hardware seems way harder (although I'd confess to not having the experience of picking any of the M* models apart personally). https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...
Didn't the latest iPhones have some sort of "repairability" push or something? Don't remember exactly, but seems to have given me the idea that Apple is moving towards making it easier to repair the iPhones specifically.
pier25
> Or the new laptops ;)
Yeah that was obvious from the OP :)
moribvndvs
> The fan was incredibly easy to swap out (hats off there, Apple!)
After reading this, an Apple middle manager is gathering an emergency meeting to figure out who fucked up
rglullis
"Once you ignore that it lost Touch ID and will have to pay hundreds of dollars to Apple for the privilege of repairing it, the process was quite smooth".
The Stockholm syndrome is strong with this one.
speedgoose
By the way, the Stockholm syndrome isn’t scientifically a thing.
xandrius
Still drive across a point.
kstrauser
Also, the sarcasm.
t1234s
Apple ownership is more like battered wife syndrome
t1234s
I had to do this to my 2012 MBP (along with fixing the gpu solder problem) and I found it wasn't that hard to disassemble / reassemble. Also replacing the battery, upgrading the ram/storage was very easy to do. Contrast this to my 2017 MBP which has to score on the top 10 list of worst apple products of all time as far as quality and ease of repair go.
Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.
hengheng
I was tempted to do that with my first-gen Intel MacBook because it just wouldn't run quiet when idle, that is until I discovered by how much I could undervolt that chip with a random tool that I could just download. I believe I went from 1.26V to 1.03V, or at least these are the numbers still etched into my brain.
Ratio of the squares of those numbers is 2/3, and so the laptop was certainly quiet without having to open it up. But I was surprised at Intel's product back then.
jpalomaki
I replaced battery and did repaste on Intel MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar). Quite tedious process. So many extremely tiny screws with different sizes and all those small connectors. Having been mostly opening ThinkPads before I wasn't really prepared for it. Also did the mistake of not reading the full instructions before starting. The process took way longer than I expected and with zillion teeny tiny half millimeter screws on table I was afraid to take a break.
zdw
If you have any of the Air models which lack fans, there's a common hack of putting thermal pads between the CPU heatspreader and case, effectively turning the bottom case into a large heatsink, and giving your system a longer maximum performance before throttling.
The downsides is that this makes the bottom of the case quite hot on a place you can touch, but putting a plastic hardshell over the entire laptop deals with that, and also gives protection.
ianferrel
Making the bottom case a heatsink and then putting a plastic insulator around it seems to defeat the purpose of the whole attempt?
manaskarekar
It's pulling the heat away from a concentrated region into a larger region.
Performance numbers reflect the optimization. I personally haven't done it for fear of affecting the battery lifespan (and possibly other components' lifespans.)
Really hard to resist due to its simplicity and noticeable improvements.
fph
Not to mention paying premium for an extra-thin computer and then making it thicker with a plastic hardshell.
exe34
Reminds me of the advice given for outdoor electronics: make sure your enclosure is absolutely watertight, and then drill a hole in the bottom to drain any residual buildup from humidity.
delusional
I take him saying:
> a longer maximum performance before throttling.
As implying that the purpose is to increase the thermal mass, not necessarily the dissipation. It should still be able to reach maximum performance for longer, it will then just also take longer to settle back down again.
zdw
This is the correct interpretation - you get a bit longer max clockspeed due to the thermal mass (and thus more heat overall).
Is the added plastic shell case a "bandaid on a bandaid" sort of solution to deal with that heat? Absolutely. But you might want that case anyway - I've had several laptops that would have had broken screens or were yanked off a desk by an attached cable and survived by the sacrificial plastic shell taking the impact.
Like all things, it's a tradeoff to consider.
ianferrel
Makes sense.
evanjrowley
Thanks for that info. I've been interested in this hack and use plastic hard shells, but have been concerned that the plastic covering might prevent proper heat dissipation. It sounds like the tradeoff is worth it.
phoronixrly
I hope apple engineers see this and cringe as hard as I do each time people have to come to such hacks to work around their infamous thermal design...
Take the product expected to have top-notch design with best in its class UX and discover you need to open it up and make a hardware modification and then cover its metal body with a cheap-looking plastic case...
If you run Asahi on it as well, at this point why even bother with Apple...
Retric
Price discrimination, MacBooks aren’t their top of the line product so it’s intentionally less powerful than it could be.
ErrorNoBrain
someone made a youtube video not too long ago (i think was that guy who made the 3rd party ssd upgrade kits?) he said that apple uses a special type of thermal paste... not that its some super awesome unique product, it's just that its not a paste in the typical sense, like you'd use on a GPU or CPU. It's more like a "putty".
smallpipe
I remember doing it on a thinkpad. I didn't break any cables, I didn't need a guide, and it got significantly quieter afterwards. Macbooks are pretty, they've got a great CPU, but the repairability is just rubbish
reddalo
> repairability is just rubbish
I wonder if something will change for the better in the future, given that the EU will force (from 18th February 2027) every computer sold in the EU to have removable and replaceable batteries.
xandrius
Waiting for that day to come before even considering buying my own macbook. Let's see.
thewebguyd
Same with most dell laptops I've owned. Pop off the back panel and everything is there, easily accessible, standard screws. Just did this on an Inspiron I have, just about 8 screws, pop the heat sync off, repaste, reassemble and done. Took like 15 minutes. Plus the RAM and SSD are also easily accessible and replaceable, as is the battery in a matter of minutes.
sethhochberg
The part I have a hard time with as a corporate purchaser is that the failure/repair/replacement rate on our small number of Dell machines is upwards of 50%. We've only got about a dozen in use, and less then half of them have just worked reliably. At a certain point I don't really care how repairable the Macbooks we buy for almost everyone else are/aren't because the failure rate on those is trivial by comparison.
I'm glad the Dell repair guy who gets sent out has a pleasant experience when he replaces the guts of a machine but my team still has to spend time and money shipping around replacements and dealing with warranty repair at a rate we just don't see with the Apple gear.
Once upon a time our entire corporate fleet was all Macbooks but the only thing we had worse luck with than these Dells was training nontechnical users on how to get to their Excel or specialized actuarial/compliance software through virtualization
thewebguyd
No argument there. Where I work (I'm in infrastructure, not a dev) we've switched almost entirely to MacBooks and experienced the same when were a Dell shop. Horrible reliability. We've been on Macs since ~2023 and I've yet to need to send one off for repair or RMA.
I keep them for use at home as Linux machines because of the repairability and ease of upgrading, but my main machine is still a Mac.
I'd love MacBook level of hardware quality combined with easy access to repair and swap parts.
dmsnell
Several years ago I replaced the thermal paste in my MacBook Pro and I did it in two steps: first to high-end paste; and second to liquid metal.
The results were impressive, and I think it’s a bit veiled how paste degradation over time impacts perceived laptop speeds. I’ve been tempted to replace the paste on new devices but haven’t taken that plunge.
The author should benchmark a few months afterwards. A common problem with using "PC" thermal pastes (for lack of a better word) is that they experience more pump out than whatever they use for laptops, so a few months later the performance might end up worse than before he changed the paste.
LorenDB
Maybe thermal pads then? I use PTM7950 in my desktop.
dsego
I recently paid 60 euros to get my 14" m1 macbook cleaned, it was extremely dusty inside, so much so that the left fan started making strange squealing noises and then a pinging sonar-type sound every few seconds. Luckily with the combination of the fan control app and the built in apple diagnostic tool I managed to determine it was probably the fan and brought it to the local service shop to disassemble and clean. Now the only things left are to replace the original battery which is at 75% and replace the rustling speaker which was damaged by ants getting inside through the vents and chewing on it.
haiku2077
Don't use regular thermal paste or pads in a Mac. They're not suitable for non-pressure mounted applications.
You can buy TCRS Carbon Black if you really need to repaste a Mac part instead of swapping a new part that was pasted at the factory.
jeron
this read more like "Do Not Repaste Your MacBook". There's no way this was worth 5 degrees and 100 points in cinbench (sic)
saurik
I mean, even the title very clearly says "(but don't)".
maz1b
While I can appreciate the intent of this blog post.. I don't see how the title should be "repaste your Macbook" when touch ID breaks and the button stops working.
Doesn't Apple offer this service if you have AppleCare+? or even if you dont? that way its on them?
thimabi
I wonder if Apple itself offers repasting services via AppleCare. For someone like me, with little experience in handling electronics, it might be better than trying to fiddle with the MacBook’s internals.
reddalo
Offering such a service would be an admission by Apple that their products are not God-tier.
pram
A nice and unexpected thing about the current MBPs is they usually have their fan completely turned off. There was barely any dust in my M1 Max MBP when I looked.
Havoc
Need to repaste and replace pads on my 3090 (appears to be overheating) and dreading the process, especially the pads.
-----
The ZIF connectors for those fans aren't different or much more fragile than the ones in most other laptops.
The adhesives on certain cables tend to trip people up a bit with causing them to pull more than they should and damage things.
Gently working under and releasing the adhesives on those fan cables with the spudger (or a fingernail) before you even start trying to move/unplug them will work a lot better for not tearing things than grabbing them with tweezers will.
The TouchID cable is fragile. Still shouldn't be any serious risk of breaking if you know to treat it with caution, but that would always be the one to take the most care with and watch the most closely while you're working around it.
-----
The secondary challenge is pretty much just making sure you have all the cables out of the way when you're putting the board back in, because you've got a dozen or more that you need to watch the positioning of and/or tape out of the way.
The actual issue I have with phones isn't that the connectors/cables break apart if you look at them funny, it's actually the god damn screens are insane to deal with and replace, with all of that adhesive crap.
This all to say, I think Apple is doing poorly here, their ribbon cables should probably be more robust on these often quite expensive devices. I know they can do it because I've experienced Apple devices with pretty robust internals... (and also similarly, have seen and heard of Apple devices where they've mysteriously cheaped out on components like voltage regulators and made their devices totally unnecessarily worse and more failure prone.)
You just have to be careful not to pull on the flex, but the connector instead. This logic applies as much to pulling a plug out of a wall socket as it does a thin flex with a board-to-board connector.
That said, would I characterize disassembling any Apple product as "quite friendly"? No. Do not attempt unless you're either familiar with how things go together or you're willing to spend the money to replace the parts you broke. If those aren't options, find a local repair shop.
Like you said, you need to be careful, but you better be prepared to pay dearly (or manage without) for your mistakes...
Although author seems to have broken the TouchID sensor and button in the process, which is less neat and maybe not so friendly even for Apple.
Maybe if you're referring to iPhones and iPads.
The Intel Macbooks were always super easy to open for cleanup or replacing parts. I did it for years and never broke anything.
Or the new laptops ;) They're no longer Intel Macbooks, and compared to laptops from other brands, the new Apple hardware seems way harder (although I'd confess to not having the experience of picking any of the M* models apart personally). https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...
Didn't the latest iPhones have some sort of "repairability" push or something? Don't remember exactly, but seems to have given me the idea that Apple is moving towards making it easier to repair the iPhones specifically.
Yeah that was obvious from the OP :)
After reading this, an Apple middle manager is gathering an emergency meeting to figure out who fucked up
The Stockholm syndrome is strong with this one.
Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.
Ratio of the squares of those numbers is 2/3, and so the laptop was certainly quiet without having to open it up. But I was surprised at Intel's product back then.
The downsides is that this makes the bottom of the case quite hot on a place you can touch, but putting a plastic hardshell over the entire laptop deals with that, and also gives protection.
Performance numbers reflect the optimization. I personally haven't done it for fear of affecting the battery lifespan (and possibly other components' lifespans.)
Really hard to resist due to its simplicity and noticeable improvements.
> a longer maximum performance before throttling.
As implying that the purpose is to increase the thermal mass, not necessarily the dissipation. It should still be able to reach maximum performance for longer, it will then just also take longer to settle back down again.
Is the added plastic shell case a "bandaid on a bandaid" sort of solution to deal with that heat? Absolutely. But you might want that case anyway - I've had several laptops that would have had broken screens or were yanked off a desk by an attached cable and survived by the sacrificial plastic shell taking the impact.
Like all things, it's a tradeoff to consider.
Take the product expected to have top-notch design with best in its class UX and discover you need to open it up and make a hardware modification and then cover its metal body with a cheap-looking plastic case...
If you run Asahi on it as well, at this point why even bother with Apple...
I wonder if something will change for the better in the future, given that the EU will force (from 18th February 2027) every computer sold in the EU to have removable and replaceable batteries.
I'm glad the Dell repair guy who gets sent out has a pleasant experience when he replaces the guts of a machine but my team still has to spend time and money shipping around replacements and dealing with warranty repair at a rate we just don't see with the Apple gear.
Once upon a time our entire corporate fleet was all Macbooks but the only thing we had worse luck with than these Dells was training nontechnical users on how to get to their Excel or specialized actuarial/compliance software through virtualization
I keep them for use at home as Linux machines because of the repairability and ease of upgrading, but my main machine is still a Mac.
I'd love MacBook level of hardware quality combined with easy access to repair and swap parts.
The results were impressive, and I think it’s a bit veiled how paste degradation over time impacts perceived laptop speeds. I’ve been tempted to replace the paste on new devices but haven’t taken that plunge.
https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2019/04/13/increasing-thermal-h...
You can buy TCRS Carbon Black if you really need to repaste a Mac part instead of swapping a new part that was pasted at the factory.
Doesn't Apple offer this service if you have AppleCare+? or even if you dont? that way its on them?
>[After] Max CPU temperature: 96°C
What? Is that normal for macs?
Vaguely unrelated I'm only buying thermal grizzly paste in future...that factory tour they did was super impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsIk_mMrt2w