I know it will be a while before e-scrappers start to see the newMacbook Pros as recyclable but I thought this was interesting. THis is a pretty big deal to me since I do a pretty good business repairing mac laptops for people, and fixing scrapped macbooks for resale.
The RAM is now soldered to the logic board — making future memory upgrades impossible. And the battery is glued to the case, requiring customers to mail their laptop to Apple every so often for a $200 replacement. The design may well be comprised of “highly recyclable aluminum and glass” — but my friends in the electronics recycling industry tell me they have no way of recycling aluminum that has glass glued to it like Apple did with both this machine and the recent iPad.
This also makes a shift in the way all macbooks are made. The Macbook Air was the first thing that came out that was unable to be upgraded, next was the iPad and now the Macbook Pro are trending that way. The most telling thing though is the batteries. All the laptops that have some before this Macbook the battery was easy to replace. Most batteries are where you finally lose your laptop portability because they are usually the weakest link. This is just another way for Apple to gouge you to send in your macbook for a replacement battery instead of being able to do it yourself.
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