Anyone hoping Apple's latest MacBook Air might inherit the iPhone's recent repair-friendly tweaks is in for disappointment, iFixit's teardown crew has found.
Introduced earlier this month, the M4 MacBook Air brought none of the repairability improvements iFixit hoped to see in a new generation of Apple laptops.
"We're sad to report that the M4 MacBook Air didn't get any real repairability upgrades, and many of the welcome improvements to the iPhone repair experience haven't made their way to the MacBook yet," iFixit director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain said in the teardown report. "It's largely business as usual: a mix of good intentions and frustrating limitations that continues to fall short of what consumers deserve in a premium laptop."
By "good intentions," Chamberlain largely meant the release of the M4 MacBook Air's full service manual on release day, along with access to select parts via Apple's Self Service Repair store. Beyond that, there's not much in the way of good news for iUsers hoping their new device would be easy to maintain.
Sure, there are easily accessed and replaced MagSafe and USB-C ports that aren't glued to the logic board, which iFixit describes as "nearly best-in-class," and the battery isn't all that inaccessible - but that's about it.
M4-Macbook-Air-port-replacement
The one bright spot in M4 MacBook Air repairability: Easily swapped ports - click to enlarge (Pic: iFixit)
The battery still uses the same adhesive strips, which iFixit calls "easier said than done" to remove. The new electrically releasing adhesive used in the iPhone 16 series is nowhere to be found. Accessing the display for replacement is also "a complex, multi-step process buried deeper in the device than should be necessary," while the keyboard and TouchID/power button are described as a "true repairability nightmare."
To make matters even more complicated, Apple's pledge to eliminate parts pairing on iPhones - allowing reused genuine components - still doesn't apply to MacBooks, as iFixit's teardown shows.
iFixit swapped logic boards between two identical M4 MacBook Airs and found software locks kicked in, leaving parts of the machine nonfunctional. The System Configuration utility flagged an error, disabling True Tone in the display.
"Our only path to remedying that error was to go through the Self Service Repair Store team, which of course, we hadn't used to buy the part," iFixit noted. In short, swapping parts out of a broken M4 MacBook Air is just as impractical as it was with previous models.
"These software blocks manifest regardless of whether you're using third-party components or OEM parts from salvaged devices," Chamberlain wrote. "MacBook refurbishers have asked repeatedly for a path to calibrating salvaged screens."
With all that in mind, iFixit gave the M4 MacBook Air a middle-of-the-road repairability score of 5 out of 10.
"While it offers better repairability than an iPad (though that's a low bar to clear), it still falls short of what we'd consider genuinely repairable hardware," Chamberlain said.
As with much of Apple's recent nods toward repairability, iFixit found the reality falls short -particularly frustrated by lingering software locks that hobble third-party and salvaged parts.
"Until Apple really focuses hard on the System Configuration software experience, we won't see true repairability for any MacBook in their lineup," Chamberlain concluded.
In short: if fixability is a key factor in your next laptop, you might want to skip this one - even at Apple's newly trimmed $999 starting price. ®