Teardown: Inside Apple MacBook Pro

Our colleagues at UBM TechInsights did a partial teardown of the new MacBook Pro from Apple. We have the pictures. The disassembled unit appears to be the $2799 configuration of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina screen. TechInsights did a separate teardown of the solid state drive (SSD) in the MacBook Pro, including x-ray images.

In this picture the back panel is opened. As with all MacBooks, it's pretty busy in there. We'll zoom in on the images to come. But it's immediately clear that the MacBook Pro, as we reported recently, is almost impossible to repair and probably quite difficult to recycle. Many components, such as RAM, are soldered to the motherboard. Some parts, such as the display and battery, are glued in, making access to other components difficult or impossible.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes in two flavors. Both have a 1280 x 800 display. The base model has a 2.5-GHz dual-core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and a 500GB hard drive. It's .95 inches thick and weighs 4.5 pounds, and offer seven-hour battery life. It starts at $1,199. For those who want a slight spec bump, the 13-inch MacBook Pro can be had with a 2.9-GHz dual-core i7 processor and a 750GB hard drive instead, for $1,499.

The 15-inch model starts at $1,799 for the base model. A step up from that will run you $2,199. Here's what $1,799 will get you: a 2.3-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory, and a 500GB hard drive. The 15-inch model is just as slim--.95 inches thick--as the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The $2,199 MacBook Pro will score you a 2.6-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory, and a 750GB hard drive.

The MacBook Pro with special Retina screen is the first major MacBook Pro redesign in several years. It's even thinner, at .71 inches, and equipped with a screen that has an 2880 x 1880 resolution, giving it a pixel density of 220ppi. Both of the available models have a 720p FaceTime HD camera, USB 3, and a newer, thinner MagSafe 2 connector.

The base model starts at $2,199, and has a 2.3-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L memory, 256GB of flash memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000, an Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, and automatic graphics switching.

The $2,799 model features a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, and 512GB of flash storage. This is the model used in our teardown.