While teardown experts iFixit gave the retina MacBook Pro low ratings when it comes to user reparability, the non-retina MacBook Pro introduced at WWDC last week turned out to be quite the opposite. The team completed its ritualistic teardown of the mid-2012 MacBook Pro on Wednesday morning, giving it a reparability score of 7 out of 10. The discrepancy comes down to the internal design differences between the two pro machines.
The differences may seem minor from a "regular" user standpoint, but they certainly add up. For one, Apple uses regular (non-proprietary) screws in the non-retina MacBook Pro, and the hard drive is quite a bit thicker—9.45mm compared to the 3.16mm of the retina MacBook Pro's solid-state drive. More importantly, the non-retina machine does not have RAM soldered onto the logic board like that of the retina MacBook Pro, making the RAM user-removable and upgradable. The retina version is more akin to the MacBook Air—what you buy from Apple is what you're stuck with until you decide to upgrade to a new computer.
iFixit also points out that while the non-retina MacBook Pro's LCD would still cost a pretty penny to replace, the LCD is at least removable and users who have cracked their displays won't have to replace the entire assembly. This is not the case with the retina version: "Incorporating a removable LCD into the MacBook Pro with Retina display would increase the thickness by less than a millimeter, while still preserving the awesome Retina resolution," the site wrote.
If you're the type to tinker with your MacBook Pro and you can live without a fancy new display, the non-retina version could be the better bet. Detailed photos of the teardown are available, as always, on iFixit's website.
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