(Image courtesy of AppleInsider and iFixIt)
If you thought a trendy new Apple product like the Magic Trackpad would escape the attention of those disassemblers at iFixIt, you’re sadly mistaken. Barely a couple days in the retail world, and already they’ve taken one apart and have the pictures to prove it.
AppleInsider is reporting that iFixIt has completed their teardown of Apple’s new Magic Trackpad, less than two days after its release. But before you get the idea to do the same, be forewarned: The diminutive wafer-like device is bound together by “copious amounts of glue, making it difficult to disassemble.” And that’s from the pros!
Apple’s $69 Magic Trackpad appears to follow the recent trend out of Cupertino, which iFixIt calls “thin and pretty = not user serviceable.” The device does have one user-replaceable area, which of course is the battery -- two AA batteries, to be exact, which slide into the cylindrical base at the upper end of the trackpad. You don’t have to be an iFixIt pro to do that -- just twist the battery door on the rear left of the device with a flathead screwdriver and you’re in.
Getting inside the actual Magic Trackpad itself was something of a challenge. After prying away the lower panel, iFixIt found layers of adhesive that had to be sliced away in order to disassemble the hardware. Other potential pitfalls include two “very thin” ribbon cables that connect the capacitive touchpad to the logic board, which are stuck to the bottom of the touch surface itself.
More glue awaited the iFixIt team as they tried to remove the outer touchpad from the aluminum chassis, requiring the use of a heat gun to warm up the adhesive. “This is not for the faint of heart,” iFixIt explained. “A copious amount of heat, guitar picks and plastic opening tools were required to make this thing bulge.”
As noted in many early reviews, the Magic Trackpad has a rather unique way of triggering the mouse button -- pressing down on the pad “actually clicks the two rubber feet on the front of the device” which creates a familiar “click.”
After removing solder from the four wires leading to the battery connector and status LED and unscrewing two Phillips screws, the logic board was revealed to include a Broadcom BCM2042 chip for the wireless Bluetooth connectivity. This is the same chip found in Apple’s Magic Mouse. The Magic Trackpad gets its multitouch magic from a BCM5974 chip -- the same one used in the iPhone, iPod touch and MacBook Air. Last but not least, the trackpad also includes 2Mbit of serial flash memory.
For all of the gory details on the Magic Trackpad disassembly, head over to iFixIt and enjoy!
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
