You’ll need a screwdriver to do it, but the sealed batteries in the new MacBook Pros announced last Monday are as user replaceable as those of the MacBook before it. IFixit has already carried out its customary explorations inside the body of the new notebook, and found that, apart from the rearrangement of ports and the latch-free baseplate, things are much as before.
The new, bigger (and 60 grams heavier) battery is claimed to last seven hours. IFixit found that the new unit is a 60 Watt-hours cell, up from the 45 Watt-hours of the original, itself supposedly able to last five hours. So there will be a boost, but we expect you’ll be lucky to even get five hours from it.
The doorless base brings new problems, too. I swapped a 500GB hard drive into my 13” unibody MacBook last week and it was so quick and easy that it wasn’t even worth writing up for Gadget Lab. The hard drive is still considered user-replaceable by Apple, but “replacement does require removing 10 more screws than on the MacBook Unibody.”
IFixit also notes that the SD card sticks out about half an inch when inserted, a little messy, and that the new combined headphone/jack socket omits a digital in connection. It also means that you can’t use headphones and a mic at the same time.
It’s apparent, though, that this is still one of the easiest Apple machines to take apart. If you don’t believe me, try replacing the hard drive on a 12” PowerBook.
[MacBook Pro 13” Unibody Teardown](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-Unibody/814/1 "MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Teardown") [Fixit via Cult of Mac]
