The crack team at iFixit has given the newest 15" MacBook Pro a "respectable" repairability score of 7 out of 10 after putting the machine through its obligatory post-launch teardown. The gadget repair team said that Apple made a number of good design choices with this round of updates, though it also questioned Apple's quality control after making a few discoveries.

According to iFixit, the latest MacBook Pro revision allows you to disconnect the battery without having to take it out of the notebook altogether—a helpful move for tinkerers, since all power is supposed to be disconnected before digging into the machine's innards. "The unibody design also allows for easy access to most of the other components, so it won't be terribly hard to replace things on the machine," said iFixit. "The only tricky repair is LCD replacement, which could easily result in shattering the front glass panel."

Other discoveries included the fact that the new MacBook Pro sports the same 77.5 watt-hour battery as the previous model, confirming that Apple has indeed reduced its battery life estimates from eight to nine hours to seven hours for other reasons (Apple cites a "new, more rigorous battery test"). The company points out, however, that the battery is held in with tri-wing screws, which could prevent the average joe from making a battery replacement. iFixit also says that the MacBook Pro's RAM has been upgraded to PC3-10600—faster than previous MacBook Pro models—and that the wireless card now has four antennas instead of three.

iFixit clarified a number of details about the MacBook Pro's Thunderbolt implementation as well. Apple advertised that the new I/O tech would support a 10Gbps throughput, but iFixit says that both PCI Express and DisplayPort appear to get their own 10Gbps data channel. "That's nice, as you don't want your display competing with your external hard drive for bandwidth," the team wrote. iFixit also points out that users can chain up to six Thunderbolt devices to one another, which could pose a problem in the future should Thunderbolt-compatible devices take off. (By comparison, USB can connect up to 127 devices at once through a hub.)

As usual, not everything on the inside of the new MacBook Pro impressed the teardown team. It found that the subwoofer enclosure was being held in place by a stripped screw and that there was an unlocked ZIF socket connecting the IR sensor, which the team described as "not fitting for an $1,800 machine." Additionally, iFixit discovered "gobs" and "absurd amounts" of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU upon removing the heat sink. "The excess paste may cause overheating issues down the road, but only time will tell," said iFixit.

Despite these quality issues, iFixit seems to feel good enough to give it a decent repairability score. (One detail of note is that Apple seems to use the same model number for this iteration of the MacBook Pro as it has been using since 2008, which is strange given all of the internal changes.) As usual, the teardown also contains detailed instructions on which tools and techniques are best for those looking to repair or upgrade their new machines, though the site warns that the teardown doesn't represent detailed disassembly instructions—dig in at your own risk!