What's inside Apple's new glowing logo? iFixit tears down the MacBook Pro OLED
Late last month, Apple unveiled its new MacBook Pro models, the first to feature both touchscreens and OLED displays. But what many people found even more exciting was the return of the glowing Apple logo on the laptop's lid. iFixit has now published its teardown of the new MacBook Pro, revealing how Apple brought back the iconic feature.
On older MacBooks, the logo glowed thanks to light from the display's backlight shining through an apple-shaped cutout in the lid. This meant the logo lit up only when the screen was on.
The new MacBook Pro uses a different approach. iFixit found four small LEDs mounted behind the display. Their light passes through a reflective layer and a diffuser, creating an evenly illuminated logo. The Apple logo itself has a mirror-like coating, so it looks shiny even when the LEDs are switched off.
Apple removed the illuminated logo in 2016, making its return somewhat ironic: the feature is back only after Apple moved away from the LCD backlight technology that originally made it possible.
Getting to the lighting assembly is difficult because it sits behind the display. iFixit damaged the OLED panel and touch-sensitive layers while trying to separate the glass, showing how risky a repair involving the logo or display could be. The repair specialists also found two foam pads behind the display, which they believe provide additional support when users press on the touchscreen.
The teardown revealed other details about Apple's new laptop. Its tandem OLED panel has a 120 Hz refresh rate and can reach 2,000 nits of peak brightness. Under a microscope, iFixit noticed that the blue subpixels are considerably larger than the red and green ones. Blue OLED materials tend to wear out faster, so giving them a larger area could help reduce the strain on the individual pixels.
Despite adding a touchscreen and bringing back the illuminated logo, Apple has also managed to make the laptop lighter. The 14-inch model weighs 1.38 kg, around 170 grams less than the comparable M6 MacBook Pro. iFixit's measurements show that Apple reduced the weight of both the aluminum bottom cover and the display assembly while keeping the battery capacity almost unchanged.
There is some good news for repairability, too. iFixit found that replacing the display lid is no more difficult than on the previous generation. The repair process also no longer requires a separate lid-angle sensor, and Apple's repair software successfully recognized a replacement logic board, display and Touch ID sensor. Both the touchscreen and Touch ID continued to work after the original logic board was reinstalled.
However, the laptop still has some familiar repair problems. The fans and USB-C ports are difficult to access because they sit underneath the logic board. The HDMI port and SD card reader are soldered directly to the board, while storage and unified memory remain non-upgradeable.
iFixit gave the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR a repairability score of 5 out of 10, one point higher than the previous M5 model.
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