The Microsoft Surface Pro is just getting into its first week of consumer availability, and gadget repair blog iFixit has already cracked the case for a closer look at what makes the tablet/PC hybrid thing tick. The teardown reveals that Microsoft has essentially glued down anything that could be glued, making it incredibly difficult for a user to repair on their own – more difficult than… → Read More
Apple’s iPad mini got the teardown treatment this morning, one day ahead of its official launch in stores. The diminutive tablet gave up its secrets to iFixit’s expert disassembly staff, revealing its complex inner workings to the camera. A lot of the parts are familiar, coming from either the iPhone 5 or MacBook Air, and Samsung makes a somewhat surprising appearance as an LCD panel supplier. → Read More
Popular gadget repair site iFixit has taken the Microsoft Surface apart to see what makes it tick, and discovered a tablet/PC that scores higher on repairability than Apple’s iPad and its Retina MacBook Pro computers. The Surface ended up with a repairability score of 4 out of a possible 10, compared to just 2 out of 10 for the iPad, 2 out of 10 for the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. → Read More
iFixit, bless their hearts, have taken a Kindle Fire to pieces, though as it turns out, there aren’t too many pieces to begin with. The battery is one huge unit, and all the processing and I/O occurs on a single PCB at the bottom of the device.
Those expecting a carbon copy of the Playbook both outside and in will be disappointed: the layout, batteries, PCB, and all the components are… → Read More
The Motorola Xoom, like the iPad, is mostly dead air and a battery. iFixIt did their best to tear out all the important bits, finding a large screen, a handsome circuit board, and what appears to be a dead PCI board dedicated to future upgrades. → Read More
I wouldn’t say this teardown of a D7000 is of particular interest over, say, a Canon or Pentax, but you don’t often get to see brand-new DSLRs cracked open like this. When you think about it, there really is quite a lot of computing power packed into these guys. Being able to process and write thirty 16-megapixel RAW or JPEG images at five or six per second is a serious task. Go ahead, open 30… → Read More
Spoiler: The inside of a Windows Phone 7 device looks like the inside of an Android or iOS device — just so you know. Didn’t want you proceeding expecting to see something like little Redmond gremlins hobbling around the circuit boards and modems. Yeah, if you’ve seen one teardown, you’ve seen them all. So unless you get a tech chubby from circuit board pr0n, proceed with… → Read More
In classic iFixit fashion, the latest Apple laptop has been torn to pieces a mere day after its release event. How exciting! Now we get to find out how Apple managed to cram so much of 2007′s technology into that gorgeous case.
Unsurprisingly, Apple has made the new MacBook Air nigh-impossible to service on your own. Not only is the interior secured by five-sided Torx T5 screws, but most of the… → Read More
After last month’s TechCrunch Disrupt, and to provide a business companion to the popular “Lean Startup” customer development methodology, this TC Teardown focuses not on how one specific company makes money but rather seeks to provide a breakdown of the main general ways consumer Internet startups try to make money. Consider it a guide to Internet business models. If you are currently… → Read More
Tearing down the iPod Shuffle may look easy – it is, after all, made of a few pieces of aluminium press-fitted and glued together – but the poor lads at iFixIt had a dickens of a time. Their complaint?
Although this step makes it look super-simple to open the Shuffle, it’s not. It took us a good half hour of prying and heat-gunning to open the little guy.
Pro tip: Aluminum gets hot when it’s… → Read More
If you’ve ever wanted to know what was inside of a Dell Streak, have we got a web page for you. Our buddies at iFixIt ripped up the Dell Streak, revealing its sweet, sweet circuit boards and tiny camera. One interesting point: the LCD is bonded to the front glass which means you can’t replace just the LCD assembly. Weird. → Read More
The Droid 2 hit VZW stores earlier today, but yet the mad scientists over at iFixit already got their hands on one and tore it apart in the name of gadget pr0n. The process didn’t revel anything terribly surprising, although while the battery is rated at the same 1390 mAh, Motorola is claiming twice the battery life. That’s neat. Click through to iFixit for the rest of the gory… → Read More
Editor’s note: Book rental startup Chegg is making money hand over fist. Guest author Steven Carpenter does a teardown of its business model and estimates its revenues will reach $130 million this year. Carpenter was the founder and CEO of Cake Financial, which was sold to E*Trade earlier this year. Previously, he’s written TC Teardowns on Groupon and Zynga.
Chegg may very well be the… → Read More
Editor’s note: In this guest post, entrepreneur Steven Carpenter does a teardown of Zynga’s business model and calculates an estimate of its profits.
Like YouTube, Twitter, and Groupon, social gaming pioneer, Zynga is a member of the “fastest from founding to $1B valuation” club, having earned its membership in just 19 months.
There are two significant traits that distinguish Zynga from its… → Read More
Desperate to see what’s under the smooth exterior of your new iPad 3G but don’t want to crack it open and void the warranty? Fear not, friend. iFixit has done the dirty work (very cleanly, I might add) and taken the iPod touch jumbo edition to pieces. There aren’t a lot of surprises, but hey, it’s Saturday afternoon and you want to see the guts of an expensive gadget. Get another cup of coffee. → Read More
Did the HTC HD2 teardown from this morning leave you wanting more? Here’s the Droid splayed out for the whole word to see. → Read More
iFixit has torn up the new iMac to reveal the delicate inner workings of both the machine and its attendant Magic Mouse. Obviously the biggest issue here is removing the massive piece of glass on the front, a process that requires a spunger, suction cups, and a sense that life is futile and electronics should be destroyed on camera for the edification of an audience. → Read More
Imagine if it were your job to race to the Apple store whenever anything came out, and then as soon as you step outside, to just hurl it against the wall and take pictures of the fragments. Well, that’s pretty much iFixit in a nutshell. Sure, they use screwdrivers and stuff, and take it apart all neat-like, and have nice cuticles, but basically they’re exploding the latest and greatest device for… → Read More
I could care less about iPod teardowns. I mean, who the hell cares anymore. It’s an iPod. But I looked at nearly every picture of iFixit’s teardown of the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj. After all, this little pocket camera sports a front-facing projector. Of course I wanna see the little gnomes that make the magic happen. Video teardown after the jump. → Read More
It’s a tradition around these parts to photograph a dissected gadget. This time around it’s the new Zune HD which looks just as good on the inside as it does on the outside. Hit up anythingbutipod for the complete gallery of the teardown. → Read More
Well, they got off to a good start, but Rapid Repair has been passed up by iFixit in the race to tear an unsuspecting PS3 Slim to pieces. What’s in there? Well, apparently, the whole thing is taken up by an enormous fan and the Blu-ray drive. Where’s the PS3?! Under the fan, I suppose. Check out the whole process here. → Read More
I bet you thought iFixit only tore apart Apple products and high-profile electronics. Not so! The Starbucks Barista is in fact not a barista but a machine that makes espresso. You could argue that’s what real baristas are as well, but we can talk about that another time. The Barista espresso machine is a good representative of the home-espresso machine world, and it isn’t some cheap piece of… → Read More
Happy iPhone 3G S Day! We’ve got the tear down of the latest iPhone here so you don’t have to spend all day sitting and staring at your new phone, wondering how it ticks. Oh, and there is a small, and geeky, surprise hidden within the iPhone 3G S that might reveal upcoming features. → Read More
Kyle at the great site iFixIt.com has just opened a new service dedicated to the collection and curation of user-generated content called Gear Teardown. The service, sort of like a how-to site for crazy people, allows folks to document each step in the process of tearing down, and hopefully putting back together, their gadgets.
For example, this teardown of the Moto Krave shows six steps, some… → Read More
Again with the tearing apart! Those crazy people at iFixit are doing it again: this time they took a Dell Adamo and tore it apart in the name of discovery. As with most laptops, it’s quite impressive how much technology the creators were able to jam into that little case. Unfortunately, as we already knew, the battery doesn’t appear to be replaceable by the casual user. → Read More
When people first saw the price of the new iPhone they thought, “Wow, how can Apple do that”? Well, ISuppli estimates the new iPhone will be cheaper to manufacture then the first one (I knew that had to be it). The original iPhone had an estimated manufacturing cost of $265, but since component prices went down the new iPhone cost about $173 to make. Also, Apple will still get the $300… → Read More
Tweaktown has (in an inexplicably explicitly-worded article) taken apart one of the new, black Eee PCs and checked out all its bits and bytes. To be honest, there’s not much in the way of surprises. It’s mostly common OEM hardware, the expected Atom processor, and the normal layout for webcam, microphone, and all that. What’s nice though is that because the RAM and HDD are both… → Read More
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