the 2013 MacBook Air may look like last
year's model but thanks to several
hardware updates the new Air offers
faster Wi-Fi more bay storage and almost
double the battery life
how did Apple do it let's find out I'm
Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open
Apple didn't make any changes to the
exterior of the 2013 air nor did they
change how you crack it open the bottom
panel is held on with special pentalobe
screws and while your local hardware
store might not have the necessary
driver to remove them plenty of online
retailers do with the bottom panel
removed we get our first look inside the
case and despite all the hardware
updates the 2013 air has the same basic
layout as the 2011 and 2012 airs along
the back edge is the motherboard cooling
fan assembly and a small IO board a pair
of speakers flank the battery which is
the first internal component to come out
next we'll remove the SSD and the
wireless card the cooling fan and the
i/o board now last to come out is the
motherboard and once we've removed it we
can detach the heatsink now I could
detach the lid and display by removing
these hinge screws and the trackpad by
removing its screws but there's nothing
really to see by doing that so I'm going
to leave them in place and declare this
teardown finished so if the 2013 air
looks so much like the previous models
what did Apple change and how did they
so dramatically improve battery life
well for starters the battery is better
the new air has a seven point six volt
50-100 milliamp hour battery compared to
the 2012 models 7.3 volt forty six
hundred and eighty milliamp hour unit
but this change alone can't account for
the jump from five hours to nine for
that Apple turned to Intel's new
fourth-generation has
processors by combining the CPU and the
platform controller hub onto a single
BGA package these ultra low voltage
chips are better able to manage power
than previous ones
they also require less space on the
motherboard a 1.3 gigahertz dual-core
Core i5 comes standard on both the 11
and 13 inch airs but our test machine
had a 1.7 gigahertz core i7 now along
with the new CPU the chip also has
intel's HD graphics 5000 which apple
claims is up to 40% faster than the old
GPU but it's not only the graphics that
are faster thanks to a solid state drive
which uses a PCI Express interface
instead of the slower SATA connection
the new area is 45% faster when
accessing files you also get more
storage for your money
the base model air comes with a 128 gig
drive compared to last year's 64 gig
unit rounding out the upgrades is a new
wireless card that also speeds things up
by supporting the 802 dot 11ac standard
now just remember you'll need an 802 11
AC access point to take full advantage
of the new card now conveniently Apple
released new airport stations that do
just that
this year's air upgrades were all about
efficiency and speed more efficient
power management faster graphics a
faster SSD and faster Wi-Fi now thanks
to these updates Apple definitely hit a
triple with the new air had the company
included a Retina display added an SD
card slot and upgraded the camera they
would have hit a home run now for more
information on the 2013 air including
performance and battery life benchmark
tests check out Scott Stein's full CNET
review and to see more teardown photos
and read my full Hardware analysis go to
TechRepublic comm forward slash cracking
open I'm Bill Detweiler thanks for
watching
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