While there may be many valid technical reasons for having air-gaps around the battery cells, such as allowing room for the batteries to expand, or limiting heat build-up inside the otherwise tightly-packed casing, the discovery is likely to spark controversy given that multiple reviewers have been reporting that they were unable to get anywhere close to Apple’s claimed 10-hour battery-life…and that Apple’s weight specs on these are coincidentally rounded to 3/4lbs. This photo gives a closer look at those gaps around the batteries. The batteries look comically small. The two cells under the trackpad look the smallest in their slots finger-sized ‘moats’ all around the batteries Looks like they shrunk the battery as much as possible to hit that 4lb figure. One Imgur user drew particular attention to this in a series of open-case photos, speculating that Apple may have limited their size to hit a weight target. Owners have also been noticing something odd about the innards of the new machines: the multiple battery cells all appear to have quite large gaps around them. With the shielding removed, these appear to be the SSD chips It should be noted that although Apple’s SSD upgrade prices seem extreme, it is using the very latest generation of high-speed NVMe PCIe SSDs, which are frighteningly expensive no matter who you buy them from. While we’ll need to await professional teardowns to verify the identification of the claimed SSD chips (seen in the photo below), this does so far appear to be the consensus on a forum post. The SSD chips are beneath some shielding, but one owner was brave enough to remove it to peek beneath … This means that, like the 12-inch MacBook, the SSD size you order from Apple is the capacity you’re going to be stuck with for the life of the machine, so you may want to take a fresh look at those rather eye-watering upgrade prices. Owners who have opened them up are finding that the SSD chips in the Touch Bar machines are permanently soldered to the logic board. The first MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models are arriving, and if you were encouraged by the removable SSD OWC found in the entry-level machine, there’s bad news.

Macbook air ssd upgrade 2016