iFixit has done a teardown and found a couple moving parts but no magic unicorns
It took a heat gun, a hairdryer, guitar picks, a soldering iron, a spunger and tweezers, but the folks at iFixit managed to pry apart Apple’s (AAPL) new $69 wireless trackpad.
“This not for the faint of heart,” they write. “Thin and pretty = not user servicable”
But having reduced the thing to nine difficult-to-assemble parts, from AA batteries to miniature motherboard, the disassemblers singled out a couple of design elements for special praise:
- The square threads on the battery door. “While square threads have the highest mechanical efficiency of all lead screws, their difficulty of manufacturing makes them prohibitive for most applications. Kudos, Apple, for sweating the details.”
- The way it triggers a mouse click. “As you press down on the top surface of the Trackpad, the two rubber feet near its front edge push up on the hinged plate and set screw attached to the chassis. This squeezes the electronic mouse button switch, producing the characteristic “click.”
The step-by-step photos are here. There’s a video slide show, with guitar accompaniment, here.
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[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
