Friendly Computers thought you would enjoy an inside view of the new Mac Magic Mouse and Screen.
You thought iFixit was going to gut the new unibody white MacBook and call it a day? Oh no—it has vivisected Apple's new Magic Mouse to see just how the "magic" happens. The gang also went ahead and disassembled the 27" iMac that came with it, too.
The first thing that iFixit discovered is that Apple really does not want you to take the Magic Mouse apart. The whole thing is held together with some really tough glue instead of screws, or clips, or anything that might make it easier to take apart and put back together. Once apart, though, iFixit verified that the entire top surface is literally covered in capacitive touch sensors—138 in all—just as Apple promised. This is what allows the multitouch gestures to be so accurate and specific over such a small surface—though it would be nice if Apple enabled pinch-to-zoom and two-finger rotate.
Though the mouse has an aluminum base, the total aluminum content weighs just 10 grams. "That's compared to 37 grams of plastic and 47 grams of batteries," according to iFixit. "Nearly half the mouse's weight comes from the two AA batteries."
The diminutive circuit and electronic components do contribute a few grams to the overall light weight of the Magic Mouse. Part of what makes the circuit so small is a Broadcom BCM2042A4KFBGH, part of the BCM2042 family of chips that integrate keyboard and mouse controller functions with an HID profile and full Bluetooth communications stack. Broadcom brags that the chip allows wireless input devices to "approach the price points of legacy-wired mice and keyboards," but this is Apple here—paying a slight premium for a "better" mouse is par for the course. Besides, what is the standard price for a wired multitouch mouse? (Answer: there isn't one!)
Of course, after discovering all the magic Apple could stuff into a $69 mouse, though, you can hardly blame iFixit for "taking apart the iMac that came with our Magic Mouse." The new 27" iMac (the lower-end Core 2 Duo version) isn't radically different that the 24" iMac model that preceded it. However, iFixit did turn up a few interesting details.
One nice addition is that Apple has doubled the amount of RAM slots; when stuffed with 4GB SO-DIMMs, you can have a total of 16GB of RAM. The new model also eliminates the 4mm aluminum bezel around the display glass cover—it goes all the way to the top and side edges, giving it a slightly cleaner appearance. The DisplayPort connection isn't wired up to allow the display to be powered separately when using the promised external source display functionality, though—the whole machine will have to be powered on for it to work.
A couple other notable discoveries: the power supply is 310W, the largest on any iMac; the SuperDrive is 12.5mm height, so it could be swapped for a Blu-ray drive if Apple ever gets over that bag of hurt; because the new back is all aluminum, the plastic Apple logo now serves as the only way for WiFi signals to get in and out of the iMac; and cooling the new machine requires two large heat sinks and three large, low-noise fans.
Source:http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/10/magic-mouse-oh-my-godits-full-of-capacitive-sensors.ars
