29 screws

Last night I had the pleasure of installing a hard drive in the new "unibody" MacBook Pro, and it seems strange to even type those words after years of fighting with the 29 screws required to replace the HDD on the previous generation of MacBook Pro.

Yesterday I took delivery of a new MacBook Pro (anti-glare) from TechRestore – which I have dubbed the MatteBook Pro – and I love it. The first order of business was to remove the HDD from my old MBP and install it in my new ride. It took about 20 minutes and 29 screws (25, plus four on the HDD itself) to extract the drive from the old and a single screw to replace the HDD on the new unibody MBP. Technically it's five screws if you count the four on the HDD itself.

What a breath of fresh air.

Previously I kept a printed copy of the iFixIt.com takeapart guide for the MBP in my tools drawer so that I could quickly replace the HDD (a task I do often) without worrying about losing a screw or missing a step. I also keep a piece of "egg crate" foam handy for screw storage. Another ritual was noting the date and what HDD I swapped on the iFixIt cheat sheet. Looking back, I swapped my MBP hard drive eight times in a little over two years and I suspect there are a couple of times I forgot to log.

Conservatively, that means that I've screwed/unscrewed 464 screws in my old MBP (29 screws * 2 * 8 times). Suffice it to say that I'm ecstatic that Apple has made this process so easy after all these years.

I've embedded a YouTube video of the (albeit boring) process above.

Disclosure: TechRestore is a PowerPage sponsor.