Teardown shows only masochists should try at-home iPad Air repairs

iFixit has a message for amateur mechanics who think they can repair their own iPad Airs: Don’t try this at home. After ripping apart the iPad Air and looking at its internals, the iFixit team found that Apple’s new tablet was almost impossible to self-repair and noted that the device’s arteries were clogged with a large amount of glue needed to keep the device together inside such a thin, compact frame. Specifically, iFixit found that removing the iPad Air’s battery was next to impossible and couldn’t get it done without warping the battery into a curved shape. On the plus side, however, iFixit did find that the iPad Air “is 20% thinner, 28% lighter, and 24% reduced in volume from the 4th-gen iPad,” so all that adhesive is going toward giving us the lightest and thinnest iPad yet.