Changing a Hard Drive or: 27 Screws

I had the distinct displelasure to have one of the hard drives in one of my fleet of MacBooks replaced today. This was a previous generation unit less than one year old-- one of the Penryn models immediately prior to the release of the current Unibody MacBooks. Just to be clear-- not an old POS by any stretch of the imaginaion. For regulatory reasons, I had to remove the hard drive and replace with a new one.

This operation took:

1. Hiring an approved Apple Tech to do the swap, so that such an operation would not void the warranty.
2. The removal of the battery, which I'll concede is a Very Good Idea in general when working on a notebook, but not required for most other brands/models.
3. The removal of a body panel unrelated to the hard drive (Memory-- just to access some screws)
   
4. The removal of 27 screws in total
   
5. The use of two laptop-size screwdrivers-- a Philips and a Torx head (for no apparent reason.)
6. The removal of one retention bracket holding one half of the hard drive.

At this point, the system was largely open, with the entire keyboard side of the bottom enclosure off. When reversing the process, you also have to take care to align tension clips in the case properly. Also, the thin aluminum shell of the pre-billet models is prone to minor dents which complicate servicing vs. purely cosmetic scratches in most other notebooks sustaining similar damage.

That's not acceptable. Business class notebooks should release a hard drive tray with no more than 2 screws, and the tray itself typically mounts to the drive with 2 more. Pop, pop, in and out.

Considering that drive removal/replacement is necessary and required for all sorts of good reasons, this design ethic is beyond reproach. I understand the "I want it to be pretty" BS, but in the real world, you can hit serious problems when a critical and basic task is denied to you.