The Surface Laptop 3 uses magnets. How do they work?

I couldn’t resist. It’s a 10 year old song lyric. When you look at the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, the keyboard lifts off the base for service – just like a MacBook Pro from 10 years ago.

Seriously. The Apple PowerBook G4 opens in a similar fashion as the Surface Laptop 3. But what makes the current Surface Laptop 3 cooler for techs to service?

Magnets. This makes it incredibly easy to remove a few screws, disconnect a flex cable or two, and the keyboard deck lifts off providing access to the internals, SSD, and everything else. There’s no glue to remove, making it ridiculously easy.

So easy, that Panos Panay was able to demonstrate it on stage. He was showing off how completely redesigned the new machine is, but at the same time, he showed how the machine is serviced.

Over at Knapsack’s southern HQ, we recently had to strip a 2014 MacBook Pro to bare parts in order to remove the swollen battery. If only the Surface Laptop 3 ran macOS, we’d be all over the magnets.