M2 MacBook Air Schematic
The M2 MacBook Air: beautiful inside & out.
I'm proud to be releasing the schematic wallpaper for the M2 MacBook Air, the next addition to my collection of schematic wallpapers.
How We Got Here
The whole schematic 'thing' started back in November 2021 when I released two wallpapers for the newly released iPhone 13 Pro & Pro Max. I thought they were pretty good, having invested a lot of time into making them, and the internet loved them! Outlets like 9to5Mac, CultofMac, & Reddit posted about these designs, and the site took off and hasn't really slowed down since. I followed up that release with the iPhone 12 schematics a month later, and then I set my sights on a much more ambitious project: the MacBook Pro.
Released in January of 2022, the MacBook Pro schematics were far and away my most complex designs yet. While the iPhone 13 wallpapers had around 325 pieces, the MacBook Pro wallpapers consisted of over 10-times that amount (3,485 for the 14-inch & 3,624 for the 16-inch). Those wallpapers exponentially increased both the complexity and time it took to draft each schematic as I continued to add parts and improve techniques used in fabricating each design. I think that improvement became most evident when I released the Studio Display schematic in April. That wallpaper, at 6,104 pieces, was not only my most significant design to date but added new shading, texture, and depth techniques learned throughout my previous designs to create my favourite schematic until today.
The Process
My previous designs have relied on teardown images from iFixit. The challenge this time was that no iFixit photos were available to use as a template. So before this project began, I needed to gather a collection of screenshots from teardown videos and create a composite image of the inside of the MacBook Air. I scoured Max Tech's teardown video and later iFixit's teardown, which all went into creating the base image I based this wallpaper on. This also included deciding which disassembly stage I wanted to incorporate into this schematic. Most significantly, the logic board of the M2 MacBook Air is completely covered with a thermal wrap. I chose to include the exposed version of the logic board as the centrepiece of this project because otherwise, this schematic would appear to be nothing more than a few black rectangles with a few screws along the periphery.
A collection of images from Max Tech & iFixit were combined to make a composite image on which this schematic is based.
Composite image made, the process of tracing out the MacBook Air began. Fortunately, Apple had done a masterful job in making the product symmetrical, which meant I could recreate one half of the schematic and mirror it over to the other side, saving a fair bit of time. But then came the logic board.
The logic board was, without a doubt, the most daunting project to date. It's thousands upon thousands of little chips, all made by hand. Some of these chips are made from as few as three pieces, while others are assembled out of as many as 50-60, all painstakingly fashioned and placed over many hours. And despite getting quite familiar with the process, by the time I added shading, depth effects, and selecting fills and colours, any time saved was lost producing these many little added touches. The crown jewel of this piece was the M2 chip, which has a pop of colour added to it on some variations of the wallpaper.
The logic board of the M2 MacBook Air.
I didn't count the hours poured into this schematic or the number of times I went cross-eyed lining up chip after chip after chip, but it was easily 40+ hours of effort, which began on July 22 and finished just a little over a month later, on August 26. The end product is a design with over 5,260 pieces, nearly 50% more than the M1 MacBook Pro wallpapers. The M2 Air is a breathtaking computer and a device that I know millions of people will have a chance to use and enjoy for years to come. This piece is my labour of love for this incredible computer and for all those who use it and create amazing things each day! Enjoy.
Downloads
I've created five colorways for the new M2 schematic: Black, Silver, Starlight, Space Grey, and Midnight. You'll want to check out the Midnight one though; it really is the chef's kiss! In addition, I've added a few alternates where the M2 chip has been highlighted with a different gradient to give it a bit of pop.
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