Such is the classic simplicity of Apple design, if you’d been abducted by aliens two decades ago and taken to the peaceful planet Zog to hang out with and learn from an enlightened species, you’d still recognize this as a Mac mini when you returned. (Though you’d probably be disappointed at the state of enlightenment here on Terra Ferma.)

Apple gets a lot of grief about its products being difficult to repair, but the company is showing a few signs of addressing the issue. The latest involves the MacBook Pro with Pro and Max chips. Apple now has available individual speaker parts for these laptops,

A memo spotted by MacRumors indicated Apple Stores and Authorized Service Providers will be able to buy speakers as standalone components for the 14-inch and 16-inch M4 MacBook Pro with the M4 family of chips.

The new M4 MacBook Pro laptops can be bought with hundreds of dollars off the list price ahead of Black Friday... just not from Apple.

A trio of retailers are fighting for your money, by offering the 1TB 14-inch MacBook Pro with an upgraded M4 Pro chip at $300 off the list price.

The M4 represents as much of a philosophical shift as it does a performance upgrade. It is Apple acknowledging that if you’re buying a laptop with “Pro” in the name, than it should be a better machine.

I tested a beautiful Space Black MacBook Pro with the new M4 Pro chip and 48GB memory (which I would treasure if it belonged to me). The 3-nanometer chip it uses has 14 cores, consisting of 10 performance and four efficiency cores; it has a 2TB drive; a Liquid Retina XDR nanotexture display; and it costs $3,349.

Memo to Apple Stores and Authorized Service Providers reveals that the company will offer individual MacBook Pro speaker parts for the first time in nearly a decade.