The new M2 MacBook Pro officially launched on Friday. As most of the reviews indicated, it’s virtually the same as the previous-generation M1 MacBook Pro, just with an M2 chip inside. The similarities between the two machines prompted YouTuber Luke Miani to see if he could simply swap the chip between the two machines.
Upgrade an M1 MacBook Pro to an M2 chip
Miani has pulled off some impressive transformations in the past, including turning a 27-inch iMac into a Studio Display and creating the “world’s first” Apple Silicon iMac using parts from an M1 Mac mini. Unfortunately, attempting to upgrade the M1 MacBook Pro to an M2 MacBook Pro wasn’t as successful.
In a video published today, Miani shows the full process of attempting to make this upgrade. You can immediately see just how similar the two machines are. In fact, they are virtually identical on the inside, just as they are on the outside. Many of the chips inside are the same as in the M1 MacBook Pro, and even the connectors match up.
But despite the many similarities, there are just enough differences to make the process of upgrading the M1 chip to the M2 chip untenable. After swapping the M2 chip to the machine, the MacBook Pro fails to boot. This is even true if you swap over the Touch ID sensor as well. The mismatched Touch ID component is one of the most common reasons projects like this fail, but that wasn’t the case this time.
Miani tried a handful of other tricks to get the upgraded MacBook Pro to boot up, such as using Apple Configurator to enter DFU mode, but all without success. After failing to get the upgraded M2 MacBook Pro to boot, Miani was able to successfully swap the components back to their original machines
Even though the project wasn’t successful, this was still a very cool to process to see. The internals of the two machines are nearly identical, even down to the connections between parts. Realistically, no one other than Miani would probably ever even try to upgrade an M1 chip to an M2 chip, but it still would have been fun to see it was possible.
What do you make of the new M2 MacBook Pro? Have you bought one or are you holding out for a future M2 Mac? Let us know down in the comments.
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