The gang at “iFixIt’ got their hands on a new iPad at midnight at the Telstra store in Melbourne, Australia, did a complete teardown and gave it a repair score of 2 out of 10. You can read all about it at http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-3-4G-Teardown/8277/1 .
Here’s the “iFixIt” summary: “While the new iPad’s design is essentially the same as the iPad 2, which we gave a repairability score of 4, we’ve learned a lot about the design since then. We’ve spent the last year trying to repair the iPad 2 with mixed success. We are awarding the new iPad an abysmal 2 out of 10, and retroactively dropping the repairability score of the iPad 2 to a 2 as well. The adhesive on the front is extremely difficult to remove without damaging the glass, making repair and end-of-life recycling very difficult.
“That said, we were able to disassemble this iPad without breaking the glass—something that we did not accomplish with our iPad 2 teardown. A year of practice has made us proficient, but schools deploying the iPad for their students are going to be in for a lot of repair technician training.”