With a few Torx screwdrivers and a Pentalobe screwdriver I bought from Ebay for $2 from Hong Kong.
Easiest laptop I ever took apart. Very intuitive. I could put the whole thing back together if I wanted to, which is nearly impossible with non-Macs once taken apart. It took 3 hours to take it apart and list everything, and I was doing other tasks at the time. Since all the parts are specially designed for Apple, they design for easy assembly, and therefore easy disassembly. They're not trying to hodge-podge a commodity SSD into their system by putting it in a housing held by 4 more screws. 1 screw for SSD. 10 for case. 1 for wifi. 6 for logic board. 6 for LCD. 3 for fan.
Since Macs are popular, there are lots of guides on ifixit, down to the "Take out this cable by lifting up this part, then pulling it out in this direction", along with high-res photos. A popular system also means a liquid market for spare parts. Apple has high standards and is notoriously incompatible with non-approved parts, so repairers prefer buying a used Apple component instead of 3rd-party parts when available.
Since Apple keeps a tight control on its suppliers, often the only spare parts are available from donors. For non-Apple systems, you can often find a manufacturer still selling new replacement parts, but not so for Macs. Lots of people out there will buy broken systems and then buy a replacement LCD or trackpad or logic board to bring it back to 100% and profitably re-sell it.
Rough Ebay value of each part:
Logic board - US$200
SSD - US$80
LCD assembly - US$300 (even with a few dents/scratches, people break these things and replace. Even if you can buy the LCD panel itself, buying the whole assembly makes repair so much easier)
Palmrest/KB/touchpad assembly - US$50 (same story: easier to buy the whole assembly rather than replace just the trackpad)
Bottom case - US$20
Wifi card - US$15
Set of screws - US$9
1 flex cable - US$7
Total: US$681
Actual selling prices may end up being 10-20% less, but I like to start my prices high, then lower it every few weeks until sold. As I said, price would be higher if battery wasn't dead, I didn't break a part off the power board and if the power adapter wasn't fraying).
Wow! That is amazing. Thanks for a detailed write up and for opening my eyes to this possibility. I have a bunch of old MacBook airs so it's not just academic to me.
No, part-out, just like most laptops, there is a liquid spare parts market for people that fix units with a broken this or that. People like to drop/spill on their laptops, and metal isn't very forgiving :)
