…are the days of the never-ending palm rest cracks over?
The problem affected almost every single MacBook, since the very first models back in 2006, and up until today, Apple didn’t make any real adjustments to the design of the machine to resolve the issue — but today, that seems to have changed.
From looking over Apple’s photos of the new machine, I feel safe saying the issue will no longer be a problem. The new MacBooks are built like the unibody machines — from a single chunk of material (in this case, white plastic).
There is now a thin rubber gasket around the inside of the lid, not the hard plastic ridges found on older models that would add pressure to the palm rests. Additionally, that front edge that used to crack is where the top case and bottom case meet, making it inherently weak — the plastic should be much thicker along that edge, since the unibody does away with such design problems.
From a service standpoint, I hope the issues is resolved. On all the unibody machines, the internal components are built into the top case, meaning a top case replacement requires removing all the components and moving them to the new enclosure — not fun.