Pentalobe screw
five-pointed tamper-resistant screw drive
The pentalobe security screw (Apple nomenclature), or pentalobe screw drive, is a five-pointed tamper-resistant system used by companies including Apple in their products. Pentalobe screws were adopted by Apple starting in 2009, when they were first used in the 15-inch MacBook Pro. They have since been used on other MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and iPhone models. Apple attracted criticism upon the introduction of the pentalobe screw; it was seen by some as an attempt to lock individuals out of their devices. In response, inexpensive pentalobe screwdrivers, manufactured by third parties, have become relatively easy to obtain. According to right-to-repair parts and tools supplier iFixit, "the pentalobe tends to be inferior to other screws [due to its] shallow draft that makes the screw prone to stripping out".
Pentalobe screw sizes include TS1 (0.8 mm, used on every iPhone starting with the iPhone 4s), TS4 (1.2 mm, used on the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina display), and TS5 (1.5 mm, used on the 2009 MacBook Pro battery). The TS designation is ambiguous as it is also used for the Torq-set screw drive.
Usage
iPod
Various models of the iPod Classic include pentalobe screws on its Toshiba hard drive.
MacBook Pro
The first Apple product to include pentalobe screws internally was the Mid 2009 MacBook Pro 15-inch model.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pentalobe screw” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.