The AirPort/Bluetooth card, conforming to the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, still clings to the back of the logic board — making replacement no easier than before.

Not the first Mac to get updated with the new ac standard, we expected to see some similar hardware as in the refreshed MacBook Airs from earlier this year.

Chips off the old new block:

Broadcom BCM4360KML1G 5G WiFi 3-Stream 802.11ac Gigabit Transceiver—as expected, this is the same chip driving the ac Wi-Fi in the 11" and 13" MacBook Air

Skyworks SE5516 Dual-Band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WLAN Front-End Module

Broadcom BCM20702 Single-Chip Bluetooth 4.0 HCI Solution with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Support