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Apple's line of laptops for professional and power users. To date, the MacBook Pro line includes 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17-inch variants, with major revisions defined by Pre-unibody(Original), unibody, Retina display, Touch Bar, and SOC (system-on-a-chip) designs.

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MBP 15" late 2008, MBP 13" Early 2011 keyboard swap?

I have an International English (vertical Enter key) MacBook Pro 15" Late 2008, and my girlfriend has an Early 2011 MacBook Pro 13" with a German keyboard, with a keyboard with the same shape keys. Our needs have changed, and we are considering switching computers, but we each want to retain our keyboard.

Being reasonably handy and careful, and having access to the right tools, would it work to simply switch the two keyboards?

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This question was migrated from http://meta.ifixit.com/Answers.

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Sorry no they are very different internally.

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If both Macbook's were 15" or 13" then you could swap them, provided the layouts match. You can't swap a 15" for a 13" keyboard or vice versa, as the keyboard connector is in different places.

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Up to a point ... Not all 15" keyboards are interchangeable. But it turns out, so far the 13" models are. The only rub with this is some keyboards are secured with rivets vs screws or a combo of both! The metal plate is different between each of these.

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