iFixit’s mad engineers encountered a few surprises along the way as they broke the Watch down component-by-component. They encountered Apple’s smallest tri-lobe screws ever — no surprise, given that they were tearing apart a wrist-worn computer.
They also got a close-up look at the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine, a small linear actuator that’s directly connected to its speaker. It’s what provides the feedback when you prod the Force Touch display on the Apple Watch. Another of the Watch’s signature features, the Digital Crown, turned out to have a lot in common with a Nest thermostat. It’s a rotary encoder, which keeps tabs on the position of a shaft attached to the Crown and turns it into scrolling input.
