Aluminum iMac Disassembled and First Impressions

[matticus008]

... to which you replied that most of the glossy naysayers (on this board) were persnickety whiners. I know what you said and what you meant...do you?

Try again. Here's the sentence, to refresh your memory:

"Most persnickety whiners have never used them, but even worse can't seem to grasp the relatively simply science that disproves their biggest gripes."

Where does that indicate that I was referring to anyone but persnickety whiners? You are making a leap beyond the text. I never said anything about most "glossy naysayers" at all--most people on this forum are capable of voicing their opinion without childish tantrums and in comprehending the difference in the point that I'm making, which is pretty basic, no matter how long you try to drag it out:

The selection of a panel is personal preference. Neither one is categorically worse than the other. Neither one, in the consumer market, is intended for professional color work. Both suffer the same in ambient light, differing only in how those imperfections manifest visually.

No posters on this forum wrote these statements or expressed anything similar to these sentences.

The record begs to differ.

No matter how much the monitor is adjusted or how much the person tries to ignore or get used to them, some people will not be able to work with the more obvious reflections that come with glossy screens.

And some people can't get over the black logo staring them in the face. Honestly, it is not difficult to get reflections to go away completely. It's not difficult to place a matte panel in a position where it suffers from its own glare problems. It would be exceedingly rare to be in a position where you couldn't adjust a display properly, regardless of type. Someone else might be unhappy with the complete glare-out of matte panels in direct sunlight (syntax help: this doesn't have to mean "outside"). It is purely a matter of personal preference.

You keep bringing up scenarios where a person would be interested in choosing a matte panel over a glossy one, posing them as though it makes a statement contrary to anything I've said.

You are ill. Seek help.

I'm not denying the statement. Hell, I'll even say it again: most persnickety whiners have no experience with a glossy panel on an extended basis and most can't grasp even the basic math of reflective optics.

And once again, there is no textual or contextual support for a metonymic association of that phrase to customers in general, "most people on this forum," people in general who don't like glossy panels, or any other absurd fabrications you might have floating in your head. Not even everyone I've responded to falls into that group. You're the only one putting them in that box.

You also might want to consider how you take offense to "persnickety whiner" which is in the same league as "old coot" but somehow you find it acceptable, even preferable, to accuse me of being mentally ill because you aren't so adept at English grammar.

 

[Fluffymuff]

The selection of a panel is personal preference. Neither one is categorically worse than the other. Neither one, in the consumer market, is intended for professional color work. Both suffer the same in ambient light, differing only in how those imperfections manifest visually.

Are you a shareholder concerned that a casual visitor to the thread might confuse personal opinion for a design flaw? You are concerned that personal opinion may not only be misguided in itself but more importantly miscontrued by others. Is that the crux?

 

[Yebot]

There's only one thing better than matte...
There's only one thing better than glossy...








The ability to between the two.

 

[maccompaq]

I find it interesting how different individuals have such a strong preference for one display or the other. Since I have not seen the new iMacs in person, I cannot make a comment about the display or the keyboard.

But, without seeing the new iMac, I still have the same concern about it as I have had about the previous iMacs. The all in one form factor generates a lot of heat. Heat is an enemy of electronic components. One person gave me a polite reply about that saying that I should not concern myself about the heat. But then he went on to say that if I buy a new iMac, I should buy Applecare, and also have a diligent backup plan to an external hard drive.

That observation has pretty much made me decide against the iMac. Perhaps the Mac Mini will do what I want, but I wonder about the heat issue there. Hopefully I can get some opinions about that. A perfect solution for me would be a mini tower that gives easy access to the internals. But I am sure that is not going to happen.

 

[psonice]

I find it interesting how different individuals have such a strong preference for one display or the other. Since I have not seen the new iMacs in person, I cannot make a comment about the display or the keyboard.

But, without seeing the new iMac, I still have the same concern about it as I have had about the previous iMacs. The all in one form factor generates a lot of heat. Heat is an enemy of electronic components. One person gave me a polite reply about that saying that I should not concern myself about the heat. But then he went on to say that if I buy a new iMac, I should buy Applecare, and also have a diligent backup plan to an external hard drive.

That observation has pretty much made me decide against the iMac. Perhaps the Mac Mini will do what I want, but I wonder about the heat issue there. Hopefully I can get some opinions about that. A perfect solution for me would be a mini tower that gives easy access to the internals. But I am sure that is not going to happen.

You should ALWAYS have a diligent backup plan to tape, cd or an external hard disk (well, if you have anything worth saving..) Not just for the imac but any computer - because the harddisk could fail at any time. They last a few years on average but still quite a lot fail early, and that can happen in any computer - actually, I believe the HDD tends to last longer if it's in a warm environment.

Having said that, the imac is more or less just a high performance laptop, with parts that are likely to get hot - and hot parts can damage the board or components over time. Apple will be aware of this and will design the cooling and layout to minimise it. I'd still recommend apple care though for any mac, because if there IS some issue and say the motherboard dies, it'll be very expensive to repair. The same would apply to a laptop PC (or a PC with this kind of form factor, if one exists).

 

[ju5tin81]

My new 20' iMac arrived today...

I've used a glossy screen MacBook before and never had a problem, but I must say, the iMac's glass front is REALLY shiny... I'm not seeing ceiling light reflections or anything, just myself! I can see myself in the reflection all the time and it is really quite distracting...

Will take some getting used to. Also the 20' panel is not nearly as good as the standalone cinema display. For one, the icons in the dock are almost out of focus. (Too bright to see, the viewing angle is really tight vertically.)

Screen definitely doesn't feel like an improvement.

App launching etc. a delight compared to the PowerMac 2 GHz G5 it replaces. Speed Great!

Keyboard... Very low, but nippy and responsive.

Black apple, needlessly prominent. The chrome one on the cinema display just faded into the background when working. This one screams for attention.

One thing.... I had hoped to eventually get an iMac to replace my TV at home. The white ones would've been so much better for that. This one blends into the black office Dells very well (I'm the only Mac user.), and is, well, too obviously a computer to use as anything else...

Good, but cosmetically, change for the sake of it really. No real innovative benefits, just distracting logo and glare. (Will look great in the shop, not at home though.)

 

[maccompaq]

You should ALWAYS have a diligent backup plan to tape, cd or an external hard disk (well, if you have anything worth saving..) Not just for the imac but any computer - because the harddisk could fail at any time. They last a few years on average but still quite a lot fail early, and that can happen in any computer - actually, I believe the HDD tends to last longer if it's in a warm environment.

Having said that, the imac is more or less just a high performance laptop, with parts that are likely to get hot - and hot parts can damage the board or components over time. Apple will be aware of this and will design the cooling and layout to minimise it. I'd still recommend apple care though for any mac, because if there IS some issue and say the motherboard dies, it'll be very expensive to repair. The same would apply to a laptop PC (or a PC with this kind of form factor, if one exists).

What I do for backup is to keep my important info on a Mac, a Compaq and an external HD formatted as FAT32 so both OSX & Windows can read and write to it.
With my Mac towers and Compaq towers, I have replaced hard drives that failed, and installed quite large extra hard drives. I removed a CDRW and replaced it with a DVDRW. Replacing a HD in an iMac is not a user function. A Mac Mini is more likely to be user serviceable. I am just wondering about the heat factor. So far, no one has responded re heat in the Mini.

 

[ChrisA]

That observation has pretty much made me decide against the iMac. Perhaps the Mac Mini will do what I want, but I wonder about the heat issue there. Hopefully I can get some opinions about that. A perfect solution for me would be a mini tower that gives easy access to the internals. But I am sure that is not going to happen.

Every computer I've ever seen, from notebooks to the old 1960's vintage CDC mainframe I used to work on all, every one of them shared the same design idea where there put of bunch of electronics inside a box and the box heats up a bit. Good luck finding a computer that does not live inside it's own self generated heat.

What you hope is that the engineers figured it out so the heat in the box is not greater than the maximum safe operating temperature of any of the components. The iMac does not use much power or make much heat so convection cooling plus a small fan works. The Mac Pro with a temperature controlled fan set to allow the inside of the box to heat up only to some set limit. For all you know the inside of the imac could be coole then the inside of the Mac Pro. It depends on how the termal controlled fa was designed more than anything else

 

[Fluffymuff]

But, without seeing the new iMac, I still have the same concern about it as I have had about the previous iMacs. The all in one form factor generates a lot of heat. Heat is an enemy of electronic components. One person gave me a polite reply about that saying that I should not concern myself about the heat.

With kindest regards, you should not concern yourself about the heat.

There.

Now you can say that two people gave you polite replies assuring you that you should not concern yourself about the heat.

With its large surface areas, the iMac seems to be a particularly good not bad design in terms of heat dispersion.

 

[snorby]

But, without seeing the new iMac, I still have the same concern about it as I have had about the previous iMacs. The all in one form factor generates a lot of heat. Heat is an enemy of electronic components. One person gave me a polite reply about that saying that I should not concern myself about the heat. But then he went on to say that if I buy a new iMac, I should buy Applecare, and also have a diligent backup plan to an external hard drive.

That observation has pretty much made me decide against the iMac. Perhaps the Mac Mini will do what I want, but I wonder about the heat issue there. Hopefully I can get some opinions about that. A perfect solution for me would be a mini tower that gives easy access to the internals. But I am sure that is not going to happen.

I asked the same question in this thread, and shared my own experience with a Mac Mini.

 

[psonice]

I am just wondering about the heat factor. So far, no one has responded re heat in the Mini.

We have a lot of macs at work, mostly imacs and pros though, no minis. I know of a fair few failures in older pro machines, and some of the g5 imacs, not heard anything bad about the newer ones (although I'm not involved much in that side of things, so maybe they're dropping like flies and nobody mentioned it

I used to do electronic repairs, and there are two main issues with heat - capacitors (they don't like heat, and mildly explode if they get too hot, plus they kindof wear out over time if they're too warm. We get MAJOR issues with that with certain dell PCs). Also, if one component gets REALLY hot, it can cause the circuit board to warp with the heat. That can kill the machine (see xbox 360's famous red ring of death) or it can just bend the board a little each time it gets warm (which eventually causes the solder holding the bits onto the board to fracture and the computer breaks down).

So really, the issues are like this:

If the computer is warm it's not a problem so long as it's not TOO warm, and the components are selected to deal with the heat. I'd say the warmer it gets, the less likely it is to live a long and fulfilling life.

If a particular component gets very hot (usually the CPU and GPU chips) that can be more of an issue. It's worth having a hunt on the net to see if you can find some figures on how hot they run and comparing it to other machines. It looks like apple has pretty decent cooling on the cpu + gpu for the imacs (plus they use laptop parts which should run cooler), so it should be OK. (Unless a fan breaks down - I once had a CPU fan fail on an old pentium 2 PC, it kept going despite the heat... until it got so hot that the power connector an inch away actually melted and shorted out, nearly causing a fire!)

I've actually ordered a 24" imac with the 2.8ghz cpu, I'm not too worried about the heat as by design it'll stand in a nice open space. I've got the applecare, and I reckon any design issues will come to light within the 3 years, so no worries there.

 

[EVH]

If the iMac had a better video card then I wouldn't hold back a purchase, but after seeing the benchmarks then I'm completely against it now.

Don't get me wrong, I have a capable MBP but the design of the iMac is visually appealing.. but I think Apple have tripped themselves up with the under-powered gfx

 

[maccompaq]

I asked the same question in this thread, and shared my own experience with a Mac Mini.

Heat is a factor in making my decision, but even more of a factor in the iMac is that I cannot service components myself.

I know that a Mac Mini is user serviceable, but I was wondering about the heat. It will not be used in a stressful manner. Just word processing, spreadsheets, email, web surfing and light PhotoShop for hobby use.

Thanks for referencing the previous item about the Mac Mini.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Just remove the glass

Hey, maybe we can pop the glass off like the disassembly picture and have a matted life again.

If it is legal I'm sure some company will make something like that, but unless you do it in a truly dust-free environment, you'll have dust under your screen and it will annoy the heck out of you more so than a glossy finish.

"If it is legal"? I don't think there are Apple Police waiting to break down the door of anyone who removes the glass. Once you buy something, it's yours, and you have the right to take an axe to it if you want, or turn it into a fishtank, etc. Maybe you mean if it doesn't violate the warranty? That's a different issue, and it's worth finding out. As for dust under the screen...not sure what you mean here. Once the glass is removed, the LCD panel, with its matte surface, is exposed in essentally the same fashion as previous iMac models (with the exception that the mount points for the glass are exposed), and dust gets onto the surface of LCD as it always has. Maybe you mean that if the user reinstalls the glass panel, that this would trap dust between it and the display, but I'm guessing that anyone removing the glass because they want to have the LCD's matte finish instead, is unlikely to be reinstalling it if they're happy with the results, unless they need to take the iMac in for warranty repairs, and if it's obvious to Apple that the glass has been removed, getting warranty repair covered under warranty, might not be easy. Some people are starting to report condensation forming under the glass, so that's not good, and people in that position would be compelled to remove the glass, if the condensation doesn't evaporate.

The glass is held in place by magnets ringing the rear surface of the glass, and ringing the bezel on the Mac. I don't know if removing the glass exposes holes that should be covered to allow proper airflow, but covering them with tape should take care of that, or maybe someone will manufacture a replacement bezel ring that will cover just the magnets and holes, making things look cosmetically nice again.

From the looks of the glass panel and its easy removability, I wonder if Apple is planning an optional retrofit for the first iMac Aluminums, if the next generation of iMacs comes out with a touchscreen, that will allow you to replace the first model's glass panel with a touchscreen.

 

[keirnna]

Yes, u can purchase cheap ram, but there are horror stories of doing so and people's macs get fried. The bad news, the warranty is voided because you installed 3rd party hardware. I don't know if it's u installing and/or the 3rd party ram that does it, the warranty does get x'd.
I'm a careless cowboy with my toys, and I install my own ram, but I at least try to purchase the same ram apple uses. memoryx.com will tell you which ram to get if u want to match ram and install yourself.
I could see an unethical person purchasing such ram, and if occuring any troubles, uninstalling such ram and taking it in for repairs? I think I'm just the same as you and would like to pinch some pennies when I don't necessarily have to spend a fortune

Good luck!

3rd Party RAM will not void your warranty. The DDR2 667 SODIMM ram is basically all the same. They all have the same cache latency, so why not go cheap?

 

[keirnna]

How are we 3 weeks after the release and we still only have the one set of disassembly pictures? I am ready to install my 1TB drive in this sucker, but I can't figure out where to get that same suction cup from. I live in Japan, maybe I can give that guy a call.

 

[matticus008]

I am ready to install my 1TB drive in this sucker, but I can't figure out where to get that same suction cup from. I live in Japan, maybe I can give that guy a call.

It's called a glass lifter. You can get them anywhere they do plastics and glass work or order one online. It's not a special tool for the iMac.

 

[keirnna]

It's called a glass lifter. You can get them anywhere they do plastics and glass work or order one online. It's not a special tool for the iMac.

I know that it is not a special tool for the iMac. I plan to order one, but I don't see how the glass came out. He just lifted it and it pops out?

 

[matticus008]

I know that it is not a special tool for the iMac. I plan to order one, but I don't see how the glass came out. He just lifted it and it pops out?

Everything you need to know is in the name. It's the same tool used to remove windscreens and window glazing. In the case of a car, there is a second tool used to remove the adhesive beading.

In the case of the iMac, there are tabs that have to be released with a flathead screwdriver or similar tool. There are 12-16 of these based on the photos of the disassembly. Use the glass lifter in conjunction with the awl to release the tabs as you work around the perimeter. Some have said that the bezel is magnetized, so it may not be easy to lift. If you don't know how to use these tools, you'll almost certainly break the glass. Consider yourself warned.

 

[flopticalcube]

Everything you need to know is in the name. It's the same tool used to remove windscreens and window glazing. In the case of a car, there is a second tool used to remove the adhesive beading.

In the case of the iMac, there are tabs that have to be released with a flathead screwdriver or similar tool. There are 12-16 of these based on the photos of the disassembly. Use the glass lifter in conjunction with the awl to release the tabs as you work around the perimeter. If you don't know how to use these tools, you'll almost certainly break the glass. Consider yourself warned.

Gone are the days when all you needed was a Phillips screwdriver and a case of beer...

 

[kheller2]

Dare I ask if the ServiceSource repair manual is in the wild yet for the new imacs?

 

[matticus008]

Gone are the days when all you needed was a Phillips screwdriver and a case of beer...

A necessary evil as things integrate and miniaturize. Remember socketed FPUs? Easy access and assembly structure means wasted space and resources. Computers aren't really worth taking apart anymore. There's nothing interesting inside, really. Everything up through midmarket has been integrated into the motherboard. That's not really a bad thing.

It just means you have to accept computer hobbyists as a shrinking niche instead of the dominant force. Once upon a time, people fixed their own TVs, too. Ah, progress.