Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Restricts Hard Drive Replacements on New iMacs

No more Macs for me I guess.

I've had a hard drive fail with my 2007 iMac. Apple charges 400 dollars for a 250GB replacement, I bought a 1TB hard drive and replaced it myself for 100 dollars.

I am also planning on replacing my iMac but I will definitely look into something else now (probably custom built).
 
Screw it, I'm getting a PC. Being able to upgrade it a year from now will be very refreshing.
 
OMG!!! NEVER buying a mac again!!!111!1

I was just about to spend $3000 on a new iMac, but not anymore!!! :mad:

SCREW THIS!!! :apple: is soooo stupid! What a dumb company.

Have fun all you iFans, I'm going back to Windows 7 because I read this article that made some stuff up, and now I know that apple=FAIL!!

Wait, everything you read on the interwebs is true, right???

:rolleyes::eek::cool:

READING people... try it out, sometimes you LEARN things!!!!!
 
I guess there are those who like modding their computers. I used to be one of them, in my former PC days. But since I switched to Macs, I haven't had a need to mod anything. My Macs have worked just fine until I decided to upgrade. At that point, I sold my old Mac for a good price and put the money toward a brand new Mac. (I like how Macs tend to hold their resale value for a long time.) And the only Macs really meant for modding are the MacPros; those are a piece of cake compared to iMacs.

I have a last generation iMac. But even so, I would never bother replacing the hard drive. With the rate at which technology advances, I'm going to want an entirely new computer in three years anyway. If my hard drive croaks before that, I've got it backed up and I've got AppleCare.
 
Well from a business standpoint this is a good idea. The more proprietary your system is the less chance people will go in and fiddle with it. That means 1) Customers will select a better HDD or SSD from the start if they need the space and 2) If there is a drive failure Apple will be the place most customers come back to for replacement.

Business is all about making money for the stockholders and from that standpoint this is a good idea. It doesn't really bother me because I am not one to open up my iMac and fiddle with it. iMacs were never really designed to be user serviceable so I don't really see the issue.
 
Not sure what is more shocking ... a company laking proper testing resources and google skills which releases poorly documented facts to the public OR hundreds of people altering their computer purchase decision without questioning the information for 1 second.

Now imagine for split second what a government and mass-media can do :eek:

To recap: OCW report is a lie. Many people have successfully upgraded the HDD without a single problem. Please read the links.
 
Bringing in for repair!

This is what I hated most when you bring your gigantic 27" iMac in the store. Imagine 3-4 years from now when new redesign iMac came out then all of a sudden you need to replace your hddd. I can't imagine people looking at you with your old obsolete computer staring thinking what this guy is doing at the store. I've seen people bringing in their crt imac not a long time ago or even the white plastic one. What if the new iMac 3-5 years from now is really thin 50-75% thinner. You don't want people staring at you with your jurassic computer don't you? How about the hdd all your personal files and sensitive data is Apple keeping them. How safe are we?
 
Everything in the commercial world seems to be tilting more and more to a proprietary, closed model, but the iMac seems to be leading the charge.

How a company like Apple can talk of having green credentials whilst making such a wasteful product like the iMac is beyond me. Need a faster machine? Here, buy everything again, including the screen and just get rid of that perfectly good one you bought 3 years ago because it's an intrinsic part of your old system.....too bad. Need a faster GPU? Same deal. What's that? Hard drive failure? You'll just have to inconveniently arrange an expensive trip to the Apple store to pay exorbitant prices to get it fixed, due to it being deliberately designed to be user non-serviceable. Not to mention the inconvenience of doing without it during repair. Just give us your money and shut up.

I know the iMac is aimed at a certain audience but pros are being given less and less options by Apple these days. There was a time I thought they were coraling the pro market into the high end iMacs but now I'm beginning to wonder if they want pros at all.

Looks like it's back to custom built PC's again for me. This isn't just about specs, it's about control over my own work tools.
 
xxBURT0Nxx said:
OMG!!! NEVER buying a mac again!!!111!1

I was just about to spend $3000 on a new iMac, but not anymore!!! :mad:

SCREW THIS!!! :apple: is soooo stupid! What a dumb company.

Have fun all you iFans, I'm going back to Windows 7 because I read this article that made some stuff up, and now I know that apple=FAIL!!

Wait, everything you read on the interwebs is true, right???

:rolleyes::eek::cool:

READING people... try it out, sometimes you LEARN things!!!!!
Click to expand...

joueboy said:
This is what I hated most when you bring your gigantic 27" iMac in the store. Imagine 3-4 years from now when new redesign iMac came out then all of a sudden you need to replace your hddd. I can't imagine people looking at you with your old obsolete computer staring thinking what this guy is doing at the store. I've seen people bringing in their crt imac not a long time ago or even the white plastic one. What if the new iMac 3-5 years from now is really thin 50-75% thinner. You don't want people staring at you with your jurassic computer don't you? How about the hdd all your personal files and sensitive data is Apple keeping them. How safe are we?
Click to expand...
what? ever think maybe not everyone is privileged enough to buy new machines every 2 or 3 years?

I feel very sorry for you if you really look down upon and diminish people because their computer may be a few years older than the newest model. :rolleyes:

Some people are so conceded these days I swear. This has to be the absolute dumbest argument/statement I may have ever read.

People must also look down at you when you bring your new iMac in but you didn't drive up in a ferrari wearing a gucci suit and a flashy jewlery. :rolleyes: God forbid not everyone own the latest and greatest.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole idea of an iMac over a traditional computer was to get rid of desktop clutter. If you have to keep an external hard drive connected 24/7, WTF is the point of getting it in the first place?
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I plan to do in a year or two. Compared to a tower on your desk a little bus powered SSD the size of a USB hub isn't clutter. It's also something you don't have to pay to have installed, or risk voiding your warranty over.
 
-hh said:
You have a fair point, but the counterpoint is that if such a minor relocation of the thermal sensor (and its associated system management software) is enough to make the difference between an iMac running okay or cooking, then pointing the finger of blame at the sensor is the wrong engineering answer.

The correct engineering answer is that product's thermal management system's design is fundamentally flawed for having an insufficient design margin for the operating environment.


-hh
Click to expand...

Exactly. For some reasons Mac have to be stupidly thin, even to the detriment of performance. An imac could be even an inch thicker and have better cooling and easier repairability. The new mini could be an inch or so taller and have a real HDD, descrete graphics and a bigger power supply. But no no no, everything has got to be thin. As if "thin" makes a computer work better or last longer.
 
Thats horrible, even more reason to get a Hackintosh, which is what I've got, and yes it will work just as a real Mac does, I find that a lot of people are sceptical when it comes to this, but as long as you have compatible hardware you won't have issues, you can update, enable sleep, and even take advantage of all the power savings features..
 
Yamcha said:
Thats horrible, even more reason to get a Hackintosh, which is what I've got, and yes it will work just as a real Mac does, I find that a lot of people are sceptical when it comes to this, but as long as you have compatible hardware you won't have issues, you can update, enable sleep, and even take advantage of all the power savings features..
Click to expand...

You have to use a mac to understand a mac. I've been the hackintosh route before. Nowadays it is more expensive (shocker!!!) and it sucks big time when you have something to compare it with.

Oh and this article is a severely flawed. Do yourself a favour and Google the non existing issue.
 
maxinc said:
Not sure what is more shocking ... a company laking proper testing resources and google skills which releases poorly documented facts to the public OR hundreds of people altering their computer purchase decision without questioning the information for 1 second.

Now imagine for split second what a government and mass-media can do :eek:

To recap: OCW report is a lie. Many people have successfully upgraded the HDD without a single problem. Please read the links.
Click to expand...

THANK YOU!

Someone on here that has some sense and reason.

17 pages (so far) of people jumping up and down like spoilt children, wanting to take their bat and ball and go home. Without EVER questioning WHY?

This was just link bait for OWC (sorry i just dont trust these guys, never have never will)

Maybe MR should put a [redaction] on the news story so that this thread can die and we dont have to read another 20 pages of people complaining because they cant FTFA (its getting almost as bad as Slashdot)
 
One of the HDD issues that doesn't get discussed very much is security. Whether the imac's HDD is really, crappy hard, kind of hard or just hard to replace is an issue. If one of my Macs has to go back to the Apple store for repair the last thing that's going to be in it is a hard drive with my personal and private data on it.

Even though there is a certain amount of encription for some of the data the last guy that I want to walk away with that data is the kid at the Apple Store, Best Buy or any place else.

Fortunately it's easy for my to return the EOM drive with any one of my computers. I don't use the OEM drives! It's hardly hidden knowlege that Macs should be purchased, BTO or not, with the lease amount of HDD space and the least amount of RAM. In the case of my machines none of them were even available with premium hard drives at any price.
 
Apple is making the same mistakes all empires have made for centuries. Super affluent multi national corporations can not help but to eventually have a skewed perspective of reality and always start to believe they can control everything.

Apple is at their absolute pinnacle right now. Like Microsoft was, GM, FORD, Toyota, AIG etc. etc. etc.
 
scottsjack said:
One of the HDD issues that doesn't get discussed very much is security. Whether the imac's HDD is really, crappy hard, kind of hard or just hard to replace is an issue. If one of my Macs has to go back to the Apple store for repair the last thing that's going to be in it is a hard drive with my personal and private data on it.

Even though there is a certain amount of encription for some of the data the last guy that I want to walk away with that data is the kid at the Apple Store, Best Buy or any place else.
Click to expand...

This always bothers me. The perpetual distrust people have for any single tech out there. I work at an Apple store and have ZERO interest in a customers data. The fact that people think their data is that important that anyone who fixes your computer wants to steal it is a bit arrogant in m eyes. I am there to do a job, which is fixing your computer, i really do not give a damn about your personal data.

Not everyone is a damned thief lurking in the shadows of an Apple store just WAITING to screw customers over.
 
ronwasserman said:
Apple is making the same mistakes all empires have made for centuries. Super affluent multi national corporations can not help but to eventually have a skewed perspective of reality and always start to believe they can control everything.
Click to expand...

No, greedy people like OCW give Apple a bad image by spreading false information for the own benefit. Apple, if anything, made it easier to upgrade the drives into the new 2011 models. No more temperature sensor means no more headaches and more happy people ... now only if they(people) would listen and check the facts.
 
maxinc said:
No, greedy people like OCW give Apple a bad image by spreading false information for the own benefit. Apple, if anything, made it easier to upgrade the drives into the new 2011 models. No more temperature sensor means no more headaches and more happy people ... now only if they(people) would listen and check the facts.
Click to expand...

Dude, the is a problem. MANY people are having fan noises after replacing. Smeone needs to clarify what drives can be used, if any! In theory, I could say your post is a lie as it is MUCH harder apparently to replace the spindle drive with a single SSD.
 
Wow this thread is going absolutely nowhere. Those of you who choose not to read can go ahead and never buy a mac again. Your loss for believing everything that comes across the internet. Maybe next time a little research will save you from making uninformed decisions, but considering it's too much to ask people to read a few sentences, I have little faith.

Read the thread, do a google search, look in the iMac forums... This is a fabricated problem OWC came up with about installing a new hard drive. Multiple people have done it, and it has been linked to in this thread countless times. The fact that people are still saying a) I'll never buy a mac because of this, and b) Apple is so evil, is absolutely absurd.

So funny how a false little rumor can blow up into some HUGE problem that now people are threatening to go to windows and never use a mac again. It will be even funnier in 5 years when they come back and troll the forums trash talking apple because they will never become wiser in the mean time since they don't read the info right in front of their eyes.

Also funny how the people in this thread that are trying to explain that this is a non-issue and that OWC is wrong are getting downranked. Oh well I suppose!
 
Macboy Pro said:
Dude, the is a problem. MANY people are having fan noises after replacing. Smeone needs to clarify what drives can be used, if any! In theory, I could say your post is a lie as it is MUCH harder apparently to replace the spindle drive with a single SSD.
Click to expand...

Check the numerous links I gave in this thread alone. People have upgraded to 2TB and even 3TB drives without problems. While I agree that not all drives would be a match and some incompatibilities may arise, it is not by far impossible to upgrade / replace the HDD as OCW claims in their incomplete report.

Also the temperature is not read from the power connector which is another mysterious claim OCW makes which everybody seems to believe without question.
 
Seems to me that OWC=fail.

Anyways, if anything, you may need to get a different temp sensor wire if you install a brand of drive that is different from what your iMac came with. I have seen this in the 2009 and newer iMacs - not a big deal.
 
hodaka said:
Seems to me that OWC=fail.

Anyways, if anything, you may need to get a different temp sensor wire if you install a brand of drive that is different from what your iMac came with. I have seen this in the 2009 and newer iMacs - not a big deal.
Click to expand...

It's easier than that since there is no temperature sensor for the HDD this time. You just have to get a compatible HDD which users on this forum and other international communities begin to discover. So far the 2TB WD Caviar Black and the 3TB Seagate XT are a match. There are others of course.
 
I'm starting to get furious with MacRumors for keeping this thread so much alive :))
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back