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Apple Restricts Hard Drive Replacements on New iMacs

I've been on the fence regarding staying with Apple or switching to Windows. My beef has been over the lack of a desktop other than an all in one positioned between the mini and the Mac Pro.

If Apple is getting this picky I'm sure Apple will never fill the gap between the $699 mini and the $2499 Pro.

Thanks Apple. With things like this it will be easier to leave Apple after 18 years.
 
OllyW said:
I'm sure Apple will be happy to supply you with a replacement proprietary hard drive when it fails.

Of course it will come at a suitably inflated price.
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I doubt Apple will sell them to anyone except their certified techs. You'll have to wait until there's a third party workaround or, unless you're lucky enough to have an Apple store near you (the nearest one to me is 5 hours away), then you'll have to send the whole computer back to Apple just to replace the stupid hard drive. Which will add at least $150 to the whole bill once your computer is out of warranty.
 
terrible idea. I just recently upgraded my macbook's hard drive to a 500GB 7200rpm, but not before talking to a few reps. They each gave me different responses.

The first rep told me it would be fine and my applecare would be intact, but that I should get the replacement checked first by apple and approved. The second rep told me it would also be fine, but my applecare may be voided if problems arose from the hard-drive. Third rep told me applecare would be fine, and they would cover everything in the computer, but not the exchanged harddrive and ram (which I changed last year). When asked if I ever had a problem and needed to take my macbook in and should remove my parts, they had no idea. One said leave it all in, the other said remove it and install the original parts back. The other said that the parts needed to be tested to see if they were responsible for causing the problem in the first place.

So as much as it is legal and approved, they have a weird way of dealing with this. Might as well take the option away and make them all like a macbook air. Buy it as it is, and if unhappy, sell it and buy another one. IDK how I feel about that though. Comes a point when a hackintosh may be a better deal.
 
Wow. I think I am pretty easygoing, and hard to irritate, but this is ridiculous. My 2007 iMac's Applecare expired not too long ago, followed quickly by the HD failing. I replaced it myself for about $70 (and doubled the size of the disk). I would have been very unhappy to have been required to purchase a new computer or pay a lordly sum to have it done for me.

I hope a workaround shows up in the not-too-distant future. I don't want to go back to Windows, and don't have the desire to learn Linux, but at least I can replace my own broken stuff with a computer running them. I like Apple's stuff but am only willing to bend over so far.
 
that is strange given that apple supports changing your hard drive on notebooks. especially since many users want the option to put in ssd's once the become affordable.

i can't imagine that apples profit on the hard drives outweighs the negative image iMac's will have in two years when people try to upgrade to cheap HD's or SSD's and can't.

Unless this is a technology that will be available to all 3rd party providers of HD's soon then it's time for Steve to leave and let somebody make more mainstream designs.....
 
kuebby said:
That's some bull. Just an unnecessary Apple hurdle. Don't they realize this is the kind of thing that really pisses off with regards to their company?

Sometimes I appreciate the closed ecosystem/"walled garden" but I don't need to wear a helmet and straight-jacket in my private garden.
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+100000000000000000000000000000

This is the height of excessive greed. What possible reason could warrant such a change other than forcing Apple supplied upgrade purchases and full price disk repair parts?

This is even beyond Apple's insane desire to maintain absolute control. Complete and utter corporate greed run amok!

Cheers,
 
Apple is moving putting SSD's in exverything and making you use external drives for more storage it seems
 
Not unexpected

If the drives were in easily accessible expansion bays, this would be an issue with me. This action is probably in response too many people f*n up hard drive upgrades and trying to get Apple to fix it under warranty. Now the rest of us have to suffer. I'll wait for iFixit or OWC to come up with something. Annoyed but not losing sleep.
 
I was contemplating replacing my 2006 imacfor a new one. No friggin way now. Apple can kiss my 4th point of contact. What next, make the Mac pro's hard drive upgrades done by apple only? Hope a hack comes out to stick it to apple. Total BS. Glad I've been migrating to win7 and ubuntu. I'll build my own for now on!
 
By the way...

Have you ever tried to buy a hard drive upgrade from Apple?

They won't sell you one. Apple will only replace a defective factory-installed drive -- you can't buy any Apple hard-drives as standalone components. I found that out when I had installed a 500 GB drive in an old MBP that originally came with a 320 GB drive. Later when the 500 GB drive failed, and I had my MBP into Apple for other reasons, I asked them if I could just buy the Apple 500 GB drive -- they wouldn't sell me one!

They are going to have to completely rethink that policy!
 
lshaner said:
Holy crap! This is possibly the worst thing Apple has EVER done!
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Utter nonsense, this is going to affect a TINY minority of users who just happen to complain loudly. Let's be honest for a minute, you're buying an all in one machine with the components (memory excluded) behind a screen and clearly designed to not be user replaceable. If you want to get a machine to fiddle with and upgrade, this ain't it. Yes, it sucks for power users but let's keep a sense of perspective here.

Besides which, and please tell me if thus won't work, why not just get a Thunderbolt drive when they come on the Market? Shouldn't be much, if any, performance difference and theresno risk of breaking something or voiding the warranty.
 
I installed my own SSD day one

I successfully replaced the hard drive that came with the new 27" Imac with a solid state drive from a local store. Installed HDD Fan Control for Imac that bypasses the Apple sensor and monitors the hard drive temp. Fan works - hard drive works - I'm happy and can boot from pressing the power button to desktop in less than 17 secs.
 
It's not like most people will crack their iMacs open anyway...

But can't the pin be shorted like before?
 
jaglad said:
What a crock of ******, I have replaced the hard drive in my iMac twice, both times for larger drives, and have also replaced drives in friends and relatives iMacs when they have failed, I would much rather take apart my machine than leave it in the hands of so called experts because I take a lot more care of my stuff than they do.

I was thinking about getting a new i5 or i7 iMac, that idea is now out of the window.
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I doubt the techs who work on these things are paid enough to give a d***. :( Meritocracy is a dead concept in a supply-side-centric "economy"...

ouimetnick said:
Pretty weak. BTW, if your drive fails, and you don't want to pay Apple, can you use a FireWire, or USB hard drive with OSX on it? I have OSX on a drive, and use it for testing.
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And you've done the benchmark tests to show that USB and FireWire-based hard drives are faster than the internal SATA connection, yes... :rolleyes:

Besides, iMacs are sold as being all-in-ones and as neat little packages. Many who buy them don't like having a ton of external enclosures... adding a ton of external enclosures defeats the purpose, and yeah - the speed difference is considerable as well. Especially when using USB...
 
RalfTheDog said:
Time for an after market upgrade kit. This sounds like Apple was having thermal issues with the hard drives. With any luck, Apple will include some kind of firmware switch for people running SSD as SSDs should not have the thermal issues.
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if that is true the Apple has other issues in terms of design. Hard drives should never and I repeat NEVER be an issue in terms of heat in a PC. That should be the least of your worries. This just smells of greed
Lesser Evets said:
-A- Hope they ditch that garbage on the next revision.

WTF, Apple.
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Do not expect them to do it. From this I expect them to shove it on their laptops as well and I would not be surprised if they try to find someway to do it as well with Ram so you have to pay Apples insane prices.
 
I replaced it...

I replaced my Apple 1TB hard drive with a 3TB western digital... I simply swapped the drive (which was a pain in the ass having to take the glass and the lcd display off) - sata connectors were the same, but there was a separate connector for the temp... I trimmed a paper clip and shorted the temp connection. Put it all together and works fine. The fans don't speed up to max.

I then use SMCFanControl and turned up the HD fan until it was just barely audible.

Works great!

Why they can't make the HD replacement similar to RAM upgrades through a simple slot on the bottom of the imac, I don't know!

(Sorry, just realized this was for the 2010 IMac, and the 2011 Imac has now replaced the SATA connector with a changed one, so it doesn't apply to 2011 iMacs, but does for others)
 
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Target Mode

I am not sure about performance (I think it will be similar) but booting off aTarget Mode Thunderbolt drive would work when/if the HD breaks down. Working at Apple and an Apple Service Provider.....Hard drive failures were VERY rare even on OLD stuff. Legacy stuff.
 
Stupid Idea

As much as I think it is nice to have a temperature checked and the spinning of fans limited for noise and power reasons, doing it this way is a very very bad idea as it alienates customers. Why would I want to buy a machine where I won't be able to replace the disk myself when it fails? Especially when the machine is out of warranty. Bad move Apple, very bad move! :mad: :(
 
This type of news makes me love my mid 2010 even more. Still have the 1gb video, quad core i5, etc.... and can change my HD :D.
 
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