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Apple Restricts Hard Drive Replacements on New iMacs

econgeek said:

HOLD YOUR HORSES EVERYBODY!

This is likely not a proprietary connector at all, but a new standard we're not familiar with.

Apple doesn't make hard drives. Therefore, someone must be making hard drives to fit in these machines. Apple doesn't want to rely on a single source, so that means multiple businesses are making these drives.

These people can sell these drives in the aftermarket to mac users.

Further, they aren't going to tool up and design a custom hard drive for Apple.

Apple has learned this lesson already. Apple does not forget lessons- especially painful ones!

This is going to turn out to be a standardized connector and part of the SATA Standard. It might not be the common, popular, backwards with SATA-1 connector... but nobody up and down the supply chain likes one off, specific designs.

The forces for standardization are VERY powerful.

And having read Apple news for the past 3 decades, I know a lot of BS gets out there, and people jump to conclusions only to later be proven wrong, but when it happens, everyone forgets that they were all up in arms about it (But the general "apple wants to screw you over" mantra persists.)

I've never been screwed over by Apple and I've never had to pay too much for any Apple part, device, accessory or product.

Apple is not going to make a one off hardware standard in order to get an extra $30 from the few people who open their iMacs to upgrade the drives.

Let's get real.
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You don't know too much about Apple history. You should look it up. They are very much capable of ordering proprietary connectors. In case you haven't noticed, they have enough clout to have mfg's build or assign entire factories to their needs. $$$$$ talks.
 
Well I was considering upgrading my 2006 iMac to one of the newer models. Forget that now. Nice step backwards Apple and a very un-consumer thing to do. I think I'll hold onto my existing iMac a while longer.
 
I'm getting mixed reports; some people are swapping out disks and just living with the noisier fan, or using SMCFanControl to slow it down. Others are saying they swapped the drive and the fan didn't spin any faster.

Could this be OWC spreading FUD? There seems to be a lot of FUD about Apple going around lately... stuff about them locking down OS X, discontinuing the Mac, etc... people eat this stuff up and love to argue about it for hours on end even though most of it is ********.

Also, who cares if the machine fails the AHT? You really only use that if something ELSE is going wrong, and if you just ignore the hard drive part of the test it'll still tell you what else is wrong (I think).

The last machine I ran AHT on was a Powerbook G4 back in 2005.

Either way, someone will figure this out. Macs use EFI for thermal management, which is highly configurable.
 
This is very bad. I can see years down the road an Apple tech replacing an iMac Hard Drive and putting in a stock drive without realizing the firmware and fan issues.

My 2006 iMac had it's hard drive die last year, I opened it up and changed the drive. It was out of warranty, so why should Apple care what I do to it?

This is an unnecessary change that they have made. I was looking forward to getting a new iMac too. It puts a bad taste in my mouth know that when my hard drive fails I'll have to pay a premium for a "special" Apple Hard Drive with some silly firmware on it. :( And if I place a regular one in there I don't want the fans working overtime and failing, causing the whole iMac to cook itself.

Very bad idea Apple. Let's hope someone hacks this to make the issue go away!
 
Order withdrawn

Canceling my order.

Lets see in a few weeks, and what iFixit has to say. If its true im not buying crap i cant modify. Its my mac if i buy it. Im not ****ing renting it!

This is a serious issue if it turns out to be fact. And its a worrying trend. Apple products seems to be more and more fitted for planned obsolecense.
 
Ugh this just adds to the reasons for Apple haters to continue to drive home why they hate Apple's restrictive ecosystem.

Not that I would ever want to open an iMac myself but purposefully putting in unnecessary, and proprietary, tech is just a dumb move.
 
I am wondering what their warranty is on the HDDs? 3 years is standard in hard drives isn't it? I wonder if you have to buy AppleCare to get the three years...

I was on the fence about getting an iMac, but I didn't realize the HDDs are not user replaceable. I doubt I would try to change it (doesn't the screen need to be taken off and such?), but I was kinda struck by this.

Does anyone know if they charge labor to put in a new HDD, or is the labor included in the replacement cost?
 
I love all this talk about "power users".

Hint: Power users use servers and/or NAS.
A small HD in an iMac would certainly not impact most "power users".

Now, if we are talking about people who use their computer specs as a representation of their (lack of) penis size as "power users" then yes, it might impact those people.
 
ed724 said:
You don't know too much about Apple history. You should look it up. They are very much capable of ordering proprietary connectors. In case you haven't noticed, they have enough clout to have mfg's build or assign entire factories to their needs. $$$$$ talks.
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Not even so much the connectors, but I can absolutely see Apple coding proprietary firmware onto these new harddrives which they undoubtedly won't release to the general public.. It's not like this goes against Apples mold..
 
HDD Fan Control

This has been a problem since the late 2009 models.

To fix it I have software which controls the drives fan using temperature readings from the S.M.A.R.T data from the drive.

Its opensource and free from www.hddfancontrol.com

Thanks

Ben
 
baleensavage said:
So Apple is in essence giving their computers a life span of 3-5 years... Major fail!
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I find it amusing how many times I got blasted for suggesting that Apple is shortening the 'planned life' of ALL their products, not just iOS or because of the PPC switch to Intel (note how Lion now ditches 32-bit Intel machines). It seems a few people are finally starting to wake up to the realization that Apple is one seriously GREEDY company that is starting to make Microsoft look soft by comparison (and I don't like Microsoft at all ever since my Amiga days). It's not hard to see they are aiming for closed software for the "Mac" in the future as well as they merge iOS "features" back into OSX proper.

Yes, Hackintosh and jailbreak options and other workarounds offer some respite from Apple's every move to thwart 3rd party competition, prevent people from making money without having to pay Apple 1/3 their gross revenue, etc., but just because Apple supports HTML5 doesn't mean they are in any way, shape or form embracing "open" or "standards" as a whole. Apple wants to sell you 100% of your hardware. They sell it at a premium over potential competition. They are now trying to close loop-holes that lets you get your hardware from anyone but them. I expect them to eventually step-up the fight against even casual Hackintosh operations (they're just a lower priority since they're a relatively small group). They want a 100% hardware "monopoly" (in the casual sense) for all Apple-based systems. That means you buy your ram from them, your hard drives from them and your software from their App store. It means you buy a new computer instead of a new graphics card. It means your Mac won't last more than 3 OS upgrades at most in the future (expect it to keep shrinking as time goes on).

I prefer the OSX operating system to Windows or Linux, but it's just getting more and more unfriendly over time in terms of hardware configurations and Apple is offering less and less "pro" equipment and dumbing things down more and more. Some may like it, but "power users" are finding it to be a bit less "Power" UNIX these days and a bit more Fisher Price in nature.

I'm really starting to think in the long run Linux may be the only real hope for an open system without a ton of BS. The problem there is traditionally Linux people are elitist hacker types and don't like GUI friendly environments. That has started to change over the years, but the system isn't unified and has more packages and archives for them than most applications have supported systems. It is not at all commercial friendly and that pretty much kills its potential right now. I don't see that changing quickly either. The future is clouded (in more ways than one, it seems).
 
jclardy said:
Well if you want to be a "power user" on a mac there is always the Mac Pro, which is built to be upgradable.

The iMac is an all in one, and even having built my own desktop some years ago I would not be willing to use a suction cup to yank the screen off of a 27 inch display to put a $200 upgrade in a $2000 computer.

If the HDD was easily accesible then I might actually care, but not in this case.

But maybe that is just me...
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Agreed. Which is why i've never cared for iMacs in the first place. It's not really meant to be taken apart by the user anyway. (similar to the first macs).
 
Don't even joke about this! If they ever pull a 'custom firmware' or proprietary connectors for portables that would end my purchase of them. Hard drives can die at anytime and I wouldn't want to have to pay Apple $100+ the drive if it had to be swapped out.

macUser2007 said:
If Apple took that ability away, I'll seriously consider switching my whole business to Windows 7 (8 is coming up, too, and it looks good).

I am glad I did not jump on the new iMac - I'll wait to see how this shakes out.

Greedy bastards :mad:
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mayhone1 said:
They are pretty much saying fans will kick on all the way, the system will pretty much overheat and shut down...
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Hold on there. There is no proven correlation between a 3rd party hard drive being installed, and any actual increase in system temperature.

The fans could turn on for one of (at least) two reasons:
1) The system temperature is unacceptably high, so the fans are needed to cool the system down, or
2) The system's usual method of measuring temperature isn't working correctly, so the system can't tell whether or not it's in imminent danger of overheating -- thus the "safe" default would be to assume the worst case and turn on the fans anyway.

Apparently, one of the sensors Apple uses to determine system health is a temperature probe (and associated firmware) inside the hard drive itself, which communicates with the system through some extra wires in the SATA cable. If the hard drive is replaced with a different unit that doesn't feed this information, then case (2) above is completely plausible.

So, we don't know for sure that the system is actually overheating, and in danger of crashing. The only thing we know for sure, from the evidence presented so far, is that the fans are turning on.

Again, I ask: Is does this situation actually cause the system to become a paperweight, or are we dealing with a case of hyperbole here?
 
goosnarrggh said:
Can someone please clarify:
The report says that replacing the hard drive will make the fans spin at full speed, and it will make the Apple Hardware Test suite fail.

Then it goes on to say that replacing the hard drive turns the Mac into a paperweight. That implies that the Mac is rendered completely unusable -- that it cannot even boot.

Note that for retail copies of OS X, the AHT utilities are located on a separate disc, and they are not installed by default. So AHT does not customarily run during power-up, in order to impose a restriction on booting.

So, is there some other side-effect, implied but not actually stated in this article, which actually does have the effect of preventing the Mac from being able to boot up after the hard drive is replaced?

If so, then come out and say it. If not, then what we're really dealing with here is an inconvenience foir sure -- ridiculously loud fans and false negative results in AHT -- but not a paperweight.
Click to expand...

The hardware checks are in the boot ROM.
 
Apple is getting greedier and uglier every day!

Soon we will have to drop a coin to decide which is the lesser evil, Apple or Micro$oft.

For months I couldn't decide between an iPad 2 or a Macbook Air 11".
But the longer I'm waiting, the more I'm losing interest to buy anything at all from the greedy iControl factory.

I guess after 17 years, our honeymoon is definitely over...
 
What I wonder is how many people on this thread complaining about the change actually own the tools necessary to safely disassemble an iMac.

I've seen how those things come apart, and it is a fairly difficult process. What's even more difficult is putting everything back together without getting dust underneath the glass display.

The aluminum iMac was never designed to support user-replaceable hard drives. That's what the MacPro is for.

Also, someone upthread mentioned potential thermal issues with the new hard drives. It *is* entirely possible that Apple chose a hard drive with a better thermal design because it was better for the machine, rather than actively trying to screw the user.
 
I'm sorry, I'm not going to read through 150 messages just to see if someone already said this, and hopefully this won't be lost in the millions of complaints, but there IS a solution. At least, the solution we've found works on the 2009 iMacs which have the exact same problem.

Solution: buy a temperature sensor designed for the optical drive. Adhere that to the new hard drive. It will plug in to the logic board, and it passes all of the temperature sensor tests that Apple provides its third-party service centers.

We've already replaced several hard drives out-of-warranty on the late 2009 iMacs, and this is what we've done to work around the issue. It's not a new issue, and there is a solution.


Edit: I went back and read what OWC actually said, and it's not clear from what MR is reporting on their front page. I tuned out when they said that the SATA power connector had been changed from four pins to seven pins, since both are wrong, considering that SATA power is fifteen pins. What they are saying is that there is no longer an external temperature sensor or external cable and that this information goes over the actual power cable now. That would be a problem.
 
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I know geeks (like me) will not agree, but iMac is not easy to open and most people will do damage with it. Some people tend to try... Then damage it and blame apple! I work in a shop and it happens.
 
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