iFixit Teardown of New 21.5-Inch 4K iMac Reveals DCI-P3 Display, Empty Solder Pads

[arcite]

You know its funny, people have had the exact criticisms since the Bondi iMac came out in 2008. Yet Apple continues to sell millions of them, so they must be doing something right. If someone is hell bent on opening up their computer and upgrading every little component, an imac is definitely not for them.

 

[chabig]

It is designed to be disposable. After all if the SSD fails, then you have to replace the logic board, which is often more expensive or close to the expense of buying a new computer. Like how an iPhone is disposable as when it gets to slow, you have to buy a new one, instead of like a computer where you can upgrade it.

I disagree with this argument. Everything on the logic board is soldered, but that doesn't make it disposable. There is no particular reason to single out the SSD for failure. Everything attached to the logic board is solid state, and soldering the connections is more compact and reliable than socketing every component.

 

[Max(IT)]

everything can be repaired with money. The point is it shouldn't be there a need to repair them if the Macs didn't stop working. Currently my late 2013 27" iMac has the spring that keep it in position from the base broken. A design or manufacturing issue that showed up 2 months after the first year. I don't get Apple Care and never will. **** happens but it is happening too frequently. Go to any Apple store and see the proportion of people buying stuff vs the people waiting for a repair or service. Apple manufacturing Quality is terrible. Paying $150-300 per repair or replacement of a component that may cost $5 isn't right, specially something which shouldn't be damaged during the lifetime of the computer, which now seems to be just one year.

Apple quality is terrible? Lol ....
Not buying AppleCare was your choice. They would have solved you issue....
Lifetime of my macs always have been 3-5 years

 

[oldmacs]

So you are basically fighting an Holy Crusade against Apple ? Oh my, give me a break...
Only thing Apple is listening are sales numbers.
If all the people are concerned about non upgradable iMacs, sales numbers will be low and Apple will react.
I bet it's not going to happen because 4K iMacs are wonderful.
Btw in this sense I'm playing your game: I'm not going to buy one....

And there in lies the problem. "Only thing Apple is listening are sales numbers." - So Apple couldn't care about what the iMac is like given it sells. With that attitude Apple is well on the way to being the Microsoft of old. We don't care how bad Windows is, as long as it is selling.

All this speech about environmental are just an excuse on your part ....
Do you think Apple just trash defective boards ? They swap , they repair and then then put it in refurbished units.
iMacs and Mac in general aren't cheap computer. If you can't afford to pay up front for the model you need, taking in account your needs for the next 4-5 years, you shouldn't buy one.
Now since you seem to be tech savvy, you should know what configuration you need and could decide if you can afford it or not.

An excuse? I don' think so. It is a major concern and issue.

If a board is trashed to a point that it needs to be replaced, its going to be recycled. Then you have to produce a whole new board, which is not great for the environment. Just recycling and replacing the SSD is a lot better. I care about the environment and Apple should as well. Its good that their products are recyclable and they've made efforts towards

Plus it is a lot cheaper. You think its reasonable to be charged huge sums of money for problems occurring after a year? SSDs fail and have to be replaced. I don't think its reasonable for what should be a $100 repair to turn into a potentially $1000 repair.

What a bloody elitist attitude. " if you can't afford the one you need straight up". I try to keep my computers for 6-7 years so buying what i need in 7 years is going to cost a BOMB. If I had gone down the road of a Retina Macbook Pro, it would have cost me $1500 more than what I paid for my non retina Pro( with my requirement of a 1TB SSD and RAM). I'm glad you can obviously afford to pay truckloads more for your future needs but I can't afford it at Apple's highway robbery upgrade prices. it is an absolute joke.

This is not just about me. Its about the general population who will not upgrade their computers at purchase. Many don't. That makes their machines a very poor second hand machine, where as an upgradable baseline will allow the second purchaser to make use of it, instead of it going to waste. As I said, very few old Macs would be in service now had they not been upgradable.

If it fails within warranty period, Apple will pay for it. Otherwise, as with all other Apple hardware, buy AppleCare. This isn't rocket science.

Are you serious? 3 Years is not a long time. Paying for an extra 2 years is very expensive and then what happens after that? Hit with logic board replacement fees for a simple SDD failure which will probably occur outside the warranty period anyway.

Why should we have to hand Apple more money for an overpriced warranty on an overpriced computer that should not have the SSD soldered in the first place?

 

[arcite]

You don't solder SSD on a motherboard, not on a macbook and not on a desktop machine, it's not rocket science

Apple's bottom line is sustainability and profitability, it's how they stay on top after all. The truth is, it's a tiny minority of people who upgrade their RAM or disk.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

My 2008 iMac had a new power supply from Apple when the old one blew. Luckily, it didn't cook the motherboard. I also had the RAM replaced by Apple when the old RAM from Apple broke.

I changed RAM on my 2001 iMac. These days, the extent of my repairing is wiping a cloth over the machine to keep it clean.

Seems to me, a computer is becoming more like an appliance in terms of repair-ability. If that leads to commodity pricing, then that must be a good thing.

 

[oldmacs]

No. Mac sales are growing, in a collapsing market...

McDonalds sales are probably also growing. So they make the perfect food then?

Apple quality is terrible? Lol ....
Not buying AppleCare was your choice. They would have solved you issue....
Lifetime of my macs always have been 3-5 years

So we pay more money to Apple for having the SSD soldered to the logic board which provides no benefit to us? Right.

This shows absolute fanboism. You're standing up for Apple over the customer.

 

[oldmacs]

Apple's bottom line is sustainability and profitability, it's how they stay on top after all. The truth is, it's a tiny minority of people who upgrade their RAM or disk.

And soldering components to the logic board is a very unsustainable practice.

I'm glad you have the data for the users who upgrade

 

[arcite]

Why should we have to hand Apple more money for an overpriced warranty on an overpriced computer that should not have the SSD soldered in the first place?

We can come up with all kinds of hypotheticals. For example, my Bondi iMac needed it's logic board replaced 3 times in the space of a few months! Yes, 3 times. Of course, it was all covered by Apple as I had Applecare. It would have cost a fortune otherwise. Macs have never been the cheapest computers. Like driving a BMW, you wanna keep it running smooth, you gotta pay up for the Apple care.

---

One more thing...what's with the worry about SSD failing? They have proven much more reliable than ye old spinny disks. Just yesterday one of my western digital backup drives inexplicably started clicking and failed. Luckily I have duplicate backups.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

Apple HAS to enforce agreements otherwise it will set precedent. iFixit essentially forced Apple to take action.

I disagree. They can exercise due discretion.

 

[McGiord]

Apple quality is terrible? Lol ....
Not buying AppleCare was your choice. They would have solved you issue....
Lifetime of my macs always have been 3-5 years

How long should a Mac priced more than $1000 last?
Why should we pay extra to keep it running?

Again it isn't my issue, it's Apple quality issue.
You can google it and see these are not isolated cases.

Because many Apple customers are used to pay the extra money and feel superior Apple quality isn't getting any better because they make more money out of it, either because many of the new crop of Apple
Customers are used to replace the iPods and iPhones every year and pay for the Apple care.
Refusing to pay for an insurance to cover Apple's terrible quality is my choice. Sadly I'm not in the current majority of new Apple customers.

If only more consumers behave better then Apple will improve their quality.

 

[oldmacs]

I disagree with this argument. Everything on the logic board is soldered, but that doesn't make it disposable. There is no particular reason to single out the SSD for failure. Everything attached to the logic board is solid state, and soldering the connections is more compact and reliable than socketing every component.

Certain components are more destined to fail than others. The more and more you solder on the less and less sustainable the whole thing is. The soldering of components has so many negatives for very small gains in reliability.

 

[oldmacs]

We can come up with all kinds of hypotheticals. For example, my Bondi iMac needed it's logic board replaced 3 times in the space of a few months! Yes, 3 times. Of course, it was all covered by Apple as I had Applecare. It would have cost a fortune otherwise. Macs have never been the cheapest computers. Like driving a BMW, you wanna keep it running smooth, you gotta pay up for the Apple care.

Thats a joke of an argument. Macs are high end computers that should last beyond a certain point without failing. Apple is engineering these things so that they are more expensive to repair, and making them more likely to need an expensive repair. Can I just remind you all we're talking about a very expensive computer here? So you think its a users fault if their expensive computer stops working and needs a very expensive (due to Apple soldering components) at say 1 year and 1 week into ownership?

 

[oldmacs]

One more thing...what's with the worry about SSD failing? They have proven much more reliable than ye old spinny disks. Just yesterday one of my western digital backup drives inexplicably started clicking and failed. Luckily I have duplicate backups.

Because they are something which is known to fail, and people shouldn't have to have their whole logic board replaced from to an SSD failure, due to Apple's cost cutting ways.

 

[MH01]

Isn't this the same iFixit that lied and broke their NDA in order to get advertising clicks, and then tried to blame their lazily-ignored and non-updated app on Apple's software and accused iOS of having bugs which broke it? Sorry, but I am forced to give them a respectability score of 1 out of 10, which means whatever trust I had in their opinion is extremely difficult to repair.

If you think they are lieing try to open up a current iMac and upgrade the HDD

 

[mabaker]

I find it so funny that upgradable RAM is now somehow a sign of progress. The iMac has NEVER ever been as fully serviceable as the PowerMac and was never intended to be.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

It is designed to be disposable. After all if the SSD fails, then you have to replace the logic board, which is often more expensive or close to the expense of buying a new computer. Like how an iPhone is disposable as when it gets to slow, you have to buy a new one, instead of like a computer where you can upgrade it.




Most people don't have the funds to do so. I'd give a baseline iMac 3/4 years before it became outdated. How do you think 2008 era Macs are still useful today? 2GB of ram and a slow 160GB Hard-drive (what my 2008 Macbook had) would not be at all useful by 2012 had the RAM and storage been soldered.

Do you not understand that most users will not have the funds or the ability to upgrade their Mac at purchase to something that will be still good to use into the future? That means when they have to (prematurely) get a new computer, their old machine will be far less desirable.

This is why iOS devices last for a much shorter time than Macs. If you could upgrade the storage or RAM on an iOS device, the iPad 2 for example would be far more useful today. Of course we know why iOS devices are not upgradable (they are designed to be as portable as can be), but the iMac is a DESKTOP machine. EG one that you will only move occasionally.

Resale value will be less for a machine that has hopelessly outdated and non upgradable specifications. The base iMac in a couple of years will be hopelessly outdated.



Its far less environmentally friendly having to have Apple replace more than just the individual component. Soldering things means that it is more expensive, less environmentally friendly and more likely to get dumped.

Many average customers get their computer person or an upgrade place to fix/upgrade their Mac. Once my warranty period ends stuff Apple's over priced prices, I go elsewhere to get better service, less expensive service and great customer service.

We are in a world where we live beyond our means and the environmental damage and impact of the throwaway society is massive, so now more than any other time is where we should be ensuring that things are repairable in a modular way, upgradable and will last as long as possible. And of course this isn't what apple wants to do, they're a corporation and anything that could cut into their profit margins doesn't matter to them.

My 2008 iMac is faster than my 2014 iPad Air 2.

It has 4GB of RAM, 3.06GHz processor and a 7200rpm 1TB drive.

It may be hopelessly outdated, but it has a SuperDrive that I regularly use for watching DVDs and burning music CDs, which makes it superior to the latest iMacs for my purposes.

What Apple considers progress is not always progress for the average person.

 

[oldmacs]

I find it so funny that upgradable RAM is now somehow a sign of progress. The iMac has NEVER ever been as fully serviceable as the PowerMac and was never intended to be.

Upgradable RAM has been a feature of every iMac up until the low end 2014 model - Ram and Storage upgradability is a benefit and has been a staple of most Apple desktops. You are right that the iMac was never meant to be as upgradable, but that is in terms of GPU, GPU, Extra Drives, expansion cards - not the basics such as ram and the storage drives.

 

[oldmacs]

What Apple considers progress is not always progress for the average person.

I agree with that. All Apple cars about is their profit margins and a thin design these days.. Which is ok on their portable machines as thats the aim of the game but is a joke on their desktop models.

 

[trifid]

Apple's bottom line is sustainability and profitability, it's how they stay on top after all. The truth is, it's a tiny minority of people who upgrade their RAM or disk.

A consumer's bottom line is affordability and value, it's how they make a purchasing decision. I guess a balance between a company's bottom line and a consumer's bottom line is of mutual business benefit right?

And, can you provide some support for your statement that a "tiny minority" upgrade ram/disk? Given the possibility, almost everyone I know at some point has upgraded their ram/disk. All of the macbook line prior to retina benefited from upgraded HDDs, either for more storage, or to upgrade to SSD, same with ram. It seems to me more than a "tiny minority" do it.

In fact, for example, all the 64gb-128gb macbooks are good candidates for upgrades as SSDs continue to decrease in pricing, I can see it in 1-2 years viable to put 500gb SSDs in them.

 

[oldmacs]

And, can you provide some support for your statement that a "tiny minority" upgrade ram/disk? Given the possibility, almost everyone I know at some point has upgraded their ram/disk. All of the macbook line prior to retina benefited from upgraded HDDs, either for more storage, or to upgrade to SSD, same with ram. It seems to me more than a "tiny minority" do it.

And while many users didn't/don't upgrade their Macs themselves, they got computer specialists or upgrade places to do it for them.

 

[MH01]

That is a good point. How can we trust their repairability scores anymore after that NDA breaking stunt and after blaming iOS9 for ifixit's lazinesses to keep their apps updated.

Okay, what can be repaired on an iMac? I've opened up my 2009 many times, and looking at videos / guides on the current ones, a 1 is about right. It's put me off upgrading my 2009, cause the notion of having to spend 2.5k-3k to upgrade to ssd is not enticing. I upgraded my 2009 to ssd a few years down the track.

 

[Tim0]

So, why does everyone seem to think that having some empty solder pads on the non-SSD board suddenly equals to a soldered SSD in a Fusion version? I'd say it is very possible that a Fusion version has a PCI-E slot, not a soldered SSD.

 

[mabaker]

What Apple considers progress is not always progress for the average person.

The thing is, you are not the average person anymore. There are millions of teens and adolescents out there that do not even know what a CD/DVD is.

 

[oldmacs]

The thing is, you are not the average person anymore. There are millions of teens and adolescents out there that do not even know what a CD/DVD is.

Out of my clients, the ones who are still using an optical drive are the basic users. You'd be surprised how high sales of optical media for TV/Movies is. Even for music, plenty of people still buy Audio CDs.

I've found its more the experienced users who have moved towards other methods before the basic users.