They know, it’s just that all their Apple related tear downs are two separate days now. And, I wouldn’t count on them posting the end of it tomorrow.
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iFixit Tears Down 24-Inch M1 iMac [Updated]
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The X-ray shots they take of the teardown devices would be neat to have hanging on a wall
Show us the "Mystery Button." What happens when it's pushed?
Nah.Then it really would look like a giant iPad Pro on a stand 👎 A chin is okay on a desktop.It allows for decent speakers 🔊
The x-ray version looks like a single-fan, so presumably is the 7-gpu and not the same one they’re actually disassembling.
It also appears to be missing that ‘daughterboard’ in the space made by the non-rectangular acoustic chamber where the second fan would otherwise be.
It also appears to be missing that ‘daughterboard’ in the space made by the non-rectangular acoustic chamber where the second fan would otherwise be.
And a place for my stick it notes. Works and looks great to me.
I'm going to assume you've never seen inside an iMac before - that "rounded square" IS the logo. It's a plate thats hot staked (or now maybe glued?) into a gap in the back panel.
The actual square in the middle of the logo is a WiFi antenna - as the logo is plastic it's the only place on the back they can put it.
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I think it’s more for market segmentation. The 7 core GPU is more like the “Air” version which has less cooling to limit sustained performance whilst the 8 core version has the proper cooling like the MBP M1 13 To allow sustained performance.
This is the button that activates lossless audio on the AirPods Max.
Indeed, Apple's recent trend of neutering the cooling on their consumer macs and "base" models is a really beginning to grate... It was bad enough when they started using 2 vs 4 ports as a differentiator, but with cooling... particularly when these are already expensive machines and there's no good reason better cooling couldn't have been included in the chassis (as its included in the upsell variant), the lack of transparency and blatent penny pinching at the expense of user experience just feels really gross. Reminds me of some of the scummier things you see PC OEMs doing
Apple Silicon is power/space efficient enough that EVERY mac deserves appropriate cooling, and its particularly egregious to see this on a desktop mac.
At least on the MBA it's an easy enough fix... just pop the back cover off and slap on some cheap thermal pads. I shudder to think of trying DIY a fix on an iMac though.
Also, I can't say the idea of an iMac that performs like my MBA is a very attractive idea... It feels like they really should've waited for an M1X/M2/etc.
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…the machines are night and day more performant than the ones they replaced. Are you annoyed that Apple is simply using thermal constraints to differentiate (slightly) between performance tiers rather than having a chip selection?Indeed, Apple's recent trend of neutering the cooling on their consumer macs and "base" models is a really beginning to grate... It was bad enough when they started using 2 vs 4 ports as a differentiator, but with cooling... particularly when these are already expensive machines and there's no good reason better cooling couldn't have been included in the chassis (as its included in the upsell variant), the lack of transparency and blatent penny pinching at the expense of user experience just feels really gross. Reminds me of some of the scummier things you see PC OEMs doing
Apple Silicon is power/space efficient enough that EVERY mac deserves appropriate cooling, and its particularly egregious to see this on a desktop mac.
At least on the MBA it's an easy enough fix... just pop the back cover off and slap on some cheap thermal pads. I shudder to think of trying DIY a fix on an iMac though.
Also, I can't say the idea of an iMac that performs like my MBA is a very attractive idea... It feels like they really should've waited for an M1X/M2/etc.
I don’t see why this upsetting.
Their teardown has a four-port mid-tier model which has two fans as seen in some of the photos. While the x-ray is done by someone else on a two-port base model. This means the two models hardware-wise differ in number of fans.
Of course. They want to close things down. Even more so in the past years (everything soldered etc.). I don't think, we will see many new Macs, where you could swap out components, except for the whole logic-board. If at all.
The design would probably last for at least two or three generations, so it has to be able to accommodate the M3 or M2X in the future.
And where would you place the speakers and webcam? The speakers need to be bottom firing to take advantage of your table for reflecting the sound, so Apple can put smaller speakers. And if the logic board is moved to the top, the webcam has to go somewhere, and nobody likes a nostril webcam.
Let me explain by going over why its problematic in the specific case of the iMac (which also handily explains why its a problem in other Macs.)
The main issue here (IMHO) is transparency. Just looking at the spec sheet on Apple's homepage one could reasonably assume the only difference, aside from storage capacity between the two 24" iMac options is 1 GPU core (or about a ~9% performance deficit in heavily GPU bound tasks based on previous M1 macs). This will undoubtedly lead some people to conclude they don't need that extra 9% GPU performance (maybe their workload is CPU bound) and just order the stock config, or CTO a 7C GPU iMac and used the money saved to go for 16GB of ram (for example.) Many of those people could be in for a rude awakening when they realize they've actually bought a mac with a significantly worse cooling system and consequentially slower performance/more noise.
To be clear, I don't own a 24" M1 iMac, and given how the M1 performs in the MBA/MBP/Mac Mini I don't expect cooling to be a major bottleneck, but it's still a major difference between the models that Apple needs to be clear about if they're going to use this as a point of differentiation going forward. While it may not matter much today, next year (or even later this year) when we have an M1X/M2/M2X/etc with more CPU and GPU cores and a potentially higher TDP, the differences could be quite significant.
So, to recap, the differentiation itself isn't the problem, the issue is the completely non transparent way that Apple is going about it. With Intel Macs, you generally knew what kind of performance you were getting by looking at the CPU/GPU on the box/spec sheet, and could thus make an informed decision. While there were a few Intel Macs where Apple really messed up the cooling, this tended to be the exception and not the rule, and typically applied to all SKUs across the product. Also, Apple doesn't get a pass on this kind of behavior just because they increased performance X% over last gen.
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The thin gets bigger, and grows a chin dimple. There's no reducing it after, it just keeps getting bigger every time you press it.Show us the "Mystery Button." What happens when it's pushed?
They show a picture of the soc and ram, and say it's Hynix RAM.
So the M1 soc is not exactly one apple chip?
I thought the m1 would be 1 part made for apple, with "apple ram".
So the M1 soc is not exactly one apple chip?
I thought the m1 would be 1 part made for apple, with "apple ram".