You are right.
Ok, I was talking mostly about the 21 base model and my needs of course. Its more important to be able to upgrade RAM & SSD at a logical cost in the future than have a thin beautiful, better screen, better graphic card, sealed computer.
Firstly, I'm talking out my arse here, so I could be totally wrong ... but I will wager that this machine will be somewhat easier to service from the standpoint of replacing the SSDand that you'll be able to replace the RAM (or upgrade it).
Obviously there's no chance RAM upgrades will be easy as they are in the current model, but here's why I think it'll be possible and also why I think it'll be easier to replace the drive.
The display assembly appears to be the only way to get inside the imac. There's roughly a zero chance that apple built no ways to service the insides, so the display assembly is the only route.
The display assembly is extremely unlikely to be laminated to the iMac. It's conceivable, but would make opening the machine a total pain in the ass. The thing that is laminated is the display to the glass.
In the old imac you used suction cups to remove the glass. Then you used a screwdriver to remove the LCD. Then you carefully removed the displayport cable. Mechanically this was pretty easy. The problem is that unless you were doing it in a clean room, you were really likely to get dust behind the glass.
Assuming that the new imac lets you pull the display and glass off in one step, the dust issue goes away. The biggest challenge that I foresee is that yanking the display off requires a bit of force, but you'll need to be careful not to use so much force that you can't put the breaks on in time to prevent the displayport cable from breaking. (It's latched onto the mobo in all likelihood. Hopefully there's enough give so that this won't be an issue.)
I'd be willing to bet $0.20 that this is the way the display will come off and that it will be screwlessmaking it easier to access the internals than the old imac.
But here's what I'd be worried about:
1) Will the RAM slots be easily accessible with the display removed? Or will you have to pull out the mobo. If you have to remove the mobo, the pain in the ass factor just skyrocketed.
2) Same question as #1 for the HD
3) Assuming you can easily yank out the HD, will it have a proprietary temp sensor (for fan control) like the 2011 models? If so, can it be easily defeated? (On 2011 models, some SSDs automatically seemed to be compatible. Alternatively, certain sata power adapters would do the trick.)
4) Presumably there will be a spot for adding an SSD card like the MBPr and MBA. Will that spot use the same connector? If so, big win for OWCand for users who want a spinning drive and an SSD.
