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Teardown of New 21.5-inch iMac Reveals Glued Down LCD and Dual Microphones
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Agreed, the imac is a good parents computer and they are never going to even consider self servicing
I think there is a third category, people who know their fair share about tech, have built PCs from scratch, and have been Mac users for a while, and who simply don't care about the direction things are going now.
I lived through the computing age in the 80s and 90s, where we did it all research ourselves, picking the best motherboards, displays, gpus, power source/fans, tower casing, etc, and then putting it all together. Where we messed around with the jumpers to over-clock our systems to get a little more oomph, etc. Those were good days, yes, but now I'm at a point in my life where I think there are better things I could be doing with my time.
And since I can see the writing on the wall, i.e. everything is becoming more integrated and less customizable/replaceable, I've come to peace with that. I'm also rather happy with the strong emphasis on aesthetics; I don't know if you remember the 90s, but my desk and the tower underneath it, was an abysmal mess of wires all over the place. These new thiner, lighter, wireless designs mean I can actually have a desk to work on.
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Mr Einstein, what would you say about those who would add RAM, replace a hard drive, etc.. ?
You're the minority and a dying breed, don't expect mass market devices to be catered to you anymore. Buy a Mac Pro, or find yourself a new niche manufacturer.
This 'computing age' of the 80s and 90s is still alive and well today. Just because you don't have the time for it doesn't mean it Is going anywhere see Www.newegg.com
You are just fitting into the iMac niche.
I honestly want to go Mac, but these design choices are killing me.
If you fixed it up it would be worth a lot more, and also a quite capable machine. With an SSD in it, perhaps Snow Leopard if push comes to shove, and a new battery, it should do everything except flash fairly well.
Anytime you are speaking of business the end answer always is $$$
With that in mind I am sure Apple knows most of their customer base now doesn't care to open things and replace hard drives and RAM, so they can make larger margins up front on those upgrades and even repairs on an out of warranty machine are usually going to be high. A lot of people feel they don't need warranty and forgo it, I noticed this all the time when I worked retail.
I personally wouldn't want to replace a logic board but I feel a perfect compromise would have been going a similar route to the XBOX 360 hard drive installs. MS has custom cases for those drives so it would be nice if on the iMac you could take out a couple screws, pull a ribbon and swap out an old one and just pay Apple for proprietary drives. I would have been happy with that, and possibly have 2 slots so you could do an SSD and normal hard drive installation with ease. Apple makes profit everyone should be happy.
I recall not too long ago the MBP's had a little circle with a slot that you put a nickel in and you could access the hard drive, battery, RAM, all were user replaceable. I think those days on notebooks for Apple are FAR gone now.
It sucks Apple has gone this route, but if you don't like Windows, you got Ubuntu and other variants of Linux you can run on a large variety of hardware that does and still will for a long while be upgradable with all the OEM's fighting each other. A few examples of HP or Dell or whoever doing Mac style designs doesn't mean they will axe hardware left and right. Look at how deep their product line still is. I hear BS here about how all these OEM's will go out....haven't seen it yet. Still waiting.....
I like Apple stuff for the integration, the looks of the machines were nice and all but the integration was #1 for me. And with the 13" MBP more than likely going to get axed real soon that leaves me with nothing I will like on their side. I don't want a laptop like the Air or Retina with soldered on RAM and limited memory. OSX being tied just to them is more of a bad thing than a good one at the moment IMO. Hell I would take the bloatware and occasional driver issue for more variety, but it won't happen so poop.
Shame really since OSX under the correct guidance would really put up against Windows and eat a lot of marketshare.
Also a lot of people will be horrified in what they end up doing to the Mac pro. That machine needs an update on internals, externals are perfectly fine. Watch how thin it gets though.
With that in mind I am sure Apple knows most of their customer base now doesn't care to open things and replace hard drives and RAM, so they can make larger margins up front on those upgrades and even repairs on an out of warranty machine are usually going to be high. A lot of people feel they don't need warranty and forgo it, I noticed this all the time when I worked retail.
I personally wouldn't want to replace a logic board but I feel a perfect compromise would have been going a similar route to the XBOX 360 hard drive installs. MS has custom cases for those drives so it would be nice if on the iMac you could take out a couple screws, pull a ribbon and swap out an old one and just pay Apple for proprietary drives. I would have been happy with that, and possibly have 2 slots so you could do an SSD and normal hard drive installation with ease. Apple makes profit everyone should be happy.
I recall not too long ago the MBP's had a little circle with a slot that you put a nickel in and you could access the hard drive, battery, RAM, all were user replaceable. I think those days on notebooks for Apple are FAR gone now.
It sucks Apple has gone this route, but if you don't like Windows, you got Ubuntu and other variants of Linux you can run on a large variety of hardware that does and still will for a long while be upgradable with all the OEM's fighting each other. A few examples of HP or Dell or whoever doing Mac style designs doesn't mean they will axe hardware left and right. Look at how deep their product line still is. I hear BS here about how all these OEM's will go out....haven't seen it yet. Still waiting.....
I like Apple stuff for the integration, the looks of the machines were nice and all but the integration was #1 for me. And with the 13" MBP more than likely going to get axed real soon that leaves me with nothing I will like on their side. I don't want a laptop like the Air or Retina with soldered on RAM and limited memory. OSX being tied just to them is more of a bad thing than a good one at the moment IMO. Hell I would take the bloatware and occasional driver issue for more variety, but it won't happen so poop.
Shame really since OSX under the correct guidance would really put up against Windows and eat a lot of marketshare.
Also a lot of people will be horrified in what they end up doing to the Mac pro. That machine needs an update on internals, externals are perfectly fine. Watch how thin it gets though.
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It depends where you are, over here in Australia we get ours from Asia region. I'll check which country when I get my new 27".
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LOL. I guess you are too young to have worked on the original iMac. That thing was a pain in the butt. Technically serviceable, but it had a LOT of parts you had to disassemble, and you certainly couldn't service much more than the RAM, HDD, and optical drive.
Just shut up. Your rant insinuates that the vast majority of people are geeks like you (and me). Most people who buy computers, and I mean MOST people, like 98% of them, don't want to rip their machines open and upgrade them. Get over it, and yourself.
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Then keep beating your head against the wall. I'll just use my computer. Same as I use my refrigerator, and microwave and TV. I feel no need to "upgrade" those appliances, either.
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so because i enjoy dealing with the internals means im banging my head agaisnt the wall...
I suppose you have equal disdain for those who enjoy working on their cars, or anyone with a hobby for that matter...
A truly "omg i'm a little pupy left alone in the dark by this huge company that doesn't give a ****" comment. Which is sad. I mean the comment, not the company.
For example i would buy this iMac in a thousand years, because it doesn't meet my requirements (user replaceable memory). But i don't see a reason to whine because of this. Problem solved. Most people even if they have option to upgrade they don't.
LOL I think some of you are missing the point this is purely a design decision to sell more iMacs. Apple doesn't particularly care much for those of us who like to pop the cover off, tinker around and replace things. People like that aren't the target buyers.
In their eyes, the consumer should just pitch the machine when it's obsolete and buy a new one.
I am waiting for the TB display to get upgraded to USB 3.0 and look as sleek as this thing.
As for iFixIt I love that site. If you are even a little bit of a geek, these teardowns are fun to see.
Well said.
Very good point you bring up ... the Worldwide crisis. What most people don't seem to understand that it's a direct consequence to fossil fuel scarcity, and the simple fact that Oil, our primary source of energy, now costs five times as much it always has. Consider the Export Land Model (ELM) - a mathematical construct based on total exports available to importers. There are currently about 157 oil importing nations - including China and India (referred to as Chindia) who are trending upwards in total imports against what is a declining net exports available. (Why this drops is manyfold, factors include depletion, and the windfall effect (oil producers use increasing amounts of their own to fund/power their growing infrastructure/needs)). So, two lines are drawn and have been since 2005 - one going up, the other going down - and guess when they cross, meaning that Chindia will (if allowed to) consume ALL the available exports - leaving NONE for the other 155 importers including the US. Believe it or not, that crossover point is 13 years from now!
Remember, Oil is a fungible commodity - it always goes to the highest bidder once on the market. And guess who's going to bid the most? Not you and I buying Apple computers and hopping into our 3-ton SUVs to Walmart to buy a plastic pumpkin! It's going to be the billions of Chindians pooling together their resources to cover their cooking needs, their emergency transportation needs, and so on. We are in the US, remember, just five percent of the world's population - there's that whole other 95% out there - we will become irrelevant in the years to come.
No matter what you hear, the ELM constitutes the most important thing to consider in the world - and think about it - ten years from now we'll all be out of a job - we'll not be cruising the highways like today - many will begin to starve rich and poor alike. And please, oh please, don't start pointing at North Dakota ... the oil found there is merely a substitute of what was once the Prudhoe Basin's oil - and it's soon to bust - they're already in a "scam the public" mode as they play the stock market to keep themselves afloat. (Research Chesapeake, and how they're bungling to the tune of billions!)
Granted, we do produce 8 million barrels per day of oil, but we also import nine and export one of those as refined products - in other words, we burn through 16 million barrels of oil per day, 5,840,000,000 barrels per year - year after year ... until we can't and that day is just around the corner.
Think about it. Don't start laughing and saying what the **** is this guy talking about - I'm telling it like it is. Simple facts of life!!
It's pretty late in my parts of the world, so I just gave a passing glance at your post, but I 'll get back to you in a day or two because it merits consideration. Later, man. 
p.s. I need to do a bit of googling and get back to you. For starters I ll just say that I was under the impression that the wwc of the 70s was due to oil, and this is one is pretty much Greenspan ****ing up from his protracted 40 year Ayn Rand high with the aid of greedy wall street golden boy imbeciles betting at 30/1 exposure in an economy where the finance sector grew in 25 years from 10% to 30% and subsequently speculated on the rest of the productive economy who were actually producing or offering a service for a living, thinking in their infinite wisdom that this ludicrous house of cards wouldn't fall. They still managed to get away filthy rich most of them, and awarded themselves bonuses for the governments worldwide bailing them out.
p.s. I need to do a bit of googling and get back to you. For starters I ll just say that I was under the impression that the wwc of the 70s was due to oil, and this is one is pretty much Greenspan ****ing up from his protracted 40 year Ayn Rand high with the aid of greedy wall street golden boy imbeciles betting at 30/1 exposure in an economy where the finance sector grew in 25 years from 10% to 30% and subsequently speculated on the rest of the productive economy who were actually producing or offering a service for a living, thinking in their infinite wisdom that this ludicrous house of cards wouldn't fall. They still managed to get away filthy rich most of them, and awarded themselves bonuses for the governments worldwide bailing them out.
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I don't know what that poster meant by his remark, but I think learning how to tinker with the internals is a valuable learning experience, and it's admirable that there are people willing to do so. But I'd venture to say that the wall we are talking about is a metaphorical one, where the metaphor is of reality.
In other words, when we say the writing is on the wall, or "keep banging your head on the wall", we are suggesting you are refusing to see what the world is really like, and where things are going. We get this from your claim that the computing age of the 80's and 90's is not going anywhere. We offer this conjecture because:
#1 Intel, Broadcom, etc. are integrating everything nowadays. You have GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth, LTE/GSM all in a single chip. You have the USB controller, the graphics, the CPU, and the varies controllers all coming together in a single chip.
#2 With the speed of SSDs, their longevity problems potentially fixed, and cloud computing, you won't realistically need to change out HDs anymore.
#3 That leaves us what, RAM to tinker with? that's a long ways from the 80s and 90s. And even then, the CPU chip has a maximum, so for instance if Ivy Bridge is maxed at 32gb, well just buy 32gb from the start if you can afford it and you'll never have to worry about upgrading again since it's simply not possible.
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Ivy Bridge maxes out at 32gbs doesn't it? Why do you need user replaceable memory if you can just max it out from day 1?
Where I can I buy a 5-year AppleCare plan? I would buy it in a heartbeat, for both of my Macs.
Also, the article says "repairability". 90% of this thread are about "upgradability". I think that's a big difference- because the specs will be good enough for a long time, I want to be able to get a cheap repair if the HDD breaks down in 3 years.
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Replacing the HD looks pretty easy to me, but for those more timid, I'm sure Apple will offer reasonable labor prices.
Uh, your car is user serviceable, look in your manual. You should be checking your tire pressures, oil and washer fluid levels regularly