Upgrading RAM on new iMac practically impossible

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234218/Upgrading_RAM_on_new_iMac_practically_impossible

by rpeden • 14 years ago

37 71 14 years ago

bcl• 14 years ago

This is one reason why I bought the 15" MBP instead of the Retina. I fully expect this to be the last user-upgradable Mac, they seem to be moving everything towards an iPhone-like closed system.

untog• 14 years ago

Honestly, if you want to send a signal about user upgradability you should probably avoid buying a Mac entirely.

orangecat• 14 years ago

A reasonable point, but assuming you want a Mac, on balance I think it's better to get a somewhat upgradeable model than abandon the platform altogether. Apple seems to be on the edge between continuing to support general purpose computing and migrating everyone to an iOS-style walled garden. By buying Macs but not iPhones or iPads, I'm hoping to increase the demand for actual computers over appliances that are locked down with the force of law.

akandiah• 14 years ago

This only affects the 21.5" model - the 27" model is not affected.

teilo• 14 years ago

Don't be so sure. What do you want to bet that the 27" display isn't also glued in place?

Yeah, you can upgrade the RAM, but how do you replace a failing drive?

jrajav• 14 years ago

From the article: "The not-yet-available 27-in. iMac will continue to sport four external memory slots."

Another source: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/23/21-5-imac-has-no-user-up...

uptown• 14 years ago

He's not talking about the hard drive. Yes, the 27" will have the same epoxy around the rim of the display, but the RAM is very-much user-accessible via a port on the back of the 27" model. It's both marketed and intended to be user-replaceable. The hard drive is not user-replaceable on the 27" though it is possible if you're willing to assume the risk/liability of doing so.

A number of users on popular Mac forums have opened up their 21" iMac cases. It's definitely not ideal, and not something I'd recommend risk-adverse people to try, but from their descriptions, it hasn't been too difficult if you follow the procedures online. One guy used a knife and scratched the black off of the display. Most use a guitar pick and it doesn't have that problem.

The rub is your warranty. If you break the epoxy seal and don't re-seal it with a suitable epoxy strip you're probably running the risk of any under-warranty claims being rejected by Apple should you need to have them service your machine. Not a problem for hard drives or RAM (you've probably opened it up to swap them out anyway) but definitely an issue for the main logic board.

Breakthrough• 14 years ago

As I paraphrased the article for my parents, "It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut."

arn5• 14 years ago

And, a hood inaccessible to me wouldn't materially impact my purchase decision of a particular car, since my ability to service my own car is pretty much zero.

For example, I don't even know how one accesses the "engine" of the Teslas but it doesn't bother me one bit that I can't access it.

whichdan• 14 years ago

I don't know much about cars, but I still:

- check my oil

- replace my windshield washer fluid

- check my coolant

- jumpstart my engine

- (rarely) jumpstart someone else's engine

I know most people on HN have already sold a company for seven or eight figures, but for the rest of us, it's nice to have some flexibility :)

saurik• 14 years ago

I don't know how to service my own car either, but I'm pretty glad the hood isn't welded shut as I do like that I can get it serviced cheaply by a professional (whether a third-party or the original dealer): even if you don't want to take something apart yourself, the fact that simple repairs or upgrades will take hours of risky (as in, possibility of destruction of the device) labor or require replacing large expensive parts unrelated to your goal is not magically irrelevant.

dhughes3• 14 years ago

I don't buy that argument for all devices, maybe for you it's OK.

A clogged PCV valve, a small one-way valve for engine gasses, is a common problem the part is about $5.00 and you remove/install with a socket wrench. Or the air filter which in wintery climates will fluff up from salt when it gets wet, a simple fix. Or corroded points on a distributor, or a loose battery cable, dead battery, bad spark plug wires etc..

A computer with dusty CPU heat sync, maybe a RAM stick needs to be reseated or has failed, graphics card needs to be reseated, graphics card heat sync needs dusting, hard drives replaced with larger capacity, more RAM etc..

As much as engineers or designers like to think they are perfect there isn't any device made by a human which will work perfectly without some some of updating, adjustment, maintenance or tinkering.

Jach• 14 years ago

If it doesn't matter to you that a hood is inaccessible, it also shouldn't matter to you that a hood is accessible. For other people it does matter. So the question is: who wants the hood to be inaccessible, and why? Clearly none of the customers want it inaccessible, they either want it accessible (and I don't think they care all that strongly if they're already set on an Apple product), or in the majority case are indifferent. So Apple must know their bottom line is better this way (there are some obvious ways why it can be) and is perfectly happy telling people "put up or don't do business with us." Unless Apple's shown to be wrong, I wouldn't expect a change.

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

Or like buying the few cars which needed the engine to be removed to replace the spark plugs. It's simply a bad design choice.

dhughes3• 14 years ago

A woman in Halifax bought a SMART car she was the second owner, the engine failed and she was told it was unserviceable since the engine had to be replaced entirely it was a single unit.

The replacement engine was $14,000 for a $5,000 car!

http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/74442-smart-car-not-so...

fratis2• 14 years ago

Yet mechanics continue to make excellent livings changing oil, repairing transmissions, and replacing brakes. Not because car companies conspire with mechanics' unions (are those a thing?), but because consumers don't want to or don't know how to do those things themselves.

For a massive percentage of Apple's customers (and customers of other computer makers as well, I'm sure), the same applies. The wailings of a handful of nerds, despite their volume, will never change that.

wisty• 14 years ago

Mechanics are only able to make a living because cars don't come with the hood welded shut.

jiggy20118• 14 years ago

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Auto mechanics can make a living precisely because they can open the hood of a car and repair/change stuff inside.

shuw2• 14 years ago

You access the hood of your car to fix it, not to upgrade it.

Solid state technology is much more reliable than the mechanical components of a car; especially over it's lifetime (cars are expected to last > 10 years, computers < 5). Those constraints lead to vastly different optimizations made in the design.

jlgreco4• 14 years ago

> You access the hood of your car to fix it, not to upgrade it.

Your perspective on auto-mobiles is bizarrely limited. Of course people upgrade their cars... There is an entire industry built around doing just that.

jiggy20118• 14 years ago

Where the analogy fails is that being able to upgrade a computer can well increase it's lifespan more than it would a car. People don't generally need faster and faster cars each year to keep using the roads in the same way they might with a computer.

When I was a teenager I made reasonable pocket money upgrading peoples computers from 16 to 32/64MB of RAM because it saved quite a bit vs the cost of buying a whole new computer and made a significant difference when running Windows 98.

cheald• 14 years ago

You've never put an aftermarket air filter or platinum spark plugs in a car? There is a whole mess of people who like to tinker with and upgrade their cars without having to fix anything.

A RAM upgrade isn't about a RAM replacement because of failure. It's because as computing progresses, you need more RAM to remain performant. A RAM upgrade is the single most effective way to revitalize older hardware - that 8GB that is more than enough today may be not nearly enough tomorrow.

lurker145• 14 years ago

I am responding to your post on a 5+ year-old Mac with upgraded RAM and a replaced battery. The upgrade/refreshability is a key factor in this machine being worth the premium price it cost.

evoxed• 14 years ago

"It's like buying a Jaguar" is probably more accurate.

wahnfrieden• 14 years ago

It would be nice If this didn't actually matter now that RAM is so ridiculously cheap, but I imagine it's an easy resource for Apple to milk the customer for on optional upgrades and will be for a long time.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

Oh, you'd like to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB in your new Mac? That will be $200.

lurker145• 14 years ago

It's $200 per marginal 8GB, actually. Per 1 GB, that's only a $20 markup over fair market value of the RAM. It's not so much when you say it that way, just like a text message is only 10c each, for each of the thousands Twitter/AIM generates.

j0j0r0• 14 years ago

post jobs apple committee rule combined with their litigious policies towards android are the reason that I'm never giving any money to them again...(and I used to drop a lot of money their way)

solac3• 14 years ago

I think this is really a shame.

With things at apple going this direction it seems that they don't want to make technology as long lived as it could be. I know people don't buy new products with the long run in mind in many cases, leaving folks with little alternative to a full upgrade after the warranty has expired and something goes wrong.

I myself have always enjoyed getting every last drop of life out of my computers. There is some joy in getting usefulness out of technology ten years out of date.

hosay123• 14 years ago

Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to nerds is required to maintain their market position. I do hope they're wrong.

I realize many nerds are quite comfortable with the commoditization of computing equiment, and I appreciate many livelihoods depend on the shoehorning of new software through a requisite Apple ID and profit share with the app store, but somehow I still hope there are enough technology advocates left that have yet to sell their souls, to have some counterbearing on this brave new world of shitty, locked down, for-commercially-approved-consumption-and-entertainment-purposes-only overpriced disposable hardware.

Fuck the church of Apple and everything it stands for.

bunderbunder• 14 years ago

> Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to nerds is required to maintain their market position.

Considering that the period over which they went from laying on their deathbed to becoming one of the most highly-valued companies in the world falls entirely within the period over which they started making these kinds of design changes, they'd have to be downright stupid to believe otherwise.

But for the sake of unpacking that idea anyway, let me advance that what's really going on is that they don't believe that the wallet of a nerd who is fundamentally opposed to the basic idea behind their business model in the first place isn't really worth chasing after. Apple deciding not to solder RAM to the motherboard because it might make their computers slightly less unappealing to a certain class of nerd makes about as much sense as your local butcher deciding to stop carrying veal in an effort to get more vegans to come through the door.

Besides, I'm not convinced that RAM soldered to the board is a real practical complaint so much as yet another lightning bolt for an ideological grudge (I can't help but note the phrase "church of Apple"). We don't see the same griping about how the Raspberry Pi's RAM is soldered to the board. This even though it's a computer that, unlike the iMac, is specifically made for us tinkerers.

dpitkin• 14 years ago

So it's just like my Mac Book Air, that is a shame. Personal irony noted.

eungyu• 14 years ago

Thinness vs upgradability! Such a huge tradeoff.

I really don't see the point in making desktop products super thin (there by making it inaccessible). Thinness is probably one of the last innovation area that customer may be excited for a desktop product. I would hope for better R&D direction in the future from Apple.

This was evident in the Apple stores this weekend, where I saw iMac tables failing to draw any crowd.

coffeedrinker• 14 years ago

I've had my 24" iMacs apart to replace hard drives, fix CD drives, and above all to clean out dust.

You cannot even clean the dust out of the fan easily!

danso• 14 years ago

How much of this is a result of an actual design consideration rather than an active attempt to prevent modding? That is, is the decision to use glue instead of magnets out of an engineering concern? It just seems by now, Apple is making fistfuls of money and the average customer is so fine with letting AppleCare fix anything that only a small pct of users would ever try to take it apart to add third party upgrades.

I guess there is a strong incentive to force users to replace computers after 3 years...but that seems shortsighted...a lot of people were loyal to Macs because they lasted longer than PCs...a customer who is using the same Mac body for 6 years may not be spending as much on hardware in the short term, but they'll have basically become a customer for life from then on.

jiggy20118• 14 years ago

Question is, will you need more than 8GB of memory in 3 years time if you are not doing something "intensive" like video editing (in which case Apple feels justified in charging you more for your computer)?

I remember the memory requirements for computers rising sharply in 2000 but this was mainly because people were making the switch over from single user systems like Win95 to proper multiuser systems like Win2000/XP and starting to do things like play video on their computers.

alwaysinshade• 14 years ago

> That is, is the decision to use glue instead of magnets out of an engineering concern?

Some of the new iMacs are being assembled in the US from factory "D2". I suspect the decision to use glue instead of user serviceable parts like screws/magnets is to reduce the amount of human labor required for assembly.

MaysonL• 14 years ago

I think it's more a little nudge at upsell: the 27 inch iMac's RAM is user-upgradeable.

knowaveragejoe• 14 years ago

Is anyone surprised? Apple is shifting to building appliances, it makes complete sense for them to do so.

lurker145• 14 years ago

Shifting? Apple has sold appliances for over 28 years.

damian2000• 14 years ago

Apple probably figures that the number of users who firstly are willing to shell out big $$$ for a new iMac, but then also care about saving $150 or so by doing a 3rd party RAM upgrade (and voiding warranty?) is fairly minimal.

omnisci• 14 years ago

Everyone here needs to understand that they are talking about a computer WITH an understanding of computers. Ask mom and dad if they want to upgrade their ram. The answer is “huh?”. The concept of upgrading computers doesn’t exist to many MAC (or PC) owners.

Most users don’t give a shit about upgrading. When I was working in support, I remember a kid who had 19238012983 viruses on his computer. We formatted, reinstalled and 3 weeks later he was back again with 6 billion viruses. After formatting again, installing AV etc, he came back a few weeks later with a NEW laptop (back in 2002) because he thought the computer was the issue. He bought a whole new computer because he was too dumb to realize that HE was the problem. Apple sees this, and makes their products to work for those people. And it works. Hard drive died on your MBpro? Ahh man, time to get a new computer. (WTF?!).

Apple takes advantage of this and they do it really well. They purposely build items that you can’t fix/upgrade so you come back to them. Even if it is free, you come to the store and look at all the new stuff…which is enticing. It’s quite brilliant. And this is why I don’t like the company. They are actually encouraging ignorance.

Upgrading RAM on new iMac practically impossible

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