SATA AFAIK has never used a 4-pin power connector. Isn't SATA 7 and 15 pin for the power and data?

It's still a bit twatty of them if this custom firmware business means you cannot replace the HDD for another off the shelf jobbie for out of warranty replacements.

Although in all honesty I'm not sure people who buy iMacs go into the deal expecting it to be upgradable do they? IIRC you have to remove the whole front glass panel to get to the HDD anyway.

I hope they're using reliable drives. How long is the warranty on these things? I can just imagine the pain if they all start failing a few days after it runs out...

Same as everybody else's. They'll say 'one year' but there are various arguments you could use to get a free repair after that. 'Merchantable quality' and all that.


Actually, my experience is Apple (rather than resellers) are not bad at dealing with stuff that's out of warranty. I've had kit that died swapped for free despite being way out. IMO, if it went pop the week after the warranty was up, they'd fix it for you. Course it depends how close to an Apple shop you are, and whether you fancy lugging a 27" iMac to them...

Jon

If you have the extended Apple care it makes a huge difference anyway. I had a logic board blow which if not covered would have set me back more than £600 to replace. Applecare covered it.

To be honest if anything blows on my Mac within the first few years I shall be looking at SOGA.

Apple always do things first. It is highly likely that other consumer targeted PCs will become similarly harder to upgrade. Such machines are appliances - in the same way your TV or radios are.

This all said, you need a fair degree of confidence to take any iMac to bits to get to the hard drive if you wanted to change them. This isn’t the 1980s any more - a time when computers were meant to be taken to bits.

It would be good if there was little door (like there is for the RAM) through which you could remove/replace the hard disk but it seems rather unlikely Apple would go for that... ever.

Apart from some very tightly done screws, the PS3 shows how this should be done. Apple's Mac Pro is very easy to swap out disks, but for that kind of machine, you'd expect it to be.

It's a sealed unit. That means it's a totally different design and engineering proposition to a normal PC.

It's not supposed to be user-swappable. You may as well moan that swapping the hdd in your Sky+ box is difficult.

It's not. (8+)

Mark

It's an interesting argument to me.

Generic IBM compatible PCs have always been easy to upgrade because they use generic parts. "Upgrade-ability" is part of the reason for their massive market dominance. "Buy this PC - it's future-proof because you can upgrade it easily". (define:future = time << 10 years hence)

I'm struggling to think of any other consumer device that's as easy to upgrade in so many ways. Sure I can add new flash memory to my phones and cameras, but memory is like a VHS cassette - you expect to be able to change it! Even on my cheap netbook, the RAM and FLASH is trivial to swap out but the hard disk requires some more delicate surgery. I have done it, but I wouldn't trust just anyone with the task. Upgrading the flash in a phone is obviously trivial - it just pops out when you poke it.

Upgrading the processor? Trivial in a PC; even when a new generation comes out you can buy a MoBo/CPU/RAM combo for a fraction the price of a whole new machine. You can't do that on anything else that I can think of.

I fancy upgrading my fridge, toaster, microwave, TV and DVD player. Guess what? I can't stick a Blue Ray drive in my DVD player and expect it to work. I have to trash thousand's of pounds worth of hardware and buy it all new...

I think the PC will remain at the centre of my entertainment systems for many years to come. It's cheap and it "just works".

I wonder how soon the iMac will switch to a MBA type storage solution. Certainly not while they are still using normal HDDs, but if/when they go fully Flash based, it'd be an interesting move.

Indeed, it would allow for some very interesting design possibilities. However I think we'll be waiting a few years yet before SSD storage is in the price/capacity range where it'll be a viable default option for 'consumer' PCs. When you can get a terabyte SSD for less than £100 we'll see it but probably not before then. So maybe 3-5 years?

Jon