Can I get some service here? The new 27-inch iMac forgoes replaceable storage for soldered innards The 2020 27-inch iMac is almost certainly Cupertino’s final Intel swan song before it departs into the uncharted waters of Apple Silicon. And while it would be easy to dismiss this as a final iterative upgrade designed to freshen up its product line while it transitions, that isn’t really the case as a new teardown from iFixit …
Trying to preserve a modern-day Apple computer is like trying to preserve any other unfixable domestic household appliance which is built to fail after a few years.
I'm trying to think of what they've done to the iMac line, but they've not done much after 2007 except use the latest Intel reference design for that particular year and make it harder to upgrade and fix.
My 2010 2.93GHz i7 seems to be going just fine. Sure it’s now relegated to just being the “family” computer as it met the barrier of to low a graphics card for post High Sierra macOS, but for modern versions where thunderbolt and USB allow you to effectively upgrade the graphics card it’s not so much of a problem.
My earlier iMac died after 7 years. Wasn't worth the cost to fix versus buy a new one.
My 2012 macbook pro is still kicking, albeit after I accidentally trashed the monitor... I think it will last another couple of years... (This has seen 3 continents, and traveled w me on average of 45 weeks in the year. ) None of my windows machines have lasted that long.
I think Apple made a goof with this. It would mean buying a service contract and then swapping the guts out if something fails.
To the author's point, w Thunderbolt 3, you can use an external raid box, which is what many people do. Would love to upgrade my Promise R4 to something using NVMe or 2.5" SSDs to get a smaller faster package.
Funnily enough I was looking at the 21.5" iMac earlier today. I'm pondering when I may need to replace my similarly sized iMac from 2014 as this WFH lark isn't ending too soon and for reasons I can only attach one extra screen right now.
The thing is I'm not a great fan of the all-in-one concept. But at the time of purchase the Mac Mini wasn't really going to cut it, and the less said about the wastebin MacPro the better. Previously I had a proper-looking MacPro you could open up and change/repair bits, but I don't think I could really justify a MacPro now (and that's before any mention of wheels!). So I'm stuck with the iMac and its shortcomings when it comes to upgrades/repair etc. And don't get me started on how by default the peripherals are wireless by default...
The wastebin Mac Pro is surprisingly good and holds its value well. I recently had to upgrade away from mine to... the newest iMac at the time and the specs and prices were on par despite a 5 or 6 year difference. Performance of it was also grand. I was sad to have to give it up. If you're concerned about SSD storage wearing out, buy 1TB of USB 3.1 Samsung T5 storage in a credit-card-sized bundle and stick it into one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports in the back. You won't notice any difference really...
It won points for the use of a socketed (and thus, upgradeable) CPU
So the CPU is upgradeable (which almost nobody does) and the storage and RAM is not upgradeable (which almost everybody wants to do at some time). It really makes you wonder if anyone in Apple cares about user-oriented design beyond getting the right curve on the corners.
> and RAM is not upgradeable (which almost everybody wants to do at some time).
Did you read the article? "Fortunately, Apple hasn’t (yet) dished out the same treatment to the iMac’s RAM, which remains user-serviceable and uses standard 260-pin DDR4 sticks. ".
In fact, for the hard of thinking, the article mentions the user upgradable RAM twice, the second time being the second half of the sentence you half-quoted: "It won points for the use of a socketed (and thus, upgradable) CPU, as well as the user-serviceable RAM."
But this approach from Apple matters because the iMac is no longer a consumer device, like the original technicolour G3 machine. The 27-inch iMac is a work machine. It’s used by developers and designers and filmmakers. And those people tend to need to store lots of stuff: be they codebases, image assets, or b-roll.
And you've answered the question right there as to why it doesn't necessarily matter if the machine has a non-replaceable SDD. If it's a work machine, then no professional worth their salt will store work data on their local drive without either (a) a backup or (b) likely stored on network or direct to cloud storage.
Thus, the internal storage device is becoming less and less relevant for the storage of data, and more as the home for the installations of executables and the OS.
Render farms have been the way to do things for a long while when it comes to video. They were comparitively easy to setup but there were never good reasons to have them cloud based due to the size of the master assets and the time taken to transfer these followed by the subsequent download time. And not forgetting that when renders became quick, they became more common as it was easier to tweak and test.
On the other hand, non-video work is largely exclusively local as this still lends itself to very fast access.
Presumably professionals want to be able to replace a borked SSD from time to time too.
With a T2 chip that is impossible, and you won't be able to boot from an external drive either because the UEFI is also on the same borked SSD and the T2 chip won't allow any other SSD to work.
That's the lifetime of your shiny over, it's landfill Apple.
Of course the professional users will have a backup. Unless they are only professionals in their field and don't know how to, but most of them will have a backup. The backup is useful in case of drive failure, because you can replace the drive and restore the backup to it. Oh, wait a minute, I meant that the backup is useful in the case that the drive fails and the user has to either boot to the backup disk, probably over USB, or restore the backup to a new drive in something else. Neither is a good approach if you need fast throughput, because you probably didn't buy two machines to do the fast professional work on when you only need one. You could buy a spare iMac, and if your work is really important you might, but it might be easier just to buy something that can take a new disk and put a new disk in.
As for network storage, no, that's not going to work. People who need local processing usually also need local storage so their processing actually helps. If you get a processor that's twice as fast as the old one and put your data on a network connection that slows you down, there's little reason to have bought the faster computer in the first place. Sure, the data gets synced to the network eventually, but it's for a rolling backup and for easier access. When you're doing complex stuff with said data, you want it on the same machine that does the processing, and usually with the fastest access you can get, which is why there's a business for really nice SSDs and in-memory caching.
And why do you do that? A disk failure can happen to any of your disks, so you're no safer your way than the other way. If you're concerned about software writing over the files because it's on the OS disk, you could create a separate partition on the same disk. If you have enough data to use seven external drives, more power to you. If you want duplication so you use seven drives, that's fine too. Some people either don't need that or are happy to have that on their backup system. For example, I use multiple drives to store backups, but I use a single disk in my laptop to do everyday work. It is faster to compile a bunch of code if it's read from inside the machine than if it has to be pulled off a RAIDed set and over a USB cable or the network. Worse, the original post suggested that this would be happening with cloud storage--retrieving from RAID on my local network isn't great, but retrieving from I don't even know what the hardware's like from the nearest data center is going to add plenty of problems while I'm trying to get work done. Back up there for off-site media, certainly. Read production media from there every day for performance-sensitive tasks, not a chance.
I thought separating OS and data was pretty much universal these days?
From my pov I put data on separate discs (or at the very least separate partitions) to the OS, mainly so that it's possible to wipe and re-install the OS without having to worry about the data. The same goes for home folders. For a single user the discs might as well be in the machine - and are probably faster for it. With multiple users, data on separate - shareable - discs means people can access their files from any suitable machine and don't have to make sure to log into the same machine on which they originated a file.
There is a slight performance argument - temp files are more likely to be stored on the OS disc, as are applications which may need to access libraries during use, so if you are hitting a lot of data it's a bit quicker to get it from a separate place where it isn't contending for accesses (though the performance arguments aren't as great with SSDs as they were with spinning rust).
There's also the option of formatting the partitions differently though the choices may not be great under Windows. OpenSuse, for example, uses BTRFS by default for the OS, but BTRFS is not renowned for its speed, so speed critical data could usefully be put on a disc formatted differently - until recently OpenSuse's default for a home folder / data partition was XFS which regularly beats BTRFS in speed trials, though of course BTRFS uses Copy-on-Write which has some safety advantages.
M.
Making the RAM upgradeable by just using opening a flap and replacing it sounds like the work of a company who's encouraging people to upgrade when they want. Making the CPU upgradeable (albeit a lot more complex than RAM) smacks of a company who cares a little about what people want to do with a computer that costs the best part of £2000 in an age where they shouldn't.
Making the flash storage totally un-replaceable smacks of arrogance and a total and wilful disregard for Apple's customers, let alone the environment. It's a kick in the teeth really. You spend that much money on a computer, knowing that a key part, the one you're most likely to want to upgrade, and the one most likely to fail within 5 or 6 years, is soldered on to the motherboard!
It's put me right off Apple's computers. They're just a plaything for the rich. It might as well be a glorified iPad. And it will be, when the ARM chip models come out. Not only will people be unable to upgrade them, but they'll be unable to install from anything except the apple store. It'll become just an appliance.
"It'll become just an appliance."
What is the lifetime of the SSD in question under typical use conditions?
Looking around my kitchen, my appliances range in age from 20 years (cooker, ok but might need a new one in the next 5 years) to a couple of years (toaster, going strong). Mind you the whole lot cost less than £2k
I'm not averse to the consumer-end-point-as-applience model, but would want a decent lifetime for £2k's worth. 10 years (£4 a week roughly) perhaps.
Aftermarket: anyone want to take bets on a piggyback SSD holder mod appearing in a few years?
Icon: off out before the thunder storms
An SSD can just fail after any amount of time. But assuming they don't have any sudden failures, it will vary depending on usage. If used for frequent video editing, it will last less. But I'd give it 4-10 years. I mean if you spend £2k on a home computer, you'd better have a damn good reason for having it and using it.
My last mac, which I no longer use due to its speed, was a core i7 Macbook Pro from 2012. I upgraded it to have an SSD and 16GB RAM (it's easy to do on those machines). It's just too slow for the kind of multitasking work I do. I've got a much newer core i5 PC and much as I like MacOS, the PC is so much faster. I don't have to wait for anything. And despite it being Windows, which I like less than MacOS, it is more efficient, pleasurable and easy to use, because it's so fast in comparison.
Having just replaced the fusion drive on my 2015 27 iMac - it's not exactly easy anyway. Why they can't figure a way of opening it without all that glue and spudgers is a mystery to me. This is a step too far for me - perhaps I'll go for a mini next time, or just wave a white flag and give up ....
At every turn, Apple are disappointing people. It's like they are trying to see how far they can go until people stop buying the i-things. On purpose. And amazingly, nothing seems to slow down the masses. Remove this feature here, add this incompatibility chip there, decrease functionality in another place, or remove ports people need to get their expensive equipment to work the other expensive stuff they already have.
"Go on... you'll buy it anyway!"
And darned if they don't. Boggles, really.
I have upgraded or replaced the storage (bigger HDD, SSD) on every computer I have bought or built in the last 30 years, except for my current build which is only 1 month old. I have never replaced a CPU, and only twice have I upgraded the memory. I wouldn't buy a laptop with no user upgradeable storage option, let allow a desktop. This is Apple greed at its worst.
Bought new laptop two weeks ago.
Ordered another NVMe for it the week after.
Sorry, but I'm going to max out storage because it's the one thing I use / want the most, to actually hold things I want to keep.
I could have gone from 16Gb to 64Gb of RAM for the same price - but I can do that any time and as my need requires it.
But I filled up my first 1Tb NVMe within the first week just loading my Steam collection and files from my old laptop - before I'd even STARTED downloading anything new.
I mentioned it previously in another Apple article regarding how it's not just onboard SSDs that punters need to be wary of in terms of soldered NAND (flash) ICs and built-in obsolescence.
The Apple T2 chip will have onboard NAND flash storage within it, for the secure enclave and there has been no mention by Apple on the design life of this NAND storage in terms of the number of data writes to such a device. It could potentially only have a 4-5 year operating life too, aka. Built-in obsolescence.
This has shown to be true in terms of HP's Gen8 / Gen9 / Gen10 Server (Microserver) iLO 4Mb NAND Flash storage and how we are seeing symptomatic failure of this onboard soldered NAND IC due to the way data is continually written to the system health, onboard temps etc, and it's ability to get into a race condition and continually write to the NAND causing its premature failure, causing failure just outside the warranty period.
What's interesting (what we have found from investigating this as we've had several fail outside the warranty period) is that HP themselves have produced a technical white paper outlining the inherent design fault and it's clear from the document, that the fault has been there since manufacture and that HP has failed to take action promptly (the first firmware 2.61 to tackle this was released in Aug 2018, with most sales much earlier than this 2014 onwards) in terms of capping the number of daily writes to the NAND IC.
In the technical white paper, HP clearly acknowledge the issue and how it causes built in obsolescence if the NAND fails before the firmware is upgraded to mitigate the excessive number of writes to the NAND (additionally, this gem of document - seems the perfect technical white paper to show legal liability in order to obtain recompense in terms of a UK court),
The problem is, if you contact HP support channels, it's still a very expensive chargeable replacement / swap-out for a board replacement outside the warranty period.
You have to ask, how can that be given the contents on the white paper, HP(E) seem to be blatantly flouting UK consumer law by not honouring a replacement / swap out of the motherboard to fix this issue.
Here's the technical white paper (worth saving if you operate lots of these HP Gen8/Gen9/Gen10 servers/HP microservers).
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-a00060052en_us
"HP(E) seem to be blatantly flouting UK consumer law by not honouring a replacement / swap out of the motherboard to fix this issue."
I doubt many HP Gen.. servers are bought by consumers. Business purchases don't qualify for this. It's still the wild west for business.
Do these issues exist for those that buy them and load freenas as many seem to do with these boxes? I believe it is possible to attach an internal storage device for the OS without occupying one of the hot swap bays.
SSD drives will eventually fill.
My Linux boxes came with 1TB and it wasn't long before I moved the home directories to an internal ZFS RAID to get more breathing room. Part of the 1TB nvram became cache.
My experience with MacOS is that a filling boot drive is serious hassle to deal with. You can't just mount new storage into whatever directory needs it. It doesn't like files being moved either because it breaks versioning in auto-save apps.
This is hurting their iPhone sales. We do not allow work computers to leave the office with their storage incase it has something sensitive on it and that means no soldered in storage. Since we told people we don't support the soldered in storage macs, they tend to pick a Windows or Linux system. When it is time to upgrade their phones, they tend not to pick Apple products. When asked, our IT staff all use the phase "We can't recommend Apple products" with an ever increasing list of technical reason why.
You’re not their target market. Tinkerers need not apply. These devices are targeted at people that buy what they need first up and “admire the design” as it sits on display. Pros using Apple machines spend big dollars on high end kit and write it off against tax. Their boxes have replaceable components.
Others like myself will run hackintoshes until they go all in with their own silicon. However we take the occasional pain for that choice.
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