New iMac Gets Respectable Repairability Score

[JMcEntegart]

Announced on Wednesday, the iFixit team certainly wasted no time in getting its hands on the new 2011 iMac. So what did they find when they took this baby apart?

New iMac Gets Respectable Repairability Score : Read more

 

[slothy89]

*sigh* Apple and their "logic" boards.. It's a MOTHERboard for Petes sake..
The "logic" happens in the CPU..

I thought the RAM was a straight forward removal of the panel on the underside of the screen type job. I guess needing a torx screwdriver puts even this in the too hard basket for some...

 

[Tamz_msc]

"Logic boards"- that made me laugh for sure.

 

[johnsmithhatesVLC]

How good is the ips panel? How does it compare to the dell u2311h?

 

[tipoo]

Yes, anything that requires a home user buy specialized suction cups to take apart is highly repairable...

 

[PCGOD]

i have to say im surprised. those specs at that price for a mac device... i would've guessed at least 1500. ive heard logic boards are the next big thing...

 

[yahboyouthere]

Ugh i don't want to see the inside of an Imac ever again. Repaired too many of these and they are not fun in any way.

 

[akorzan]

[citation][nom]johnsmithhatesVLC[/nom]How good is the ips panel? How does it compare to the dell u2311h?[/citation]
Both panels are made by LG. When you buy a monitor, the LCD panel is not manufactured by Dell, Apple, Asus, Viewsonic but by a another firm since it is a costly process that requires large factories.

On this site they review different technologies and have a large database listing every panel in each monitor.
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/panelsearch.htm

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]Yes, anything that requires a home user buy specialized suction cups to take apart is highly repairable...[/citation]

Guess with that regard and high rating, any Win PC have a rating of 10 across the board!

 

[fyasko]

stop the hate!!!

 

[alidan]

depending on how good that monitor is, its almost like you are getting a decent computer along with an amassing monitor. if only it wasnt a mac, i would praise this, but because its mac, its shooting itself in the foot, as people only use a mac for dicking around, not doing real work.

 

[mchuf]

Having a torx driver isn't a big deal anymore. Now suction cups (and knowing how to correctly use them), well that's another story.

The thing I don't like is that Apple equips this iMac with a wonderful 1080p screen, yet only has a gpu with 512 meg of video ram. Come on now Apple, 1 gig of vram has become the defacto baseline anymore. Oh that's right Jobs doesn't like gaming.

 

[Guest]

I never liked "all in ones" You can't do hardware upgrades, many times they have mobile chipsets in them for less heat. When you want new you have to buy another "all in one" or a monitor if you go back to a conventional desktop setup. If your monitor breaks you lose your computer, if your computer breaks you lose your monitor.
Its just not a good setup unless you really don't like a box sitting around. In that case you might as well get a laptop. Its cheaper!

 

[alisalem]

I always thought iMacs used mobile specs for everything. I guess now it's only the GPUs?

 

[scuba dave]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]depending on how good that monitor is, its almost like you are getting a decent computer along with an amassing monitor. if only it wasnt a mac, i would praise this, but because its mac, its shooting itself in the foot, as people only use a mac for dicking around, not doing real work.[/citation]

Your highly questionable opinion, is worthless.

Also, the suction cups thing is odd.. Not many people would have those already, but as it is.. Since Apple doesn't intend for its users to repair their suff DIY-style, it's not too unusual. I'm guessing the higher score is more lined with how easy it is to repair with all the right tools, instead of how easy it is with, and only with, a standard set of tools. And in that case.. The score makes some sense.

 

[rosen380]

Are these magical suction cups? I have a bunch around the house already -- and got them at a dollar store.

From the pic it looks like they are using the suction cups to lift off the display-- is there any reason you couldn't flip it over on a padded surface and just lift away the case??

 

[mobrocket]

Why would u need to fix it, arent apple fanboys required to buy a new one every year or face the wrath of being "uncool"

 

[teodoreh]

$1.200 is not bad for Apple, is this surely the right price?

 

[Yoder54]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]...people only use a mac for dicking around, not doing real work.[/citation]

This is a pretty lame and baseless comment. Do you have any idea how many in the movie industry are using Mac's, not to mention the audio industry? Then there is the graphic arts industry (Photoshop was designed for the Mac initially) that seems to gravitate to Mac, and AutoCAD is now ported to the Mac and most likely many will be moving over to iMac's to do this type of work if not for the small footprint. With it's UNIX kernel you also see more of them creeping into science, medicine, etc. Apple provide a decent SDK for developers (free,) and so OS X has as much room for application growth as does the PC. Now that Apple is gaining more market share, then we will most likely see more applications being implemented. The greatest selling point of OS X, is it's robustness and ease of use. The typical consumer does not want to fight an OS like Window's, and corporations loose money when they must spend time implementing simple tasks on Windows versus OS X. History will be the judge.

 

[memadmax]

Yoder, you may have needed a mac to do all those things back in the early 90's but now, we have all those tools for free on the wintel platform... mac's are dead, thats why apple builds phones and music gadgets now....

 

[Guest]

Yoder54: Yeah, Macs were all the rage in the Audio and Video industries back in the late 90s, but somewhere around the end of the G5 era, there was a mass exodus away from Mac. They no longer have the same renown that they used to, mostly because people figured out the platform as a whole sucks, the application is used the same way in either OS, and that OSX has worse performance per price and per hardware spec.

 

[audioee]

"an Intel BD82Z68 Platform Controller Hub"

Is this the same Z68 that we on the PC side have been waiting months for?

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]Yoder54[/nom]The greatest selling point of OS X, is it's robustness and ease of use. The typical consumer does not want to fight an OS like Window's, and corporations loose money when they must spend time implementing simple tasks on Windows versus OS X. History will be the judge.[/citation]

Windows is just as user friendly as os X if your use to using it. And if companies spent as much on a windows computer as they do with a mac and got none cheap crap parts they wouldn't have to do much fighting with anything

If history is any judge apple will eventually shoot its self in the foot and fall into near bankruptcy and become a nitch product..... again. Since Apple went away from risc cpu's other then opinions about its OS i find no real compelling reasons they are any better then a regular old windows PC anymore. I mean other then someones opinions about the OS I couldn't stand mac for the decades i was forced to use them and i still cant.

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]audioee[/nom]"an Intel BD82Z68 Platform Controller Hub" Is this the same Z68 that we on the PC side have been waiting months for?[/citation]

Yupp its the Z68, (for you who don't know its pretty much a P68 but with added cpu gfx support and ssd caching for hdd's).

I rather wait for the real performance LGA-2011 chipset/cpu's (qpi, quad memory channels and 2x16 pci-e 3.0 for gfx not the 2x8 like p68/z68)

 

[jecastej]

One fact is that Apple supposedly died many times over the last decade and is now bigger than Ms, now also #34 in the Fortune list for what ever it means, and selling more macs every year, beside selling more gadgets than ever. Facts and no my opinion.

With this facts still being true I personally don't like iMacs for not being as easy to upgrade as the OS philosophy is easy to interact with. Apple is very capable to produce an upgradable PC/MAC hardware. But it looks like Apple don't want to deal with those kind of users on a commercial product. Mac Pros are workstations, a more reliable PC, for Pro users.

The 27 panel iMac with a 2600K is a decent all in one, the only one I would consider for myself for "high end" use. But as someone pointed if the IPS monitor fails or an important part you lose all the functionality while the machine is on service. I don't like that either.

But the news is about the iMacs getting easier to upgrade or repair by a more adventurous user.