6 ms·

Lesson #7: Don't buy an iMac Seriously. Why would you ever buy a computer that you need to remove the screen from to replace a part like an HDD with a high fa

Lesson #7: Don't buy an iMac Seriously. Why would you ever buy a computer that you need to remove the screen from to replace a part like an HDD with a high failure rate? I have a friend with a 2011 27" iMac that uses thunderbolt 1. It has an absurdly slow HDD. I was going to try to help her upgrade it, but I can't find a TB1 enclosure to put an SSD into. The other choice is FW800, and those are incredibly rare too. I'm actually shopping for these as we speak, so reading this article was very timely.. EDIT: Finally found a FW800 SATA 2.5" enclosure on Amazon that I can pop an SSD into. Sadly it was more expensive than a cheap SSD.

slhlk3h5klh 7y ago
I've upgraded that particular model. You can use something like this to replace the internal disk: https://www.ebay.com/itm/123514199917 https://www.ebay.com/itm/123514199917 Removing the screen cover is easy - all you need is a couple suction cups: https://www.ebay.com/itm/323959879241 https://www.ebay.com/itm/323959879241
- drewg123 7y ago
  I'm not going to try to remove the screen, I'm sorry. I don't mind turning screws, but I'm not going to mess with glass and glue and stuff. I'm clumsy and afraid I'll break something just by looking at it wrong. Especially on something that isn't mine.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Screws are much more delicate than glass. Screws strip very easily, making it impossible to remove the connection.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      Philips heads strip unusually easily because the driver will fit, but then cam out damaging the drive, if you use the wrong driver size or too little pressure. Or if it's actually a JIS or Pozidriv, and you're using a Philips driver because you don't know better, or the proper sets are expensive, or the size and type you need is in the same place all your 10mm sockets are. Most other drives don't have most of these problems. Even with the infamous Pentalobe, as long as you get the size right, it's pretty hard to screw up.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Philips heads camming out is a feature in certain contexts, apparently.
        throwanem 7y ago
        So I gather, and after all it is by design, but after a lifetime of dealing with the miserable things I've come to regard the design as either obsolete or just bad from the start. edit: Apocryphally by design, anyway. Wikipedia says that's an urban legend, unfounded. I cordially despise the things either way, and I'm sure the sentiment is reciprocated.
        imtringued 7y ago
        They are bad by design. You can just limit the torque on your cordless drill.
  - djrogers 7y ago
    It’s not glue - the glass is actually held on by magnets around the perimeter. At least my iMac was...
  - slhlk3h5klh 7y ago
    There's no glue - it's held on by magnets. Honestly, it's really easy! Just check here: https://youtu.be/pU2JT6NGNOQ?t=11 https://youtu.be/pU2JT6NGNOQ?t=11
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      With newer models, Apple has replaced the magnets with glue.
correct_horse 7y ago
I agree, but I think this lesson needs qualification. If you know how to diagnose a bad drive and replace it, don't buy an iMac. The vast majority of people would need to bring a broken computer into a repair shop to replace the drive, even if that computer were a PC with a highly accessible solid state drive. I won't ever buy a mac again, but it makes sense for some people to do so.
- drewg123 7y ago
  The drive isn't even broken. Its just a painfully slow 5400rpm spinning rust drive that makes the machine sluggish.
- incompatible 7y ago
  Presumably the repair shop will charge more if the job on the iMac takes 5 times as long and risks damaging the screen.
lonelappde 7y ago
My 9yr old hard drive on my daily driver PC, still works fine.
bluedino 7y ago
>> I have a friend with a 2011 27" iMac that uses thunderbolt 1. It has an absurdly slow HDD. Almost every single one of those that we bought, had a hard drive failure. They used WD Green drives. I replaced them with WD Blacks, and if SSD's had been cheaper in 2012/13 we would have used them, but these were graphics designers. You will need to control the fans with software like SMC Fan Control, which is annoying, or better yet, this harness: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD11/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD11/ You can pop the glass off an iMac with a credit card (or your fingernails, they don't glue them on that year, instead they used magnets) and with a torx bit you can tilt the screen out of the way and pull the bad drive out.
- abakker 7y ago
  Yeah, you need some suction cups to do it easily, but drive swaps on iMacs are trivial. If you prepare. Get the tools for $5 and go for it.
  - Dr_Jefyll 7y ago
    Rather than buying suction cups (for which I would subsequently have had no further use), I managed very nicely by using just a couple of strips of packing tape. Each strip formed a "handle" -- one on each side of the screen, same as you'd do with the suction cups. There are various ways to manage this, I suppose, but in my case each strip began as a roughly 16 inch length. I folded it 180 degrees at the halfway point and allowed the two legs to stick to each other for about 4 inches. Then the two legs part company, turning 90 degrees but in opposite directions -- and that 90 degree point is where the tape meets the surface of the glass.
    - abakker 7y ago
      This works, but it is risky since I've seen it damage the screen coatings on some of the iMacs. Some of the older ones seemed to have softer coatings.
- MonaroVXR 7y ago
  Why did you buy an iMac for graphic designers? (No sarcasm or hate) When you are doing heavy lifting, the iMac isn't that good enough?
bjoli 7y ago
I got a 2016 iMac for free, and I have many times questioned if it wasn't an insult after all. It has given me nothing but grief. Had I not been able to fix things myself, I probably would have spent more money of this free iMac than I would if I had bought a decently specced computer to replace it with. And now I have to deal with Catalina. Either it's a lemon, or there's something deeply masochistic about apple users. I have fixed enough inane issues with friends' macbooks to suspect the latter (these include: 2x broken SATA cables, 2 shitty solder jobs (of which one was "fixed" by Apple by pressing the chip down with a rubber pad against the chassi. It broke again), several things that just magically disconnected themselves inside an unopened laptop (with apple quoting several thousand SEK repair costs). All of this while providing arguably the worst repair experience of all time (the only real competition I have met is the previous gen MS surface). Yet the people I have helped still praise apple's superior quality.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  Question:what was bad about the surface repair experience? I'm curious, as I've been fairly pleased with mine over the last 6 months but I haven't looked into the repairability of it. I'd read that MS were pretty good on warranty claims, but should I be concerned? For reference, the keyboard has been run over by a forklift once already (don't ask), but I've been fairly impressed so far. I know this won't be as easy to work on as my old thinkpads, but should I be concerned about warranty repairs? If so, I might want to consider a cheap chromebook solely to use in my warehouse.
  - bjoli 7y ago
    The one I opened was made up mostly of glue and solder with some components in between. It was a Surface Laptop. iFixit are way better at describing the pains of trying to open it up: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Teardown/92915 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Tea... They give the newer (2019) variants a far better score, so Microsoft are at least on a good path there.
runamok 7y ago
That's exactly my thought. Hard drives and ram (and frankly batteries where applicable) should be externally accessible for service and replacement. Apple's eco-talk is bullshit until their repairability scores are on average a bit better than 1 or 2 out of 10. Examples: https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability
- PhantomGremlin 7y ago
  Apple's eco-talk is bullshit Apple's hypocrisy is overwhelming. Don't forget that Al Gore, who Wikipedia calls an "environmentalist" in the very first sentence, has been on their Board of Directors for many years.[1] Twenty eight years ago he wrote the book Earth in the Balance to warn us about ecological problems. He's taken millions of dollars from Apple, and together they've done jack-shit about repairability. There is some argument to be made for lower repairability in laptops, but WTF is their excuse for iMac desktops??? They're all Gulfsteam environmentalists, jetting off to places like Davos where they can cavort with others of their ilk while lecturing the rest of us on how bad things are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore
mehrdada 7y ago
Just stick the SSD to the aluminum enclosure with double sided tape. Works like a charm.
Shivetya 7y ago
because like most systems you tend to only hear the horror stories but the vast majority never experience an issue. I replaced my previous 2013 iMac only because updates to its Nvidia video card were no longer occurring. I have only owned iMacs since they switched to Intel, starting with a 24 inch to having passed through to my third 27 model. I never once had an issue other than software related. Now I do agree with many that have stated that Apple should long go have ditched spinning hard drives and I am still amazed they did not. I would like to see some hard evidence of failure rates, I doubt it could be as bad as many think it is but considering how long Apple recently allowed their keyboard issues to manifest I could be wrong
- philistine 7y ago
  I still own and use my 2007 iMac as an iTunes server for the Apple TV. I changed the drive around 2010 because it failed, but outside of that I had nothing but a magnificent experience. I love my iMac.
- drewg123 7y ago
  In this case, the reason for replacement is the fact that its a slow spinning disk and makes the system feel sluggish and dated, not that it has failed. What I find shameful is that in 2020 Apple is STILL SELLING 5400rpm spinnng drives as the base drive in iMacs. https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/
PaulHoule 7y ago
I find this article shocking in it's relentless dropping of brand names and painstaking effort to try each and every wrong solution to every sysadmin problem. When I see how many people complain about their macs, it reminds me of the oldsters complaining about problems with their Buicks and Chevys long ago. After WWII there were large parts of the population such as veterans, Italians, Polish, and Jewish people who would not buy a Japanese or German car. These people let the quality of American cars deteriorate dangerously because they'd buy any bucket of bolts and rust that Detroit would offer. Slowly these people died off or eventually got burned so bad by a lemon they bought that by the 2008 financial crisis the last two hold outs, car rental companies and police departments, were wavering. Detroit realized that shipping crap cars to car rental companies just meant that people who never drove American cans would be certain to drive bad ones, and decide that they never will drive American cars. Cops in my area went so far as to road-test Hondas, but they are still stuck with getting American cars from an industry that isn't really sure if it wants to build police cars. It is the same with the mac. There are many unhappy people who think using a different computer is like putting a hand in a toilet, so they are afraid to upgrade to better computers that are available on a competitive market. A lot of the trouble in the software biz in the last 10 years or so is that there is a certain kind of company that buys every dev a mac, and that they live in a world that is so insular that they never meet anybody who uses a PC, although most of the end users have PCs. Then they wonder why they can't sell any software and can only get acqui-hired.

slhlk3h5klh 7y ago

I've upgraded that particular model. You can use something like this to replace the internal disk: https://www.ebay.com/itm/123514199917 https://www.ebay.com/itm/123514199917 Removing the screen cover is easy - all you need is a couple suction cups: https://www.ebay.com/itm/323959879241 https://www.ebay.com/itm/323959879241

drewg123 7y ago
I'm not going to try to remove the screen, I'm sorry. I don't mind turning screws, but I'm not going to mess with glass and glue and stuff. I'm clumsy and afraid I'll break something just by looking at it wrong. Especially on something that isn't mine.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Screws are much more delicate than glass. Screws strip very easily, making it impossible to remove the connection.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Philips heads strip unusually easily because the driver will fit, but then cam out damaging the drive, if you use the wrong driver size or too little pressure. Or if it's actually a JIS or Pozidriv, and you're using a Philips driver because you don't know better, or the proper sets are expensive, or the size and type you need is in the same place all your 10mm sockets are. Most other drives don't have most of these problems. Even with the infamous Pentalobe, as long as you get the size right, it's pretty hard to screw up.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Philips heads camming out is a feature in certain contexts, apparently.
      - throwanem 7y ago
        So I gather, and after all it is by design, but after a lifetime of dealing with the miserable things I've come to regard the design as either obsolete or just bad from the start. edit: Apocryphally by design, anyway. Wikipedia says that's an urban legend, unfounded. I cordially despise the things either way, and I'm sure the sentiment is reciprocated.
        imtringued 7y ago
        They are bad by design. You can just limit the torque on your cordless drill.
- djrogers 7y ago
  It’s not glue - the glass is actually held on by magnets around the perimeter. At least my iMac was...
- slhlk3h5klh 7y ago
  There's no glue - it's held on by magnets. Honestly, it's really easy! Just check here: https://youtu.be/pU2JT6NGNOQ?t=11 https://youtu.be/pU2JT6NGNOQ?t=11
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    With newer models, Apple has replaced the magnets with glue.

correct_horse 7y ago

I agree, but I think this lesson needs qualification. If you know how to diagnose a bad drive and replace it, don't buy an iMac. The vast majority of people would need to bring a broken computer into a repair shop to replace the drive, even if that computer were a PC with a highly accessible solid state drive. I won't ever buy a mac again, but it makes sense for some people to do so.

drewg123 7y ago
The drive isn't even broken. Its just a painfully slow 5400rpm spinning rust drive that makes the machine sluggish.
incompatible 7y ago
Presumably the repair shop will charge more if the job on the iMac takes 5 times as long and risks damaging the screen.

lonelappde 7y ago

My 9yr old hard drive on my daily driver PC, still works fine.

bluedino 7y ago

>> I have a friend with a 2011 27" iMac that uses thunderbolt 1. It has an absurdly slow HDD. Almost every single one of those that we bought, had a hard drive failure. They used WD Green drives. I replaced them with WD Blacks, and if SSD's had been cheaper in 2012/13 we would have used them, but these were graphics designers. You will need to control the fans with software like SMC Fan Control, which is annoying, or better yet, this harness: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD11/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD11/ You can pop the glass off an iMac with a credit card (or your fingernails, they don't glue them on that year, instead they used magnets) and with a torx bit you can tilt the screen out of the way and pull the bad drive out.

abakker 7y ago
Yeah, you need some suction cups to do it easily, but drive swaps on iMacs are trivial. If you prepare. Get the tools for $5 and go for it.
- Dr_Jefyll 7y ago
  Rather than buying suction cups (for which I would subsequently have had no further use), I managed very nicely by using just a couple of strips of packing tape. Each strip formed a "handle" -- one on each side of the screen, same as you'd do with the suction cups. There are various ways to manage this, I suppose, but in my case each strip began as a roughly 16 inch length. I folded it 180 degrees at the halfway point and allowed the two legs to stick to each other for about 4 inches. Then the two legs part company, turning 90 degrees but in opposite directions -- and that 90 degree point is where the tape meets the surface of the glass.
  - abakker 7y ago
    This works, but it is risky since I've seen it damage the screen coatings on some of the iMacs. Some of the older ones seemed to have softer coatings.
MonaroVXR 7y ago
Why did you buy an iMac for graphic designers? (No sarcasm or hate) When you are doing heavy lifting, the iMac isn't that good enough?

bjoli 7y ago

I got a 2016 iMac for free, and I have many times questioned if it wasn't an insult after all. It has given me nothing but grief. Had I not been able to fix things myself, I probably would have spent more money of this free iMac than I would if I had bought a decently specced computer to replace it with. And now I have to deal with Catalina. Either it's a lemon, or there's something deeply masochistic about apple users. I have fixed enough inane issues with friends' macbooks to suspect the latter (these include: 2x broken SATA cables, 2 shitty solder jobs (of which one was "fixed" by Apple by pressing the chip down with a rubber pad against the chassi. It broke again), several things that just magically disconnected themselves inside an unopened laptop (with apple quoting several thousand SEK repair costs). All of this while providing arguably the worst repair experience of all time (the only real competition I have met is the previous gen MS surface). Yet the people I have helped still praise apple's superior quality.

zrobotics 7y ago
Question:what was bad about the surface repair experience? I'm curious, as I've been fairly pleased with mine over the last 6 months but I haven't looked into the repairability of it. I'd read that MS were pretty good on warranty claims, but should I be concerned? For reference, the keyboard has been run over by a forklift once already (don't ask), but I've been fairly impressed so far. I know this won't be as easy to work on as my old thinkpads, but should I be concerned about warranty repairs? If so, I might want to consider a cheap chromebook solely to use in my warehouse.
- bjoli 7y ago
  The one I opened was made up mostly of glue and solder with some components in between. It was a Surface Laptop. iFixit are way better at describing the pains of trying to open it up: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Teardown/92915 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Tea... They give the newer (2019) variants a far better score, so Microsoft are at least on a good path there.

runamok 7y ago

That's exactly my thought. Hard drives and ram (and frankly batteries where applicable) should be externally accessible for service and replacement. Apple's eco-talk is bullshit until their repairability scores are on average a bit better than 1 or 2 out of 10. Examples: https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability

PhantomGremlin 7y ago
Apple's eco-talk is bullshit Apple's hypocrisy is overwhelming. Don't forget that Al Gore, who Wikipedia calls an "environmentalist" in the very first sentence, has been on their Board of Directors for many years.[1] Twenty eight years ago he wrote the book Earth in the Balance to warn us about ecological problems. He's taken millions of dollars from Apple, and together they've done jack-shit about repairability. There is some argument to be made for lower repairability in laptops, but WTF is their excuse for iMac desktops??? They're all Gulfsteam environmentalists, jetting off to places like Davos where they can cavort with others of their ilk while lecturing the rest of us on how bad things are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore

mehrdada 7y ago

Just stick the SSD to the aluminum enclosure with double sided tape. Works like a charm.

Shivetya 7y ago

because like most systems you tend to only hear the horror stories but the vast majority never experience an issue. I replaced my previous 2013 iMac only because updates to its Nvidia video card were no longer occurring. I have only owned iMacs since they switched to Intel, starting with a 24 inch to having passed through to my third 27 model. I never once had an issue other than software related. Now I do agree with many that have stated that Apple should long go have ditched spinning hard drives and I am still amazed they did not. I would like to see some hard evidence of failure rates, I doubt it could be as bad as many think it is but considering how long Apple recently allowed their keyboard issues to manifest I could be wrong

philistine 7y ago
I still own and use my 2007 iMac as an iTunes server for the Apple TV. I changed the drive around 2010 because it failed, but outside of that I had nothing but a magnificent experience. I love my iMac.
drewg123 7y ago
In this case, the reason for replacement is the fact that its a slow spinning disk and makes the system feel sluggish and dated, not that it has failed. What I find shameful is that in 2020 Apple is STILL SELLING 5400rpm spinnng drives as the base drive in iMacs. https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/

PaulHoule 7y ago

I find this article shocking in it's relentless dropping of brand names and painstaking effort to try each and every wrong solution to every sysadmin problem. When I see how many people complain about their macs, it reminds me of the oldsters complaining about problems with their Buicks and Chevys long ago. After WWII there were large parts of the population such as veterans, Italians, Polish, and Jewish people who would not buy a Japanese or German car. These people let the quality of American cars deteriorate dangerously because they'd buy any bucket of bolts and rust that Detroit would offer. Slowly these people died off or eventually got burned so bad by a lemon they bought that by the 2008 financial crisis the last two hold outs, car rental companies and police departments, were wavering. Detroit realized that shipping crap cars to car rental companies just meant that people who never drove American cans would be certain to drive bad ones, and decide that they never will drive American cars. Cops in my area went so far as to road-test Hondas, but they are still stuck with getting American cars from an industry that isn't really sure if it wants to build police cars. It is the same with the mac. There are many unhappy people who think using a different computer is like putting a hand in a toilet, so they are afraid to upgrade to better computers that are available on a competitive market. A lot of the trouble in the software biz in the last 10 years or so is that there is a certain kind of company that buys every dev a mac, and that they live in a world that is so insular that they never meet anybody who uses a PC, although most of the end users have PCs. Then they wonder why they can't sell any software and can only get acqui-hired.