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This will sound pedantic, but... It isn't hard to replace them. You pull out your iPhone, use the Apple Store App to schedule an appointment, drop off your iMa

This will sound pedantic, but... It isn't hard to replace them. You pull out your iPhone, use the Apple Store App to schedule an appointment, drop off your iMac at the store, go have lunch at Sbarro and then pick it up and go home. If you are buying an iMac, you are buying a sealed solution. If you are the kind of user who wants to replace HDD or upgrade components, the iMac is not the computer you should buy. Bad buyer! A lot has been made of Steve Jobs comments about cars and trucks and the future of computers. I think that is very much how Apple views what they do. The iMac is a family-friendly, automatic sedan or wagon for the kind of person who gets his oil changes done at the dealership because they have a nice waiting room there.

kunai 13y ago
He said Apple would continue to sell trucks and cars, but he expects the cars to cannibalize the truck market. There's no use in a truck with a bed cover that's locked into place and unremovable. There's equally no use in a truck that's not built body-on-frame, and the Mac, one of my favorite computing platforms, is moving away from it.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  The truck analogy wasn’t about internal upgradability, it was about devices running a mobile OS versus devices with desktop OS (notebooks, desktops, etc.). In Jobs’ analogy, the upcoming Mac Pro is just as much a truck as the current one is. However, Steve Jobs didn’t say that Apple would continue selling trucks, just that companies would. Here’s the full quote: When you did your presentation on the iPad, you described it as a new category of device, says Walt [Mossberg]. But in order for it to succeed, people have to feel that it’s worth carrying around. Do you think the tablet will succeed the laptop, he asks. “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.” http://allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/
- dntrkv 13y ago
  Your analogy is nothing like what Apple is doing. A more apt analogy would be selling trucks that don't have easily upgradeable engines where you wouldn't be able to access the engine components without a ton of work, which is exactly how they build most trucks nowadays. The sealed bedcover is more like a limitation in software since that's part of the functionality of the truck. Upgrading a Mac isn't part of the functionality, it's something you do to increase the speed at which you work on it. And as for the body-on-frame comparison, I don't really know what you mean there. If you are talking about the actual, physical chassis of the MacPro not being on a conventional computer frame, then again, that is a bad analogy since a body-on-frame chassis on a truck directly affects the towing and load capability of a truck, which is not so with computers. You can have your components scattered across the floor and they would perform just as well as in a conventional chassis.
potatolicious 13y ago
> "It isn't hard to replace them. You pull out your iPhone, use the Apple Store App to schedule an appointment, drop off your iMac at the store, go have lunch at Sbarro and then pick it up and go home." This sounds pretty annoying. Around here that means lugging your giant 27" iMac down the stairs of your walkup, down the stairs of the subway, up the stairs of the subway, and over to the Apple Store. Then doing it all in reverse. Or calling an Uber - either way, inconvenience, cost, and annoyance that seem hardly necessary. What I really want is to be able to sit on my ass, wait for a hard drive to show up at my doorstep (via Amazon, or Apple themselves, I really don't care), and pull a lever/panel and slip the new one in. If you want to play up the "this needs to be fixed NOW" angle, it'd still be cheaper and more pleasant for Apple to send a bike messenger over with a new hard drive from the Apple Store and let me do it without disentangling the iMac from my workstation setup and hauling it. For a company that espouses "it just works", one of these sounds way less annoying than the other.
- parasubvert 13y ago
  Apple support does mail-order instead of store appointments. They'll send you the empty box too. just call UPS.
falcolas 13y ago
I'm in Bozeman, MT. Where do I stop by to drop it off again? Not everyone lives in a major city.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  The nearest Apple Store is in Boise, Idaho. It’s only a 500mi drive! But seriously, in your case, you’d call Apple and they’d send either a technician or a courier – or you could take it to an Apple Authorized Reseller, there are loads of them.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  601 Nikles Drive, Suite 12 https://locate.apple.com/service/?pt=4&lat=45.6834599&lon=-111.050499 https://locate.apple.com/service/?pt=4&lat=45.6834599&lon=-1...
- dubfan 13y ago
  As nknighthb replied, there is an Apple affiliated service location in Bozeman. Be glad you don't live in Butte, though, or you'd be looking at a drive to Helena.
- baddox 13y ago
  Not everyone lives in a country that Apple even has a presence in. Or, to exaggerate even more, not everyone can even afford enough food to stay alive. How does that affect the argument?

kunai 13y ago

He said Apple would continue to sell trucks and cars, but he expects the cars to cannibalize the truck market. There's no use in a truck with a bed cover that's locked into place and unremovable. There's equally no use in a truck that's not built body-on-frame, and the Mac, one of my favorite computing platforms, is moving away from it.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago
The truck analogy wasn’t about internal upgradability, it was about devices running a mobile OS versus devices with desktop OS (notebooks, desktops, etc.). In Jobs’ analogy, the upcoming Mac Pro is just as much a truck as the current one is. However, Steve Jobs didn’t say that Apple would continue selling trucks, just that companies would. Here’s the full quote: When you did your presentation on the iPad, you described it as a new category of device, says Walt [Mossberg]. But in order for it to succeed, people have to feel that it’s worth carrying around. Do you think the tablet will succeed the laptop, he asks. “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.” http://allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/
dntrkv 13y ago
Your analogy is nothing like what Apple is doing. A more apt analogy would be selling trucks that don't have easily upgradeable engines where you wouldn't be able to access the engine components without a ton of work, which is exactly how they build most trucks nowadays. The sealed bedcover is more like a limitation in software since that's part of the functionality of the truck. Upgrading a Mac isn't part of the functionality, it's something you do to increase the speed at which you work on it. And as for the body-on-frame comparison, I don't really know what you mean there. If you are talking about the actual, physical chassis of the MacPro not being on a conventional computer frame, then again, that is a bad analogy since a body-on-frame chassis on a truck directly affects the towing and load capability of a truck, which is not so with computers. You can have your components scattered across the floor and they would perform just as well as in a conventional chassis.

potatolicious 13y ago

> "It isn't hard to replace them. You pull out your iPhone, use the Apple Store App to schedule an appointment, drop off your iMac at the store, go have lunch at Sbarro and then pick it up and go home." This sounds pretty annoying. Around here that means lugging your giant 27" iMac down the stairs of your walkup, down the stairs of the subway, up the stairs of the subway, and over to the Apple Store. Then doing it all in reverse. Or calling an Uber - either way, inconvenience, cost, and annoyance that seem hardly necessary. What I really want is to be able to sit on my ass, wait for a hard drive to show up at my doorstep (via Amazon, or Apple themselves, I really don't care), and pull a lever/panel and slip the new one in. If you want to play up the "this needs to be fixed NOW" angle, it'd still be cheaper and more pleasant for Apple to send a bike messenger over with a new hard drive from the Apple Store and let me do it without disentangling the iMac from my workstation setup and hauling it. For a company that espouses "it just works", one of these sounds way less annoying than the other.

parasubvert 13y ago
Apple support does mail-order instead of store appointments. They'll send you the empty box too. just call UPS.

falcolas 13y ago

I'm in Bozeman, MT. Where do I stop by to drop it off again? Not everyone lives in a major city.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago
The nearest Apple Store is in Boise, Idaho. It’s only a 500mi drive! But seriously, in your case, you’d call Apple and they’d send either a technician or a courier – or you could take it to an Apple Authorized Reseller, there are loads of them.
nknighthb 13y ago
601 Nikles Drive, Suite 12 https://locate.apple.com/service/?pt=4&lat=45.6834599&lon=-111.050499 https://locate.apple.com/service/?pt=4&lat=45.6834599&lon=-1...
dubfan 13y ago
As nknighthb replied, there is an Apple affiliated service location in Bozeman. Be glad you don't live in Butte, though, or you'd be looking at a drive to Helena.
baddox 13y ago
Not everyone lives in a country that Apple even has a presence in. Or, to exaggerate even more, not everyone can even afford enough food to stay alive. How does that affect the argument?