Redesigned iMac gets unboxed, torn down just hours after launch [u]

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 81


    Um. Wrong. Most SE/30's that aren't recapped are no longer working or are exhibiting symptoms of cap leakage which corrodes the motherboard.

     


    In fact I would suspect that most component failures in any electronic device are due to cap failures.


     


    There's a very active community of people dedicated to replacing these ticking time bombs which tantalum caps which will never leak.


     


    On the flip side, all my Amiga's which are even older than my SE/30's which use Electrolytic caps are perfectly fine - granted the form factor would be an issue these days.


     


    I just question when I'm spending such a premium price for a Mac they couldn't have thrown in better caps.

  • Reply 42 of 81
    malaxmalax Posts: 1,598member


    Would you mind giving us a few sentences of context about caps and tantalum caps for those of us who aren't electrical engineers and have no idea what you're talking about?  If it's something that will effect this computer 20 years from now I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

  • Reply 43 of 81


    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post

    Um. Wrong. Most SE/30's that aren't recapped are no longer working or are exhibiting symptoms of cap leakage which corrodes the motherboard.


     


    So the Apple II family. What did they use?


     



    I just question when I'm spending such a premium price for a Mac they couldn't have thrown in better caps.



     


    I still question why this is even a concern or question in any capacity whatsoever.

  • Reply 44 of 81

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by isaidso View Post


    Then simply open them frequently.



     


    ...that still doesn't give nearly the level of control a power user could have if the drives are formattable separately.  What specifically worries me, is how does fusion work internally?  Are they two separate HFS+ partitions with the files being transferred between them? Or does it operate below the filesystem level, similar to how RAID does?  What happens if the HDD dies, do you lose your documents on the SSD? Even if you don't, what are the odds you have the files necessary to still boot?


     


    Fortunately, from what I have read, you can enable an ad-hoc Fusion drive with Disk Utility in the terminal by pairing an SSD and a HDD (ie in a MBP with the superdrive swapped for a HDD).  This makes me think you could probably do the reverse on a real Fusion drive.


     


    Personally, I would rather have two separate drives.  I'd put my OS, Apps and important documents on the SSD and movies etc on the HDD.  Or even better, if possible I would:


     


    SSD


    96 GB for OS, Apps and documents


    32 GB for Fusion (to take advantage of the automatic speed up for my most recent photos, and videos being edited)


     


    HDD


    100-200 GB to act as time machine for the SSD


    800-900 GB for Fusion as long-term storage of old photos and moviez

  • Reply 45 of 81

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by antkm1 View Post


    As not surprising as it is, It's sill a bit strange that nobody but Apple has adopted Intel's Thunderbolt I/O.  What makes this kind of frustrating is that in order to get full resolution for Apple's computers, you have to use TB.  So really if you want 2560x1440 from your Macbook or Mac Mini, you have to go Thunderbolt.  This irks me quite a bit, since there are other monitors out there that are just as good and have much less glare than the TB Display.  Dell and Acer both offer equal 27" solutions but without TB, the best resolution you'll get is 1920x1080.  Way to continue to suck us in Apple.



     


    That is simply not true.


     


    Thunderbolt, as a display interface, is completely compatible with DisplayPort, an industry standard. A quick look at Dell's site shows a wide selection of monitors with DisplayPort inputs. The U2712HM, for example, should work just fine as a display with 2560x1440 resolution.


     


    Additionally, a quick search uncovers a fair selection of PCs that provide Thunderbolt ports. Acer, Lenovo, Asus, etc. all make them. Sony does as well, however they have a non-standard connector.


     


    Apple's Thunderbolt Display does have two advantages that are currently unique: First, connecting via Thunderbolt also provides audio, FaceTime camera, USB & FireWire ports in the monitor. Second, it allows daisy-chaining multiple Thunderbolt devices. I don't think it's Apple's fault for other companies not stepping up to the plate.

  • Reply 46 of 81
    Sigh, so it looks like the 21.5" is crippled in terms of hard drive and of course RAM access compared to the 27".

    If you notice, the 21.5" only has a 2.5" hard drive and Apple's tech specs say it is 5400RPM. Meanwhile, the 27" comes with a 7200RPM drive and since you can configure a 3TB option, it probably always has a 3.5" drive.
  • Reply 47 of 81


    Originally Posted by woof pup View Post

    …crippled…


     


    This needs to stop.

  • Reply 48 of 81


    The fact that I can still run computers that are pushing 30 is amazing. Compare this to modern electronics which tends to crap out just after the warranty expires. It's planned obsolescence and while it may be the norm it's wrong. If I'm spending over $3000 for a fully loaded iMac it would have been nice if Apple had spent a few extra pennies per cap for longevity's sake.

     

  • Reply 49 of 81
    rptrpt Posts: 175member


    A little bit dissapointed  with the design...


     


    The one thing I dislike with my iMac 27 is the lower part of it which in combination with the lack of height adjustment places the lower part of the screen like 6 inch above the top of the table. I spend most of the time with a laptop and have gotten used to having the screen about an inch above. Great thing when you are not a good typist, and it has made my neck used to a specific angle!


    However, I thought the reason I bought our special desk where the iMac is lowered so the lowest part of it is flush with the rest of the tabletop was that Apple needed the lower part of the iMac for electronics. 


    From the teardown you can clearly see that this is not the case, it is only needed to show the flag. Good design? Functional? Doubt it!

  • Reply 50 of 81
    ecs wrote: »
    Yes, cool design, and nice pricing too, but, unfortunately, they chose to not support pure SSD (except for the 768GB SSD option, which is a joke).

    The Mac Mini was almost perfect: Good CPU, good pure SSD (256GB), and good RAM (16GB). But with a bad GPU. So I cannot justify its purchase.

    The iMac fixes the Mac Mini weakness by adding a good GPU, but unfortunately drops the 256GB SSD option, so I won't buy it either (yes, I know Fusion well, and no thanks, I won't buy it, I want pure SSD -if you can put it in the Mac Mini, you can also put it on the iMac, so there's no excuse for you here Apple).

    Now let's wait for the Mac Pro. Chances are that they'll manage to trash the Mac Pro too, just like they did with the Mini and the iMac...

    Anyway, no reason to worry, as Apple wants us to use iOS for all computing tasks in the future, so don't worry if there's no useful Mac desktop in the market... we'll be forced to move to iPads at some point anyway.

    This sounds like a variation of the "Apple doesn't care about Pro users" type of concern trolling we get around here.

    Why are you waiting for the Mac Pro if you think Apple is going to screw it up? If I really believed that, I'd by one of the last Mac Pros before they allegedly screw it up. You can mount as much SSD in Mac Pro as you can afford, and it's all standard on the inside: nothing is soldered down. So put your money where your mouth is and buy one, if the iMac is really so awful.
  • Reply 51 of 81
    This needs to stop.

    Let me guess: the iMac is crippled because it's not Android enough.
  • Reply 52 of 81

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post



    As someone who's had to shell out a bunch of money and be stressed to the max getting my old SE/30's, IIci's etc. recapped I find it quite annoying that Apple is still using the same capacitor technology in their current products.

    Why are they not using Tantalum caps???? Anyone? Oh right, designed for future failure.


     


    Bad components happen. Doesn't matter what's kind it is, if the part was bad, it's bad. If Apple (or Dell, IBM, HP, or anybody else for that matter) gets a bad run of components from a dishonest Taiwanese component manufacturer that don't meet the specs they were <supposed> to, you can hardly point at Apple (or the others) and say "designed for future failure" (and be taken seriously anyhow). At worst, you can say that got taken by a shady component manufacturer who didn't sell them the parts that they paid for - which is exactly what's happened with <all> of the mentioned companies, and many more, at one point or another over the years. The result is a bad run of finished product that experiences premature failures. I have a 2005 Quad G5 that's seen 10's of thousands of hours of power-on usage, and it's never had a failure. It's the same capacitor technology there too. The components were specced <and built> to meet the operating environment conditions (my poorly-ventilated, stuffy little home office ;)), and they didn't fail. Easy.


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post


    Um. Wrong. Most SE/30's that aren't recapped are no longer working or are exhibiting symptoms of cap leakage which corrodes the motherboard.

     


    In fact I would suspect that most component failures in any electronic device are due to cap failures.


     


    There's a very active community of people dedicated to replacing these ticking time bombs which tantalum caps which will never leak.


     


    On the flip side, all my Amiga's which are even older than my SE/30's which use Electrolytic caps are perfectly fine - granted the form factor would be an issue these days.


     


    I just question when I'm spending such a premium price for a Mac they couldn't have thrown in better caps.



     


     


    I never had any of my II-series Macs die on me for any reason. I did have a motherboard fry in a Wallstreet powerbook once - but a transformer on pole just outside my house exploded during an electrical storm ... so I'm guessing that can't really be blamed on a capacitor failure. :P I find it interesting when people try to make authoritative statements like "all my XYZ's of type Q die/break/whatever so therefore this/that/th'other is wrong with them". It's interesting because in many of those cases, the most significant link in the series of failures is the <person> making the claim (or their usage/environment). Have you been living in the same house (or maybe even just same town) for 30 years? Maybe you have bad electrical service in the house and you get voltage fluctuations that go far outside of the norm, maybe that's why you see so many capacitor failures, you're feeding your devices bad power that's well outside what the parts were usually specced for. Maybe you should invest in mil-spec gear that is rated for more extreme operating conditions?


     


    You're making some bold, sweeping statements here with those "most" comments. Care to support any of them?


     


    "Ticking time bombs"? That's not too much of a hyperbole, right? My G5 didn't fail, your Amiga(s) "are perfectly fine", countless other devices utilizing liquid-electrolyte aluminum capacitors running for a couple <decades> haven't failed. A significant production run of SE/30's that ended up with faulty capacitors did - but again, those were <faulty>. If they'd been faulty CP tantalum capacitors, they'd have failed too. The argument presented is flawed - or at the very least, not supported by the evidence provided.


     


    If you're using a capacitor with a solid electrolyte, you are correct, it will "never leak". But, why does a liquid-electrolyte capacitor leak? Answer: for the same reason that solid-electrolyte capacitor explodes and catches fire, operating it in conditions which exceed it's tolerances.


     


    "Better" is a relative term. Better for what particular conditions? More reliable when running in higher temperature environments that an iMac will realistically never experience? Are you suggesting an extremely low ESR required for iMac longevity? If so, why not suggest they go ceramic and not mess with electrolytics (tantalum, aluminum, or otherwise) at all?


     


    As for tantalum capacitors (which, by the way <are> electrolytic) ... just a guess, but: higher cost, not available with the specifications required, and/or if they fail, the very real potential for catastrophic thermal runaway leading to nasty fires (not something a consumer product manufacturer wants to deal with if they can avoid it ;)).


     


    Lazy me quotes Wiki, who says:


     


    "... unlike aluminum electrolytics, they are intolerant of positive or negative voltage spikes and are destroyed (often exploding violently) if connected in the circuit backwards or exposed to spikes above their voltage rating.


     


    Tantalum capacitors are more expensive than aluminum-based (with liquid electrolyte) capacitors and generally only available in low-voltage versions, but because of their smaller size for a given capacitance and lower impedance at high frequencies they are popular in miniature applications such as cellular telephones."


     


    Also,


     


    "Multilayer ceramic capacitors are increasingly used to replace tantalum and low capacitance aluminium electrolytic capacitors in applications such as bypass or high frequency switched-mode power supplies as their cost, reliability and size becomes competitive. In many applications, their low ESR allows the use of a lower nominal capacitance value."


     


    So, again, why not more ceramics?


     


    Bottom-line, operating specs and reliability metrics apparently all meet or exceed Apple's criteria (whose completed products typically have a usable lifetime of two or more times than that of similar products from other companies), and cost less to boot, so why <not> use the ones they did?

  • Reply 53 of 81

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by antkm1 View Post


     


    That being said, I still think that the better deal is to buy the Mac Mini paired with an external display.  For the same price as the iMac you have pretty much the same powerful machine, and you can keep the display for years to come...



     


     


    But the iMac has a GTX 680Mx GPU compared to the mac mini which only has er... no GPU at all (just an integrated on on the cpu)


  • Reply 54 of 81
    am8449am8449 Posts: 392member


    That's no unboxing video.  Where's the trembling hands and giddy commentary?!


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by sr2012 View Post





    Hmm... It is delicious but why the chin? The LED and Thunderbolt Cinema Displays are lovely without the chin. With the thinness dropping the chin would have been perfect.


     


    I find the chin useful for adjusting the tilt on my iMac without smudging the screen.

  • Reply 55 of 81
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    bluefish86 wrote: »
    ...that still doesn't give nearly the level of control a power user could have if the drives are formattable separately.  What specifically worries me, is how does fusion work internally?  Are they two separate HFS+ partitions with the files being transferred between them? Or does it operate below the filesystem level, similar to how RAID does?  What happens if the HDD dies, do you lose your documents on the SSD? Even if you don't, what are the odds you have the files necessary to still boot?

    Fortunately, from what I have read, you can enable an ad-hoc Fusion drive with Disk Utility in the terminal by pairing an SSD and a HDD (ie in a MBP with the superdrive swapped for a HDD).  This makes me think you could probably do the reverse on a real Fusion drive.

    Personally, I would rather have two separate drives.  I'd put my OS, Apps and important documents on the SSD and movies etc on the HDD.  Or even better, if possible I would:

    SSD
    96 GB for OS, Apps and documents
    32 GB for Fusion (to take advantage of the automatic speed up for my most recent photos, and videos being edited)

    HDD
    100-200 GB to act as time machine for the SSD
    800-900 GB for Fusion as long-term storage of old photos and moviez

    If you want two separate drives to act as two separate drives in the OS then you can set it up that way. The problem with that is you don't get the performance benefits when it spread around and using two separate logical drives means it's not as seamless. Fusion is very simple in what it does. It creates a single logical drive that the OS is aware of and will put the files that would benefit from being on the SSD on the SSD. It's that simple. I have it set up on my 2010 MBP and it's working great. No longer do I have to use weird work arounds to get capacity and performance between my internal SSD+HDD.
  • Reply 56 of 81
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    As someone who's had to shell out a bunch of money and be stressed to the max getting my old SE/30's, IIci's etc. recapped I find it quite annoying that Apple is still using the same capacitor technology in their current products.
    Why are they not using Tantalum caps???? Anyone? Oh right, designed for future failure.

    How much do you want to pay for a computer? Tantalums cost a lot more for the charge capacity and they often can't take as much voltage.

    Except for a burst of industry-wide rash of failures some years back, they generally hold up well a couple times beyond obsolescence.
  • Reply 57 of 81


    Bad news for upgrading... The glass is glued to the chassis. Have to use a heat gun and very carefully pry it off. Not easy like the magnets in previous models.


     


    The big rubber gasket you see inside is designed to keep heat away from the edges so it does not soften the glue causing the display panel to detach itself. The seal around the edge should be air tight to allow proper airflow within the machine so re-gluing it would be tricky as well.

  • Reply 58 of 81
    hentaiboyhentaiboy Posts: 1,252member
    Bad news for sflocal
    sflocal wrote: »
    And of course the famous "I can't upgrade an iMac" cry-me-a-river story. Like they don't know how to use bathroom-shower suction cups and an extra five minutes to crack open an iMac, after preaching how technically inclined they are by building their own rigs at 1/3 the cost... *rolls eyes*
  • Reply 59 of 81
    ecsecs Posts: 307member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post


     


    I agree about "pure" SSD being preferable but it's kind of silly that you are arguing that the only thing "wrong" with the new iMac is that it's "pure" SSD isn't small enough?  


    This is ridiculous on the face of it. 



     


    It's ridiculous if, and only if, you don't care about SSD. But if you really want pure SSD on your desktop, and you're forced to pay 3000 euros for an iMac with 768GB SSD, then you obviously won't buy it, because that price point belongs to the Mac Pro, and yes, you get a Mac Pro with SSD for that price (maybe you'd have to buy a third-party SSD to get the final Mac Pro price below 3000 euros, but you can get it).


     


    So, yes, my complaint is that Apple isn't supporting 256GB nor 340GB nor 512GB SSD on the new iMacs, which would turn SSD-based iMacs very reasonably priced.


     


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    This sounds like a variation of the "Apple doesn't care about Pro users" type of concern trolling we get around here.


     


    Really? Then point me to a new Mac desktop that can be configured with a 4core i7, with discrete GPU, and 256GB SSD. My money is ready to buy that, because my previous iMac died past the 5-year parts availability period. I won't buy a Mac with lower specs than that. 


     


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    Why are you waiting for the Mac Pro if you think Apple is going to screw it up?


     


    Because it's my last hope before I decide to go Hackintosh. I don't want a Hackintosh because I prefer an original Apple, but I'm not going to spend my money on a configuration I don't like, so I'm waiting for the Mac Pro in order to have a full vision of the new Mac desktop line before taking a decision on where to put my money.

  • Reply 60 of 81

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ecs View Post


    Really? Then point me to a new Mac desktop that can be configured with a 4core i7, with discrete GPU, and 256GB SSD. My money is ready to buy that, because my previous iMac died past the 5-year parts availability period. I won't buy a Mac with lower specs than that.



     


    So just buy the iMac with the Fusion drive and replace the SSD with a larger version. From iFixit taking the 21inch apart seems like getting access to it shouldn't be too difficult.

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