MacQuadra840av

sflocal said:

The vague issues regarding upgradability of the SSD in the new iMacs is the reason why I ordered it yesterday with the 8TB option.  It will be my last Intel-based iMac and I decided to bite my lower lip and max it out so I never have to deal with it ever on that machine.

That being said, with Thunderbolt3, it's really not that much an issue.  There are excellent external TB3 enclosures (like from OWC) that will let you install regular NVMe drives to your heart's content.  I get that it would be nicer to upgrade the internal drive, but it is what it is.

I totally get your reasons for the 8TB option, as I would do the same, but not with an Intel Mac when they are out the door in Apple's mind.  Sure you will likely get about 4-5 years of use out of that Mac, but in past Apple history, they did not support the OS for very long when they switched processors.  When they switched from 680x0 to PowerPC, the 680x0 Macs only had support for System 7 and early versions of System 8 (7.5, 7.6, 8.0, and 8.1.  The original Power Mac shipped with 7.1.2).  Apple cut off 680x0 Macs with System 8.1, and System 8.5 and later were PowerPC only.  With Intel, the last iMac G5 only had support for Mac OS X Tiger and Mac OS X Leopard (10.4 and 10.5), and they originally shipped with 10.4.  So they only received one OS upgrade.  The PowerPC Macs were cut off when Snow Leopard shipped (10.6).  As Apple moves forward with Apple Silicon, they probably are not going to put that much effort into supporting the Intel Macs except for maybe one or two versions past Big Sur.  Maybe you should have done the 2TB SSD upgrade for the Intel Mac, and then do an 8TB option for the Apple Silicon Mac which will have a much longer future.  $2,400 is pretty steep.

entropys said:

People would be less upset about the soldering if the upgrades to storage was competitively priced with market SSDs. As it is I feel ripped off. 

Exactly!  No reason why Apple should charge such excessive prices for both RAM and SSD upgrades.  Here is where it gets even more absurd...Apple charges different prices for the same exact SSD upgrade based on different models of Macs and different tiers.  The same 1TB upgrade can vary in hundreds of dollars between different Mac models and different tiers (base model -> top model).  Charge more for lower models and less for higher models...yet it is the same 1TB SSD upgrade.  That makes no sense.

Mike Wuerthele said:

kent909 said:

It probably would have been newsworthy if they were upgradable. Why does this surprise you?

Its good that you're familiar with these things historically, but as a reminder, AI is for everybody, and not everybody has the same knowledge that you do.

He does have a valid point.  The T2 chip has been in Macs for 2 years now, and it has been common knowledge that the SSD cannot be upgraded or replaced because of that T2 chip.  So once the iMac got the T2 chip, people would know that the SSD would not be upgradable, and that is also why they dropped spinning hard drives from the 27" model (not compatible with the T2).

The T2 chip also has another dirty dark secret.  You can brick your Mac as a result of the T2 chip.  Let's say you are in a location with no internet access and the Mac with the T2 chip won't boot into macOS.  So you are thinking of your regular troubleshooting technique to restore the Mac.  Boot into recovery mode and erase the drive and re-install from your bootable USB flash drive with macOS and restore from backup, or if a company-owned Mac, just erase and re-image using a USB boot disk.  Most people are unaware that Apple's default T2 chip setting is set to disable booting from any external device and restrict OS installations to only validated copies from Apple.  So after you erase the internal drive, and try to boot from an external drive, you have just bricked the Mac because the T2 chip blocks booting from an external drive.  Now that the drive is erased, there is no more recovery mode and you cannot change the T2 chip settings to allow booting from an external drive.  The only way to restore the Mac is through Internet recovery mode.  So if you don't have internet at the moment, the Mac is bricked.  You need to boot into recovery mode before you erase the drive and change the T2 settings first by allowing booting from external devices, and disable all security for the OS so it will allow the USB flash drive to install macOS.  It is a big hassle if you get stuck in that situation.