SSD soldered: Apple kills off the 27 inch iMac's storage upgradability

[Redaktion]

Of all the computer manufacturers, Apple is probably the most restrictive when it comes to user upgradability. MacBooks lost their upgradable storage years ago. Now, even the all-in-one desktop Apple iMac will be no longer upgradable.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/SSD-soldered-Apple-kills-off-the-27-inch-iMac-s-storage-upgradability.484814.0.html

[toven]

DOA then.

[Vaardu]

This isn't very green either. Just means more landfill eventually.

[NewsView]

I can't believe I made the mistake of buying a 2020 iMac i9 27" on Prime Day. Sure it's faster. But I don't game or work in video production so that added speed is not as critical as what I lost in "upgrading". (The cheif redeeming quality about the last of the 27" INTEL iMacs is the nano-coated screen and the true-tone technology.)

New in a box at a too-good-to-be-true price should have been the tell. Unfortunately, it's been so long since I upgraded my hardware that I didn't even know about the Apple Silicone transition. (And those can't be upgraded either, apparently!)

I would have been happy enough to replace my 2009 27" iMac with a 2017-2019 had I done my homework about the limitations Catalina would also put on using my old apps like Adobe CS6. (Moreover, thanks to the T2 security chip good luck booting from a USB installer stick if the need should arise, let alone any other external source without jumping through multiple hoops. "It just works" has turned into "Don't go getting any ideas!" and a slap on the hand from Apple!) Needless to say, I have only just come to terms with the fact that I can't downgrade to a 32-bit supportable macOS and now I find that I have a soldered SSD? (This is textbook Machiavellianism on Apple's part. Hard drives fail. It's not "if" but when — which is a great way to promote the necessity of an indefinite AppleCare subscription!)

As someone else points out, the fact that the last of the Intel  can't be upgraded also means they can't be repaired, so "Right to Repair" is functionally dead! Sure they claim the hardware itself is "recyclable". But that was much more true when RAM, working Airport cards, graphics cards and the like could be pulled from "DOA" units and sold on the secondary market to the likes of OWC. With Apple Silicone, "recycling" to the secondary market will come to a screatching halt and the amount of e-waste will increase exponentially. (Already, among the top U.S. exports is scrap!)

I wonder how Apple expects to maintain their ESG score (Environment, Sustainability, Governance) in view of the fact that their 21st Century business model is even more geared toward "planned obsolescence" in the Apple Silicone era than it ever was in the INTEL/PowerPC days?

For now, the market is enamored with the M1/M2 offerings. But when those devices start failing — and what would have been a $150 repair is now a $1,000 job (or wholesale replacement!) — all hell will break loose as it rightly should, and I can see Apple's stock value dropping in tandem with a repatriation of longtime Apple fans to the Windows platform, where micromanaging users to the ninth degree isn't the top priority.

In closing, I have never listed such a new computer purchase on Ebay but I'm seriously thinking about it!