Apart from of course the cost? New SSD from Amazon £300. New iMac from Apple £1,249. I think if Apple gave people the opportunity to replace their hard disk and RAM quite a lot of people would opt for that option.
Where can I get a car for that mount?
And the Apple Care on your Screenshot is just 299,-
So, instead of buying a SSD for 300,- from Amazon, just book Apple Care for 1,- less, and return the device for a replacement…
The M1 is largely the first crack at Apple manufacturing their own SSDs though, isn’t it?
The early 2009 20” iMac came with 4gb of ram. Because the ram was upgradeable and the hard drives were replaceable 59 of the original 60 machines remained useful for ten years. Depending on the cost to repair the new 24” iMac, it could become a paperweight after three years.
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Out of curiosity, where are you getting the three-year estimate?
AppleCare. If you pay the extra 13% for a base model 24” iMac repairs are covered for 3 years.
I never purchased AppleCare for desktop Macs. I felt it was an unnecessary expense because I never had a Mac fail in the first three years.
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Depending on, where you life, you can extend those 3 years, as far as I remember.
That’s correct. I used 3 years because that was the limit when I was buying computers for my company.
I think my largest purchase was for something like 100 iMacs in a 12 month period. At todays prices that would be $130,000 for the computers and an additional $16,900 for AppleCare. Thirteen computers would have had to have an unrepairable failure in the first three years to justify the cost of AppleCare.
The math is different when you are only buying one. If you hope to use one of the new iMacs for 6 years the extra $360 may be worth it.
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I do not know. If that’s true, is it true if iPhones too? How often do those drives fail? Either way, you seem more knowledgeable than me.
Sure, that’s true. But I don’t think the number is as high as you think. How many people want to work even on their own cars these days? I’d love it if it were possible to upgrade my computer (which, as others have said, is different from repair) without lessening performance now. But if somebody told me I could get double the performance, let’s say, or a replaceable hard drive, I’d pick performance every time.
I’m not saying what you want is wrong. Just that I’d put money on the people who want to upgrade their machines being a smaller number than you think. Most of the people I know can barely find their way around their browser, let alone swap out some RAM.
I will add, just for the sake of proving my own point, the biggest leaps in performance have come for me when I lost upgradability: the 2012 MacBook Pro, which sacrificed RAM upgrades (or SSD upgrades; I don’t recall which), and the new MacBook Pros, which offer twice the speed of my iMac Pro workstation in a portable form factor. I am certain that this performance isn’t possible with swappable parts. And the performance is what I want.
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I think that really depends on context. This is not about desirability, that is whether people want to or not, it’s about cost. Many people don’t want to work on their cars, but they certainly don’t ask their dealership where they bought it to repair their vehicle. The ask a friend if he knows a guy.
The difference between new and upgrading in terms of cost is massive. Again looking at context a family of four apple users may find it financially difficult to replace macbooks, ipads, iphones, where an upgrade might just do for a few more years.
You can “upgrade” easily, with an external GPU for Example. You can add SSD/HDD via Thunderbolt. You can use your Apps more wisely, and close those Apps not needed for the time being, to “free” more RAM.
And you can buy used/refurbished, and get in the advantage of an “upgraded” system on that way.
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Sure, but in your metaphor, people ask their friends if they know a third-party repair outlet for Apple stuff, and those do exist.
I get that it’s about cost for you. I ask you this: Do you want a computer that is half as fast, so you can replace parts more easily?
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I managed the computers systems for office workers and graphic artists for several years. The new Apple silicon computers are wonderful machines but none of my users needed that kind of horsepower in 2018. The graphics team always wanted better search and faster file transfer. The rest never complained about performance.
May I ask what you do with your Mac?
People don’t know what they want. Steve Jobs said it, so I know it’s true. Who knew we would get Macs as fast at the new M1 machines? And once we did, who knew how old and busted the Intel Macs would seem? (Even the top of the line Intel Mac Pro.)
That’s true, but I knew what they needed, because I had years of experience with every program they used. Except for the graphics team. I relied on the judgement of the most experienced members when I purchased their equipment.
That works when you are choosing from what’s available but not for choosing what to make that doesn’t yet exist.
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You knew what was available, not what they “needed”!
They “needed” 2018 the same stuff, they use today (and need today the stuff, the use in 2026), but they where not able to get it then…!
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It seems that we are now urged to “Future Proof” our purchases to make sure that we will still enjoy our computers a few years down the line.
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