As I paraphrased the article for my parents, "It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut."
For a massive percentage of Apple's customers (and customers of other computer makers as well, I'm sure), the same applies. The wailings of a handful of nerds, despite their volume, will never change that.
The point is that authorized service shops are provided with the training to perform repairs on these things, so whether the display/glass is glued to the body or not, people are going to be able to take their machines to a shop, have it repaired, and receive it back in working condition. The iMac, if we're following the analogy in an honest way, doesn't have its hood welded shut. (Because iMac mechanics can, in fact, repair them, even if it is more difficult.)
Further, as far as the user is concerned, breaking out a heat gun is just as inaccessible as buying a Torx screwdriver (they don't own one, I promise) and suction cups to pull the glass and display off the old model. They're going to a repair shop or an Apple store 99% of the time.
Imagine having to go to a Toyota or Honda dealer just to get a battery upgraded, and that it cost 10x more than replacing the battery in a Ford or Chevy at a 3rd party dealer. The battery is no different, just the manufacturer.
Also, what if you don't live in an area with an authorized Apple store? I think there's only 2 Apple Stores in my state, and if I drive south, the next authorized Apple reseller is 4 hours away (I don't think they even do repairs). On the flip side, there are PC repair stores peppered in nearly every town.
That's like saying that the only place you can get your car repaired is 2 hours away, even though there are 3 car repair stores that repair literally every other kind of car in your home town. That's a BIG deal!
By requiring a ton of tools and time you are pointlessly making it more difficult (and therefor expensive), regardless of whether the end user repairs it themselves, gets the nerdy kid down the street to fix it or takes it to an Apple store.
You can't get to the engine without pulling it out from underneath, and yet Porsche owners and mechanics are both perfectly happy with the situation.
The majority of cars are FWD and stick the engine in the under the hood where it's easy to get at because practicality is more important.
The only argument here is for the GPU. Apple has put in a lot of work to maximize usability by targeting a specific GPU/CPU combo. RAM is a constant that doesn't really play into the design of the OS, since all RAM manufacturers make the same thing, but with different guarantees.
RAM is about the easiest thing to upgrade, second maybe to a hard-drive. This used to be trivial to upgrade, but now they're making it unnecessarily difficult to lock in customers to paying out the nose for something that should be a simple and cheap upgrade. They're operating on insane margins in the RAM arena (and CPU arena, but that's a different story).
In fact there are attempts to limit the serviceability of cars, and these attempts are harmful to independent mechanics.
Solid state technology is much more reliable than the mechanical components of a car; especially over it's lifetime (cars are expected to last > 10 years, computers < 5). Those constraints lead to vastly different optimizations made in the design.
When I was a teenager I made reasonable pocket money upgrading peoples computers from 16 to 32/64MB of RAM because it saved quite a bit vs the cost of buying a whole new computer and made a significant difference when running Windows 98.
Your perspective on auto-mobiles is bizarrely limited. Of course people upgrade their cars... There is an entire industry built around doing just that.
The performance part industry caters to very specific niche of users analogously to gamers in the PC industry. This niche should avoid iMacs.
That new stereo the neighbour kid has? Upgrade. Those new Xeon headlamps that jackass coming the other way on the country road has? Upgrade. Those new windshield wipers you got last year that don't totally suck? Upgrade. Those big rims you see on cars at the local 7-11 once in a while? Upgrade. Just about every single jeep wrangler you have ever seen? Five thousand upgrades. There is a whole class of car for which it is more rare to see a stock specimen than modified. Check out a used car magazine sometime. The number of companies just making aftermarket suspension kits alone for specific models of Jeeps is absurd.
The aftermarket industry for automobiles is massive, and the automotive industry for the most part accommodates it very nicely. This is because, presumably, they are not comfortable with marginalizing what you seem to describe as an insignificant minority. Car enthusiasts.
I can see why the automotive industry may be unfamiliar to a lot of HNers (Lots of us live in cities (hell, these days my car is lucky if I use it once a month), spend our time avoiding grease, and have large salaries so our cars represent a relatively small or otherwise inconsequential investment). But just because it is fairly invisible to you does not mean it does not exist.
A RAM upgrade isn't about a RAM replacement because of failure. It's because as computing progresses, you need more RAM to remain performant. A RAM upgrade is the single most effective way to revitalize older hardware - that 8GB that is more than enough today may be not nearly enough tomorrow.
For example, I don't even know how one accesses the "engine" of the Teslas but it doesn't bother me one bit that I can't access it.
- check my oil
- replace my windshield washer fluid
- check my coolant
- jumpstart my engine
- (rarely) jumpstart someone else's engine
I know most people on HN have already sold a company for seven or eight figures, but for the rest of us, it's nice to have some flexibility :)
A clogged PCV valve, a small one-way valve for engine gasses, is a common problem the part is about $5.00 and you remove/install with a socket wrench. Or the air filter which in wintery climates will fluff up from salt when it gets wet, a simple fix. Or corroded points on a distributor, or a loose battery cable, dead battery, bad spark plug wires etc..
A computer with dusty CPU heat sync, maybe a RAM stick needs to be reseated or has failed, graphics card needs to be reseated, graphics card heat sync needs dusting, hard drives replaced with larger capacity, more RAM etc..
As much as engineers or designers like to think they are perfect there isn't any device made by a human which will work perfectly without some some of updating, adjustment, maintenance or tinkering.
Take it to an industry you don't know anything about, and see if that interest holds up, because that's what it's like for the majority of customers in any particular industry.
Do you care if your AC unit has a user accessible panel rather than something that requires special tools? Do you care that your Microwave doesn't have any user serviceable parts? I don't care about either. It's not on my radar at all when I buy those things.
This stuff becomes important when you have an item that is expensive enough to bother repairing.
I guess most people would be pissed if they spent $20,000 on a new car and when the clutch failed were told they needed to replace the entire car or spend many thousands of $ having the entire transmission rebuilt rather than being able to take it down to the local repair shop and have them do it within a day for a few hundred $.
"I guess most people would be pissed they spent $20,000 on a new car and were unable to easily service it themselves".
And my answer to that is no, most people wouldn't be pissed. They would take it into a repair shop that can handle it.
If the car has been designed in such a way that a relatively common maintenance task (changing spark plugs, upgrading RAM or whatever) is now much more difficult (thus expensive because the mechanic will charge you for more hours of labour) than it otherwise would have been (or impossible) and reduces your choices of service providers then this is definitely not a good thing to the customer.
Of course sometimes such design changes are inevitable trade-offs against something else. For example a laptop is less maintainable than a desktop but you gain vastly increased portability. In this case (the iMac) it's not obvious what the gain to the customer is.
Proprietary equipment and exclusive repair rights is terrible for consumers we need choices and alternatives.
At least now, staying with the car example, even if I can't fix it or don't know how at least I can take it to any garage instead of only Ford or only GM.
If I could only take it to Ford they could charge whatever they wanted for service and parts.
Microwave ovens even printers have become so cheap they are practically disposable they have no parts, or unserviceable parts (surface mount components) or cost so little repairing it is a waste of time. If they could be repaired it would be better for the consumer to spend say 10% of its value instead of buying a new unit.
Sure, if all things were equal, then yes, I'd prefer an accessible hood. But all things aren't equal. There are design tradeoffs. What if there were a seamless car with no breaks for the hood to open/close? And that really looked nice to you?
The replacement engine was $14,000 for a $5,000 car!
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/74442-smart-car-not-so...