M3 iMac Teardown: Apple’s Most Replaceable Battery?
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
- It’s a little late in the season for Apples, but before we wrap up the year, we’ve got a final stocking stuffer. A device that’s so thin we almost forgot to tear it down: the M3 powered iMac. This razor-thin profile is made possible due to an external power supply-one that also holds the machine's ethernet port.
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:24 Removing the iMacs Display
00:43 Logic Board Bracket Removal
00:54 Visa Mount Removal
01:05 Logic Board Removal and Chip ID
01:36 Port Removal
01:46 Easiest Battery Removal
02:00 Display Adhesive Removal and Final Thoughts
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It's genuinely disappointing seeing how much progress Apple is making on designing their hardware to be more repair-friendly while simultaneously serializing everything AND preventing upgrades of any kind, ensuring the device has a much shorter lifespan compared to their older, more upgradeable devices. Just imagine how amazing their product would be if their engineers rather than the accountants had the final say.
Yeah, Apple products are appliances now... zero repair or upgrade ability. SSD replacement is neigh impossible unless you don't mind soldering and a rediculous amount of hacking and praying from what I've seen. They do encrypted software locks on all their hardware...so you can't just replace it, requires programming for it to be used after replacement.
Its amazing how Apple moves forward in some ways but moves insanely back at the same time, and for very few gains. I think their M series systems seem nice, but its sad that despite all that.... they are not much better than iphones. Unless you exclusively want to render video and photos...there's nearly zero point in an expensive unrepairable Mac.
Apple's going to be serializing that CMOS battery, but still have it be easily replaceable, just to spite everyone
they want money, not great products, this is a sad truth in the tech community… just like your mo-
(sorry)
But won't you think of the shareholders?? Their methods give rich people more money! How could you not want that?
I'd like to ask you, how would you design a computer that thin and equip it with a replacable HDD? It would have to be at least 1cm thicker! You easily can add a USB3 thumbs-sized flashdrive (or HDD on this stationary device). And 8 GB of RAM will be ok for the next few years, as the system volume is nearly as fast as RAM these days. Or you should at least buy the 16 GB RAM equipped iMac. Monterey operated pretty well on my 2008 MacBook Pro with only 6 GB of RAM and a relatively slow 1.5 GBit SSD, so 8 GB of RAM will do the job pretty well the next years. I guess the biggest downside is and will be the lack of macOS support after three or six years.
The air tag is the most easy replacement battery.
your mom is the most-haha, nah, forget it lol
@@Conchobhar lDlOT
I'm surprised at how easy it is to get into this iMac. Looks pretty good in terms of repairability. Unfortunately, almost nothing can be replaced by the end user.
sorry is this sarcasm?
i really cant tell
i dont get how needing to purchase a adhesive kit use a special roller then remove seval components to access a common consumable is repairable considering most those connectors are fragile and if they break void your warrenty and cost alot to replace
@@Sarge92 I can't tell either, but I do know that while it might be easy to open, closing it properly requires the purchase of adhesive which Apple will not sell, this is just one part of the entire planned obsolescence approach Apple have taken. And the woman in the video even recommends it, as if it's normal to shaft your customers!
@@Sarge92 It's a much easier case to open than one might expect it to be. People talk about it as though it's impossible, so from the perspective of someone who's trying to cope with the reality that apple killed their iMac line, who wants to go on pretending that this is a return to a proper rendering workstation, it's a glimmer of false hope.
@@nohandleleft meanwhile in most other laptops they place that battery either under the keyboard accesibly by removing 2 screws and a trim piece
or under the access panel near the ram
for almost all aio style pcs this battery can be accessed via the hardware upgrades panel cover on the rear
only apple requires this level of tedium to replace a consumable battery
the fact that you need to take over 70% of it apart to access this common part shows just how much apple despices consumer repair
because apple when they choose to can engineer products quite well just look at how much tech they fit into a iphone
but frequently they choose screwing over self repair above common sense
Yes, it is a smart, repairable design, but those virtues are canceled out by Apple's refusal to let us replace components without their permission.
hopefully they expand the consumer repair program to this soon
And Apple's refusal to have anything meaningful be changed, such as the storage, cpu, gpu, and ram. Like the components that actually matter, not a dinky $2 cmos battery for a bios that is virtually nonexistent
@@hatsunehatsunemikumikumiku Nice idea for marketing team: "and in new heneration we allowe users to replace buttons!")
@@bigbubba0439I will grant them that replacing components that are on the SoC, those being the GPU, CPU, and RAM would be almost impossible without an additional component allowing one to swap out the entire package. There really is no reason for Apple to be soldering storage into place, though.
@@bigbubba0439 Realistically, apple can get away with not allowing you to upgrade the cpu, ram and gpu, it's an SOC. The one thing that makes no sense is the storage however.
It's the Queen of fixes!
Yeah, she's awesome - anyone know her name?
She's so pretty 😍
They should have a removable tray design for such a battery. Like a sim tray, from the bottom.
I don't own a single apple device but was still entertained watching this. Great teardown!
So, you’re basically living in stoneage?
@@DerPfoertner So if he prefer PC over Mac and Android over iOS he's living in stoneage? I wonder how he watched and post a comment to this video?
Well. I got my collection of Macs just for the sake of fun. When I got my first MacBook back in 2006, it was the Aqua interface of Mac OS X that made me want one. I guess, today I would not switch from Windows or Linux or PC in general to a Mac.
On the mobile side, I prefer Android over iPhone, just because Android means more freedom to my personal needs. This defo got nothing to do with stoneage.
@@DerPfoertneri also dont have any apple devices and no i dont live in the stone age apple fan! I have a gaming pc and a 128gb android phone with 8gb ram and android 13 for just 300 euro
What even is repairable anymore. I miss my T440! Good video, thanks for uploading.
Issa giant iPad on a stand
Yeah, I looked at the M3 specs and thought this might be a return to the old imac rendering workstations from back in the day. No, seeing under the hood it's clear this is just another lego set for rich children to fiddle with. Reading the comments, everyone had the same hope as me. Apple doesn't give a crap.
Didn't realize Imac had a battery .. I though only Air and macbook pro laptops.
The reason why desktop computers have batteries is because this prevents system date and time from resetting each time computer is disconnected from AC outlet. When tearing down iMac, what needs to be removed first is, of course, screen, but what should be removed second in this video is battery, despite it only powers internal clock and not anything else.
impressive teardown!
I admit when I moved recently I misplaced my power supply for over a week. Trying to get a replacement was difficult. Fortunately it turned up.
Does the 1TB version have the single nano drive like 256 model? Im considering purchasing but hope they use duo in the bumped up model
Why is there no more repairability scales?
Does the M3 iMac with 2 ports come with 2 fans or just the 4 ports model?
Great teardown, fabulous style! 👕
Nice sharing, keep it up
Haha good one! Imac..? Battery..?? then I got it! I still think the Airtag take the cake for apples most user replacebale battery, but in how many years?? Thanks for the aweome work you guys do!
Love it 😊thx
Hey iFixit. Could you tell us what config of iMac you used for this teardown? ie. is there a difference on fan count with base vs upgraded?
Wondering the same. I bought the base model, with the only update to 16 GB RAM (which is what I could afford, and I honestly preferred spending those $200 in RAM than 2 extra cores). But I'd like to know if mine will only bring 1 fan rather than 2 😥
@@jomaix Nice of iFixit to reply to me... I ended up downloading an application called Macs Fan Control to see how many fans there are and what speed they run.
Is it possible apple
Next move is to go moduler? Especially, since the last improve are minuscule since the introduction of the M1 chip. 🧏♂️🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲
i still don't understand why are we not getting Pro or Max chips on iMacs. larger heat sinks, got fans to cool things down and have more than enough space to add extra fans and whatnots. if it fits in a MacBook it fits in an iMac. just slap one of those better chips and call it an iMac Pro already, it would be a very capable yet minimalistic machine.
Apple would rather you buy a Mac Studio with a Studio display.
May be the iMac Pro did not sell well, so they keep the iMac in the non-pro-line of products. Isn't the M3 itself freaking fast yet?
what about the iphone chip inside? now with A16?
If the SSD dies on it, to a normal person, the entire machine is E-Waste. If the Keyboard battery dies, it is E-waste. If the Mouse Battery dies, its E-Waste. Having to remove the glued on screen for 0 upgradable parts should be a 0 out of 10. Not to mention it ships with 8 gigs of ram as standard when that was standard on most apple macbooks 10 years ago.
i agree with everything your saying but the glued screen those are easy to remove yea i would prefer screws but it isnt hard
they used to be magnetic which was so much nicer and easier to remove. @@CollynPlayz
As an ACMT Tech myself, I LOVE seeing other than men in the technical industry. Great vid. I find you much better than Linus Tech.
Is it a vapor chamber heat sink on the M3 iMac? If so why does Apple not do this in the MacBook Air product line, and the iPhone product line?
Because they don’t need them.
If anyone was wondering why Apple stopped allowing end user VESA to stand swaps apparently the iMac Pro VESA kit was causing people a lot of problems (breaking while being installed/removed, screws stripping due to thread locker)
snazzy labs has a series of videos documenting his struggles so Apple decided you needed to pick which way you wanted it since
Cool and all that they took one tiny ant step towards the right direction with the external PSU but still 0 repairability considering parts arent found anywhere reliably neither is anything upgradeable or rather is upgradeable but through apple with super expensive parts and labour cost.
What a shame Apple, killing Target Display Mode is wasting this beautiful screen.
Worked in the factory where these made ,great professional place,only factory owned by Apple in Ireland
0:03 should have mentioned it as "One more thing"
The thumbnail looks like Steve Vai.
1:34 Even if Its small it still got value
Who sells the screens for this? I have a cracked screen n want to replace it
Not bad, but I still don't think this is the right approach to a desktop - soldered RAM and storage in a DESKTOP is very poor because neither can be upgraded, or replaced in case of failure.
I've never heard of other desktops (or AIOs) having soldered RAM and storage (at least not outside of Apple).
Although I agree wholeheartedly, at least they have a somewhat decent excuse for the RAM since it is an SOC and part of the benefits of their architecture are sharing the RAM between the CPU and GPU allowing for some performance benefits since there isn't a copy back and forth. I've particularly noticed a benefit in loading huge ML models that I wouldn't be able to without a super expensive GPU or paying lots of money for cloud compute (although Apple's GPU is weak so it doesn't compare to the dedicated GPUs in speed).
But the storage, there is 0 excuse for them to solder the storage in their laptops or desktops.
@@Watchandlearn91 Even though I don't like Apple's practices... I kinda agree. I feel that this iMac is less of a proper desktop for power users, but closer to a laptop that can't be moved (e.g. for a business, computer lab or a home office) - and for some casual users that's preferable. And if that's who Apple is targeting and it lowers the price for performance, that's good.
Fully agree about SSDs, that's a limit a lot of users hit and are aware of.
@@wojtek4p4 I see it as a home or office computer for someone doing light work. I know my wife wants one that I will probably get her very soon because she does graphic design and the screen on those are so nice. It's just a shame Apple is bent on making them e-waste after the internals are too outdated for OS updates.
@@Watchandlearn91 I kinda understand the mainboard being one-piece (not SSD), since ram on the package/SoC has definite advantages, compared to socketed versions.
I wish these mainboards were upgradeable (Framework style), so a new mainboard could be attached to an old-ish body, giving it a new life, but I'm not sure how useful would that feature be to iMac's target audience.
Unlike power users, casual users will likely be more tolerant to older machines (since they don't use all of the machine's capabilities), which means upgrade cycles would have to be longer. And maintaining compatibility for 3 or more years for a relatively small group of people sadly isn't in Apple's interest.
@@Watchandlearn91 The excuse would be the extra impedance of the connectors creates delay and signal quality issues that require increasing system times.
The answer could be to provide a memory/storage expansion bus that can also be used as primary memory/storage (at the cost of performance, because the physics can't be evaded) if there is a failure in the base primary storage. This would simplify manufacturing for Apple because the storage options wouldn't require different logic boards to build and inventory. The real challenge in that would be keeping the signal lines short without creating thermal management issues, making the package undesirably large, or requiring an expensive or overly delicate connector. (Connector expense could be addressed by making the storage expansion connector an option, but Apple tends to go way overboard on the markup for that sort of thing).
Does replacing any of those components brick functionality?
Probably.
What is this battery for?
Can you purchase a replacement screen?
and the CMOS battery is cr2016. meaning it will last half as long as most CMOS batteries used in PC's that are cr2032
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Please open imac m3 base version.
Is it UPGRADABLE? NOPE LOL
top notch video
Seriously they should make the ram and hard drive upgradable. At least make an extra slot to insert your additional drive. 😡 faster NVME are cheap nowadays, and it wont even compromise the macos experience.
explode all beauty Happy News year 🥳👌🍀💙🔨
Where did you get that Lego T-Shirt?
They should do an OLED ProMotion iMac with a larger variant. Who agrees?
Been waiting for this FOREVER.... UNFORTUNATELY APPLE DOESNT CARE 😓😭
Apples said they have no plans for a bigger iMac, the 24” is all they’re making. The studio display and Mac Studio IS their larger iMac sadly.
I feel like I just got trolled with that title!
The only apple product with an easier battery replacement is the AirTag.
missed opportunity to make the power brick a thunderbolt dock.
Also a missed opportunity to not include a small-ish battery capable of running it for a short time in the event of a power outage (and allow it to shutdown gracefully if power is not restored before the battery runs low).
I'm sorry--if I can't open it with a #2 Philips, it isn't a "repairable design."
Those boards are getting smaller and smaller. At some point it will be all in one chip that you can't repair.
Great host
So why do you have to do that for?
this soldered in SSD should be illegal.
those tiny fans will be grinding in couple years of dust
When you look at the insides of the iMac it's easier to picture it as laptop internals with a big screen. I wouldn't call this a desktop computer.
honestly with Apple Sillicon it really doesn't make a difference anymore ;)
It is usually placed on top of a desk, so..?
nice pizza cutter
If they'd just shoved that tiny mainboard into the PSU as well, then... oh hold on.. then that would be a mac min... and a moni..
I'm sure they have their reasons.
That would require compromising the performance of the display interface and adding the expense of the video cable and connectors.
I wish new iMac M3 had upgradeable memory and storage. What a pitty !!
at least RAM is not integrated into M3 chip, can be at least technically replaced or reflowed ???
It's part of the SoM, same as all other M-series
It's soldered on and Epoxied in place, it can be reflowed just requires way more work than necessary due to Apple's greed.
@@u8myfoood Massive power to efficiency ratio gains have been made from the way they have made theses SOCs so maybe not all to do with greed...
@@leebeeskee if you add glue under the chip, it is totally greed
If they could hardware lock the CMOS battery, they would 😤
Easier to lose the power supply? I wouldn’t think so, at least not for the iMac.
I can’t tell if this is supposed to be satirical or not?
What’s the battery for?
time and bios
As answered time and BIOS settings, virtually every computer has a battery in it for that reason.
@@ross-carlson today I learned …😅
Why Battery
Clock and probably some EFI data.
As answered time and BIOS settings, virtually every computer has a battery in it for that reason.
❤
Apple could’ve kept the magnetic screen from the 2011 and earlier iMacs but noooo, they decided to tape the screen shut.
I remember a time when you could upgrade the RAM and SSD. Yeah all companies should go back to making those.
Oh, so inside is a bit different.
Second most replaceable 😉 AirTags exist.
I will never buy an Apple PC. I like their Phones and iPads, but the fact that they go out of their way to prevent me from upgrading the components like DRAM, SSD, Keyboards and virtually every other component of their system, is disgusting!
lol what a fan-less system.
'easier to lose', its a desktop PC, where is it going!?
Since it's an Apple device, it deserves an automatic 0/10 repairabilty for parts pairing, lack of upgradeability, and pesky software locks.
Especially with the lack of upgradeability. I mean, almost every modern device does this, it’s not just an Apple issue. It’s sad.
@@mirai9150 Except most people don't buy maxed out hardware, so they end up completely replacing the device much sooner than if they had an upgrade path a year or two after purchase. The value of used hardware on a secondary market is also significantly reduced if that stuff can't be upgraded -- which leads to more stuff being prematurely trashed. Also, manufacturing processes are constantly improving and becoming more efficient, so waiting to buy a part a year or two after release will frequently lower the economic and environmental impact. No matter how you look at it, it's hard to argue that non-upgradability is better for the environment.
@@mirai9150 Not everyone has the means to max out at purchase, and buying an upgrade is better than buying twice. You are definitely misinterpreting the situation.
@@mirai9150wow! Your brain sure does contain a all the dirts of the world
@mirai9150 I don't know kid, if you come to d1ck ride and defend Apple after someone's comment, I think you are the one that got mad
Apple claims to be eco friendly, but if that's the case this kind of product should not exist without user replace-able/upgradeable CPU board, RAM, battery, HD (without needing to take the whole product apart).. as it stands you have a screen that is probably going to be trashed 5-10 years down the line. There was really no reason for Apple to not enable also using this as an external display capable to show other non-Apple OSs from external machines (well there are reasons, but I need to stay polite). Do yourself and the environment a favor get a Mac mini or laptop instead + external display if you really must have Mac OS and a big screen (non-upgradeable soldered HD/RAM in the mini/laptops is also kind of offensive).
You should get an older devices that has been used in the real world and try to peel adhesive or pull tabs off... you get another kind of experience.
The iMac has batteries?
Just like any PC's CMOS battery. It keeps the clock going while the machine is unplugged.
No fault of the technician / host here but "accessible" shouldn't be associated with "repairable". Short of the battery, it seems like there's nothing you can actually fix on this machine with a replacement part due to serialization. Soldered basic components still gets a 0 of 10 from me.
I looked at the M3 iMac specs and thought this might be a return to the old imac rendering workstations from back in the day. No, seeing under the hood it's clear this is just another lego set for rich children to fiddle with. Reading the comments, everyone had the same hope as me. Apple doesn't give a crap, Tim Cook's obsessed with his bad magic trick nobody likes of making it impossibly thin instead of powerful. At some point they're really only going to be making iphone variants and completely abandoning all the other markets where they used to dominate.
What Apple computer has EVER been viable for repairs when something major dies? The original 1999 Bondi G3 was a write off if the CRT died! The 2002 iMac G4 was a write off if most anything died in them, whether it was a TFT screen death or the logic board had gone. Nothing has really changed. In the PC world it's always been substantially simpler and affordable because there was no Apple "tax" for their proprietary expensive parts. If your PC motherboard fritzed? Just buy another one and a lot of people could replace the parts themselves or get a PC shop to do it for parts plus labour. Apple has ALWAYS been about profit from using a closed hardware system.
Their design philosophy is to keep tight control on the hardware so they don't have to clutter up the OS with multiple hardware drivers for the same function. That's one of the reasons Mac OS has always had some quantitative and qualitative advantages over the comparable generation of Windows. At least, that's been the official Apple story for decades.
Apple computers was always a proprietary hardware vendor running a closed operating system. That's the simple truth. Apple was the polar opposite of Microsoft. @@paulbade3566
There's a freaking LOT OF FREE SPACE in the iMac. Apple could design it with at least 2 M.2 ports for SSDs and RAM slots, but nooooo, they WANT their products to be impossible to upgrade so you have to buy another machine every 2 years (that time depends on what you do with the machine, but you get the idea). Until the day I can at least upgrade storage and RAM, I'm not buying Apple computers again.
Merry Christmas to you too!
I hate this new iMac. The real iMac was the 2020 intel model
Power supply is easier loose ? Seriously !? iMac is a desktop and is meant to stay put and… never had I heard someone highlights loosing a charger in a review of a portable laptop or MacBook …
The screen on my m1 iMac is pure trash. This looks no better
give me my time back, you click bated me so hard
There is nothing repairable about this.
Everything is replace when damaged, not repair.
And the screen and motherboard as usual cost nearly as much as a new device.
FUCK Apple
Once the SSD goes belly up and it will they always do ylu can throw it out to the trash.
Soldering ssd and ram on the motherboard is theft andna crime against Humanity.
This iMac is a very badly designed and as a result a waste. This is a disposable machine. The computer part should be user replaceable/upgradable (for future M3 chips, and for other upgrades, with option of having a fan equipped unit). Apple is capable of doing this with a nice design that's practical, user friendly and engineered well. No adhesive should at all on the machine. The stand should be changeable way easier than this, not to mentioned the stand should be height adjustable.
Apple purposely does make repair hard because its how they get money. If it breaks or gets obsolete the first thing their brainwashed apple fans do is buy a new device! Boom more money and really "eco friendly indeed"
She's strangely attractive....I'm confused 👀
I can't see schools buying such a fragile product. Apple didn't think this one out.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
@@davidjacobs6244 You're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. You clearly have never seen what kids can do to computers in a classroom environment. This iMac, unlike the older models, is so thin you can easily warp and break the screen with your bare hands.
@@bobweiram6321 The design has been around almost 3 years now and I haven’t heard any reports of anybody trying to break them with their own hands.Slight exaggeration there just because YOU don’t like it.
@@davidjacobs6244I am the biggest Apple fanboy. Their product are attractive and well-built, but the iMac isn't one of them, especially for a classroom environment. It's thinner than most iPads! It's also very light, making it easy to drag across a desk and on the floor by its cord. The X and Y matrix wires of the display panel are prone to failure, and the laminated display glass are prone to crack. I know this from the number of returns and repairs it comes in for at one of my client's locations. It's so bad, they advise their salespeople to steer customers away from it.
Love nerdy girly 😂
first
Back in the days i can remove my MacBook's battery with only turn one button 90 degrees with a coin.
Shame on you Apple. I'd rather have a thicker mac with replaceable battery, RAM and SSD.
Back in the days, this battery lasted for three hours or less. You had to carry two batteries if you wanted to work all day without a wall plug.
@@atarixle lol totally forgot about that part…
But if we can have the removable battery today i bet we still can get 12 hours of usage…
Propierty components, many masking tape and how tiny that's motherboard (I'll bet it's not desktop pc grade performance) show how greedy is Apple especially former cut cost chief Tim Cook
Better off buying a real computer.
So, even when Apple does something RIGHT by switching to an external PSU you just had to give them criticism for it?
IKR. she doesn't know what she's talking about
Apple hasn't done anything right since mid-2008.
The external PSU is nothing when nothing on the inside is upgradeable anyways.
@@nibelungvalesti Bullshit.
@@Sphyxx You don't buy an iMac for upgradeability. Lots of parts are replaceable IF they break.
Don't mean to be rude but they way the host speaks is really irritating