The new 2011 iMacs, while they are great machines, have apparently made it far more difficult to upgrade your main hard drive. OWC has discovered that the new models feature a proprietary SATA power connector, necessary for fan control on the new models.
The result is that if you replace your iMac’s main hard drive yourself, your fans will no longer work correctly, being on full force all of the time. This essentially makes it impossible to replace or upgrade the main Apple-branded hard drive located within.
This is fairly nominal news, however, as the 2011 iMac also features a second drive slot, making it a simple procedure to add a drive of your choosing at any rate.
Further, despite what some tech blogs, such as CultOfMac, might be saying about this, this doesn’t seem like an inherently anti-consumer move to me. Instead, its simply a design decision. iMacs are not designed to be modded, and really aren’t designed to be user-servicable to a high degree. This preserves their compactness and slim form factor, and they are extremely well designed machines.
Make what you will of this news, but I for one find little if any fault here.
Image: iFixit
