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New iMac disassembled
wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."
From the blog: "There are no less than 3 blowers inside the machine" I wonder if the machine is quiet(can anyone comment from firsthand experience?) Some of the Rev. A iMac G5s sounded like a jet taking off, but it appears they fixed it in later revs. I want to get one of these bad boys, but only if they are silent.
Monstar L
Ever tried to desolder a BGA chip? You need more than an iron. I've seen people do it with two hot air blowers, but I always end up cooking the things.
If we have to choose between quiet and cool -- and I'd rather not, but this design has a history -- I'll lean toward the machine that doesn't croak six months after I buy it. Better still, waiting six or nine months on this model in its new incarnation seems wise.
(Or the MacBook instead, but no guarantees there either...)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.
... ever. IMO ugprading is not worth it. Usually when I upgrade it's more than CPU only, I need new type of RAM, new stuff like USB 2.0. And at the end, new mobo + CPU = better choice than simply a bit faster CPU that would run in the old machine.
(A commercial-grade desoldering tool is also useful.)
I haven't upgraded a CPU for like
My good ole' 486 wasn't worth upgrading with Pentium Overdrive, my Athlon Thoroughbreed neither with a faster CPU, and so is my current Athlon 64 3000+ (939). I could upgrade my 939 3000+ with a dual core, but then again I don't need it now and when I would need it, probably early next year I would be better off with a AM2 socket (or whatever it's called) to get DDR2.
According to one of the Mac rumors sites, the battery life hasn't changed much on the MacBooks, but they don't have official figures yet.
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The original iMac G5 had a series of diagnostic lights inside that showed possible problems. Does this one have that?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Anyone got a side-by-side comparison between this and the G5 iMac innards? This new one's definitely lacking in the interior design department. I mean I know it's basically a PC now, but...
Anyway, maybe it's a nitpicky point, but just something that occurred to me when I saw the pictures.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
If you are, could you check something for me?
:\
Will these things come up in target disk mode? Can you boot from a firewire device?
People seem to mod me down for this, but it is critically important to me to know whether or not I can still do ye olde CCC, keep a dmg around, and restore as needed.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
as a developer, I find OS X to be very much worth the "apple tax"... but then again, if I bought a PC (I am over the putting machines together phase of my life, I have more important things to do) I would be purchasing one with the same specs as what ever mac I would buy, so the price is near enough that I am not hurting...and now that Apple has intel inside, the machines should get bumps every quarter or sooner when intel releases new versions of a chip line that Apple uses.
That looks like some disassembly is required to clean dust from the heatsink and fan. Even my notebook only needs one panel removed and I can blow it out; I do wish designers would pay more attention to this. Dust settles — even in Macs.
Speaking of EFI, linux supports it. I've heard lot of noise about windows support, but what about linux support, will linux (and BSDs) be able to run on those things? I'm not buying a machine that can't run open operative systems...
I am sorry, but as a long time victim of the iMac G5 series, I have to question these pictures.
Background:
I have one personal iMac G5 20", and five work iMac G5 20"s all within the serial number range affected by bad capacitors and bad power supplies. A coworker also has a personal iMac G50 20" within the affected range.
Out of these seven machines, three have already killed one motherboard and a power supply. Two of these machines have burned at least two motherboards.
So yeah, I have a damn good idea of what the innards of an iMac G5 20" looks like. Because of this I am having a hard time coming to terms with these pictures. They look shoddy as hell, like they are pictures of a pre-production mule or mockup. Tear open any Apple product from the last 5 years and you will notice the fanatical attention to detail in the way the hardware components are laid out. They are very clean and pretty. The iMac G5 20" is extremely well laid up, everything is tucked in, there are no lose wires, and there is basically no space left unused.
Either these pics are a PS job, or somebody leaked pictures from older test mules. There is no way in hell that Apple is going to sell something that looks so messy.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
It's interesting to note that the new iMacs are using a standard Intel 945 Series chipset, and an Intel 82801GBM southbridge, as well as other standard Intel chipsets and features:
Other interesting hardware features can be discovered by browsing the output of system_profiler, kextstat, and ioreg .
Of note:
- Full 802.11a support is present, though unadvertised, as well as 802.11b/g
- Intel High Definition Audio is used
- the iMac's optical drive does have dual layer support, unlike the ultra slimline 9mm drive used in the MacBook Pro
- the iSight is USB
- a TPM entry is present in ioreg
- com.apple.Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X is an active kernel extension