And I use the “you” rhetorically, Brainspore, not personally.

“Seriously, when was the last time you upgraded a computer?” sounded like an actual question to me. If it was rhetorical, why is that “seriously” there?

I know why Apple is going in this direction, but it still sucks for a lot of people and organizations. There are a lot of people and facilities, like mine, which need something more powerful than a Mac Mini but don’t need the horsepower (and expense) of a Mac Pro. Upgradability was an important factor in keeping labs like ours up-to-date without breaking our budgets.

There is no question that an Apple product holds it value longer than a PC product.

That appears to be empirically true.  I sometimes find working one-year-old PCs in the trash, but the Macs are always at least three years old.

Inertia.

I just cracked the screen on my iphone 3gs, it was cheaper to buy a new one than even pay for the repair parts.

I cracked the screen on my HTC Legend and replaced it for $20.

Either you are blessed with a far faster connection than I, or you are completely rubbish at organizing physical media.

Streaming through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc. is instant to start even with slower DSL connections. Torrents can be downloaded and kept on a hard drive for instant access later as well on cheap-as-hell, huge hard drives.

Like I said, enjoy your trashy optical discs taking up space in your luggage, etc. (don’t break the jewel cases or scratch the media though!). This computer isn’t for you or you can go get a glorious, external optical drive if you have dial-up for Internet access.

Optical is dead and dying for everyone else.

It’s pretty much 2013 and that’s been hyperbole for a long time now. 

Yeah, this whole thing kind of sound like “Well, if that doo-hicky doesn’t have a VHS drive, how are you going to watch Matlock, eh smart guy?”

Yeah. And I work at an educational institution, in administration, so upgrades matter to us too. But since we’re not doing digital video and multimedia, not as often.

Also, I do some multimedia at home, and I know a visual artist who uses his Mac to do his work. Both of us are using Macs that are more than 4 years old.

My point is, most people, especially people who would be buying an iMac, have a hell of a lot less need to upgrade later in the machine’s life than folks here are proposing.

I’m a system administrator in a large department and have occasion to use and maintain a wide variety of machines and operating systems. I’ve been doing this a long time. And I can tell you from experience, that the need for post purchase upgrades, especially in the last 5 years or so, is mostly overstated by the industry, and us geeks.

If you have vast computing power needs, then an iMac is certainly not the best purchasing decision you could make. If you have modest needs, an iMac will fill them for many years. If you’re a serious IT geek, and simply must have the best specs possible to build up your self-esteem, an iMac is a weak choice… and why the hell are you even having this discussion.

And I use the “you” rhetorically, Brainspore, not personally.

Also, Cowicide: Suffer? Does the presence of an optical drive really cause you existential angst or some form of physical suffering? Or does it just mean you might have to pay an extra $20 for the computer? I notice you don’t care about me hypothetically having to buy an extra DVD drive merely so that you don’t have to contemplate your beautifully-designed Mac having an unsightly slot in it.

Either you are blessed with a far faster connection than I, or you are completely rubbish at organizing physical media.

You clearly have never lived in NYC. Or in London. Or in SF. Or or or…

No you don’t! No one does. You like to watch movies/TV shows on your Mac.

To do that, you get a large capacity USB hard drive (very cheap) and you rip your DVDs on to it using Handbrake. Then you can watch them with VLC instantly whenever you want: no searching for physical discs that were put back in the wrong case, no ugly/baffling menu screens, no copyright messages you can’t skip.

The general Computer buying public is very different from us tech enthusiasts. The average user will choose to run their systems far beyond any useful resell value before they will meekly submit to a $1k to $2k upgrade. 

I think Apple wants to create the same mindset with iMacs and MacBooks they they have created for iPhones, iPods, and to a lesser extent iPads. They want to get consumers accustom to the ideal of periodic total equipment replacement. I honestly don’t know how this strategy will work out in the long term, but on it’s face it does seem very anti-consumer.

People who prefer to upgrade their systems themselves are not going to buy a complete system unless it is upgradeable. By limiting/eliminating the ability to upgrade a system, the company loses out on those sales, as well as the sales of individual components.

There is no loss of sales to people who are not interested in upgrading on their own. But here’s an opportunity to increase sales by selling upgradeable systems and their components.

And then there’s the positive advertising that such a change would bring.

All the internal components save the mother/logic-board and (as we both agree, redundant) optical drive have had decent upgrades in the last few years: RAM, Graphics, CPU and HDD. It would be nice if there was some USB3 or Thunderbolt support, but I don’t really see a problem with retaining the form factor.

If you’re dragging your desktop on a plane hoping to watch a movie, the lack of an optical drive is the least of your worries!

If you are one of the RARE people that wants to watch out-of-print movie titles that have yet to be sold online, then this computer isn’t for you – or for f’s sake, go buy an external optical drive.

But, once again, why should the rest of us suffer for the minority of you that want a larger iMac for esoteric uses?

Or are you just really into Adam Sandler and Charlie’s Angels remakes?

It’s pretty much 2013 and that’s been hyperbole for a long time now. There’s a vast collection of titles available nowadays and if the film producers are too stupid to make it available, you can download the torrent.