I’m not an adherent of the Right to Repair movement. IMO, if a company like Apple wants to make closed hardware and to discourage users from working on their hardware by restricting the warranty, that’s their right. Nor do I think companies like Apple have to make DIY repairs and upgrades easy or even to provide repair kits and parts to end users (which they seem to be doing now).
That said, however, I think that if a user is willing to live with those restrictions and that hardware, and is willing to dive right in and DIY their hardware at their own risk, that’s their right, too. And once the warranty has expired, go to town.
I finally decided this weekend to make use of the 2 TB blade SSD upgrade for my 2019 27” 5K Retina iMac, from 1 TB SSD. I had read someone online speculating about a 32” Apple Silicon iMac, but I haven’t heard any rumors backing that speculation. And TechTool Pro was warning me that my internal SSD was close to full.
I used the instructions at iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display 2019 Blade SSD Replacement - iFixit Repair Guide. I also ordered the parts from iFixit, including an OWC Aura 2 TB blade SSD.
Despite the 1-3 hour estimated time, I took ~4 hours or so.
This was one of the most difficult DIY upgrades I’ve done to an Apple product, more difficult than the PowerBook G4 12”’s.
It’s a big, 27” screen iMac, and the screen is held in place by adhesive rather than screws or clips. It was laborious to cut through the adhesive — carefully! — and to disconnect the screen.
Once inside, I had to remove every internal component in order to get to the back of the logic board to swap out the SSD. That took forever, and it reemphasized that this iMac was never intended for user servicing.
The instructions repeatedly cautioned against touching components on the power supply, but I was pretty careful and didn’t get any shocks.
I did spend a lot of time removing the adhesive residue so I’d have clean surfaces on which to apply the replacement adhesive strips.
Reassembly went faster than disassembly, and after initially applying the adhesive strips — leaving one side of backing tape on so I’d be able to go back in in case something didn’t work — I did a power-on test and found everything seemingly okay. I didn’t test every bit of hardware, though — the microphone, speakers, and camera, for example — and I didn’t have an OS installed. In retrospect, maybe I should have fully installed contents of the old internal drive from backup at this point, but I’m pretty confident in my computer DIY skills.
I finally removed the last backing strips from the adhesives and, as carefully as I could, sealed the screen to the iMac case. Visually from a regular seated distance, the screen looks fine, but by touch — and if I look very closely, maybe — the screen seems shifted left by a fraction of a millimeter. I have just enough OCD — maybe 2-3 on a scale of 1-10 — for it to bother me, but that’s my cross to bear. Fixing it would involve buying new replacement adhesive strips and going through all that again, and I’m definitely not OC enough for that.
I installed macOS using recovery mode, and now Migration Assistant is migrating the contents of a recent Macintosh HD backup to the new drive.
-awlabrador
I figured it was never worth going back in to find out where they went. Other times, I wound up stripping the tiny screws or their screwholes, so I’d just toss them out anyway. (Nowadays, I keep screws organized in ice cube trays during disassembly.)