Eventually, I get the 'rainbow circle' (beach ball?) mouse cursor and I can't do anything else other than move the mouse around.

I am not even able to restart the iMac from the Apple menu (it just doesn't respond). When the fans spin up like this, the applications I am using (typically Chrome, but others too), will work for a little while, ~30 seconds, and then become unresponsive. This is definitely not the case here so for most users, they'll need to pay Apple's ridiculous premium for a RAM upgrade instead of ordering RAM for a lot less on their own.I've been having an intermittent problem with my late 2013 27' iMac for more than a year now and it seems to be getting more frequent.īasically, I could be doing anything on my iMac (or nothing at all!) and I suddenly hear the fans spin up to what sounds like max speed. Anyone who has an older generation iMac currently enjoys being able to lay the computer flat, unscrew a few screws, pop their RAM cards out and hot swap them.

Once you get beyond the screen you'll have quite a bit of work to do before you can even replace something as little as a RAM card since it's hidden beneath the logic board. Gone are the lovely magnets that held the glass in place in iMacs of yesteryear. We were quite worried when we saw that super-thin bezel during Apple's keynote, and unfortunately we were correct: the glass and LCD are now glued to the iMac's frame with incredibly strong adhesive. If you break the glass in the process you'll also have to replace the LCD since they are fused together in order to make the iMac so thin. After doing so, the foam around the edges that secures the screen will have to be completely replaced. You'll need a heat gun and your ninja skills to even break into the computer. According to iFixIt, it's simliar to the adhesive used in iPads. The first thing realized upon tearing open the new iMac is that Apple has ditched the traditional screen enclosure that used to be held in with magnets for an adhesive.

Imac 27 late 2013 disassembly