While I was looking at Macbook Pros, my friend wondered about the Imac: it is so thin. Are the internal components hard or easy to access?

The ram is very accessible, it even comes with a manual on how to install it. The hard drive on the other hand you’d have to open it up for. If you at any point decide the hard drive isn’t big enough, or you need more space, go external to avoid opening it up.

If you must open it to upgrade, take it to an apple certified/authorized repair center so they can upgrade it for you.

Plan ahead if you think hard drive is going to be an issue, customize it to be 500GB or something before you get it.

The Ram door is located underneath the screen with a phillips screw holding it in place.

Accessing RAM is extremely easy, but nothing else is. I haven’t seen the inside of the new silver/glass ones, but the previous edition was a huge pain in the ass to get into. You had to peel back foil and stuff to get the screen out (you have to remove the entire screen to access anything other than RAM), etc. You could spend a good 10 minutes just trying to get the case open with this crazy hidden clip thing they used. The new ones might be better but I at least know it’s a huge pain to get the class front back on without having dust all over it, inside and out. You should probably not plan to upgrade anything other than the RAM unless you are really comfortable taking apart computers.

@RandomMrdan Apple and most of their authorized repair centers will not upgrade a machine for you. They’ll only swap out like-for-like parts. You can’t bring them a larger hard drive or even buy one from them and have them upgrade it.

I switched from PC to Mac in 2002 because Macs are so much less trouble. I was getting addicted to the Blue Screen of Death. I’ve owned two iMacs, and I’ve never had to get into one.

As StellarAirman says, it’s a royal pain. And may I add that once you went through the pain of opening it, you’ve not even had half the fun yet. Try getting the whole thing back together. The latest aluminum case ones are just as bad as previous models.

Ram is easy, as others have said, anything else is difficult – but not impossible. Face it though, people rarely need to access anything else. Even hard drives, most people would just buy an external and plug it in if they need more storage.