It's not just Apple iMacs. Tablet designs in general, the MS Surface, Ultrabooks, the Air...they're all doing it. The computer industry is transitioning computers from old-school upgradeable and repairable tech into devices that you just throw away and replace when they break, like your TV or cellphone.
The era of the user-repairable computer is coming to an end. Perhaps you haven't heard, but Intel has announced that there will be no LGA package for their upcoming Broadwell processor. Want to upgrade your CPU? You'll need to buy a whole new motherboard, because from here on out processors will only be available if they're soldered to the motherboard (barring a magical revival at AMD, which is itself teetering on the edge of bankruptcy). Since most mobos already come with sound and video onboard, we've finally reached the point where most computers will simply be a "board in a box". Sure, you can still swap your hard drive, and you can play with your RAM, but virtually all of the "tinkering" is gone. You'll pick a case, choose a single board to go in it, and you'll have a functional computer.
For those of us who remember the old days of juggling jumpers to set IRQ's and DMA's to get everything to cohabitate nicely, or (gasp) plugging DIPPS directly into our motherboard sockets whenever we wanted to add another few dozen K of ram, this is just the culmination of a 20+ year transformation of computers from "magical machines" that could only be built by skilled technicians into generic one-board boxes that are structurally no different than the $10 throwaway radios you can buy at Walmart (albeit with slightly more expensive board components).
The era of "hackers, tinkerers, and repairers" is over.
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