Apple can choose to make SSD upgrade-able and replaceable but choose not to. Why?

[Danfango]

Because Apple milks all of you fools with upgrades.

My 15” 2010 MBP could be maxed out with RAM and SDD for dirt cheap in comparison to what Apple charges.

And the funny thing is, the warranty of Apple was worse on top of this, as my RAM has life time warranty while Samsung was giving 5 years warranty for the SDD.

Apple knows how to make money. They even make you buy AppleCare which is still less warranty.

But it’s a 2010 MBP. Why would I want one?

The warranty you’re getting on your RAM and SSD are designed to be within the failure and/or disposal window of the device. Stuff is so reliable these days they can offer that warranty with a negligible chance of having to send you replacements.

The same is for apple. It’s probably not going to die in 5 years either. There’s nothing much to go wrong inside it these days. All the new macs have an absolutely minimalist engineering approach which will improve MTTF figures drastically.

As for the AppleCare I buy that because at least here in the UK I can usually leverage it to get a next day replacement of whatever it is mailed out to me and send the broken thing back in the box they ship. That means I don’t have to futz with taking it anywhere or dealing with complex RMA processes which take weeks.

Samsung RMA takes about a month for ref.

 

[Ethosik]

On desktops, the majority of the deployments are in corporates.

And to add to this statement, most of the corporations I have dealt with do NOT just order a drive from Newegg and open it up and replace it. We get a quote from our Dell rep on a new drive if possible or an entirely new system if it has been a couple years -- Why upgrade a 2 year old system when it should be replaced in a usual 3 year cycle? We will just upgrade their device early.

 

[Ethosik]

Yeah, you can, and I will, but it wont work as fast as if it were an internal drive.

What exactly are you doing that needs such raw throughput? Are you needing to work by the second to deliver customer projects? Then why not invest in the larger drive up front? Those people that absolutely TRULY need the 5GB/s speeds and these types of systems (keyword NEED....not WANT) will make up the cost in no time. I certainly will. I got a 4TB internal which is overkill like I said everything I do is external. But I plan to have this system for 5+ years.

 

[Ethosik]

Speaking of corporations, people need to realize that these are business computers not consumer computers. People need to look in to capital expense and see what all that means. Not going to go through all the details on it. But basically, what I did with my Mac Studio is planning to use it for 5 years so it will essentially be depreciated over time as I use it. It is an investment to my business. And throwing a random Newegg SSD a year or two later messes up the books and plans for the Mac Studio from a CapEx perspective. It gets very very VERY tricky. So a lot of corporations do not upgrade their systems from that perspective too. Also, I guess coming from a business point of view is why I don't have an issue with it, but you typically want to pick out what you need TODAY and add a good 20-25% on top of the product to bake in the expected growth. We do this with servers, desktops, laptops and more equipment. Speaking with the Mac Studio in mind, that 20% increase was taken care of by the internal SSD. I have a lot of software and tools/plugins where I have been getting 2TB systems for a while now but bumped this up to 4TB just for the potential growth.

But no matter what, there is no way to shove 70 TB (my working environment between two NAS) into a laptop or a desktop and achieve 5GB/s speeds.

 

[Alex W.]

Because its anti consumer - they've been like this because it increase margin and profitability as a company its simple economics.

This is the only reason why.

 

[ArkSingularity]

What exactly are you doing that needs such raw throughput? Are you needing to work by the second to deliver customer projects? Then why not invest in the larger drive up front? Those people that absolutely TRULY need the 5GB/s speeds and these types of systems (keyword NEED....not WANT) will make up the cost in no time. I certainly will. I got a 4TB internal which is overkill like I said everything I do is external. But I plan to have this system for 5+ years.

This is a very good point. For an OS drive, there is a lot of benefit to NVME speeds on the SSD. But for data storage, SATA-speed SSDs (approx. 540 MB/sec) are usually more than sufficient. Enough so that higher speeds would bring very little noticeable gain in the majority of today's applications. My old 2012 Pro has a Samsung Evo running at about 500MB/sec (vs. my M1 MPB running at about 2.3GB/sec), and there isn't much noticeable difference in the storage performance. Both are very low latency drives with reasonable speeds, and both feel very fast (despite what marketing would have folks believe about these old drives).

Of course there are always exceptions. For someone regularly dealing with raw 4k or 8k video or massive regular backups (or of course server systems), extremely fast storage devices have a very real and very tangible benefit. But that's a very different use case from someone who just needs an extra 1TB drive for general storage on top of their existing OS drive.The majority of folks just trying to expand their internal 256GB or 512GB drives don't really need this kind of performance (and many won't even really notice the difference).

 

[Ethosik]

This is a very good point. For an OS drive, there is a lot of benefit to NVME speeds on the SSD. But for data storage, SATA-speed SSDs (approx. 540 MB/sec) are usually more than sufficient. Enough so that higher speeds would bring very little noticeable gain in the majority of today's applications. My old 2012 Pro has a Samsung Evo running at about 500MB/sec (vs. my M1 MPB running at about 2.3GB/sec), and there isn't much noticeable difference in the storage performance. Both are very low latency drives with reasonable speeds, and both feel very fast (despite what marketing would have folks believe about these old drives).

Of course there are always exceptions. For someone regularly dealing with raw 4k or 8k video or massive regular backups (or of course server systems), extremely fast storage devices have a very real and very tangible benefit. But that's a very different use case from someone who just needs an extra 1TB drive for general storage on top of their existing OS drive.The majority of folks just trying to expand their internal 256GB or 512GB drives don't really need this kind of performance (and many won't even really notice the difference).

Yep, I find SATA SSDs to be fast enough, but even the slow side of NVME is fast - 1.5 GB/s is what I get on my external SSDs and that is just good enough.

I guess soon we should expect PCIe 5 SSDs to have heatsinks and fans? NVMe SSDs currently do get way too hot. At what point is it too much?

PCIe 5.0 to feature fans alongside heatsinks, next-gen M.2 connectors also in works

Active cooling could become the norm for the upcoming PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSDs according to storage controller maker Phison. That may not be enough for long as next-gen connectors are also in works.

www.neowin.net

 

[ArkSingularity]

Yep, I find SATA SSDs to be fast enough, but even the slow side of NVME is fast - 1.5 GB/s is what I get on my external SSDs and that is just good enough.

I guess soon we should expect PCIe 5 SSDs to have heatsinks and fans? NVMe SSDs currently do get way too hot. At what point is it too much?

PCIe 5.0 to feature fans alongside heatsinks, next-gen M.2 connectors also in works

Active cooling could become the norm for the upcoming PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSDs according to storage controller maker Phison. That may not be enough for long as next-gen connectors are also in works.

www.neowin.net

SSDs are kinda on a weird trend these days too. Older SSDs used SLC and MLC NAND, which was much more reliable and much faster. Nowadays, we're predominantly using TLC, which has substantially reduced the price of storage, but is of course less reliable and slower. I won't say TLC itself is necessarily a bad compromise, it's part of why 1TB SSDs can be found for $100 (and TLC performs well enough for most people and the decreased cost has a lot of advantages). But it's not faster, nor is it more reliable, than the older technologies it replaced.

Nowadays, manufactures are pushing it even further and some are beginning to move to QLC. We're seeing generous SLC caches thrown on the drives to absorb the writes and offer faster speeds, but those SLC caches get exhausted after 10-12GB of writes. And on some of these QLC drives, once those SLC caches are exhausted, the drives are often barely any faster than HDDs. There are literally SSDs on the market that can't really get better than 200MB/sec once enough data has been written at once to exhaust that cache.

They market this and say "Oh, well, nobody is actually going to write that much data at once" - and for most of us, that might be true. But video editors who need this kind of fast performance and high storage density can very easily write this much data at once, and many of these new QLC drives are not even remotely suitable for them. In fact, they'd be better off buying a high quality, lower capacity MLC or TLC drive and then getting literal hard drives for the rest, because QLC drives often perform very poorly once their SLC caches run out.

It's created a weird situation where the older SSDs (although more expensive) are actually better than some of these newer ones. Yes, these newer ones can handle blisteringly fast burst speeds, but they don't always perform so well with a long series of continuous writes. The older SSDs actually outperform many of them, despite being slower on paper. And for video editors, continuous write speeds are important if someone is trying to write 100+GB of ProRes video at once.

 

[JouniS]

This is a very good point. For an OS drive, there is a lot of benefit to NVME speeds on the SSD. But for data storage, SATA-speed SSDs (approx. 540 MB/sec) are usually more than sufficient. Enough so that higher speeds would bring very little noticeable gain in the majority of today's applications.

I don't think there is any real benefit in storing the OS or most apps on a fast SSD, because software is small. Fast drives are more useful as temporary working space. Depending on what you are doing, you may need from tens of gigabytes to tens of terabytes of it. For long-term data storage, almost any drive is again fast enough.

There are some specific types of apps that benefit from fast disks. Games are the only mainstream example, as they tend to be large and loading times are annoying. Other examples are much smaller niches.

 

[dandeco]

I'm pretty sure it's due to if a broken Mac Studio needs to be recycled, the SSD can be removed and destroyed separately from the rest of the computer. I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and we are required by regulation to either securely erase/wipe any hard drives or SDDs we pull out of computers that we plan to recycle or resell, Macs included. My boss says that Apple can get in big trouble with the law for their Macs having non-removable SSDs for such a reason, and I think they have at least once, hence the Mac Studio having the removable (but not replaceable) SSD.

 

[satcomer]

It's called profits! LOOk it up folks and buy Stock!

 

[aronsajan]

The Mac Studio proves that Apple Silicon can have modular SSD. Then why doesn't Apple use that in the MBP and MBA. A small M.2 drive would easily fit in that laptop. Heck, even MS provides replaceable M.2 drives in case of failure.

Why is Apple so against this? Apple talks about how they are green but having a modular SSD means that when it fails the user or even the Apple Store technician can easily replace the drive without replacing the whole logic-board.


It's crazy such a simple thing is not available in a computer. Apple also says they don't do data recovery which is also stupid, they solder the drive on laptops and provide no means of getting data back. I know about backups and they are important but on a laptop you are on the go and you will have important files on local storage.

It is also sane for the user to know the data is safe when the drive is modular as the user can hold onto to drive when sending the laptop back to Apple to get a replacement drive.

I am not talking from a upgrade able perspective but from a ease of repair and data security view.

It's even more bonkers that they make the SSD modular when it suits Apple.

Apple does this so that:

1.) SSDs will wear out after some time. So technically your macbook will turn out to be a brick. So you got no option but to buy a new computer. Note that 2015 macbook pros with replaceable SSDs are still used to date. So its in Apple’s best interest to keep it soldered

2.) Rather than upgrading Apple wants its customer base to use its cloud storage solution. Definitely you can choose any cloud storage provider. However, apples icloud is integrated well with the mac ecosystem so that will be the preferred choice

If anyone claims that its for speed and thinness of the device its not true.

• Innovations keep happening in the storage medium space. Making the system open for expansion allow us to adopt the new tech. For example, mechanical HDDs were used in computers a while back. When SSDs came anyone could use an SSD adapter to plug an SSD into the computer instead of HDD. Because systems back then were upgradeable
• Thinness!! Really?? Has anyone seen the latest 14” and 16” macbook pros?

These big claims on going green and environment friendly are rather hypocritical. Anyone with common sense can understand that. Would you rather trash your entire computer when its replaceable storage fails or rather trash that storage medium and keep the computer. What is more environment friendly?

Recommendation - Next time you decide to buy a computer, keep all this in mind. We can hope Apple being the best in its class for quality control will keep these things in consideration

 

[Shazaam!]

Because its anti consumer - they've been like this because it increase margin and profitability as a company its simple economics.

This is the only reason why.

Nothing wrong with that.

 

[NT1440]

Apple does this so that:

1.) SSDs will wear out after some time. So technically your macbook will turn out to be a brick. So you got no option but to buy a new computer. Note that 2015 macbook pros with replaceable SSDs are still used to date. So its in Apple’s best interest to keep it soldered

2.) Rather than upgrading Apple wants its customer base to use its cloud storage solution. Definitely you can choose any cloud storage provider. However, apples icloud is integrated well with the mac ecosystem so that will be the preferred choice

If anyone claims that its for speed and thinness of the device its not true.

• Innovations keep happening in the storage medium space. Making the system open for expansion allow us to adopt the new tech. For example, mechanical HDDs were used in computers a while back. When SSDs came anyone could use an SSD adapter to plug an SSD into the computer instead of HDD. Because systems back then were upgradeable
• Thinness!! Really?? Has anyone seen the latest 14” and 16” macbook pros?

These big claims on going green and environment friendly are rather hypocritical. Anyone with common sense can understand that. Would you rather trash your entire computer when its replaceable storage fails or rather trash that storage medium and keep the computer. What is more environment friendly?

Recommendation - Next time you decide to buy a computer, keep all this in mind. We can hope Apple being the best in its class for quality control will keep these things in consideration

Truly, do you think the SSD has less of a lifespan than a mechanical drive in 2023? I’ve worked on thousands of computers in the last decade. You’re more likely to replace a keyboard or display these days than a hard drive.

 

[ahurst]

Apple does this so that:

1.) SSDs will wear out after some time. So technically your macbook will turn out to be a brick. So you got no option but to buy a new computer. Note that 2015 macbook pros with replaceable SSDs are still used to date. So its in Apple’s best interest to keep it soldered

2.) Rather than upgrading Apple wants its customer base to use its cloud storage solution. Definitely you can choose any cloud storage provider. However, apples icloud is integrated well with the mac ecosystem so that will be the preferred choice

As explained elsewhere in the thread, new Macs basically have soldered SSDs because it’s the path of least resistance: the A-series SoCs that the M-series chips are derived from have had built-in SSD controllers with Secure Enclave encryption for years, supporting iPhone and iPad internal storage. Apple scales those same chips up for laptops/desktops and they have two options: keep the same raw flash modules + on-chip controller, or design a new separate T2-like system that handles removable NVME storage from any manufacturer while still preserving data security. Since it was presumably simpler and required less R&D, Apple went with the first option.

In other words, it’s not something they consciously decided should be removed as a consumer choice: it’s just how things worked on the iPhone, so that just got carried over to the Mac when they adapted the SoC. Now, did that engineering decision make people on the financial side of the company happy about their ability to mark up storage costs? Almost certainly! Were those people responsible for the decision in the first place? Given what we know about the technical details, almost certainly not.

Also, on your note about sustainability: while I understand your point, unless your daily workload absolutely thrashes your storage I/O constantly, I would expect the longevity for the SSD in modern Macs (and from other premium storage makers) to easily last 10 years (at which point most people have replaced their computers anyway). I have a 2009 Mac Mini NAS with an 11-year-old SSD and it’s perfectly fine, and that was made before a lot of modern advances in SSD longevity!

 

[KPOM]

Apple does this so that:

1.) SSDs will wear out after some time. So technically your macbook will turn out to be a brick. So you got no option but to buy a new computer. Note that 2015 macbook pros with replaceable SSDs are still used to date. So its in Apple’s best interest to keep it soldered

2.) Rather than upgrading Apple wants its customer base to use its cloud storage solution. Definitely you can choose any cloud storage provider. However, apples icloud is integrated well with the mac ecosystem so that will be the preferred choice

If anyone claims that its for speed and thinness of the device its not true.

• Innovations keep happening in the storage medium space. Making the system open for expansion allow us to adopt the new tech. For example, mechanical HDDs were used in computers a while back. When SSDs came anyone could use an SSD adapter to plug an SSD into the computer instead of HDD. Because systems back then were upgradeable
• Thinness!! Really?? Has anyone seen the latest 14” and 16” macbook pros?

These big claims on going green and environment friendly are rather hypocritical. Anyone with common sense can understand that. Would you rather trash your entire computer when its replaceable storage fails or rather trash that storage medium and keep the computer. What is more environment friendly?

Recommendation - Next time you decide to buy a computer, keep all this in mind. We can hope Apple being the best in its class for quality control will keep these things in consideration

Gee. It’s almost as if corporate platitudes about being “green,” “responsible corporate citizens,” and “sustainable” come from the marketing department. Who would have ever guessed?

 

[mr_roboto]

I'm pretty sure it's due to if a broken Mac Studio needs to be recycled, the SSD can be removed and destroyed separately from the rest of the computer. I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and we are required by regulation to either securely erase/wipe any hard drives or SDDs we pull out of computers that we plan to recycle or resell, Macs included. My boss says that Apple can get in big trouble with the law for their Macs having non-removable SSDs for such a reason, and I think they have at least once, hence the Mac Studio having the removable (but not replaceable) SSD.

I don't buy that at all. If your boss' theory was true, every Mac Apple released after the Studio should have a removable SSD. The opposite is true.

I assume you're right that secure erase is now a legal requirement to recycle or resell a computer. However, removability has nothing to do with erasure. If reselling a machine, it's in working condition and you can electronically perform a secure erase. If recycling, even if the motherboard is too broken to be booted, you can simply drill through the flash chips to physically destroy the data.

Since the time Apple started pushing soldered SSDs into most of its product line, the exceptions to the rule have all been workstation products: 2017 iMac Pro, 2019 Mac Pro, 2022 Mac Studio.

It's easy to understand why. Consider how many Studio motherboards Apple has to make. There are a total of eight variants based on M1 chip type (max or ultra), GPU core count per die (24 or 32), and RAM (32/64 on the Max, 64/128 on the Ultra). If this had to be multiplied by the five different SSD capacities (512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB) Apple offers, they'd have 40 different motherboards. Every single one would need to be stocked as a repair part, they'd have to accurately predict demand, and so on.

They actually do make crazy numbers of motherboard variants in MacBook Pros. There's more engineering reasons to do it in portables; MacBooks benefit far more from the reduced physical volume and power consumption made possible by not connectorizing flash modules. More importantly, MacBooks sell in far higher volume than the desktop workstations, which makes it easier for Apple to smooth over the downsides of making so many board variants.

 

[Bob_DM]

But it’s a 2010 MBP. Why would I want one?

The warranty you’re getting on your RAM and SSD are designed to be within the failure and/or disposal window of the device. Stuff is so reliable these days they can offer that warranty with a negligible chance of having to send you replacements.

The same is for apple. It’s probably not going to die in 5 years either. There’s nothing much to go wrong inside it these days. All the new macs have an absolutely minimalist engineering approach which will improve MTTF figures drastically.

As for the AppleCare I buy that because at least here in the UK I can usually leverage it to get a next day replacement of whatever it is mailed out to me and send the broken thing back in the box they ship. That means I don’t have to futz with taking it anywhere or dealing with complex RMA processes which take weeks.

Samsung RMA takes about a month for ref.

Always wondering about “lifetime warranty” for technology that will be obsolete in a few years.
By the way once tried to get a replacement for bad RAM (1 of 4 modules - same batch) from OWC, tested in different slots and different powermac’s G4 after delivery (giving complete lock-ups). Gave up with customer service after sending serial en memory test results … never got a solution.

 

[dotnet]

What we have here is an echo chamber of technology enthusiasts[…], not a pool of opinions worth trusting.

This should appear on every MRF page, right underneath the MacRumors logo.

 

[maflynn]

What we have here is an echo chamber of technology enthusiasts who do it, not a pool of opinions worth trusting.

MacRumors is totally an echo chamber, not just this thread.

Because its anti consumer - they've been like this because it increase margin and profitability as a company its simple economics.

We as consumers have a choice, reward anti-consumer behavior by buying the products or not. We get to vote on this behavior and it seems the majority of consumers are not very concerned.

A little different but I think in the same vein. Disney's then head Chapek basically said as long as people are buying disneywold tickets, they'll keep raising prices.

source

The hike follows Chapek's hint that prices will continue to increase with high demand from Disney lovers during an August earnings call.

Similarly if Apple is outselling its competition with what could be computers designed not to be repaired, or upgraded, then the consumers have spoken.

 

[kasakka]

Nothing wrong with that.

If you are a stock holder. For the consumer it cannot be anything but bad. Plenty of other laptop manufacturers manage replaceable RAM and SSD in enclosures not much larger than Macbook Pros, let alone desktop systems.

It's decidedly anti-consumer. I wouldn't mind as much if Apple offered reasonable upgrade prices but they charge 3-4x more for upgrades than the parts cost at retail for standard DDR4/5 or NVME M.2 SSDs.

It's one aspect that has made me not buy an Apple computer for personal use.

 

[ahurst]

If you are a stock holder. For the consumer it cannot be anything but bad. Plenty of other laptop manufacturers manage replaceable RAM and SSD in enclosures not much larger than Macbook Pros, let alone desktop systems.

It's decidedly anti-consumer. I wouldn't mind as much if Apple offered reasonable upgrade prices but they charge 3-4x more for upgrades than the parts cost at retail for standard DDR4/5 or NVME M.2 SSDs.

Repeating my post from another thread here, which summarizes a lot of earlier discussion in this thread:

As Hector Martin of the Asahi Linux project has explained, you'd need a whopping 8 RAM sockets on the logic boards of the MBP and Mac Studio to match the same memory bandwidth (400GB/s) as the M1 Max (a single channel of DDR5 is 50GB/s). Additionally, because you need to run the traces longer on the board to all the separate modules and support socketed connections, you end up notably increasing voltage demands meaning more heat and less battery life.

It's a trade-off to be sure, but I think it's a trade-off that makes sense for the vast majority of customers. Would I prefer it if my 14" MBP had slower RAM, was notably thicker (to accommodate the 4/8 DIMMs), and had worse battery life in exchange for being able to upgrade my RAM a few years down the line? Personally, I would not.

 

[KPOM]

MacRumors is totally an echo chamber, not just this thread.


We as consumers have a choice, reward anti-consumer behavior by buying the products or not. We get to vote on this behavior and it seems the majority of consumers are not very concerned.

A little different but I think in the same vein. Disney's then head Chapek basically said as long as people are buying disneywold tickets, they'll keep raising prices.

source


Similarly if Apple is outselling its competition with what could be computers designed not to be repaired, or upgraded, then the consumers have spoken.

It’s telling which models Apple stocks in stores. Except for a few CTO configurations that appear in selected stores (often on a rotating basis), it is the base models. Most Apple consumers, it seems, do not upgrade the RAM or SSD.

 

[za9ra22]

.... For the consumer it cannot be anything but bad ...

... It's decidedly anti-consumer ...

As a user of 20+ year old Apple systems, I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I'd say, judging by what we know of current sales volumes, consumers don't seem to agree.

That there are some who are aggrieved by some or all of Apple's policies or build ethics is obvious, but it is a bad mistake to assume that these people speak for the market, when clearly they don't. The market want what Apple produces. I can't say I understand why, but they do, which is why Apple build and sell what they do.

As has been said earlier in the thread, the average consumer neither knows nor cares about upgradable or replaceable components. They want to buy something they can take home or to the office, power up, and use. They may care a lot about what's on the outside, but they don't care at all what's on the inside as long as they get what they want out of it - and that isn't tinkering or repairing.

My bet is that Apple would be happy to accommodate the kind of upgrade or replacement options being mooted here (which would be at a cost to all users, not just those who want it) if their market research showed more than a small number of users wanted it, but pretty clearly they don't, so Apple doesn't waste money providing it.

It's certainly true that we're much closer these days to having to trash a broken system because we can't repair it, but in the marketplace as a whole, rather than amongst the technologically inclined such as members here, computers have become disposable products.

What Apple likely know really well is that they can't sustain a business on the back of consumers who post in places such as this.

 

[VivienM]

It’s telling which models Apple stocks in stores. Except for a few CTO configurations that appear in selected stores (often on a rotating basis), it is the base models. Most Apple consumers, it seems, do not upgrade the RAM or SSD.

And it's also interesting how they pick the configurations. e.g. they typically will offer multiple configurations with more disk capacity, but RAM upgrades are CTO-only. e.g. if you want an iMac, you can get an 8/256 or an 8/512 standard model, but nothing with 16GB. Same with the M2 Mac Mini or the MacBook Air.

As someone who loves loves loves loves RAM (but doesn't guzzle much disk space on my Macs), that seems odd to me. Other than my slightly-odd-config refurb Intel iMac, I think most of my other Macs have actually had more storage than I might have needed...

(Now, occasionally, there have been weird custom SKUs. e.g. a friend has an 8GB mid-2012 non-Retina MBP from, I think, Worst Buy, who somehow had an 8GB SKU when the Apple Store only stocked 4GB models.)