There certainly could be some of that, but given the lower cost of SSDs, we see Apple still using mechanical drives in their iMacs, and I think industry standard SSDs, instead of the blade models would also be better.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's Secret War To Keep You From...
- Thread starter maxsix
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm not sure what "industry standard SSDs" means - if you're talking about a SATA drive... that's the 5400 RPM version of Flash. You'd rather have that than a PCIe blade day in and day out, on the chance that some day you'll want to replace or upgrade it? The only reason SATA SSDs are the dominant SSD form factor is that they fit into desktop PCs that are (still) built to hold mechanical HDDs. Are all those ultra-slim PC laptops equipped with SATA drives??? The day the industry abandons HDD-equipped desktops they'll abandon the space and hardware required to secure and connect a SATA HDD - everything will have a blade or soldered Flash, just like RAM.
And to play with words a bit, in desktops, SSDs are not yet the "industry standard." I sure don't see all-SSD base configurations at Dell and HP - they're optional. Even Dell's $5,816 (list price) Precision Tower 7000 workstation comes with a SATA HDD.
The cost of SSDs is lower than it was, but still nowhere near the cost of mechanical drives. If Apple is going to retain price point on those models that have mechanical drives, it means a line of machines with substantially smaller internal storage and a lot of users hanging an external HDD off the back - a problem faced by countless owners of 128GB MBAs.
Of course, those external HDDs might go away if Apple still sold towers/pizza boxes with spare drive bays. Right? But the vast majority of computer users would not open an "easy-to-upgrade" tower and slap another drive into a spare slot, any more than they'd change the oil in their car. They'd still buy an external drive, because plugging an external into a USB port is cheaper and easier than having a shop install an internal.
Product design is a careful balancing act - purchase price, performance, reliability... I fully appreciate that a portion of the market would prefer a higher emphasis on repairability/upgradability. But far greater numbers do not - they want to drive their cars, run their household appliances, and enjoy their home entertainment products with a minimum of maintenance or fuss. The day of the PC as hobby is over. The vast majority of users are just that - users.
I work as a technician at a repair shop that fixes iDevices and Macs. We don't have a right to repair law in NJ and it really doesn't stifle our business too much. The only major downside is we can't get genuine Apple parts. The screens we use are refurbished by local companies here in Jersey who buy original Apple LCD's with broken glass from shops like ours and put new glass on them. Sometimes it's hard to get consistent quality and there's a high rate of defectives. That's about as close as we can get to OEM though. A right to repair law that gives us access to OEM parts from Apple would be great.
I dunno why Apple decided to go fusion in their Mac's by default whole they had ssd's as default in laptop's.
I suspect that maflynn meant industry standard M.2 SSDs versus Apple's homebrewed version.
He may have meant that. Maybe he'll clarify.
Meantime, M.2 SSDs sure look like blades to me. While Apple's are not M.2 (should Apple have waited until after M.2 rev. 1.0 was released in December 2013, when they've been using blades in MBAs since 2010?), otherwise the form factor is pretty similar, and they all connect to the industry-standard PCIe bus.
So if someone says, "Industry standard SSDs instead of the blade models," I'm likely to think they're talking about the very common 2.5" SATA SSDs, rather than the far less common M.2 configuration. And why are 2.5" SATA SSDs so common? Because the vast majority of PCs are still built with 2.5" SATA bays so that the low-end models can be equipped with cheap spinners. They may not be the only "industry standard," but they're still the dominant standard.
I don't think u will win in court over something customers are unhappy with..... and a company does it this way
Its how Apple does their stuff........ This is just something people have a tiff with. Plus, added to that is your using Apple products as my defense always to anything like this...
If this happened to any other company, then there would be a "reason", but we are talking of Apple... we know how limit and restricted Apple does their stuff.... so why is not being able to repair an iphone out of the ordinary, when it IS normal to Apple and most of their customers? The only other thing, if maybie that they keep changing screws to "prevent" you further... But again,, thats nothing to worry about... Its still their eco system... I have no problem with that..
The right to repair,,, that's a different issue.. We're just trying to combine what everyone else does, then single out Apple have got issues, just because no one can understand this is how Apple is...