Has Apple Silicon made you reconsider the Mac platform?

[pshufd]

Yep, but in the M1 models the SSD is still not replaceable. When it fails one is screwed (or replace the whole motherboard, which is basically the same as being screwed). For any other machine I would not worry about the life span of any SDD in it, as long as I can replace it.

Could you not use an external drive if the SSD fails?

 

[rui no onna]

Could you not use an external drive if the SSD fails?

The thing is these M1 Macs don't have a traditional SSD. The storage controller (brain of the SSD) is part of the M1 SoC itself.

It's possible the NAND flash may fail while the M1 chip continues to work but I don't know if it'll even allow booting off external drive in that situation.

Does Apple offer Express Replacement Service for Macs?

 

[pshufd]

The thing is these M1 Macs don't have a traditional SSD. The storage controller (brain of the SSD) is part of the M1 SoC itself.

It's possible the NAND flash may fail while the M1 chip continues to work but I don't know if it'll even allow booting off external drive in that situation.

Does Apple offer Express Replacement Service for Macs?

https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/k2nzs2

 

[rui no onna]

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https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/k2nzs2

That's not a hardware issue, though. It can boot from external but the internal storage is still working.

I'm wondering what if the NAND flash itself actually fails. Where is Recovery Mode even stored? In the SoC itself? If it's on NAND, then you may not even get to that point (Recovery).

 

[pshufd]

That's not a hardware issue, though. It can boot from external but the internal storage is still working.

I'm wondering what if the NAND flash itself actually fails. Where is Recovery Mode even stored? In the SoC itself? If it's on NAND, then you may not even get to that point (Recovery).

I don't think that you'd need the recover partition on the internal flash. Just hook up your external drive and an installer and it should create a recovery partition on your external drive.

 

[rui no onna]

I don't think that you'd need the recover partition on the internal flash. Just hook up your external drive and an installer and it should create a recovery partition on your external drive.

I'm guessing you need another working Mac for that?

In any case, before I bought the MBA, I already figured I might need to treat it like I do my iOS devices. Just run regular backups and let Apple take care of device repair/replacement.

 

[pshufd]

I'm guessing you need another working Mac for that?

In any case, before I bought the MBA, I already figured I might need to treat it like I do my iOS devices. Just run regular backups and let Apple take care of device repair/replacement.

Yes, you need a working Mac (a Hackintosh might work as well) to create a bootable installer. I've made dozens of them in the past. Or you can just create one in advance just in case. You could also just get a 256 GB Thumb Drive and put installers for 16 different versions of macOS. I have installer images from El Capitan to Big Sur on one of my systems in case I need to install macOS on a system or just want to play around with virtual machines.

 

[GoldfishRT]

I'm excited to see what AS powered 16" looks like. I still haven't figured out what my ideal setup is. Right now I'm still running with the 2018 15" MBP which I enjoy as a daily laptop, and my very well equipped gaming desktop. At one point I had just planned to get rid of the laptop and go phablet for a phone as I really do dislike having more than one computer. Then I thought of getting rid of both and buying a high end gaming laptop. The only thing really motivating a replacement for the 15" MacBook Pro is that I bought the base with a paltry 256GB of storage and weak sauce GPU. Otherwise thuroughly enjoy it still, even with the very no-good keyboard, and probably wouldn't have built the desktop or switched anything until Bootcamp becomes unusable and deprecated. Unfortunately that will likely keep me out of being Apple-only anymore but I think the new hardware gives Apple a huge advantage in remaining a secondary device in my home.

 

[2984839]

I disagree with you on that point. The SSD has a finite live and is soldered on the motherboard. Also the M1 models with 8 GB of RAM use the SSD a lot for swap memory and that shortens the live of the SSD as wel.
If the SSD fails the M1 is out off warranty and the user faces the cost for a replacement of the whole motherboard.

My guess is that because of the non replaceable SSD the average life time of a machine will be around 5 years.

100% agree, and this is why it's unacceptable for me.

At work we have several thousand servers with multiple SSDs in each. The oldest systems are around 6 years old. We see very few failures for about 5 years, and a significant rise in the number of SSD failures at the 5 year mark. Drives are failing in the oldest systems on a near-daily basis. We do run them hard, but they are also very expensive enterprise drives with high quality components, with each one costing nearly as much as an M1 Mac. While the typical workload may or may not be as severe, I would expect consumer level drives to be worse in quality, especially if they are being sold in an entire system that is $1500 or less. If I had critical data, 5 years is probably about the limit of what I would trust my SSD, unless it was a rarely used backup system.

 

[rui no onna]

100% agree, and this is why it's unacceptable for me.

At work we have several thousand servers with multiple SSDs in each. The oldest systems are around 6 years old. We see very few failures for about 5 years, and a significant rise in the number of SSD failures at the 5 year mark. Drives are failing in the oldest systems on a near-daily basis. We do run them hard, but they are also very expensive enterprise drives with high quality components, with each one costing nearly as much as an M1 Mac. While the typical workload may or may not be as severe, I would expect consumer level drives to be worse in quality, especially if they are being sold in an entire system that is $1500 or less. If I had critical data, 5 years is probably about the limit of what I would trust my SSD, unless it was a rarely used backup system.

Iirc, you could probably kill your typical consumer level 3D TLC SSD within a few months with the workload on your servers.

I forgot where I read it but someone tried it as an experiment with OLTP database and a consumer level SSD (Samsung?) and it died in 3 months.

With that said, as I've previously mentioned, I'll be treating the M1 MBA like an iOS device and it wouldn't be sole repository for any critical data I have (should be backing up anyway).

 

[Queen6]

Personally not a big fan of the SSD being on the Logic Board, equally this is how Apple has been for a good number of years. So if you want a portable Mac that's the only option, as most certainly Apple isn't going to change it's direction.

Also feel a touch of scare mongering as these drives are in general very reliable, I've never had issue with some writing multiple terabytes of data over the years. Some drives will prematurely fail yet the vast majority likely serve the useful life of the computer and yes this tactic tends to serve Apple more than the consumer.

Same as any other, if you don't back up and loose data it's your own fault. Overall it's not a reason to disregard the platform in 2020. Last portable Mac's that were user serviceable was something like 2012 and as much as I would like it, that's not coming back...

Q-6

 

[pshufd]

Personally not a big fan of the SSD being on the Logic Board, equally this is how Apple has been for a good number of years. So if you want a portable Mac that's the only option, as most certainly Apple isn't going to change it's direction.

Also feel a touch of scare mongering as these drives are in general very reliable, I've never had issue with some writing multiple terabytes of data over the years. Some drives will prematurely fail yet the vast majority likely serve the useful life of the computer and yes this tactic tends to serve Apple more than the consumer.

Same as any other, if you don't back up and loose data it's your own fault. Overall it's not a reason to disregard the platform in 2020. Last portable Mac's that were user serviceable was something like 2012 and as much as I would like it, that's not coming back...

Q-6

The 2015 MacBook Pros are NVMe and you can change them yourself though you may need a bit of extra hardware. There is a long thread in the MacBook Pro forum on how to change the SSDs in the Retina MacBook Pros.

 

[LeeW]

Personally not a big fan of the SSD being on the Logic Board, equally this is how Apple has been for a good number of years.

I have come to terms with this one, aside from anything else I am part of the reason for it. That is as a consumer who wants the thinnest and lightest portable, even if that means removing all but a couple of USBC ports and soldering everything on.

I work with Linux servers day in day out, I sent two servers down to the Data Centre in London in 2012, mostly SATA drives but I wanted to test a couple of SSDs, I still have the details of the two SSDss, one in each server.

They are both still in the data centre, 8 years later running fine, neither has any issues writing/reading daily since then. I think since then I have a handful of failures between these types of SSD and NVMe out of over 1,000.

So I don't really worry about failures in my personal devices, to be honest. Of which I have had none.

Same as any other, if you don't back up and loose data it's your own fault.

Also this, there is no excuse for not having all your data backed up given the number of available services, most of them free or very low cost. As I always tell web hosting customers, yes we back up your data, but so should you.

If your data is important and you do not have at least 3 copies, the live version, a service provider backup and your own backup then your data doesn't really exist.

 

[pshufd]

I have come to terms with this one, aside from anything else I am part of the reason for it. That is as a consumer who wants the thinnest and lightest portable, even if that means removing all but a couple of USBC ports and soldering everything on.

I work with Linux servers day in day out, I sent two servers down to the Data Centre in London in 2012, mostly SATA drives but I wanted to test a couple of SSDs, I still have the details of the two SSDss, one in each server.

View attachment 1702008

View attachment 1702009

They are both still in the data centre, 8 years later running fine, neither has any issues writing/reading daily since then. I think since then I have a handful of failures between these types of SSD and NVMe out of over 1,000.

So I don't really worry about failures in my personal devices, to be honest. Of which I have had none.




Also this, there is no excuse for not having all your data backed up given the number of available services, most of them free or very low cost. As I always tell web hosting customers, yes we back up your data, but so should you.

If your data is important and you do not have at least 3 copies, the live version, a service provider backup and your own backup then your data doesn't really exist.

Today is Time Machine day for me. I'm backing up my two MacBook Pro to three Western Digital MyBooks. Always good to have multiple backups of your files.

 

[Queen6]

The 2015 MacBook Pros are NVMe and you can change them yourself though you may need a bit of extra hardware. There is a long thread in the MacBook Pro forum on how to change the SSDs in the Retina MacBook Pros.

I have come to terms with this one, aside from anything else I am part of the reason for it. That is as a consumer who wants the thinnest and lightest portable, even if that means removing all but a couple of USBC ports and soldering everything on.

I work with Linux servers day in day out, I sent two servers down to the Data Centre in London in 2012, mostly SATA drives but I wanted to test a couple of SSDs, I still have the details of the two SSDss, one in each server.

View attachment 1702008

View attachment 1702009

They are both still in the data centre, 8 years later running fine, neither has any issues writing/reading daily since then. I think since then I have a handful of failures between these types of SSD and NVMe out of over 1,000.

So I don't really worry about failures in my personal devices, to be honest. Of which I have had none.




Also this, there is no excuse for not having all your data backed up given the number of available services, most of them free or very low cost. As I always tell web hosting customers, yes we back up your data, but so should you.

If your data is important and you do not have at least 3 copies, the live version, a service provider backup and your own backup then your data doesn't really exist.

For the average user they will likely never consider replacing the SSD or need to. The professional will know and budget for the storage required. Yeah you can change the SSD on previous Mac's yet likely less than 1% of owners even consider, let alone do so.

Most used Mac with SSD I still have is a 2014 13" MBP that I ran heavily in a professional role for it's first two years and it's been home server ever since with well over 100TB of writes to the SSD. Even this much newer ASUS has written 45TB...

I just think suggesting that the 8GB M1 Mac's will have reliability concerns due to swap usage is nonsense unless the user is deliberately writing data 24/7. By the time such drives fail due to usage the systems will be obsolete. The downside is if the drive fails prematurely which can occur with anything and again this where a solid backup regime comes in.

I still maintain I'd prefer a separate drive, however that's for other reasons such a data security, equally the way the world is moving it's becoming a lesser factor especially with the Ultraportable class. With the previous Mac's with SSD's directly on the board I didn't see much advantage for the users, with M1 I do...

TLDR if your looking at an M1 Air or MBP don't be off put and unless you have an extremally demanding workflow, run multiple VM's or a specific demanding application the 8GB base models are more than adequate. Is also worth minding that M1 is just the first step so better not to spend more than you need as within a couple of years Apple will likely increase performance yet again.

Q-6

 

[SteveJUAE]

I can see why @Queen6 is enthused by AS

For mobile professionals be it field engineers, photographers DJ's etc or even small business from lock-up or market stalls the price/performance value ratio over Intel variants is amazing

These AS models are as cheap as chips for business that may require a $3k laptop otherwise, So back-up or redundancy becomes so affordable as you can have 2 or even 3 for similar price thus negating any concerns of reliability or service etc

Personally I always city hop (or use too LOL) so a store is always at hand should I need an instant replacement

But in sheer terms of a cheap disposable asset for small business its win,

For normal consumers I still say 2nd gen maybe a better option for those more cautious but given price they wont really loose that much sleep

 

[c0ppo]

I can see why @Queen6 is enthused by AS

Any adult will be enthused by AS. Basically anyone who looks at their tools as just tools, and not like a sports team to cheer for.
I have my reservations when it comes to Apple and MBP. But AS isn't one of them. I would really like one AS in my current device.

I will wait until 3rd gen, and then look at what's best for me. At the moment I'm really more than OK with what I already own

 

[LeeW]

I just think suggesting that the 8GB M1 Mac's will have reliability concerns due to swap usage is nonsense unless the user is deliberately writing data 24/7.

I doubt most will even know what SWAP is nevermind be concerned by it. Heavy use of SWAP has been a thing with Apple for a while now. Personally, I just prefer to have enough RAM to do what RAM does instead of relying on the SSD to pick up the slack.

 

[Queen6]

I can see why @Queen6 is enthused by AS

For mobile professionals be it field engineers, photographers DJ's etc or even small business from lock-up or market stalls the price/performance value ratio over Intel variants is amazing

These AS models are as cheap as chips for business that may require a $3k laptop otherwise, So back-up or redundancy becomes so affordable as you can have 2 or even 3 for similar price thus negating any concerns of reliability or service etc

Personally I always city hop (or use too LOL) so a store is always at hand should I need an instant replacement

But in sheer terms of a cheap disposable asset for small business its win,

For normal consumers I still say 2nd gen maybe a better option for those more cautious but given price they wont really loose that much sleep

Any adult will be enthused by AS. Basically anyone who looks at their tools as just tools, and not like a sports team to cheer for.
I have my reservations when it comes to Apple and MBP. But AS isn't one of them. I would really like one AS in my current device.

I will wait until 3rd gen, and then look at what's best for me. At the moment I'm really more than OK with what I already own

Very true with the base models offering tremendous value with price to performance in mind. I'd be far more cautious with a 16" in the $3K-$4K upwards range as the MBP is now firmly a disposable asset. TBH I don't think anyone has much to loose with the current M1 Mac's, rather more that they will gain on the next cycle as that's often the case, yet sometimes not so (2016 MBP...).

I also consider the M1 a safe bet as the chassis is tried and proven, 2nd Gen is likely to be a new design (thinner) and hopefully 3rd Gen a solid buy. The build quality of my M1 is excellent and I do think Apple is acutely aware of the damage poor design and execution can result in (Butterfly KB, throttling, hinges etc.). Touch Bar remains under developed being semi useful in some apps and near useless in others. Basically it's part and parcel of the MBP now, so one just needs to adapt to it and get on with things.

I even think that the base Air would serve many and then some given how rapid the M1 is, unless you plan on sustained heavy workloads. I bought the base 13" M1 MBP as more a test bed for the future. Knowing that it will take some work to get it to do what I need and openly my hardware is aging, although still badly effected by COVID I don't want to be in a situation where hardware fails at the most inopportune moment in time.

The only real negatives with the M1 Air & MBP (assuming your SW works) is the lack of ports, but what's new and for some multi monitor support although the workarounds are available for those determined. The former I'd like to see more ports, equally limitations of the M1 SOC and of course this is Apple. The later not such a concern as I used/use my systems in a portable role, although mobile would be the more appropriate word in better times...

Q-6

 

[Thysanoptera]

After using the M1 MBP for couple of days, it is definitely a keeper and I'll be ok blowing $8k+ on 16 inch version, even in its first iteration - if the MS Windows support improves. Mainly because of quality of life improvement, cool and quiet. You may laugh, but one of the reasons I stopped using Intel MBP were my sweaty palms, it was just uncomfortable to use. This M1 is a joy to use, but for me still limited to be the only machine, can't ditch Windows laptop yet.

- I depend on Windows for work. The ARM Windows preview works surprisingly well in Pararells, almost all of the Windows software that I need works well in it, even older games, but is MS going to offer retail licenses? What happens when this insider program ends?
- x86 VMs. That's kind of a big one, I can work around by deploying Linux or Windows ARM VMs, recompiling and installing my stuff, but nothing beats just copying customer's VM and working right in it. Oh - and I need VMWare for it.
- while in Pararells it randomly disconnects my external NVMe drive with Bitlocker partitions. It's a beta hypervisor running beta OS, need to investigate if the same happens while attached to MacOS only with AFPS volumes. That may not be a problem when 8TB AS MacBook arrives.
- multi monitor support / lack of eGPU support. Although I was mainly using eGPU to attach multiple displays and reduce heat/noise coming from laptop - this seems to be non-issue on M1. But I still would like to have 3 external displays when not travelling.
- ports/storage limitations of the current base models.
- I have some gripes with Big Sur UI choices, but that's not M1 related.

It is an awesome laptop, I'm really blown away, I did not see that coming.

 

[LeeW]

but is MS going to offer retail licenses?

I see zero reasons for them not to, millions of licences would be sold overall, MS is not going to cut off a revenue stream.

 

[Thysanoptera]

I see zero reasons for them not to, millions of licences would be sold overall, MS is not going to cut off a revenue stream.

That opens the door to Bootcamp like ARM installation on Mac, and imho this would kill their Surface X line. AS is the best ARM hardware by far, M1 is several times faster than whatever Qualcomm with MS put in it. This wasn't a problem with x86 because Windows PCs were faster, but now it is other way around and not by 20% or so but by multiple of 100%.

 

[SteveJUAE]

I see zero reasons for them not to, millions of licences would be sold overall, MS is not going to cut off a revenue stream.

We do not know what MOU's MS have with Samsung LG etc

It would take sometime before there was several million (if ever) W10 arm users on AS even at $200 a pop it's a one time sale

 

[Erehy Dobon]

I see zero reasons for them not to, millions of licences would be sold overall, MS is not going to cut off a revenue stream.

Microsoft is perfectly capable of ignoring a path of action that is in their best interest.

Look at their Windows updates. And I won't even start with their mobile presence...

 

[Queen6]

I doubt most will even know what SWAP is nevermind be concerned by it. Heavy use of SWAP has been a thing with Apple for a while now. Personally, I just prefer to have enough RAM to do what RAM does instead of relying on the SSD to pick up the slack.

True, equally it also doesn't serve to worry people needlessly who likely will be fine with the base 8GB.

Q-6