Published tonight. The lemmings who have jumped on this particular bandwagon aren't going to like what he has to say.
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Louis Rossmann on the Mac Studio SSD "Scandal"
- Thread starter F-Train
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Sorry this is not a scandal. Apple clearly states that the SSDs are not user serviceable.
That's Rossmann's point (although not for the reason you give, which from a right to repair perspective is irrelevant).
Apple’s stance:
If you don’t like our computers, buy one from someone else.
If you don’t like our computers, buy one from someone else.
Yeah, it's a glass half-full/half empty thing.
There won't be cheap third-party upgrades, and Apple charges through the nose for Flash - glass half empty.
If the SSD fails, an Apple-approved service engineer can replace it without replacing the whole logic board (unlike some other Macs) - glass half full.
Apple may make upgrade/replacement kits available in the future - as they have with the Mac Pro and/or if their promised (but, so far, not delivered) spare parts store materialises (but you'll need a second Mac to initialise it). Or they could pull the "but stupid people will kill themselves by licking the PSU" card - we might have a glass!!!?
Meanwhile, hopefully there will be some nice, matching/stackable HD/SSD enclosures available - if existing Mac Mini ones don't work. Of course, then the Mac Studio won't fit under the Studio Display unless you get the $400 stand...
OWC sells some external drive enclosures with Mac mini footprints.
eshop.macsales.com
OWC miniStack - The External Drive with a Mac mini Footprint
Whether on your desktop or doing duty in the server room, miniStack delivers high-speed performance that stacks perfectly with your Mac mini.
I'm tempted by that, or something similar, as a way to raise the Studio off the desk and so hopefully reduce the amount of dust it sucks in if I ever tax it enough to spin up the fans beyond their idle speedOWC sells some external drive enclosures with Mac mini footprints.
OWC miniStack - The External Drive with a Mac mini Footprint
Whether on your desktop or doing duty in the server room, miniStack delivers high-speed performance that stacks perfectly with your Mac mini.
Andrew Cunningham (ARS Technica) has also now weighed in: Explaining the Mac Studio’s removable SSDs, and why you can’t simply swap them out. To upgrade the Mac's SSDs, it helps to understand how they work.
OWC has a ministack STX which offers a NVMe SSD solution in a non-matching color but same stackable form factor. A 2 TB SSD plus enclosure runs $599. However, no information as to the R/W speeds for the SSD or the performance of those via TB4 vs the internal SSD on the Studio. And while the Mini won't suffer from a stack, not sure I want to make the Studio taller by stacking it on one of these.OWC sells some external drive enclosures with Mac mini footprints.
OWC miniStack - The External Drive with a Mac mini Footprint
Whether on your desktop or doing duty in the server room, miniStack delivers high-speed performance that stacks perfectly with your Mac mini.
Curious then that they didn't just solder SSD's to the board, getting the performance increase it would give (i.e. see MBP vs Studio). Though I'd rather have it the way they did it, giving some ease of swapping out if need be (for Apple anyway).
I'm curious too. My guess is that Apple sees the "Studio" name as suggestive of flexibility on at least storage, and will offer upgrades done by itself or certified technicians. This should also reduce the cost of some repairs; no need to replace the entire board if a storage module dies. Both of these are selling points, although Apple is not yet talking about them as part of its marketing.
And here I thought Apple went, "Dammit, we can't let Microsoft have "Studio" to themselves."
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(A) SSDs fail - it makes them repairable by Apple service people with approved parts & access to the Apple configuration tools.
(B) logistics - there are a zillion permutations of configurations, on something that is going to sell in far fewer numbers than (say) an Air or Mini. Apple can decide how many of each configuration to make at assembly time rather than during main board manufacture.
(C) Not sure how big a deal the speed is - they’re still very close to the CPU with pretty short traces, and they’re only running at a fraction of the speed of RAM.
Scandal? Find me one instance where Apple advertised removable/replaceable storage or one extra storage slot. Lemming indeed......
Ah, I see - that's excellent!
All 3 points does make logical sense indeed - the past issues with soldered in SSD failing prematurely, source of SSDs due to parts supply issues and having flexibility with single vs double module, plus the small speed issue.
I think Apple has been learning over time when they originally moved to soldered in SSD in the past.....
The "scandal" (such as it is - and, yeah, perspective folks!) is that the hardware seems to be there to allow after-market storage expansion but that Apple are simply not allowing it - either because the configurator software artificially blocks it or you need a slightly different module to go into the "spare" slots.
Yeah, some people don't quite "get" the difference between M.2 NVMe modules with on-board SSD controllers and the Apple situation with the controller living on the M1 or T2 chip - it's never going to be plug'n'play because the controller needs to "learn" a lot of data about the flash chips. However, the technical situation with the Mac Pro is pretty much the same, and Apple did end up offering SSD upgrades for that.
I fear that it is all about logistics and not about users, though. There's probably some cold equations based on predicted sale figures, unit costs and relative sales of different SSD configurations that determine whether it is more cost-efficient to socket or not to socket.
(Another issue that occurs to me is that having SSDs on daughterboards make make it easier to change the type/size/configuration of Flash chips used over the lifetime of the design without re-designing the logic board).
No, modularity by Apple means computer is separate from the display. Seriously.
You can hold out forever and never purchase anything to avoid getting "locked in"
I've obtained whatever was needed from Apple for my personal and business needs going on 20+ years and made a better than anticipated living with the equipment.
I still run two 2011 Mini's on my internal LAN and expect to easily get 6+ years out of a Studio Max base model.
As time has gone by (particularly in the past ~5 years or so), the need to add user serviceable components like memory or storage is no longer applicable.
I haven't seen one, but I expect that it's a LOT more accessible than the ones in the Studio.
Apple may offer an upgrade program where they do the work, but I seriously doubt it. No reason to. I think they did it this way to make it easier to fix.
The Mac Pro is a tower computer. In his review of the Mac Studio, Dave Lee says that for its power it is far and away the most compact computer he has seen. Ease of transport is one of its selling features.