Soldered Storage: A Design Choice

[BellSystem]

As much as I hate to say it.....upgradable Macs probably make more eWaste. Think of how many RAM sticks went straight in the bin and never got used. I can say 99% of my past Macs and most of the people I knew. They were rarely worth any money selling them so they just were waste. So really soldered on memory is a better solution. The only sensible compromise would be an empty expansion slot.

 

[MajorFubar]

1. Any argument like this that tries to draw "the environment" into it is ridiculous. Don't. Not everything is about "the environment".
2. Would you be OK with a device that is an overall a worse design because the storage needs to be removable, and performance that is worse because it needs to go through a different interface? I would not.
3. Just be honest and say, "These computers are almost too expensive for me, so I prefer to buy them as cheap as I can, and upgrade some parts later when I have more money." Because that's really what this is about, right? This is about needing 1 TB of storage, but not wanting to pay for it (yet), and somehow Apple's product is designed wrong because of this. No.

This is so wrong I don't even know where to start. Apple has no right to assume we can fortune-tell our future requirements based on what we buy now. And who other than some BS spreader told you that making the storage upgradeable, or even the memory upgradeable, would compromise the performance in any way that couldn't be circumvented by a design-tweak? Just how magic do you think solder tabs are on a circuitboard compared to a socket? In any case they've already halved the SSD speed of the 256GB M2 Air compared to its predecessor just to save money and the consensus seems to be that in practical everyday use no one will even notice.

In what world fifteen years ago would even you agree that a computer should not be upgradeable? The brainwashing is strong in you, and you don't even know it.

Also there is no need for the pompousness. People who think Apple could achieve expandability without noticeably compromising performance and reliability are not all bottom-feeding proletariats envious of others with bigger bank accounts. Some of us just think it's morally wrong.

 

[leman]

This is so wrong I don't even know where to start. Apple has no right to assume we can fortune-tell our future requirements based on what we buy now. And who other than some BS spreader told you that making the storage upgradeable, or even the memory upgradeable, would compromise the performance in any way that couldn't be circumvented by a design-tweak? Just how magic do you think solder tabs are on a circuitboard compared to a socket? In any case they've already halved the SSD speed of the 256GB M2 Air compared to its predecessor just to save money and the consensus seems to be that in practical everyday use no one will even notice.

It’s not that simple. Upgradeable storage, sure, it can easily be done from the technical point of view. But the devil is in details. Are we talking about going back to industry standard M.2 SSDs? Well, then you have the problem with controller firmware reliability (I mentioned in my previous post), latency, OS integration etc. Or are we talking about custom storage chips sold by Apple - how much would you be willing to pay for that? Also, the big benefit of the current system is that Apple is free to change the implementation at any time. Right now they use a custom extension of the NVMe protocol, with the controller in the SoC and raw flash connected directly to the chip data bus. Maybe next year they will wipe out some new crazy solution that uses a completely different data bus. How do you imagine the logistics of that if this stuff also has to be upgradeable?

You mention RAM. What kind of design tweak do you imagine that can reliably provide thousands of pins without dramatically affecting power consumption, size or cost? Current Apple RAM solutions use close to 900 pins per 64-bit RAM module. That’s comparable with the x86 desktop CPU sockets and have you seen the size of those things? Imagine the size and the cost of a modular RAM solution of that kind. And of course, you can forget about energy efficiency if yiu go that way.

In what world fifteen years ago would even you agree that a computer should not be upgradeable? The brainwashing is strong in you, and you don't even know it.

Fifteen years ago computing and technology were very different. The affordable RAM capacity doubled every couple of years and going from 2GB to 4GB was a big deal. In the storage space we had the SSD revolution thst promised much better performance. These days we get laptops shipping with super fast SSDs and humongous amounts of RAM. There is much less need for upgrades than it was before. But there is always the need for higher performance, improved mobility and improved efficiency, which are at odds with modular designs.

It’s only a question of time before modularity disappears from the laptop form factor altogether - it already largely did and niche offerings like the framework laptop only confirm this trend. It will stick around for some more in the enthusiast desktop, but that’s also probably a question of time. Modularity is already dwindling in the enterprise segment where performance and efficiency is much more important.

 

[ignatius345]

There are a few things that should be mentioned here I think. First, customers don’t care about upgrades. They really don’t. If they did you wouldn’t have an entire industry moving to the non-upgradeable model (with Apple at the forefront). Upgradeability is a niche demand and will likely stay that way.

I think that's a sweeping generalization. For first-tier consumers, sure -- they're probably just going to buy a new Mac after 3-4 years and move on because there are other upgrades they want anyway. But a Mac's life shouldn't end there.

We want more people selling or donating or handing down "old" Macs when they're done with them because that fulfulls someone's need for a computer without another one needing to be manufactured -- with all carbon- and materials-intensive industrial activity that entails.

Corporations like Apple love to tout recycling as some kind of miracle, but trying to recover materials and then (hopefully) rework them into another consumer product costs a hell of a lot more energy than just having the machine continue to function well with the replacement of a small part.

Upgradability and repairability help Macs stay useful longer. For all Apple's greenwashing, they're not doing very well on this very important front.

 

[ignatius345]

Any argument like this that tries to draw "the environment" into it is ridiculous.

LOL we're spiralling toward catastrophic climate change and this guy is bitching about his laptop potentially being a few millimeters thicker.

 

[theluggage]

These days we get laptops shipping with super fast SSDs and humongous amounts of RAM. There is much less need for upgrades than it was before. But there is always the need for higher performance, improved mobility and improved efficiency, which are at odds with modular designs.

We're getting that way with RAM - although the base 8GB that Apple is pushing is a bit too small for anything other than the lowest-end MacBook Air, and the logistics of making two versions of the M1 package would be a false economy if Apple couldn't get away with charging such a huge amount for the 16GB upgrade - but soldered-in RAM does save power and improve speed.

The particular problem with soldered-in SSD is that flash memory wears out with use in a way that RAM and other electrical components don't - and even if this is unlikely in typical workloads it could be accelerated by a software bug. At least the Studio has replaceable SSD modules - even if they're not user upgradeable - and could be repaired without changing the motherboard. Maybe the MacBook Air (and, of course, iPad) are too small to accommodate removable SSDs, but everything else should be able to, most competing PCs use M.2 without any apparent problems and even former Macs used SSD modules.

There may be some speed advantage to soldered SSD, but it's still running at a fraction of the speed of RAM (...and ultimate speed doesn't seem to figure in Apple's thinking when they only use half the SSD bus in the 256GB M2 machines to save a buck...)

 

[ahurst]

Fifteen years ago computing and technology were very different. The affordable RAM capacity doubled every couple of years and going from 2GB to 4GB was a big deal. In the storage space we had the SSD revolution thst promised much better performance. These days we get laptops shipping with super fast SSDs and humongous amounts of RAM. There is much less need for upgrades than it was before. But there is always the need for higher performance, improved mobility and improved efficiency, which are at odds with modular designs.

In support of the above, I'm pulling out this plot again:

That's the base storage capacity for every unique Mac SKU since the 80's on a logarithmic scale. In the early 2000's, you could wait a few years and replace your 8 GB IDE hard drive with an 80 GB model because storage sizes were increasing so quickly. Ever since the early 2010's, however, storage sizes have remained pretty much flat (except for the dropping of 64 GB and eventually 128 GB budget options), with the major advancements coming in the form of improved performance rather than more capacity.

As such, it's a lot less likely than it used to be that someone would upgrade their internal storage 5 years down the line to get more years from their Mac, because unless you underbought for your specific use-case there your built-in storage is likely more than enough. With the exception of high-end video editing, file sizes aren't getting any bigger, and more and more content is being pushed onto the cloud.

 

[PauloSera]

LOL we're spiralling toward catastrophic climate change and this guy is bitching about his laptop potentially being a few millimeters thicker.

Lmao. Sure bud.

 

[PauloSera]

Well hell who are these computers for then? How many young people (students) will be able to get a Mac?

For people who can afford them. /thread

 

[dandeco]

I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and my boss has said that soldered storage is not a good idea, because the law requires a storage module in a computer should be removable in case the computer gets broken and needs to be disposed of, so the storage module can then be taken out and shredded or destroyed separately. There are regulations requiring disposing of data storage modules, and my boss said that Apple could get in trouble doing this. I'm betting that's why the Mac Studio has a removable (but non-replaceable) SSD, to comply with those regulations. (I remember my boss being pretty pleased when I told him about that!)

 

[kevcube]

you're implying you have to get a new machine when you run out of storage? have you never deleted a file? If I get close to my storage limits I realize I have hundreds of gigabytes of junk, and bam, no longer close to the limits. Also there are external drives, allowing you to have the same file accessible to multiple machines. revolutionary.

 

[kevcube]

I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and my boss has said that soldered storage is not a good idea, because the law requires a storage module in a computer should be removable in case the computer gets broken and needs to be disposed of, so the storage module can then be taken out and shredded or destroyed separately. There are regulations requiring disposing of data storage modules, and my boss said that Apple could get in trouble doing this. I'm betting that's why the Mac Studio has a removable (but non-replaceable) SSD, to comply with those regulations. (I remember my boss being pretty pleased when I told him about that!)

hm. that's an awful lot of hearsay. I'm not aware of any regulations requiring removable storage. every phone is a computer, and no phones have removable storage.

 

[leman]

We want more people selling or donating or handing down "old" Macs when they're done with them because that fulfulls someone's need for a computer without another one needing to be manufactured -- with all carbon- and materials-intensive industrial activity that entails.

I fully agree with this. But why do you think Apple Silicon Macs cannot be handed down just because the components are not user-replaceable? Many of these machines will work well for many many years. The main problem of course is that the repair of an old computer would be very costly, but that would also be the case if the SSD were modular. I wish there was a good solution to this. Subscription warranty sounds like an option.

Corporations like Apple love to tout recycling as some kind of miracle, but trying to recover materials and then (hopefully) rework them into another consumer product costs a hell of a lot more energy than just having the machine continue to function well with the replacement of a small part.

It sounds intuitive, but let's not forget that modularity also costs more materials and energy. Is it really better to pay this material and energy cost for every single device than to pay a higher energy cost for some failed devices? I honestly don't know.

The particular problem with soldered-in SSD is that flash memory wears out with use in a way that RAM and other electrical components don't - and even if this is unlikely in typical workloads it could be accelerated by a software bug. At least the Studio has replaceable SSD modules - even if they're not user upgradeable - and could be repaired without changing the motherboard. Maybe the MacBook Air (and, of course, iPad) are too small to accommodate removable SSDs, but everything else should be able to, most competing PCs use M.2 without any apparent problems and even former Macs used SSD modules.

There may be some speed advantage to soldered SSD, but it's still running at a fraction of the speed of RAM (...and ultimate speed doesn't seem to figure in Apple's thinking when they only use half the SSD bus in the 256GB M2 machines to save a buck...)

Do we have some authoritative data on how big of a problem this is in reality? Yes, the story with M1 machines churning out a ludicrous amount of writes in a short time was very worrisome, but I still haven't seen any reports of M1 computers failing in larger than expected numbers (almost three years have passed, should be enough time to hit the SSD wear threshold). My almost 12 months old MacBook Pro shows 13TB writes (and I would consider myself a power user, so I probably push the disk more than an average person). I have a 1TB SSD, but even a consumer grade 256GB SSD nowadays should have the endurance in excess of 200TBW. That's over 15 years of life for a 256GB SSD life. And I would think that Apple SSDs have better endurance than average consumer SSD.

At any rate Apple seems confident enough that the SSD will last for a while if they are willing to sell you a $99/year extended warranty. Of course it sucks to be hit by an Apple repair cost for an old Mac, but as mentioned before, modular SSDs will hardly make the situation better. Sure, instead of $700 logic board replacement you'd pay only $400 for SSD+service fee... would you do it on a 7+ year old computer?

I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and my boss has said that soldered storage is not a good idea, because the law requires a storage module in a computer should be removable in case the computer gets broken and needs to be disposed of, so the storage module can then be taken out and shredded or destroyed separately. There are regulations requiring disposing of data storage modules, and my boss said that Apple could get in trouble doing this. I'm betting that's why the Mac Studio has a removable (but non-replaceable) SSD, to comply with those regulations. (I remember my boss being pretty pleased when I told him about that!)

Which law is that? Given the fact that the data on these modules is encrypted and the modules themselves are entirely useless without the controller software and in-depth knowledge on how they work, I doubt that data recovery is a practical endeavour. A group that has the resources to recover the data from a broken Apple logic board will probably have much easier time hacking your computer and stealing your data before it is broken

 

[Gudi]

I have to be honest I just cannot get over Apple‘s switch to soldered to logic board storage (I can deal with the RAM not being upgradable as there is an obvious benefit to that approach).

What's that benefit? It's not obvious to me. All I can think of is to prevent people from buying much more memory than their passively cooled thermal-throttled cpu can handle.

Anyhow there is no big fundamental difference between short-term memory and long-term storage. Soldered versus upgradeable has largely the same benefits and detriments in both cases.

Upgrading my storage later in the computers life just seems more practical and greener for me than buying a new computer when my storage runs out.

Or you could empty your storage on an external ssd drive? Those will get cheaper later in the computers life too.

I want to get the most out of my machine over its usable lifetime.

The usability doesn't really shrink with storage size, but with storage speed. You can't add a faster system bus later on. Or a faster USB port for external storage either.

I say this as someone who owned and splurged on a higher capacity model TouchBar Mac and I had so many problems with it that I never had with the thicker unibody MacBook Pro that were a dream to maintain and upgrade.

SATA 3 had a speed limit of 600MB/s. Unlucky me I had a unibody MBP from 2010 with SATA 2. While you could easily upgrade the size of storage, storage speed sucked even with an SSD.

I just wish Apple was more serious about being environmentally friendly with their business practices, as this seems pretty much in service to their bank balance and not the customer or the environment.

I bet the usable lifetime of Macs has only increased with solder and glue. As for the users ability to avoid Apple's crazy upgrade prices, that's another story.

 

[leman]

What's that benefit? It's not obvious to me. All I can think of is to prevent people from buying much more memory than their passively cooled thermal-throttled cpu can handle.

Soldered-on components can have much higher connector density and boast better electrical properties. It’s very hard to have modular high-bandwidth, energy efficient modular interfaces. In fact, I don’t think there are any examples of such interfaces in computing industry. It is no accident that GPU RAM is not upgradeable for example.

Apples uses around 900 (!!!) electrical pins per 64-bit RAM module on M1 package. M1 Max has a 512-bit RAM bus. Imagine how much space you would need to accommodate a modular RAM system of this kind and how much it would cost.

Anyhow there is no big fundamental difference between short-term memory and long-term storage. Soldered versus upgradeable has largely the same benefits and detriments in both cases.

The operational requirements are vastly different. RAM needs To be much faster and operate much more efficiently.

 

[Queen6]

We're getting that way with RAM - although the base 8GB that Apple is pushing is a bit too small for anything other than the lowest-end MacBook Air, and the logistics of making two versions of the M1 package would be a false economy if Apple couldn't get away with charging such a huge amount for the 16GB upgrade - but soldered-in RAM does save power and improve speed.

The particular problem with soldered-in SSD is that flash memory wears out with use in a way that RAM and other electrical components don't - and even if this is unlikely in typical workloads it could be accelerated by a software bug. At least the Studio has replaceable SSD modules - even if they're not user upgradeable - and could be repaired without changing the motherboard. Maybe the MacBook Air (and, of course, iPad) are too small to accommodate removable SSDs, but everything else should be able to, most competing PCs use M.2 without any apparent problems and even former Macs used SSD modules.

There may be some speed advantage to soldered SSD, but it's still running at a fraction of the speed of RAM (...and ultimate speed doesn't seem to figure in Apple's thinking when they only use half the SSD bus in the 256GB M2 machines to save a buck...)

Just don't buy it what so ever, 8GB is a lot of RAM for basic use. The whole bigger numbers, buy more is mostly a sales & marketing ploy which many fall into. Ever considered why all manufactures inhouse upgrades are so egregiously priced?

Boosted margins plain and simple. Even a base model M1 Air is a very capable computer that can put many a larger system to shame. M2 Air having a reduction in R/W storage speed is disappointing, equally I suspect Apple is up against the wall with pricing.

If 8/256 was inadequate Apple would increase as anyone who likes, loathes, or at very least understands a little of Apple's mantra it's about the user experience, its paramount only to profit. Given how much data Apple hoovers up, they likely have a good grasp of the majority of user's needs...

Q-6

 

[MayaUser]

I work for an electronics recycling/reselling company, and my boss has said that soldered storage is not a good idea, because the law requires a storage module in a computer should be removable in case the computer gets broken and needs to be disposed of, so the storage module can then be taken out and shredded or destroyed separately. There are regulations requiring disposing of data storage modules, and my boss said that Apple could get in trouble doing this. I'm betting that's why the Mac Studio has a removable (but non-replaceable) SSD, to comply with those regulations. (I remember my boss being pretty pleased when I told him about that!)

maybe in some countries its a law about that but i doubt it, if you can point it to us...but we saw how laws can change and how quickly so no...tech should not follow the laws, but the laws should adapt to the tech improvements

 

[Queen6]

Soldered-on components can have much higher connector density and boast better electrical properties. It’s very hard to have modular high-bandwidth, energy efficient modular interfaces. In fact, I don’t think there are any examples of such interfaces in computing industry. It is no accident that GPU RAM is not upgradeable for example.

Apples uses around 900 (!!!) electrical pins per 64-bit RAM module on M1 package. M1 Max has a 512-bit RAM bus. Imagine how much space you would need to accommodate a modular RAM system of this kind and how much it would cost.



The operational requirements are vastly different. RAM needs To be much faster and operate much more efficiently.

People want workstation performance with tremendous battery life in small form factors this is Apple's solution, and it works. That said there's a cost to it, Apple isn't sending Mac's to Mar's it's predominantly selling consumer products to consumers and despite what some think has to keep the pricing reasonable to remain competitive.

As with all Apple could design a fully user upgradable MBP with a ten year guaranteed Lifecyle, equally I doubt many would be up for the asking price. In industry some notebooks range well past $15K, far more if for specific purpose.

Q-6

 

[MayaUser]

People want workstation performance with tremendous battery life in small form factors this is Apple's solution, and it works. That said there's a cost to it, Apple isn't sending Mac's to Mar's it's predominantly selling consumer products to consumers and despite what some think has to keep the pricing reasonable to remain competitive.

As with all Apple could design a fully user upgradable MBP with a ten year guaranteed Lifecyle, equally I doubt many would be up for the asking price. In industry some notebooks range well past $15K, far more if for specific purpose.

Q-6

Agree. But those people who wants that ...are the casual people who doesnt even use over 60% of their capabilities of their devices because those who are real professionals understand everything and every compromises that are taken and the laws of physics

 

[Gudi]

Apple seems to be straying further and further from "professional" systems. I would think that most businesses don't want to have to replace entire machines due to part failures, and the ability to replace individual components is commonplace enterprise markets.

Stop thinking! Repair and maintenance is a huge labor cost. Industry by far prefers the unupgradable tool that just works out of the box. Tinkering with your PC is a private hobby for people who don't calculate their own labor costs.

 

[MayaUser]

Stop thinking! Repair and maintenance is a huge labor cost. Industry by far prefers the unupgradable tool that just works out of the box. Tinkering with your PC is a private hobby for people who don't calculate their own labor costs.

Totally agree and this is true even for mid level business not even talking about the large ones
I prefer to change all the work electronics after the warranty is gone

 

[filmbuff]

Apple went to soldered RAM 10 years ago, and soldered storage 6 years ago. What's the point in complaining about this now?

 

[Lihp8270]

There’s a difference between the Mac Studio and a MBP, though. One sits on a desk, the other faces vibration and shocks. Connectors will be less reliable in a portable device. Despite everyone‘s speculative insistence that it’s a money grab, there are also legitimate technical reasons as well. I’m sure each machine goes through a reliability and service strategy analysis during development.

For the MS, the vibration constraints are minimal and the cost of swapping a motherboard with an Ultra is high. For a MBP, the vibration requirements are higher. For a 24” iMac the cost of replacing the mother board is lower.

Vibration means they can’t use a slot?

My laptop which used socketed ram and storage is rated at 0.66 GRMS max in use and 1.3 GRMS in storage.

140G of shock in use and 160G of shock in storage.

These numbers are far greater than a portable machine would see in reasonable use.

 

[MayaUser]

Apple went to soldered RAM 10 years ago, and soldered storage 6 years ago. What's the point in complaining about this now?

He is a new member, and we already saw how many new members makes kind of pointless new topics

 

[Gudi]

I do hope that they will move all of their computers to use slotted SSDs, like what they do on Mac Studio.

Yeah, but the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is a $4,000+ computer. Even Apple doesn't want to throw that kind of money away over one faulty SSD chip. Upgradability and repairability is a Pro feature. The average user benefits more from a dust-prove enclosure.