What is the expected shelf life of the SoC M series devices?

[theorist9]

My experience has been that when chips fail, like the graphics card or the ram, that most of the time the computer is so old that it cannot be repaired with parts that are easily obtainable by the average person. The usual response is to buy a new computer. The exception is when the hard drive fails, that can often be replaced. Usually you’re looking at 10 years or more of service.
.....

I don’t think a computer’s lifespan is massively affected by warranty. Warranty is just to catch manufacturing defects or a bad batch of machines, faults near the beginning of the life of a computer.

That's been my experience with desktops, but not with laptops. I owned the 2008, 2011, and 2014 15" MacBook Pro's, and all failed after about 3 years (fortunately, in every case, just before the end of AppleCare). The 2008 had a GPU issue, the 2011 had a thermal issue with the GPU, and the 2014 had a thermal issue with the GPU, a swollen battery, and a peeling screen coating.

While the MBP's were always given adequate air flow (elevated on a RainDesign mStand*), it's possible the GPU thermal issues occurred because they spent most of their time as a desktop replacement driving an external monitor (which means they were always running the discrete GPU), in a room that was often on the warm side (low 80's in the summer and fall).

OTOH (or perhaps I should say consistent with this, since they were both desktops with great thermals), my PowerMac G5, and my custom-built Pentium PC, never had an issue, except for a failed HD in the G5.

Because of the better thermals, the AS laptops should not have the thermal issues I experienced. Still, you can have issues with the battery, screen, ports, etc. Here are my two pieces of advice:
1) Get AppleCare!
2) If you get a laptop, get a stand to elevate it above your desk when you use it at home, and use it with an external KB and mouse. This will protect it from spills.

*Here's what I use: https://www.raindesigninc.com/mstand.html

 

[theorist9]

The state of the art study is still this one: https://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

It's a bit old, but the technology has not changed significantly, so it probably still holds. And the failure rates vs. time of ownership is pretty much linear according to their findings.

I found this interesting:

"There is also a notable acceleration of malfunctions in the second and third years. While fewer than 5% of laptops failed from malfunctions in the first year, an additional 8% fail in each subsequent year."

What that tells me is you don't have many settling-in failures, so the initial QC, on average, is pretty good.

What's amusing in that the accident rate is higher in year 2 than year 1 (4.5% vs. 2.5%). I guess some people start off being very careful with their new laptops, but that wears off after a year. Kind of like some relationships....

 

[Freeangel1]

The only thing I really worry about is the tiny Soldered in SSD.
All SSD's fail. it's just a question of when?
And does it render your MacBook Pro or Mac Studio a useless piece of TRASH because you can not afford to replace the SSD or APPLE won't do the repair.

I'm holding out specifically because of this situation.

Would be scary to spend $4000 plus for a Mac Studio Ultra and the SSD craps out in 3 years or less

I may chose to build an Alder Lake 16 core i9 Hack in Tosh. This way everything is repairable.
I can dual boot Windows 11 and MacOS Ventura.
I can Play PC Games.
Should be as fast as a Mac Studio Ultra but the SSD can be replaced or upgraded.


Don't want to make a costly mistake.

Waiting for the first users of M1's to start complaining their SSD's are bad.

 

[leman]

Would be scary to spend $4000 plus for a Mac Studio Ultra and the SSD craps out in 3 years or less

SSDs in the Ultra are modular and should be easily replaceable by Apple. MacBook Pro... not so much

 

[theorist9]

The only thing I really worry about is the tiny Soldered in SSD.
All SSD's fail. it's just a question of when?
And does it render your MacBook Pro or Mac Studio a useless piece of TRASH because you can not afford to replace the SSD or APPLE won't do the repair.

I'm holding out specifically because of this situation.

Would be scary to spend $4000 plus for a Mac Studio Ultra and the SSD craps out in 3 years or less

I may chose to build an Alder Lake 16 core i9 Hack in Tosh. This way everything is repairable.
I can dual boot Windows 11 and MacOS Ventura.
I can Play PC Games.
Should be as fast as a Mac Studio Ultra but the SSD can be replaced or upgraded.


Don't want to make a costly mistake.

Waiting for the first users of M1's to start complaining their SSD's are bad.

I don't know how things work outside the US, but if you're in the US none of this is a concern—just buy three years of AppleCare+ (for the Studio, it's only $129 from my university's bookstore), and continue to purchase the yearly subscription ($60) after the 3 years expires.

You'll likely make back most of what you spend on AppleCare+ in increased resale value, since the warranty is transferrable. If you're selling, say, a $5000 Ultra for ~$2000 five years from now, being able to offer it with an Apple warranty should easily add ~$200 to the resale value.

I've had Apple do lots of warranty repairs, and have never gotten any pushback at all. Quite the opposite—they're always happy to help. I can't imagine a case where your SSD fails and they wouldn't replace it, unless you've done something that obviously violates the warranty.

 

[satcomer]

To me this is pointless! Every Mac I ever seen (old Mac User) the limit for me is when you can't upgrade anymore!

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Over the years especially on older Mac Book Pros dust was the largest problem because I still gave the advice on old intel Book Pro pros to open their Mac and tip it and blow the dust out of it!

don't u think that the MacBook air is way less prone to dust accumulation than any other Mac nay any laptop?

 

[DHagan4755]

None of my Macs have — at any point — sat on a shelf

 

[NT1440]

2015 13” MBP still running strong with original battery. It will be passed on to my girlfriend when I move on to an M2 (or M3, life is expensive).

I’m recovering information on a client’s 2008 iMac. I say recovering not because it doesn’t work (it still does), but usb 2 and FireWire 400 means it’s going to be more time effective to pull the drive.

Given there are plenty of iPad 2’s out there that still work fine I think the M series machines will be usable for a shockingly long time.

 

[SnackyD]

Heat is the #1 killer of electronics. Since the new M1 chips are extremely efficient thermal wise, I expect the device to last at least 8 years for me, since my chip temperature idles at around 52 C 99% of the time.

 

[theorist9]

.

 

[izzy0242mr]

Oh sure, a big proportion of failures will occur in the first year or two. That's exactly why we have the mandatory warranty.

But I am talking about something else, the risk that your machine will fail afterwards. Estimates show that there is more or less a 5-8% chance of failure per year. So if you made it past the base warranty period (let's say 2 years in the EU), there is still at least a 10-15% chance that your laptop will fail before year 5. And repairs on the devices, due to their integrated nature are expensive. So that's the choice to make: take a 15% risk of paying an average $700 or more for a an eventual repair over a 5-year ownership, or pay a smaller lump sum per year and have the repairs taken care of at no extra expense.

I think it in the end it comes down to how often your devices break.

I've owned 4 different Macs since 2011 and zero of them have ever broken in any way. The battery on one (a 2011 MBP) got low so I replaced it manually, but beyond that I never had any issues with any of them. Buying AppleCare+ for each one would mean I would have spent over $1000 that would have purchased nothing for me, and now I have $1000 more which—if something does happen—can go toward repairs, but more likely than not can be used for something else. Obviously it's always a gamble if you don't get an extended warranty, but yeah.

Also, I bought all but 1 of my Macs used so I didn't even have a warranty option on several. My current used one came with part of an extended warranty (which is nice), but I don't buy most of my electronics used for environmental + financial reasons, so.

 

[Tagbert]

Oh sure, a big proportion of failures will occur in the first year or two. That's exactly why we have the mandatory warranty.

But I am talking about something else, the risk that your machine will fail afterwards. Estimates show that there is more or less a 5-8% chance of failure per year. So if you made it past the base warranty period (let's say 2 years in the EU), there is still at least a 10-15% chance that your laptop will fail before year 5. And repairs on the devices, due to their integrated nature are expensive. So that's the choice to make: take a 15% risk of paying an average $700 or more for a an eventual repair over a 5-year ownership, or pay a smaller lump sum per year and have the repairs taken care of at no extra expense.

That’s the problem with extended warranties. The companies backing those warranties know the numbers too. They need to cover the cost of those repairs/replacements plus a profit margin. You are better off putting that money into savings to be applied to the next computer if this one dies.

 

[theorist9]

That’s the problem with extended warranties. The companies backing those warranties know the numbers too. They need to cover the cost of those repairs/replacements plus a profit margin. You are better off putting that money into savings to be applied to the next computer if this one dies.

But remember that they only need to charge enough to cover the costs of the repair to them, plus a profit margin, while you would need to cover the costs of the repair to you (which could be, say, 3 x what the repair costs them).

Also, you do get some of your money back when you sell the computer if you have AppleCare+ on it, since that provides nearly complete protection to the buyer, who otherwise has no recourse if there's a hidden problem that crops up after the sale.

It is curious that Apple's actuaries determined they needed to charge so much more for AppleCare on the 16" MBP than the 14" ($400 vs. $280), particularly given that equally-spec'd models differ in cost by only $200. Is there something Apple knows about the potential reliability of the 16" model that we don't, or is this simply because they expect the typical 16" is much more likely to be purchased high-spec'd than the typical 14"?

 

[jav6454]

Heat is the #1 killer of electronics. Since the new M1 chips are extremely efficient thermal wise, I expect the device to last at least 8 years for me, since my chip temperature idles at around 52 C 99% of the time.

Excessive heat, but agreed on the efficiency of M1. M2 right now is unknown.

 

[MacCheetah3]

The only thing I really worry about is the tiny Soldered in SSD.
All SSD's fail. it's just a question of when?
And does it render your MacBook Pro or Mac Studio a useless piece of TRASH because you can not afford to replace the SSD or APPLE won't do the repair.

I'm holding out specifically because of this situation.

Would be scary to spend $4000 plus for a Mac Studio Ultra and the SSD craps out in 3 years or less

I may chose to build an Alder Lake 16 core i9 Hack in Tosh. This way everything is repairable.
I can dual boot Windows 11 and MacOS Ventura.
I can Play PC Games.
Should be as fast as a Mac Studio Ultra but the SSD can be replaced or upgraded.


Don't want to make a costly mistake.

Waiting for the first users of M1's to start complaining their SSD's are bad.

Fortunately, this argument/discussion has been greatly blown out of proportion. Beyond DOA or within the warranty period, how many SSD failures have you experienced or even read about?

Looking at the issue from one perspective, most premium/high-end SSDs have 300 TBW and higher. Although, I have seen manufacturer estimates/specs as low as 100 TBW. An anecdote, after about a year of use my Mac mini’s SSD:

Power On Time: 344 hours (14 days 8 hours)
Power Cycle Count: 362
Data Units Written: 14,440,312 (7.4 TB)
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Keeping things simple... Presumably, I should be able to get at least 10 years out of these NAND chips. In other words, the computer will probably be vintage/obsolete by the time there’s any real concern about internal storage failure.

P.S. Even on the “PC” side, how many users upgrade SSDs versus replacing them due to failure? Again, I have not heard/read about many.

 

[leman]

That’s the problem with extended warranties. The companies backing those warranties know the numbers too. They need to cover the cost of those repairs/replacements plus a profit margin. You are better off putting that money into savings to be applied to the next computer if this one dies.

That's why I am suggesting that the maximal price for these warranties be regulated and fixed by a government agency. E.g. 5% of the original price per year.

 

[theorist9]

That's why I am suggesting that the maximal price for these warranties be regulated and fixed by a government agency. E.g. 5% of the original price per year.

I think that's problematic because there's such a vast difference in the quality of warranty coverage. At the top end, there's warranties like Apple's—any issue other than accidental damage is fixed, no questions asked. But then there's most other warranties I've encountered; these have deductibles, exclusions for wear and tear, don't cover all components, and don't pay the repair center directly, but make you pay for the repair and then require you to jump through all sorts of documentation hoops to get reimbursed.

I don't think it would be good policy to place the same cost limit on companies that provide the first type of warranty and companies that provide the second type. It would just encourage everyone to provide the poorest possible warranties. It's a product like any other. Just as you don't want a regulation that says "laptops cannot be sold for more than $x", you don't want something like that for warranties either.

In addition, you can't calculate reasonable warranty costs based on purchase price or any other simple metric, because different products have vastly different reliabilities. The only way to calculate what warranties should cost is by looking at how much profit the companies make, like is done for health insurance companies. But doing that for warranty companies would be too costly.

Instead, if you really want to regulate things, have regulation that will reduce the number of bad warranties. In particular, require them to clearly specify their limitations in plain, simple language—especially any aspect of their practices that creates a barrier for consumers (like the documentation requirement). And prosecute the scammers that deny legitimate claims.