[HN Gopher] Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive
failed
Author : concinds
Score : 326 points
Date : 2021-11-02 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bombich.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bombich.com)
| concinds wrote:
| Article is from May but received no attention, and I believe most
| people are unaware of this; the Mac needs an iBoot on the
| internal drive in order to boot from any volume, and thus cannot
| boot from an external drive if the internal one has failed.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Once again Apple is showing how to do things stupidly. They
| won't allow you to boot from an external HDD/SSD if the
| internal one fails. On top of that they make it extremely
| difficult to replace the internal disk on your own. Carbon Copy
| Cloner has been my number one program all these years, but I
| think that Apple is pushing us loyal and technical competent
| people away. They just want "simple" users.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| They want you to take the device to the dealership.
| easton wrote:
| Perhaps, but there's a security angle to this as well.
| iBoot is stored on the internal SSD. If you want to bypass
| the internal SSD entirely for the boot process, you must
| now trust that any external drives plugged in have non-evil
| versions of iBoot installed, as the Mac will now have to go
| to every external device and say "can you tell me how to
| boot?". If the internal drive is the only place to get
| iBoot it makes the security strategy way easier (since the
| only way to write to it is via DFU connected to Apple
| Configurator). We know only people with the keys can modify
| the internal drive, so we don't have to keep certificates
| or something else around to verify it is trustworthy. Who
| knows where the external drive's copy of iBoot is from.
|
| You could make it so there's a break glass copy of iBoot on
| another chip, but then that's something they can't update
| if there's a bug.
| [deleted]
| nyxaiur wrote:
| The SSDs of 2015-2017 macbooks start failing and they are
| soldered on the board. I have a 12" that I can only boot
| from external now otherwise the device would be dead. With
| the M1 models you don't even have the chance to do this.
| Apple won't even change the failed ssds they will sell you
| a new logic board for the prize of a new machine. It's
| infuriating and the only reason I won't buy a machine until
| they make user replaceable storage the norm again.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't think it will be the price of a new machine, it
| will be the price of a flat rate repair which is a fixed
| price for any sort of work past a certain point (as far
| as the genius bar worker described to me at least). For
| my 2020 laptop it could explode in a fireball and Apple
| will repair it for $418 before tax, my flat rate for this
| laptop.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| 680 Euros quoted from the apple store in berlin for a
| 2012 macbook.
| asdff wrote:
| Everything apple is vastly more expensive in europe,
| can't be compared to US contexts. You pay a few hundred
| more at least for iphones too. Seriously, a good
| population of people actually fly to Portland to stock up
| on apple gear, and fly back to Europe or India or other
| places. No sales taxes in Oregon too so you save even
| more, sometimes its enough to pay for airfare compared to
| buying in California even with 10% sales taxes being
| somewhat typical there.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| I don't think it would turn out a plus if I fly over to
| get it serviced.
| [deleted]
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I noticed that AppleCare, which use to be a one-time
| purchase of 3-year coverage, is now offered as an annual
| purchase that can be renewed indefinitely. Presumably
| this means that, as long as I pay my $150 rent, they will
| replace my logic board, with its failed SSD, for free?
| aluminussoma wrote:
| I suspect they began soldering it because the cable
| connecting the disk drive had a lot of problems in older
| MacBooks. Soldering may have been an easy fix for that.
|
| I hate the soldering, too. I'm just offering an
| explanation that may make some sense given the context.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| pcie and nvme ssds use ports that are similar to ram
| slots there is no more cable involved.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And 2.5 inch drives can and often do have ports directly
| mounted on the laptop motherboard. If you don't want to
| use a cable, then you simply don't use a cable. Nothing
| else changes.
| handrous wrote:
| It's less the cable than the connector, so, similar
| trouble with nvme ports (and ram slots, for that matter).
| I've _barely_ had exposure to supporting laptop hardware,
| and have seen "thing shimmied loose" or "contact
| corroded" as the root cause of problems more than once.
| adolph wrote:
| What cable? As far as I can recall, everything not
| directly soldered since about 2013 was ssd mounted to
| motherboard using either M.2 or a similar proprietary
| connector. I suspect it was Cook-ish financial
| engineering and that trademark Apple hubris (that they
| finally got over to re-add ports in the most recent MBP).
| aluminussoma wrote:
| Here's an older thread on the cable:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7794520
|
| This was pre-2013. So perhaps the proprietary connector
| was a reaction to the cable?
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I like your Ockham razor reasoning, but given the history
| of this company, it would be very difficult to defend
| this claim. Soldering the SSD and memory made the device
| unupgradeable (in contrast to pre-2013 models where I
| have currently have 2x2TB!).
| swarnie wrote:
| > Once again Apple is showing how to do things stupidly.
|
| To be fair if you or your company are dumb enough to buy
| these devices your probably also of a mind to take it in for
| expensive repairs.
|
| Its perfect business logic from the fruity chaps.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Is this also why you can't install Monterey on a non-Apple SSD? I
| haven't seen an article acknowledging this problem but others are
| experiencing it in various forums.
|
| My 2013 Mac Pro had an SSD failure so I replaced it with a
| standard M.2 drive and an adapter. Can't upgrade.
| neilalexander wrote:
| I replaced the Fusion Drive in my 2017 iMac with an off-the-
| shelf Samsung SSD and had no problems at all upgrading to
| Monterey.
| DemiGuru wrote:
| This is old information and no longer the case -
| https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.htm...
| tyingq wrote:
| Though who knows what types of experimentation, trial and error
| SuperDuper went through to make it work.
| DemiGuru wrote:
| I know that David Nanian and co worked with Apple to address
| the issue(s) that prevented them from providing a bootable
| backup.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| The ability to create bootable backups on external drives
| as you describe, does not necessarily conflict with the
| inability to boot from external drives as the post link
| describes.
| concinds wrote:
| I'm not sure your link disproves this article. The first
| paragraph just says bootable backups are supported (they are by
| CCC too), and the rest of the page hasn't been changed in
| years.
|
| The SuperDuper blog says:
|
| > Note that, as I indicated above, M1 Macs can't readily boot
| from external drives. There are things you can do, if you have
| an external Thunderbolt 3 drive (USB-C isn't sufficient), but
| even that won't work if the internal drive is dead. Unless
| things change, bootable backups are basically a thing of the
| past on M1-based Macs. [0]
|
| in a January article, and I haven't seen anything that
| contradicts it in more recent articles. Mind linking?
|
| (Note that booting from USB-C is now supported on AS Macs, but
| booting when the internal drive is dead is not)
|
| [0]:
| https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/commen...
| DemiGuru wrote:
| The blog entry you're referencing is old. Please follow the
| link I had provided - https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/Supe
| rDuperDescription.htm... - note the recent version number and
| its respective description.
| concinds wrote:
| Again, bootable backups work fine on Apple Silicon, but not
| when the internal drive has failed, since booting requires
| an iBoot volume stored on the internal drive. I believe
| there's a misunderstanding, and SuperDuper hasn't found any
| workaround for this.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> If you were making your backups bootable in case of hardware
| failure, then that 's an extra logistical chore that you can now
| retire from your backup strategy._
|
| That's some premium-quality snark, right there.
| mahesh_rm wrote:
| Not really knowledgeable of the specifics: Is it really currently
| unfeasible for a repair shop to figure out how to re-solder a new
| SSD, and "flash" the T2 chip?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Apple Silicon macs lack T2 chips, and you cannot "resolder the
| SSD" on modern Macs, really, you'd need to resolder 8-16 chips
| on the actual main board, make sure they are the right kind of
| chips (not something Apple will tell you), and then pray it
| works --- did it fail because there's a proprietary process of
| pairing SSD chips to the motherboard, or because one BGA ball
| on one of the chips didn't sit correctly? Or because it was the
| controller that died? It's a nightmare to test and pinpoint,
| you're better off replacing the thing.
|
| There was a video of Louis Rossmann where he explained why he
| didn't want to do component level repairs on new macs if it was
| RAM or SSD. I trust his expertise on the matter.
| mahesh_rm wrote:
| Great answer, thank you :)
| xondono wrote:
| I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a
| hardware perspective I would say it's a good change.
|
| Instead of having a SPI flash memory with the firmware they've
| gone ahead and merged that into a single flash memory.
|
| It's weird because we are used to see disks as independent
| modules, but for these devices that's simply a useless
| distinction, something that we keep for legacy reasons, not
| because it provides any meaningful advantage.
| Chocola wrote:
| There is still a SPI chip from Winbond on board. Also the NVRAM
| contains variables like "boot-volume". Question is if you can
| easily change it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Being able to swap disks is a meaningful advantage. After all,
| it's the part most likely to fail first, and often first
| limitation people hit on a machine.
|
| Storage tech is still advancing at a decent clip. In 5 years,
| there will probably be 4-6TB drives on the market with 2-4x the
| throughput for the same price as 1TB drives today.
| slownews45 wrote:
| We keep on hearing about folks needing to swap out disks out
| that are broken who ALSO don't have apple care AND are out of
| warranty? I mean, how many people is this vs the millions /
| billions of idevices out there? Apple simplifies / integrates
| like crazy - that is a focus for them. No separate bios flash
| - my guess is others start copying them personally.
|
| Because apple products hold value so well, I just sell me 2
| year old stuff and it can really knock down cost of the new
| stuff.
| kuschku wrote:
| And the people buying your used devices have no apple care
| and are out of warranty, so they'll complain if they can't
| repair it.
|
| Apple devices will stop holding value so well the less
| repairable they get, which in turn will also increase your
| costs.
| slownews45 wrote:
| The "unrepairable" apple devices have far FAR higher
| resale value and lifetimes than most the Huawei / OPPO /
| etc used phones out there.
|
| This is really the proof point.
|
| This is a combination of apples total system engineering
| and software update story. You don't need applecare to
| get updtes on an iphone.
|
| For example, looking at recently sold items on Ebay -
| Iphone 5S 32GB is going for $100. That's an 8 year old
| phone.
|
| Take your 8 year old HTC - nothing close to that.
| xondono wrote:
| But that's another different battle, and has nothing to do
| with this change. Disks were already soldered down, and
| that's a tradeoff.
|
| I get that for some people swappable disks are great, but
| those people couldn't really use pre-M1 macs. The only change
| is that instead of two different interfaces for non volatile
| storage, now there's one.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Consider options like Framework laptops that let you actually own
| your hardware, and repair it.
| RKearney wrote:
| Looks like all their laptops use Intel processors? Do they let
| you control and disable Intel's management engine on that CPU?
| If not then I don't see how one really "owns" the hardware.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Dell allows you to disable it (but it's not really
| repairable) system76 and librem I think has it removed (but
| they're not worth it for the specs).
| for1nner wrote:
| s76 blogged that they're working towards manu of their own
| laptop machines soon rather than the clevo stock, so that
| value might change soon.
|
| Then again, their tower is exorbitant, so...maybe not.
| yumraj wrote:
| I for one will, if they were to make a 15" :)
| arbuge wrote:
| Any PC will let you boot from an external drive if the internal
| drive fails (or even if it doesn't).
| hyperstar wrote:
| As soon as they make it possible to install free firmware such
| as coreboot.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| We're comparing to Apple. Have fun freebooting that.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It happened before:
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc2NTU
|
| Although, true, I suspect their modern stuff will never
| reach the same point.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Then the M1 trounces this laptop in power and energy usage
| and there's no contest.
| Milner08 wrote:
| If only they were available in the UK
| darrenf wrote:
| I'm in the UK too, finding myself unwilling to pay the new
| Mac prices and getting impatient for the framework. So,
| recently I've been considering a StarBook Mk V from
| https://starlabs.systems/
|
| They publish a full disassembly guide[0], so I'm reasonably
| sure the whole thing is repairable and upgradable if
| necessary. Lots of options for custom build at order time
| including coreboot. I'm a bit hesitant about a 1920x1080
| display but otherwise extremely tempted.
|
| [0] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-
| com...
| GordonS wrote:
| I hadn't come across this laptop before, thanks for
| sharing!
|
| It looks _almost_ perfect, but only having a single USB-C
| port is a disappointing choice :(
| fsflover wrote:
| Perhaps you can consider this one instead:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before
| someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and
| the company might be gone forever. You can buy common business
| laptops such as thinkpad and swap the parts easily and cheaply.
| People aren't swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care
| about performance; they're getting an i5 from 2018.
|
| None of these swappable parts are unique aside from the
| processor (mine is soldered), I can replace all my parts and my
| laptop cost under $200.
| novok wrote:
| TBH until very recently with the apple M1 archtecture CPU
| perf peaked about 7 years ago and laptops never really had a
| good GPU story. Improvements have been fairly incremental
| since then. Yes lower nm processes reduce energy usage, but
| we are even starting to approach a wall with that too now.
|
| Personal laptops and desktops have become things you replace
| at car intervals now. And phones are starting to approach
| that too.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| M1 is just a continuation of the same, it's just fanless,
| cooler, less energy usage and optimized for a few types of
| uses (very useful for web). CPUs really haven't had a jump
| since sandy/ivy bridge, and GPUs got much better with the
| nvidia models in 2016, but it didn't show up in the real
| world as much as it did in running machine learning
| algorithms. Gaming laptops existed with good if overly hot
| and expensive GPUs.
| anthk wrote:
| My AMD Turion 2 based laptop has a "new" SSD and it rocks.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| "It's a silly idea in tech, my computer does the same thing".
|
| Framework may not be for the purpose of upgrading a laptop
| incrementally for ten years, but it has the core competency
| of _intending_ to let you repair every component of your
| laptop as needed, while having the profile of a slim but
| powerful machine. They are the anti-apple from that
| perspective.
|
| Your $200 laptop is not as good as the Framework laptop. You
| either bought a Chromebook, or you bought used meaning
| someone else ate depreciation, or you're comparing apples to
| oranges.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I use a used business laptop. My programs don't care if
| their being run off depreciated hardware. Even if you
| bought a new one you'd still have access to all these cheap
| replacement parts and common skus. It's still better for
| replacing parts cheaply and easily. If you want a
| repairable device for cheap, you aren't going to buy new
| devices from new unknown companies that have a monopoly
| over the parts production. The aftermarket for iPhone
| batteries is so good it doesn't matter if they're
| proprietary batteries over open batteries nobody has. Even
| PinePhone piggybacks off Samsung batteries.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| I disagree. My thinkpad x230t is still going strong nearly 10
| years later (extreme example). With 16GB of ram and an SSD
| it's still a decently capable machine.
|
| If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_
| computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or
| if you work on large codebases, etc.
|
| But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years
| with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten faster, but the
| internet is still usable on a 10 year old machine.
|
| I've replaced my battery once already, but consider your
| keyboard/screen are likely things to break at any point in
| time with accidents.
|
| And we're comparing this to apple, a company that has been
| basically DRM'ing components - even if you can buy the
| replacement you can't use it without it being "programmed" by
| apple.
|
| EDIT: Also note that the bare minimum models from 10 years
| ago are likely too slow nowadays, I mean to compare this to
| the medium-upper range devices of the time, potentially with
| relatively low cost upgrades like an SSD.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| I still use a ThinkPad T420 running Linux for some
| projects. It's a tank, practically everything is
| replaceable (unlike in my MBP, which has already had one
| Butterfly Keyboard failure...) and Sandy Bridge CPUs are
| honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most
| complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist
| nonsense.
|
| We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are
| good enough and commoditized to the point where they should
| be lasting 10+ years. Instead, we're moving toward a 4-year
| maximum with everything sealed up and soldered, so you can
| throw it on the e-waste pile and replace it to keep
| "infinite" growth chugging. The iMac is particularly
| offensive.
|
| What Foundation is doing should be the norm, _by law_.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You agree with all my points and the fact we both have
| thinkpads, what do you disagree with?
|
| The thinkpads esp batteries from 2013 suck them most. DRM,
| and expensive, 2012 has no DRM and 2014 and up has way
| cheaper aftermarket.
| narraturgy wrote:
| This is a tangential question. I adore my Thinkpad x230t
| but it has a whopping ~1 hour battery life at this point.
| Do you leave yours permanently plugged in or do you have
| some sort of modern battery solution for our ancient beast
| with an amazing keyboard?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You can hack the bios to remove the DRM and use 2012
| aftermarket batteries, or replace the cells. I dumped my
| x230, not worth the horribly priced aftermarket (if you
| break your screen it's almost as expensive as another
| laptop and you'll need to repair it). I love my newer
| x250 with no DRM for WiFi, 2x SSD slots, cheap batteries
| that can hotswap, cheaper 1080p IPS replacement screens,
| and 11hr+ battery life. The x230 already lost the classic
| keyboard, the new one is fine, and the speakers are
| retardedly still on the bottom but it's much louder.
| amatecha wrote:
| Ah yeah, the unlock to do this is called "1vyrain",
| right? https://github.com/n4ru/1vyrain/ Friend was
| telling me about it as he accidentally ordered a non-
| Lenovo battery and was considering sending it back but
| also considering trying this "unlock".
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That looks very nice, before you had to flash the bios
| yourself, I never heard of it. I just got lazy and never
| flashed the bios, I'll set time to use this. Makes the
| battery replacement much less painful, thank you!
| amatecha wrote:
| No problem! Yeah it looks a bit scary to me so I'll only
| try it if I can really dedicate some time and focus on
| it, and only if I really want to install the mod. I think
| this same mod is needed if you want to use X220 keyboard
| on the X230.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| I ended up just buying a new battery for my t540p. I was
| reluctant to because I didn't think it could possibly
| last much longer with the abuse it's been subjected to,
| but, it's still going strong a year later.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They're so much cheaper than the 2013 ones. I love the
| new battery platform.
| amatecha wrote:
| Thinking of how the MNT Reform designed their battery
| solution[0], I wonder if it's possible to build a
| "battery enclosure" where you can just drop in a bunch of
| LiFePo4 cells, so you can just purchase commodity
| batteries. It seems super wasteful to buy a complete new
| battery every time because it's just the cells inside
| that lose energy capacity...
|
| [0]
| https://mntre.com/reform2/handbook/parts.html#battery-
| packs
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Wonder what the benefit of battery packs are? Why not
| just have 18650s directly insert into the laptop?
| javchz wrote:
| That's the reason I jumped to the T430. Same CPU, but can
| get a 70++ battery for 6-9 hours worth of battery, but
| kinda the same concept. The only bad thing, you need to
| mod the keyboard for an t420 for the vintage thinkpad
| experience.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| I've had the same issue, I've replaced the battery once
| but I've found that if you're running any type of
| workload then ~1 hour is the best you can hope for.
| Luckily I rarely need it mobile for more then an hour,
| but I might look into modding the battery.
| eropple wrote:
| On the other hand, my x200t, which isn't that much older,
| is minimally functional for the web and is effectively
| nonfunctional for YouTube.
|
| I keep it around because it works as a kiosk in my
| recording studio, but that's about it.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| mpv with --script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp allows
| to watch Youtube videos with a fraction of the system
| load that Youtube demands in a browser.
| amatecha wrote:
| Coincidentally I just bought a ThinkPad X230T this past
| weekend and it's powered on next to me at this moment! It
| runs great. I actually bought a couple, and a regular X230.
| Such nice machines, and very repairable. I am observing the
| fate of modern computing and trying to get a few easily-
| repairable machines to hopefully last a long time, rather
| than weird difficult-to-repair stuff. I have absolutely
| zero interest in brand new machines that are increasingly
| locked down with impossible-to-repair and "you don't really
| own this computer" features.
|
| The X230 was having some weird power/sensor issue so I
| ordered a replacement motherboard for like $40 CAD in case
| it dies. It could be years before I need it, but like, this
| stuff costs peanuts and I am so much more comfortable using
| a computer I know I can easily maintain (and has excellent
| performance to boot).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I highly suggest you return them since the upkeep is very
| expensive. The repairs for screens is ridiculous, the
| batteries are horrible (the x220 has more longevity since
| the bios is DRM free), the cards are on a whitelist (only
| approved ones allowed). It is so bad I have some that are
| in disrepair until I can find parts for them again. The
| x240 to x270 will have modern parts that are cheap, the
| batteries internal and external are under $30, the screen
| aren't almost/more than the price of the same laptop. The
| TN screens on the x230 may not break, but you won't be
| happy using them, and to modify it with modern parts
| needs an expensive $60 screen adapter, and you can't
| control the backlight. The x250 is the best since there
| is no wifi whitelist, unofficial screens are fine in
| linux, the trackpad is good by default, and the battery
| market is so good sometimes they give you 2 6 cells
| instead of one, whereas the x230 ones are now going for
| $80.
| amatecha wrote:
| Ah yeah, luckily the X230T I will mostly only use plugged
| in. I do agree, the energy efficiency (and battery cost)
| is one criticism of mine. That said, I'm not too worried
| about WLAN allowlist since I can supposedly remove that
| with 1vyrain (same with battery allowlist), if I even
| cared about it. Same with displays, the TN in the X230 is
| pretty sub-par but totally fine for me. Yeah, for now
| stuff is pretty easily available here, but I wonder how
| long that will last. Lots of people selling these
| machines for parts, so I can totally hoard some extra
| stuff if I want to... haha
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| With the cheaper batteries it's still only an ok usage if
| you already have it. Official batteries will cost the
| same as the unofficial ones for these older devices and
| the screens remain expensive, and there aren't any good
| IPS ones. If you don't care about it being used as a
| laptop you can replace them with screens that are larger
| in size, but it won't close properly anymore. I
| personally never looked back since the x250 was better in
| every way, the default screen is IPS.
| marmaduke wrote:
| We have a compute cluster made mainly of Westmere-generation
| Xeons from 2011, which has been the workhorse for research
| publications from our group for a decade. They are still
| running fine, the (non soldered, replaceable) ECC DRAM chips
| are failing before anything else.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Being able to replace memory and storage is very critical
| for anything that will see a lot of use. Both of these are
| certainly not "lifetime" items.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I never had to replace either, although I don't want them
| non replacable. External/cloud storage can take care of
| space, and memory corruption is a fear, but nothing I
| worry about, batteries are worst than both combined.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't think I ever had a single machine where I stayed
| with the storage it came with.
|
| As for memory, DRAM doesn't really have a particularly
| long lifetime (iirc design life is something like 75k
| hours), and that certainly shows in servers - memory
| modules start to fail a lot after the four year mark. And
| here I don't think I ever had a machine where I didn't
| upgrade memory at least once.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > People aren't swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they
| care about performance
|
| I beg to differ. I swapped my 2011 i5-2500k for a 2012
| i7-3770 and it was a nice and cheap upgrade.
|
| Used hardware is cheap, there is no reason to not upgrade it
| all the way.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You're really depending on your mobo to not blow a cap and
| using way more energy. A used older ryzen 5 is comparable
| and much better, and the mobos are current. Even a newer
| intel F processor isn't much more the 3770K is way
| overpriced for its performance.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| It's not just about upgrades, in fact it's not even mainly
| about upgrades. It's about being able to understand the
| machine, repairing it when necessary and ultimately being
| able to rely on it. Otherwise your device might be a
| candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which can
| be surprisingly quick.
| mlindner wrote:
| This weird OCD obsession with wanting to be able to piece
| apart a device just like it's a car is just strange. The
| device is a complete package. You don't re-solder and
| reflash busted chips on a motherboard do you? So why do you
| want to be able to replace the higher level parts rather
| than the whole device?
|
| This isn't like a desktop where all the parts are bought
| from different manufacturers and assembled by an OEM or by
| you. The laptop is a complete kit made by a single
| manufacturer.
| UseStrict wrote:
| But why does it have to be that way? They ship off-the-
| shelf RAM and SSDs in the Framework fully or partially
| assembled kits. They released CAD files and drawings for
| their module system. They actually sell replacement parts
| for other components, much like an OEM automaker does. If
| my touchpad dies I'd rather be able to swap it out with a
| new $100 part than buy a whole new $1500 laptop.
|
| It's a new company and have not been tested yet in terms
| of backwards-compatibility and ongoing inventory. But
| just because you can't swap parts in most laptops doesn't
| really imply that you shouldn't be able to.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| The thinkpad trackpads are $15 new. If you want to get
| repairable laptops just get business laptops.
|
| Don't be fooled by the marketing, many Dell, HP and
| Lenovo laptops have those benefits on top of a huge
| aftermarket which framework doesn't have and can't
| leverage. You can way cheaper buy a broken laptop of the
| same model and fix yours with it whereas framework will
| only have their niche market which won't be cheaper.
| dsego wrote:
| Broke my t480s screen, found a replacement from a german
| online store, ordered it and it came to my address in
| croatia in a day or two. Went to a local repair shop and
| had it installed in less than 20 minutes. Imagine doing
| the same with a macbook, lol.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You can do it yourself next time in under 7 even for a
| first time. Its very easy. I did it in 3 minutes my first
| time.
| kuschku wrote:
| I bought a T470 used, replaced RAM, SSD, display,
| battery, and now I've got 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM, 2TB NVMe
| SSD, a 1080p 400 nits 105% sRGB display, and over 20h
| battery life in performance mode. For 460EUR.
|
| I put some of the old parts together with some old
| desktop SSD in my old E540 and gave it my gf, who
| previously used an x220 with upgraded SSD and RAM. The
| E540 already has a new display, too.
|
| I do replace and change and upgrade all these parts to be
| able to use a cheap laptop over many years, just like I
| do with a desktop.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _This weird OCD obsession with wanting to be able to
| piece apart a device_
|
| suggesting that people who embrace "right to repair" have
| a psychopathology is the only psychological blindspot I
| see here.
|
| wanting to enlarge your memory or your drive storage is
| completely normal in the present day as these devices
| increase in size dramatically well within the lifetime of
| a notebook computer
| pvarangot wrote:
| > a candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which
| can be surprisingly quick
|
| All my all Macs sold for great value after I was done with
| them or got a better one, even with an expired guarantee.
| It took like a week or two to sell them. I'm still stuck
| with Thinkpads because the used market is shit.
|
| My last Thinkpad I got kinda impulsively as a workstation
| for Ableton is my deepest regret. It was a year ago, the
| Intel MacBooks where not cutting it, it's a great machine
| and was like 2600 and now I want to go back to an M1
| MacBook Pro and it's impossible to sell it anywhere, I feel
| I just threw away money. A four year old MacBook Pro is
| worth more on the Apple exchange program than my Thinkpad,
| it's really sad.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Which one did you get?
| pvarangot wrote:
| It's a P53 with 32gb ram, 1tb SSD, an i7-9750H and a
| Quadro. It's a beast. It smokes my one year newer similar
| MacBook Pro because it actually runs at clock rate
| because it doesn't get as hot. But no one wants it
| because it's a niche market to have an ugly workstation
| on your desk. If I could sell it for something like 1600
| I would buy an M1 Mac in a brim but it's really though.
| They go from 600 to 900 on Craigslist, it's insane, I
| feel really dumb for buying it, a MacBook with half the
| RAM and SSD goes for 1400 to 1600 and the GPU sucks.
|
| I'm thinking about plugging it to the TV and using it as
| a Steam console or something like that, my girlfriend
| games. But it's a fucking expensive console.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Install hackintosh on it and sell the MacBook.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Yeah it already runs Hackintosh. The MacBook is not mine,
| it's my work laptop. What I'm saying is instead of the
| Thinkpad if I had bought anything Apple with similar
| performance, like an iMac Pro or a Mini Pro, I would be
| up around 1000 and now that money just disappeared into
| nothingness because the used market for PCs suck.
| snek_case wrote:
| I'm using a MacBook Air 2015 and it's basically still a fast,
| perfectly usable machine. Quad core i7, 8GB RAM, SSD.
| However, I wish I could replace the battery, I wish the SSD
| was more easily upgradeable, and it would be nice to double
| the RAM.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is very easy to replace a 2015 MacBook Air battery:
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Early+2015
| +...
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| Not to be overly pedantic, but Apple didn't release any
| quad-core MacBook Airs in 2015.(see
| https://support.apple.com/kb/sp714?locale=en_US) Intel
| didn't even have quad-core ULV CPUs available until late
| 2017-2018.
|
| I only comment because the jump between dual & quad core is
| a pretty big one, as is the presumed jump to newer chips
| with 6, 8, and 16 core processors in modern machines.
|
| Dual core has remained surprisingly usable for light
| tasking though. Whether it is a well-loved MacBook or a
| battle-scarred ThinkPad from that era, Intel's dual core
| CPUs have held up well (even if it means they didn't feel
| the need to push their CPU design as much in the subsequent
| years.)
| fartcannon wrote:
| Thinkpads are owned by Lenovo, a known bad actor who
| installed, for example, rootkits on their own hardware.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Never the thinkpad.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If something comes preinstalled with Windows on it, it's
| going to be rootkitted anyways. There's also an argument to
| be made where we assume all commercial OSes are backdoored,
| but I think at this point playing the "muh security" card
| is a bit of a ruse. If you care about the stuff, you've
| already installed LTSC/Linux/BSD/Some special Windows
| distro.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| it wasn't about pre-installed windows software, it was
| about software embedded in UEFI that reinstalled itself
| on windows even with a clean fresh non-lenovo provided
| installation of windows.
| thrashh wrote:
| I give them a pass because their actions seem come from
| stupidity rather than maliciousness.
|
| Also while this was going on, they never did any of this to
| Thinkpads.
| aaomidi wrote:
| It also means that you can keep the same shell while changing
| other components to upgrade it, yknow, like desktops.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I have the same shell/case.
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| And the used 2011 i3, that wouldn't become garbage if it were
| repairable would get sold to someone less performance / price
| consciousness? Now it gets trashed.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Nope, nobody wants it. You can try to sell it though.
| People don't want even a free processor that needs an
| expensive mobo they'll need to buy our own when they can
| get a much better ryzen board and a cheap processor that
| will trounce it. Nobody wants these old processors, many
| are so useless they're being drilled for keychains.
| [deleted]
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| While I certainly can't speak for everyone - I've had a
| 2011 Dell Inspiron that I upgraded from the i5-2450m to
| an i7-2670qm a couple years ago. Additionally the RAM and
| HDD were upgraded/swapped for SSDs.
|
| The computer now lives with my mom, who needs a simple
| but reliable device. The i5 was sold on ebay for a few
| bucks to some lad or lasse who may have needed it for a
| cheap laptop build. Decade old computers aren't vastly
| different from today in terms of day to day use.
| Capabilities and high performance is one thing, but using
| devices longer, and upgrading entire systems less
| frequently is both better for your wallet, and better for
| the environment.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I agree, performance hasn't changed much. But they're
| relying on old motherboards which are way more fragile.
|
| How often does your mother use that computer? Did the
| performance matter to her at all? Even if you swapped it
| back to the old i5 with the SSD I doubt much of a
| difference would be noticed.
| mlindner wrote:
| And it was almost completely made from recyclable parts. It
| gets recycled, not trashed.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The other comment points it out correctly, no one wants it
| price conscious or not.
|
| Between the fact that many of them work without issue for
| years, and the fact that an new equivalent to your 2011 i3
| becomes exponentially cheaper over time, repairing it will
| never be worth it.
|
| A Raspberry PI 4 is a functional computer but costs less
| than just the CPU of that i3 based machine while trouncing
| it in performance and power efficiency.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i3-2100
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16396722
| ghaff wrote:
| It's true with electronic devices in general. I've tried
| to pass down (still in support) older tablets,
| Chromebooks, etc. through a friend who has some nieces
| and nephews. Basically, to quote my friend, "no one's
| interested in your old electronic crap."
|
| Now I'm sure there are families with less money who might
| think differently but it's definitely not straightforward
| in general to hand down old computer-related stuff.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They already have phones. They're not interested in your
| slower than their phone computers either.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| At some point, the CPU is almost irrelevant. A huge issue
| is software locked to a certain motherboard. And the fact
| that your Raspberry Pi isn't going to be running x86
| software flawlessly and doesn't come with nearly the same
| peripherals as a typical laptop (without a lot more
| cost... but even then, a 1:1 replacement isn't possible).
|
| The assumption that tech gets exponentially cheaper over
| time, ie Moore's Law, only applies to a portion of the
| hardware, one the CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. It doesn't
| apply to the glue that holds it all together, the
| integrated display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. In
| fact, a lot of webcams are actually worse than they were
| 10 years ago. AND Moore's Law has significantly slowed.
| Apple Silicon is a big improvement, but this is a step
| change, and it's not likely to be a continuation of the
| 18 Month Moore's Law doubling time of years past.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Even if it's not cheaper, the devices aren't really
| desirable. Most people don't want a desktop, they want
| mobile devices. Lots of people still use old computers
| and significant upgrades don't happen in the same
| generation which is the issue with upgrading Intel CPUs.
|
| x86 isn't what it was, MS made Windows 11 be able to run
| android apps, consumers don't care about x86 software
| anymore. That's been true since ChromeOS had been used
| more often since browsers mattered more than programs
| that only ran on windows.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's funny. I literally just had a long conversation with
| a fellow researcher still running a laptop from the late
| 00s, dual booting windows (XP!) and Linux. He is super
| happy with how reliable and effective it is, plenty of
| ports without a lot of software cruft. He does a lot of
| hardware instrumentation interfacing with it.
|
| Do developers typically use ChromeOS to do development? I
| don't think it can run, say, LabView or Matlab (the
| latter it MIGHT be able to, with some extra work, but not
| natively). It's all a pretty big headache to use a device
| for serious work that is optimized for passive
| consumption and web browsing and social media. Everything
| you want to do that isn't in a web browser is a pain.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yes, they use it for SSH and programming without worrying
| about taking care of their hardware. Chromebooks aren't a
| pain, but I doubt your researcher can run those easily
| either with such old hardware my 1.6ghz atom netbook
| probably smokes it and still I wouldn't use it for that.
|
| Most people don't need to run those programs, they're
| niche, and the normal consumer doesn't care.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Right. Chromebooks are somewhere between a full actual
| laptop and a tablet or phone. Good for _consume_ rs.
| varispeed wrote:
| If you can't buy parts from 3rd parties e.g. you can't source
| chips or connectors etc. on Mouser, then I can't see how this
| is much different from Apple. Just because manufacturer sells
| parts themselves (thus avoiding spending money on good repair
| service), probably won't save you much money considering you
| will have to spend your own time and make effort to fix it
| yourself. Nonetheless, any move into more repair friendly
| product is welcome.
| canadaduane wrote:
| I agree with your point, but I think it slightly misses the
| potential and (I believe) intent of Framework: they have
| opened their design specs and encouraged even DIY
| participants, making it possible for a cultural movement of
| innovation & right-to-repair to exist. It reminds me of
| revered machines like the Commodore 64 that didn't just
| create hardware (although they did that very well)--they
| enabled social clubs, the demoscene, and a many hobby
| programmers and hardware hackers who went on to become
| professionals.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Opening them doesn't mean it'll be taken up. Everyone had
| a commandore so there was enthusiasm for it. This is
| another generic very niche laptop that has no defining
| benefits over others and so will find it hard to convince
| anyone to make some niche parts that doesn't have a large
| install base.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| "Very niche laptop" It's largely a laptop aimed at being
| a general computer, just like a Dell or HP.
|
| With two exceptions: - Freedom of choice over operating
| system - Freedom of choice over repair components
|
| From the looks of it, there doesn't appear to be much of
| a detriment to it over other laptops.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| The parts are niche, they don't work anywhere else.
| Nobody will touch making niche parts for repairing one
| with a niche marketshare. You don't expect anyone to take
| up custom parts to a WilyFox phone even though its a much
| larger marketshare device do you? So why do you think
| they will for this laptop nobody has? Yes, it's a general
| computer, nothing unique in computing to choose it over
| the other.
|
| Dell and HP have plenty of aftermarket parts and don't
| limit my OS either.
|
| They start at $999 and the base is 8GB, 256GB SSD, with
| an i5 and you need to wait with a deposit and it only has
| 1 year of warranty with no strong aftermarket products.
| None of these are incentivizing for performance, for
| repairable, or for cost.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Framework's hardware is entirely open source
| (https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards) so
| you can buy parts from any third-party that wants to
| produce them.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| They have open sourced a development toolkit for making
| expansion card modules but the motherboard itself is not
| open source. You can, however get schematics if you are a
| "repair shop", under NDA, however they define that.
| userbinator wrote:
| I hope the schematics leak, just like they do for many
| other laptops.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That just reminds me of Alienware's open modular GPU
| cards or the open nanoSD cards from Huawei, both of which
| are open and nobody wants to make or use in their own
| products. It's open but there isn't any incentive for
| anyone else to make some niche parts for a single laptop
| brand.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They do have good repair as well. It saves you a ton of
| money because the devices are so common and the parts are
| cheap, I don't go to Lenovo.com, I buy some junk devices
| and take the parts off them.
|
| You're stating effort like it's hard to unscrew a laptop
| and seat in a new part, which you'll need to do for
| framework too.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Assuming you want to do repair, I have no interest in repairing
| anything. In fact I'll happily part with my money to not have
| to deal with repairing stuff. Same applies to my car.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Do you have a threshold for this?
|
| I assume that if your laptop wasn't working and all you had
| to do was take a single screw out then you'd do it, rather
| than taking it to a repair shop or buy another.
|
| Or if the repair cost was extreme, but it was relatively easy
| to fix it yourself.
|
| Your point of view is valid of course. At the same time I
| believe many people don't have sufficient money to allow them
| the luxury of never repairing anything themselves.
|
| Having hardware that is repairable is rarely a problem for
| the end-user who doesn't want to repair it themselves. For
| users who DO want to repair it themselves, having hardware
| that's designed to be hard to repair is a huge burden.
| aeturnum wrote:
| There's the old joke about a plumber to charges $100 to fix
| a hot water heater by hitting it once with a hammer. The
| home owner, incensed by such a bill for a simple action,
| demands the plumber justify it. The breakdown is: $1 hammer
| strike, $99 choosing correct location.
|
| Even a decade ago, the rewards for being able to repair
| computers were pretty substantial. Your computer was likely
| to have routine failures and you could probably save a lot
| of money doing piecemeal replacements. I think those things
| are still true for people who are trying to stay on the
| bleeding edge of computer hardware or use unusual setups,
| but for 95%+ of folks it is probably going to be a net
| loss.
|
| For most people performing most tasks, they are better off
| taking the "one-screw" computer into the shop because it
| would take them hours and hours to do the research figuring
| out if it really is a "one-screw" problem. If you are wrong
| you could seriously damage your hardware. In addition,
| because hardware that is sufficient for most purposes and
| inexpensive is widely available - there is very limited
| utility in learning those skills otherwise.
|
| If you want to learn about and repair computers as a hobby
| that's great! I do it and I enjoy it. But it's not a "smart
| financial decision."
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Exactly this. The amount of time, effort, labor, sourcing
| tools, parts, coupled with education, or making a costly
| mistake, etc... The warranty or repair person is actually
| cheaper if you're able to put a price on your time. They
| also do better work in most cases.
|
| I just leave it to the professionals because it saves me
| money/time. I have no doubts I could do my own repair but
| from this vantage point it's just not a sound investment.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| That's fair enough. Everyone has a different cost/benefit
| analysis based on their own situation.
|
| Some people have more money than time, some have more
| time than money. And there are a million other factors
| too.
| pvarangot wrote:
| > Do you have a threshold for this?
|
| Not OP but I have a really high threshold for this. I don't
| want to own a house and rent because of this.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Hire from taskrabbit. ;)
| minhazm wrote:
| The problem is knowing what's actually broken in the first
| place. A friend of mine took their laptop to Geeksquad and
| they told my friend the power circuit was broken and the
| motherboard needs replacing. I checked the charger and
| realized the charger was broken and told them to buy a new
| one and what do you know it works fine. Most people are
| generally incapable of figuring out what actually is broken
| and will go to a repair place anyway. Or if the device is
| old enough they will just buy a new one. These days devices
| last a long time if you take care of them physically so by
| the time something starts failing it's likely already time
| for an upgrade for most people.
|
| So the actual DIY repairability of laptops just doesn't
| matter for the vast majority of people. What Framework is
| doing is awesome amazing though and I hope it does
| encourage companies to make easier to repair computers to
| lower the actual cost of repairs.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Yes, many people don't know what's broken in the first
| place.
|
| My minimum threshold for reaching out to a repair
| technician is 1) the problem must not have a solution
| that is easily found through an internet search, and 2)
| the solution must require more time and effort than the
| time to get it to and from the repair shop.
|
| What saddens me is how few people will do the internet
| search before giving up.
|
| Yes, I'm tech-savvy so I'm speaking from a position of
| privilege, but if you're looking for "What's wrong with
| this thing?" how can you NOT think to search the
| internet?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| I don't want to repair my laptop either but I want to upgrade
| my laptop a year or two down the line. The modern laptop can
| go much further with a simple upgrade like RAM or SSD HD.
|
| Apple's laptop is really limited in this way. The older
| generation of Apple's laptop allowed you to upgrade RAM and
| HD.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Apple is targeting the population that has no need for
| upgrades.
|
| Watching videos, browsing internet, sharing pictures and
| videos, video calling and basic spreadsheet/word processing
| needs no upgrades.
|
| I use a 2015 MacBook Air and I don't need an upgrade, and I
| probably do more on my laptop than 80% of people.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Apple is targeting the population that has no need for
| upgrades.
|
| And also those who _very frequently_ do backups, because
| restoring the data from a failed SSD would be
| problematic.
| kube-system wrote:
| Time Machine takes hourly backups. Setup consists of
| selecting a target and checking a box.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, Apple is also probably not targeting the population
| of people who cannot backup to iCloud and also not backup
| regularly to a NAS or USB via Time Machine.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Harder to repair products are more expensive to repair. This
| is the main reason Apple locks down everything so much and
| fights independent repair shops at every corner. Repair
| monopolies are profitable too.
|
| It doesn't matter whether you want to repair it or not, in
| the long term you can only lose when you don't care how hard
| it is to repair.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| You do not actually own a Framework, though. Unlike say a
| Raptor Talos II -- the only example I know of, albeit not a
| laptop.
|
| https://community.frame.work/t/free-the-ec-and-coreboot-only...
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Itt: more corporate sycophants a who have reasons for Apple to
| deny right to repair to their customers
|
| The majority of you work at publicly traded companies and it
| shows.
| userbinator wrote:
| Brainwashed propagandists are everywhere. Watch out for them
| and you may be able to find the truth and the agenda.
| niklasrde wrote:
| Does that apply to PXE or the Mac equivalent?
|
| I wonder how they will run their diagnistics in the Apple Store
| if they can't boot their diagnostics tool.
| xxpor wrote:
| If they're loading the EFI image off of the SSD, it'd affect
| that too (unless there's PXE in the bootstrap code, but I
| seriously doubt it)
| olyjohn wrote:
| Throw it away and give you a new one?
| [deleted]
| qq4 wrote:
| Bummer. This is solely how I keep alive my old iMac. You know
| why? Because of the near-impossible-to-replace drive inside of
| it!
| kevwil wrote:
| So if a "Standard Backup" contains all your files, but the
| machine cannot boot because the internal drive has failed, what
| is the plan forward? $4k for a new laptop and restore from the
| backup to the new machine? Kinda makes me glad I'm broke.
| aneutron wrote:
| I get that the memory bandwidth and performance of the SoC is
| intimately tied to the CPU, GPU and memory being on the same
| silicon (grossly vulgarizing the approach).
|
| However, there is no reasonable justification (as far as I can
| tell) for why the SSD would have to be soldered onto the same
| SoC, and even less reasonable justification for why the iBoot
| stuff couldn't be located on an EEPROM or something of the sort,
| like a secondary BIOS/UEFI.
|
| It just boggles my mind why Apple would go so far to limit
| storage options and even make a straight up bad architectural
| decision (SSD gone ? You can't boot the 4kEUR machine. What ? You
| bought it 4 years ago ? Well, tough luck.)
| slownews45 wrote:
| Does anyone laugh a bit at these types of comments?
|
| Using these "stupid" and "unjustifiable" approaches, apple has
| delivered highly reliable / fast machines to lots of users.
| They come with applecare if you want, which gets you walk in
| fix/replace at their stores.
|
| Note, they've already don't this on iphones - millions shipped.
|
| They are going for as much reliability / speed out of this for
| the 90%+ of users who are not going in to manually swap out
| SSDs. They are also huge on part simplification, they probably
| got rid of the bios flash and are just using the SSD flash.
|
| My own predication, as in many other areas others will COPY
| this "stupid" design - imitation is the sincerest form of
| flattery. My guess is others will also stop shipping another
| set of chargers with everything (again copying apple).
|
| They now also sell indefinite applecare, by getting normal
| breakage down low enough you can keep apple care as long as you
| want if you keep paying.
| aneutron wrote:
| You are arguing without any arguments.
|
| 1) I agree that some integration is intimately tied to how
| well the machines performs. I also referenced this in my
| comment. What I don't agree to is the SSD being soldered on.
| It uses the same PCIe lanes it would use if it was swappable
| ! As for the "stupid" approach, it really doesn't make much
| sense to tie the capability of the machine FUNCTIONING to a
| storage that you cannot change (and that is bound to break
| eventually from wear & tear, because it's an SSD).
|
| 2) The iPhone are a different story. It's a different
| requirement all together. You have to fit EVERYTHING in a
| couple of mm2 of surface. That's a very tough requirement,
| and everyone understands that you can't have the ability of
| swapping an SSD and having the portability that the iPhone
| offers at the same time. The same is simply not true for a
| professional laptop.
|
| 3) I sincerely don't see how an iBoot-inspired design would
| replace UEFI anytime soon. The latter is more powerful as far
| as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong).
|
| 4) The "support" plan you're describing is in my eyes
| extortion. If I can buy an SSD for 100EUR on Amazon, and
| replace it down the line 5 years from now, it really doesn't
| compare to paying 200EUR / year for an insurance, when all it
| covers is bringing your laptop to its original state. A
| swappable SSD can be expanded down the line when storage gets
| denser / cheaper.
|
| All-in-all, I do agree and fully support a degree of
| integration that's backed by technical motives (i.e.
| Otherwise unattainable performance), but when the motives
| start turning into more lock-in and sell-up motives, that's
| where my support ends.
|
| I genuinely do not understand how you could view this as a
| "good" thing. As for the 90% users who are not going to
| manually swap out SSDs, it would still be the same ! They
| won't have to touch them !
| slownews45 wrote:
| You are not in the business of shipping a million+ devices.
|
| * Any connector is a potential failure point. Generally
| with a connector you double the connection points (ie, SSD
| -> Connector -> now soldered to board). So if you are
| soldering anyways, and can solder to board directly, then
| you save yourself both a part and a bunch of connection
| points. This is good news for everything (signal loss,
| noise / RFI / durability etc). When you warranty and offer
| applecare on expensive devices, you want these warrenty
| claims to be low.
|
| * Apple's mode has been to integrate / tighten things up -
| that is their design philosophy. They are going to
| integrate as many chips into one as they can (ie, you won't
| be even able to unsolder a T2 chip because there won't be
| one). There stuff, again, is meant to be used as an
| integrated whole, there is no mix / match here.
|
| * They are going to solder memory as well down - you won't
| be able to replace that either. Then they are going to try
| and integrate memory into same package as CPU / GPU. I
| realize this makes folks mad, but it's what they do and
| it's been very successful for them. I think some of their
| LPDDR stuff only comes in a solder on format (and M1 is
| going towards even more integration - I actually like mix
| and match on my desktops so don't use macs so not following
| so closely but I know they were thinking of literally not
| even soldering but integrating fully).
|
| * I saw first hand a number of claims BTW where replacement
| batteries had been put into macbooks and iphones as part of
| resales and people then went and complained to apple or
| about apple online when those batteries had problems. I
| think even when replaceable, they've added warnings in
| these cases. But it goes to show the quality in the mix and
| match department is hit and miss.
|
| Frankly, it's probably 95%+ of their millions / billions of
| devices that won't get an upgrade. They've done same with
| airpods, no removable batteries. A ton of companies, again,
| or COPYING these designs.
| pram wrote:
| Your assumption is incorrect. The SSD on any Mac with a
| T2/M1 is not like an NVME SSD you'd pick up from the store.
| The soldered modules themselves are just NAND storage, the
| T2/M1 is the actual storage controller. They're literally
| non-functional otherwise.
| slownews45 wrote:
| My impression was they were also going to try and move
| the T2 off being a separate (potentially replaceable)
| chip and integrate it with the M1 - did that happen yet
| or still to happen? But one thing you get on a mac is
| basically hardware level security for the SSD.
|
| Bad news, data recovery will be hard / impossible. Good
| news, if you sell the thing on pretty unlikely next
| person will get your data or can remove the "drive" and
| try to crack it offline. Not sure how imaging a mac drive
| works these days either?
| DenseComet wrote:
| Yep on M1 macs there is no T2, it's already been
| integrated.
| jackorange wrote:
| Maybe others will also take after apple selling $99 stands
| and $7 small microfiber cloths.
| somebehemoth wrote:
| Laughing at other peoples' opinions doesn't make you more
| correct. Corporations copying each other to increase profit
| does not prove this is the right thing to do for all users.
| slownews45 wrote:
| The point is having separate eeproms, separate bios flash
| memory, separate storage controller in SSD drive etc etc -
| apple focuses very hard on NOT doing any of that.
|
| They are CONSTANTLY pushing down part counts.
|
| The claim that there is "no reason" for this is ridiculous.
| There are at least 10 good businesses reasons, from part
| count / inventory complexity, to assembly time, to
| durability to get rid of parts, connectors, ribbon cables
| etc etc.
|
| The best part is no part.
|
| And yes, it makes folks putting in (often crap) replacement
| parts and reselling things (without disclosure) harder too.
| Does apple care about that? No. And there is a good
| business reason for them not to care, their users want a
| trusted device. Apple brand strength is at record highs.
|
| As speeds scale, bus speeds scale, frankly apple is going
| to have the advantage if they can tie things in better. At
| some point you can't run PCI full speed over things like a
| replaceable cable, the tolerances are too tight (16GT/s
| etc).
|
| On HN it's like reading of folks who are used to stone
| blocks, very modular and stackable and replaceable, yes,
| complain about something like concrete with rebar in it.
|
| You really realize the mentality advantage apple has when
| you come here. While other companies are dumping tons of
| parts, connectors, EEPROM flash ships (which BTW can brick
| the system if the update doesn't work) Apple is
| streamlining and integrating.
| mlindner wrote:
| This title is misleading. Apple Silicon Macs can boot from
| external hard drives just fine. The topic is only about if the
| drive is failed.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Title:
|
| "Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal
| drive failed"
| keymone wrote:
| i get that their business is at risk, but i've literally never
| had a macbook disk fail on me in 12 years of dealing with half a
| dozen laptops (oldest one still in use today). this will get way
| more attention than it deserves.
| VortexDream wrote:
| Not sure how this is relevant in any way. I've seen dozens of
| MacBooks where the hard drive had failed. Not to say that they
| fail any more than other laptops, but unless Apple has come up
| with some magical technology that makes their hard drives never
| fail, this is a terrible, terrible change. Water is wet, the
| moon circles the earth and hard drives fail (eventually, some
| sooner than others).
| asddubs wrote:
| are you talking about actual hard drives or ssds though?
| TillE wrote:
| I've had two sudden, total failures of my 2012 Macbook Air
| drive: once in warranty where it got replaced, once out of
| warranty. I have indeed been using a USB3 external SSD drive
| for the OS ever since. Inconvenient, but it works quite well.
| rvz wrote:
| Unsurprising.
|
| Given the countless times I have warned about the risks of going
| 'all in' on an Apple Silicon Mac and now they realise.
|
| Good luck with your files if the internal hard drive is dead.
| Consider creating regular backups otherwise your can say goodbye
| to your files.
|
| No thanks and absolutely no deal to that.
| [deleted]
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| How is this any different than any other computer? If a hard
| drive fails, recovering data is either impossible or very
| expensive. Everyone who uses a computer ought to have some sort
| of backup, either another drive, cloud service, etc.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Yes, if you have anything of even moderate importance on a
| computer, not backing up is foolish and _will_ eventually
| result in loss of data. If plugging in an external drive and
| letting something like Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner run
| from time to time is too much trouble there 's even options
| like Backblaze which makes automated incremental backups
| entirely transparent and effortless. There's no good reason
| to not backup.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Surely everyone on HN does regular backups of some kind? Most
| of us probably have two or three different kinds of backups, if
| I'm to believe what I read here (e.g. I have everything I care
| about on cloud storage, also backed up by Time Machine, and
| backed up by Backblaze).
|
| If my MBP fails, I'll walk into the Apple Store and swap for a
| new one, hook up my TM backup and be back working in an hour or
| so.
|
| I've always, always assumed that the internal drive can fail at
| any moment and take every last byte of data with it.
| [deleted]
| Twisell wrote:
| I can't see any scenario on any hardware in which I would not
| strongly advise to make regular backups.
|
| Beside theses laptop are designed to be used (if configured so)
| with full disk encryption using a strong key stored inside a
| secure enclave on the cpu. If something is amiss the data is
| lost, they could almost say it's a feature (but they probably
| won't as is would be seen as a bug by the majority of people
| hence this thread).
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I never cared about bootable backups. What is more of a concern
| is getting data off a non-bootable Mac that has a viable drive,
| since Apple often replaces the drive as part of servicing.
| 323 wrote:
| Isn't the drive encrypted anyway, with the key in T2?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. The only real solution is to backup regularly. (And, if
| you travel, it probably makes sense to regularly copy any
| critical work in process to an SD card.)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Not backing up regularly is eventual (potentially massive)
| data loss even with a machine that doesn't have the
| limitations mentioned in the linked page. It may not be as
| common but SSD controllers for example can and do fail
| sometimes, and in that situation no amount of flexibility
| on the host computer's part is going to save you.
| xuki wrote:
| The SSD on all new Macs is soldered into the board. If a single
| component on the board breaks, they replace the whole thing.
| yumraj wrote:
| So, in other words, it is actually possible to _brick_ an Apple
| Silicon Mac computer.
|
| Cool!!
| indigomm wrote:
| I've always treated a laptop as essentially disposable - by which
| I mean that in no way do I rely on it to store my data. It's the
| device I use to manipulate data. Not only could it break, it
| could get stolen or damaged at any time.
|
| The bigger issue is that when the drive breaks, they are
| essentially unrepairable. The only option is getting Apple to
| swap out the motherboard with another one. On other devices, I'd
| just swap an M.2 drive. So it's more of a cost issue.
| api wrote:
| Sounds like something a software update could fix. Probably a
| scenario that was never tested.
| nrclark wrote:
| Maybe or maybe not. It depends a lot on how the chip's boot ROM
| is designed.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Intending to support it but never testing it would be a
| surprise. If I were designing laptop hardware I'd probably
| spend a lot of time booting it from external media as part of
| the design process. It would accidentally be the most tested
| feature of the hardware aside from maybe turning it on.
| 323 wrote:
| You assume it's a bug and not as designed.
| api wrote:
| If they didn't want people running their own stuff on it,
| they would have locked it down like an iPad. The fact that
| they didn't means they wanted it to be possible.
| kennywinker wrote:
| The only lens I care about these days is the impending climate
| disaster. Technology like this, that embodies a lot of carbon and
| has a built-in expiration date, is getting more and more
| upsetting to me.
|
| I don't need a faster computer, I need air that will still be
| breathable in 20 years. My next computer will likely be whatever
| 5-10 year old laptop I can snatch up on it's way to the landfill.
| It definitely won't be an M1.
| quitit wrote:
| Landfill and the environment are legitimate concerns.. i'm just
| gonna quote the website
|
| > The new MacBook Pro has been carefully designed with the
| environment in mind. The enclosure is now made with 100%
| recycled aluminum. And we use recycled rare earth elements in
| all the magnets in the product. MacBook Pro is free of numerous
| harmful substances and all the virgin wood fiber in our
| packaging comes from responsibly-managed forests.
|
| Other notable objectives: 1. full carbon neutrality across
| their supply chain and services by 2030, inclusive of the use
| of the device. 2. Recycling and refurb program 3. Circular
| sourcing (e.g reclamation.)
|
| You concerns are valid, but the princess is in another castle.
| kennywinker wrote:
| That's all fine and good, but once any single component of
| that block of embodied carbon fails the whole thing is now
| e-waste. Which means I guess apple is buying up carbon
| offsets in order to recycle that e-waste back into a new M2
| or M3 mac? How much faith do you have in carbon offsets? The
| aluminum and rare earth elements are recycled - what about
| the rest of it?
|
| A modular design means a failed SSD only sends the SSD - not
| the entire product - into the waste (recycle?) chain.
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| I'm going to call very large amounts of BS on #2 -- Apple
| devices are infamous in electronics refurbishing circles.
| Thousands of very functional devices are being scrapped
| instead of being reused because they are soft-bricked due to
| never being deregistered from iCloud accounts, for various
| legitimate reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam (and
| shouldn't be the responsibility of the end user in any case).
|
| Many solutions have been repeatedly suggested to Apple to
| mitigate the e-waste damage from this without compromising
| their supposed dedication to iCloud-locking to prevent theft;
| they have fallen on deaf ears.
| krrrh wrote:
| If I take a box of old apple devices and accessories to the
| Apple Store from any point in the history of the company,
| they will put them through their own recycling program. A
| box of old PCs will go to my municipal e-waste program and
| end up in an incinerator (which is the best case scenario,
| but we know what happens to e-waste in a lot of
| jurisdictions).
|
| That iPhone torturing robot [0] that they demoed a few
| years back may have seemed a bit silly, but I don't think
| any other electronics manufacturer is concerned about
| finding a const-effective way of separating the screws from
| other metals before recycling everything.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bu-gl7v-P8
| [deleted]
| liminalsunset wrote:
| General grumpiness about this particular design decision aside,
| it appears that since the T2 Macs, the main SSD was being used to
| store core system firmware. On T2 I think it's BridgeOS that
| sends the EFI image to the Intel side to boot it, and it does the
| firmware verification and loading.
|
| This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick
| the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to
| use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. Just like the iPhone, you
| can enter Boot ROM DFU mode, which can't easily be overwritten,
| and restore all of the firmware on the system that's writable.
|
| This is great for restoring systems to a known good firmware
| state, including SSD, EFI, BridgeOS, RecoveryOS. On a normal
| system, there is plenty of non volatile storage that is difficult
| to recover or reset.
|
| The primary argument against soldering the SSD, or really any
| other part, down like this tends to be that "Oh, now you can't
| just save money by upgrading it yourself|replacing it when it
| breaks". On the other side, these machines are engineered as
| appliances that should achieve a certain degree of reliability.
| The SSD is reasonably considered to last the "lifetime" of the
| product, and should it fail, I don't consider the inability to
| externally boot to be a huge problem, since whatever failure
| damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the
| reliability of the rest of the board. Any failure is grounds for
| "rework" of the board on a hardware level if necessary,up to and
| including repair/replacement of the onboard flash, and not just a
| simple workaround in my opinion. Note that they don't force you
| to actually USE the internal SSD - you can still netboot or USB
| boot I think. It just has to work.
|
| Trivia: -At least on T2 systems, the flash memory itself (the
| NAND chips) on the mainboard can actually be swapped between
| units after a DFU restore by unsoldering them and transferring
| them.
|
| The person that did this on YouTube notes that a common reason
| for SSD failure on T2 machines is due to SSD power regulator
| circuitry being located close to the intake vents on the side of
| the MacBook Pro. They recommend that users of these machines open
| them and clean the dust out often, since dust buildup on the
| actual power regulator combined with moisture sometimes causes a
| short circuit, sending high voltage to the SSD and damaging it.
|
| This kind of failure (high voltage parts close to low voltage
| ones, close to liquid damage prone areas, without any
| underfilling) is documented by Louis Rossmann. It is, however,
| not always feasible or possible to entirely prevent.
| wpearse wrote:
| > it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI
| flash
|
| I had to flash the T2 to do a Bug Sur update on my 2018 Mac
| Mini a couple weeks ago. The flash failed and bricked the
| machine.
|
| Sent the machine in for service and the entire logic board was
| replaced under warranty, the machine was at least 2 years out
| of warranty as far as I know. This makes me think failed
| flashes are a known issue?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to
| compromise the reliability of the rest of the board_
|
| Sorry, but how? That's just reads like BS.
|
| SSDs have limited lifespans due to the limited write cycles of
| the NAND chips. So no, what damages NAND does not damage the
| rest of the board. The more you write and swap to flash, the
| faster it wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it
| dies.
|
| Granted, I expect the controller to keep moving your data
| around to the cells with the least ammount of wear and isolate
| the ones that have worn out, reducing your storage space and
| speed of the drive over time.
| wtallis wrote:
| In practice, exhausting NAND write endurance is usually not
| what causes SSDs to fail in the field. It is especially
| unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and
| seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure.
|
| Also, it is not possible for an SSD to decrease your usable
| storage space over time. That would break any partition table
| format or filesystem that expects an ordinary block device.
| It also wouldn't win you any significant increase unusable
| lifespan, because when your drive starts retiring large
| numbers of blocks, _all_ of your blocks are on the verge of
| failure. (Though keep in mind that "failure" here is defined
| as "only able to retain data for one year" for consumer
| SSDs).
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It also wouldn't win you any significant increase
| unusable lifespan, because when your drive starts retiring
| large numbers of blocks, all of your blocks are on the
| verge of failure.
|
| That's not true. Blocks degrade when written to. Most files
| are written once and read many times.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| You're forgetting that SSDs use virtual addressing so
| writes are distributed relatively equally over the whole
| drive. Even data that is written once and never changed
| logically will probably move around on the SSD due to
| garbage collection. The virtualization algorithms are
| kept relatively secret, but I assume good SSDs will move
| full unchanged blocks around occasionally to distribute
| write load more equally on the physical blocks.
| wtallis wrote:
| Yep, wear leveling actually works. On some SSDs, there
| are SMART indicators to tell you the average, max and min
| block erase counts, so you can see for yourself that the
| erase counts are all about the same across the entire
| drive.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I assume good SSDs will move full unchanged blocks
| around occasionally to distribute write load more equally
| on the physical blocks.
|
| I hadn't considered that. Make sense. Better to move
| never-changing data to blocks that are still good but not
| worn out so those available writes can be utilized.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Also, it is not possible for an SSD to decrease your
| usable storage space over time.
|
| It totally _could_ be possible. For Windows /Linux, you
| could have a daemon that creates a 'ssd_wear' file which
| grows in size as the SSD wears out, and messages to the SSD
| which physical blocks it occupies. Mac could obviously do a
| deeper integration directly into the OS.
|
| > all of your blocks are on the verge of failure
|
| A failed block still stores some information (in an
| information entropy sense). It's totally possible to store
| one blocks worth of information across two, four, or eight
| failed blocks (with extra error correction information).
|
| Combining these two techniques, an SSD should never fail.
| Instead it slows down and gets smaller. Sadly as far as I'm
| aware, no consumer drive vendor has implemented these.
| pkaye wrote:
| I used to work on SSD firmware. I did implement something
| like the above for a custom solution for caching. When
| the flash storage is running low on space, it reduced the
| reported storage capacity and notifies the host which
| will need to trim some data to bring it below the
| reported storage capacity. The striping of data across
| multiple blocks also has been implemented. You could fail
| an entire NAND die and it would still function though a
| little slower assuming you still have enough spare
| blocks.
| wtallis wrote:
| You should read up on Zoned Storage for NVMe SSDs, and
| some of the more recently added error handling features
| like Get LBA Status. The gist is that it is only
| practical for the SSD to be in charge of determining what
| has failed-not the host, and that retrofitting NAND
| retirement into the traditional block device/LBA model is
| not worth the trouble when there are also other reasons
| to migrate to a different, more flash-friendly
| abstraction.
| ooboe wrote:
| https://tesla-info.com/blog/tesla-mcu1-emmc-failure.php
| wtallis wrote:
| Do you have a point? Linking to a story about an embedded
| system that experiences flash wearout is not really
| relevant here. You're trying to make a comparison against
| a far smaller and lower-quality storage module than
| typical consumer SSDs, subjected to a vastly different
| workload. There are no useful conclusions to draw about
| consumer PCs from that case.
| azalemeth wrote:
| > It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of
| unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD
| failure.
|
| One of my graduate students experienced this, the hard way:
| writing up his thesis, his mum plugged in "the wrong USB C"
| charger. I don't know exactly what happened, but the board
| was utterly fried. The problem with the soldered-to-the-
| motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that
| it's _almost impossible_ to do data recovery. On the M1+
| models, you literally can 't do anything _except_ semi-fix
| the motherboard as the flash and its controllers are
| integrated and the keys are cryptographically securely
| stored. This video [1] shows what data recovery is really
| like -- I don 't often link to YT videos, but it is an hour
| long, involves an awful lot of BGA de-balling and re-
| balling and the scouring of spare chips from other donor
| dead machines, as Apple doesn't let manufacturers sell the
| chips separately and datasheets are all NDA'd.
|
| We're very much in the part of the curve where you'd need a
| lab and a lot of _serious_ work to get data off these
| things without either sacrificial macs or luck (e.g. one
| blow voltage regulator). Of course, the flip side of this
| is that _your data is really, really secure_. You just have
| to be _damn_ sure that you back it up correctly.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=110x5rMHCIw
| donkeyd wrote:
| > soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-
| encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do
| data recovery
|
| Well, that's kind of the point.
|
| > You just have to be damn sure that you back it up
| correctly.
|
| Exactly. And that's as easy as plugging in an external
| hard drive occasionally, or storing critical files in the
| cloud.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| >> soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-
| encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do
| data recovery
|
| >Well, that's kind of the point.
|
| Not that I don't appreciate a security-minded platform,
| it just seems overkill for 99% of the people who'll
| purchase them, and do nothing but cause heartache when
| the internal SSD fails. And fail they do. it's rare, but
| I've had several SSDs (Toshiba and Crucial, if it
| matters) fail within 1-2 years of moderate usage. No
| warning there was an issue, the drives just disappeared
| one day and I was left looking for backups.
| katbyte wrote:
| > 99% of the people
|
| I think you underestimate this number. Most businesses
| are going to want security/encryption over ability to
| recover data to prevent leaking secrets in the case of a
| lost/stolen laptop.
|
| as for everyone else, backups really need to become the
| norm for everyone because as you say any HDD/SSD can fail
| for any reason anytime beyond any possible recovery apple
| laptop or not.
| notriddle wrote:
| > Not that I don't appreciate a security-minded platform,
| it just seems overkill for 99% of the people who'll
| purchase them
|
| No man is an island. If my mom is insecure, then all the
| messages I sent her are leaked, too, no matter how secure
| I try to be. If my boss is insecure, then I'm even worse
| off than that.
|
| Also, if high-security stuff is normalized, then you
| don't wind up stuck in a place where you have to choose
| between "the secure option" and "the option that can
| actually run the apps I need." E2E encrypting the whole
| world is also the best defense against the government
| passing laws that make E2E encryption illegal.
| nottorp wrote:
| > > soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-
| encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do
| data recovery
|
| > Well, that's kind of the point.
|
| Great; how do we opt out?
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| with different machines? The framework laptop doesn't
| work this way, afaik
| nottorp wrote:
| Too bad i switched to Mac OS from Linux. The OS matters
| to me and OS X is still the least annoying.
| StillBored wrote:
| Back it up to some cloud vendor that also holds the
| encryption keys... Brilliant bit of security there...
|
| /s
| josephg wrote:
| If you don't want that, back it up to a cloud service
| that doesn't hold the encryption keys. Eg, use tarsnap.
| It's your computer and your data.
| StillBored wrote:
| Thanks, I don't remember trying tarsnap. I use
| $OTHERBIGVENDOR and its been sticky, because I have ~60T
| of large files (miniDV .mpg captures/4k video/etc) mixed
| with an insane number of .5k files from git repos/etc.
|
| That combination has broken just about every modern cloud
| backup application I've tried to use over the ~10 years
| that meets a short list of minimal features I require
| (locally stored encryption keys for one). It actually
| breaks $OTHERBIGVENDOR in its default configuration as
| well, but I've collected a pile of tweaks/etc that keep
| it functional although I've managed at one point to cause
| my account to go into a reindexing mode on the servers
| that didn't complete for months too.
|
| So, maybe at some point. I've got some experience in the
| space :) and I've considered writing my own when I
| eventually give up on $OTHERBIGVENDOR. So many of them
| are written in "modern" languages and the clients are
| outrageously slow, or get exponentially slower as the
| data set grows.
|
| I've looked at tarsnap in passing in the past, but
| haven't gotten around to trying it because from their
| description of what appears to be a traditional
| referenced counted global dedupe. I suspected it of
| having problems when the hash map need to track 50T+
| unique hashes from all those video files across backups.
|
| PS: That doesn't mean there aren't good tools, my local
| backups are via rsnapshot to an offline USB+RAID I plug
| in once in a while.
| thefz wrote:
| > or storing critical files in the cloud. No. I refuse to
| let my vacation photos, hard drive images or hell, even
| my wallpaper collection to leave my house. No. I refuse.
| My data is my data.
| chaoskanzlerin wrote:
| Nothing stopping you from putting NextCloud on a
| Raspberry Pi
| StillBored wrote:
| I don't know about the mac, but I tried to do this for
| the wife/kids i-devices, and it was an utter failure. 3rd
| party backup apps are at a huge disadvantage on ios
| because apparently they can't run in the background long
| enough to keep things synced unless they also require
| _GPS_ service notifications (or at least that is how the
| nextcloud app works around it). Which in turn eats even
| more battery to work around ios's inability to flag apps
| as trusted system services and provide extra
| warnings/whatever during install (or app store acceptance
| might be a better plan).
| robertoandred wrote:
| What if your house burns down?
| donkeyd wrote:
| > or
|
| There was another simple option. You're free to use that
| one.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| These days I don't understand why people don't sync their
| important files to cloud. Dropbox has a free layer that's
| perfectly fit for a theses.
| Chocola wrote:
| Maybe because not everyone likes to share their most
| important files with a third party? Or because of
| providers scanning files or stuff like:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-
| exclusiv...
| kube-system wrote:
| If you seriously consider a state actor to be a threat,
| then you likely make many other compromises to your
| ability to conveniently perform disaster recovery.
|
| There is not much overlap between these use-cases:
|
| * I need an easy way to recover my family pictures
| because I didn't make backups
|
| and
|
| * I have state actors interested in my data
|
| If you really have state actor threats, you probably
| _like_ that M1 Macs are very hard to perform data-
| recovery from.
| Chocola wrote:
| If you are a state actor you probably love M1 Macs. You
| literally can't restore them without phoning home.
|
| Everone should consider state actors as a threat because
| they are. They maybe are not specifically after you. But
| every now and then some big box gets popped leaking all
| kinds of personal information (including yours) and the
| actors are probably state sponsored. Also it is not state
| actors scanning your data, many cloud providers do so.
|
| If you have a state actor as threat model you probably
| want to remove iCloud backups (see link):
|
| "Apple's iCloud, on the other hand, can be searched in
| secret. In the first half of last year, the period
| covered by Apple's most recent semiannual transparency
| report on requests for data it receives from government
| agencies, U.S. authorities armed with regular court
| papers asked for and obtained full device backups or
| other iCloud content in 1,568 cases, covering about 6,000
| accounts."
| kube-system wrote:
| Your concerns are not unfounded, but there is a very
| significant functional difference between being generally
| concerned about data privacy posed by any third-party bad
| actor, and having a threat profile that includes specific
| state actor threats.
|
| If you think it is a realistic scenario that the US would
| serve a warrant against you, then yes, your iCloud backup
| will probably be disclosed to the authorities. But if
| this is a real concern of yours, then you probably have
| much bigger things to worry about than whether your SSD
| is soldered to the board or not.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| That's fair but if someone is concerned about it they
| should invest into backups. It's unconscionable to
| entrust days of someone's work to a single device.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Seriously. It's 2021, you should have a remote backup.
| Use backblaze, tarsnap, anything. SSD failure is one of a
| thousand ways you can lose access to files on your
| laptop.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You just have to be damn sure that you back it up
| correctly.
|
| Most somewhat serious NAS appliances offer being a
| TimeMachine server which is more than enough for most
| people.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| How many SSDs have you worn out? I've never managed it.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've had hundreds of enterprise SSDs fail on my servers,
| but only a couple had any pre-failure indicators in SMART,
| including write volume which was pretty low. The post-
| failure indicator was almost consistently no longer visible
| through the disk controller.
|
| Failure rate was much less than enterprise spinning disks,
| but at least with the spinners failed, you could still see
| them and get most of the data off, if you needed to. And
| they had reliable pre-failure indications.
|
| TLDR: take regular backups and plan for storage to fail
| (which for soldered storage means plan to get a new device,
| I guess)
| StillBored wrote:
| If your running that big of a shop, I would call your
| channel partner/support group and bitch until they figure
| out whats failing. The usual expected failure modes for
| SSD's should be that they go into read only mode. If that
| isn't happening its either a firmware bug (probably) or a
| controller/vr failure which could be a process/heat/etc
| type of failure.
|
| Particularly for "enterprise" equipment the expectations
| isn't that it fails, but that the failures are more
| graceful and understood.
|
| So complain... that is why your paying the "enterprise"
| tax.
| [deleted]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Apple SSD module failures on portable Macs are quite
| common. A buddy has a computer repair shop and they do
| brisk business replacing them. Mine failed about 5 years
| in.
|
| SSDs are wear items. Especially when they're quite full, it
| is very easy to blow through spare writes and brick the
| drive.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| There was a problem with some of the SSDs where they
| corrupt themselves on powerloss.
|
| That's a totally different reason, and afaik, they should
| be using proper caps to let the controller write/flush
| their buffers.
|
| My last MacBook Pro was 7 years old, almost always full,
| and still works fine. Granted I'm not a video editor, but
| I had quite some write cycles.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Did those modules fail readonly, and the SMART data
| showed that their write limit had been reached?
|
| Or did the entire module electronically fail, as distinct
| from the SSD "no more writes" case?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| One, small capacity X limited cycles = short life span.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > That's just reads like BS.
|
| Because it partly is. It's just a lame defence /
| justification of soldering SSD, RAM and other parts, the
| major advantage of which is to make modern electronics more
| complex, hard to repair and prevent upgrades (i.e. "planned
| obsolescence"). If SSDs were reliable beyond 5+ years,
| manufacturers would be highlighting that and even offering
| guarantees for such a period. (Hell, most RAM today come with
| "lifetime" guarantees, even though RAM modules too fail
| occasionally).
|
| The modular design for computer hardware was chosen for a
| practical reason - that hardware can, and do fail. While
| electronic manufacturing has advanced a lot, minimizing
| failure rates to a great extent, the pros of replaceable
| modules absolutely still outweigh any of the alternative
| hardware designs so far.
| bitwize wrote:
| Except soldering everything on can give you HUGE
| performance boosts. Like, laptops come with soldered-on RAM
| that you can't get in a DIMM configuration because the
| soldered on stuff is so fast it needs a fast path to the
| CPU, which DIMM slots can't provide. And now with Apple
| building all system RAM directly into the chip die, it's
| just a whole new ballgame.
|
| So you can either go modular and have a slow PC, or you can
| have decent performance and just accept that everything is
| going to be soldered on and irreplaceable.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| This argument doesn't work with Apple. They built laptops
| that could literally just use 50% of their CPU because of
| insufficient cooling. Not too long ago they released a
| Macbook with a CPU cooler that doesn't even have direct
| contact with the CPU. And when LTT modded the cooler to
| fix it they realised the performance was still not better
| because the power delivery is insufficient as well.
|
| Also our PCs are not slow, modular or not. In many cases
| hardware is not the bottleneck.
| inb4_cancelled wrote:
| Maybe that CPU cooler wasn't really a CPU cooler after
| all, if it didn't have direct contact with the CPU.
|
| Maybe the fan was more of a case fan and it simply ran
| air through the whole machine INCLUDING the CPU heatsink,
| which is AFAIK exactly how it worked.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| Sorry, what? Citation please. The speed lost moving a
| DIMM from a 3cm path-to-CPU to a removable DIMM slot 6cm
| away is infinitesimal. You would not notice it.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| I've read that nowadays because they effectively have
| 8-channel or 16-channel RAM, there would just be too many
| connections to make them removable.
|
| Imagine 8 DIMMs next to each other, and then fitting that
| into a laptop form factor.
| wtallis wrote:
| For laptops, soldered vs socketed DRAM is mostly about
| power, not performance. But it is true that soldering
| DRAM makes it possible to reach higher bus speeds than
| are practical to achieve through a DIMM slot; this is why
| GPUs don't have upgradable RAM.
| tzs wrote:
| The speed lost due to distance would be infinitesimal,
| but is that the only speed loss there would be? I'd
| expect that parasitic inductance and parasitic
| capacitance would be higher in a socketed system which
| would impose speed limits.
| rvz wrote:
| > So no, what damages NAND does not damage the rest of the
| board. The more you write and swap to flash, the faster it
| wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it dies.
|
| Except as explained by the parent, when the SSD dies on an
| Intel Mac it can be recovered via Internet Recovery via EFI.
|
| Only way to brick that it is to have a bad flash onto the EFI
| ROM.
|
| On Apple Silicon when the SSD dies, it cannot be recovered as
| the firmware is also on the SSD and remains bricked which
| that is that.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I think you are using old information. Any modern SSD should
| be good for a few hundred to several hundred TB and may reach
| a PB. It would be very hard to use a personal computer that
| heavily. Most people would take 20 years or more.
| ApolloRising wrote:
| Video editors have workloads that can write a ton for each
| project in 4k and 8k resolutions, if its pro res even more.
| First thing they do is grab the largest fastest storage
| they can work off externally.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Right -- but work externally is key here. Sure, you often
| have some stuff you'll do locally, but having external
| disk arrays is the name of the game if you're doing large
| volumes of video, not just because you want to be able to
| have a backup if your internal dies, but because lots of
| other people often touch your stuff and it just fits a
| workflow better to use fast networked storage when
| possible.
| wtallis wrote:
| That _is_ a fairly write-heavy use case. But SSD
| endurance is measured in drive writes per day (over a
| typically 5-year warranty period). Rewriting the entire
| contents of your drive every workday for 2.5 years is
| only enough to put a typical consumer SSD out of
| warranty; actual failure due to write endurance will come
| much later.
| rsync wrote:
| "Any modern SSD should be good for a few hundred to several
| hundred TB and may reach a PB."
|
| Actually, even more than that - here are some examples:[1]
|
| Intel SSDSC2KB019TZ01 ("S4520") with 8.8 PB of lifetime
| writes
|
| Intel SSDSC2KB019T801 ("S4510") with 7.1 PB of lifetime
| writes
|
| Seagate ZA1920NM10001 ("Ironwolf[2] 110") with 3.5 PB of
| lifetime writes [2]
|
| Samsung MZ-76P2T0BW ("860 PRO") with 2.4 PB of lifetime
| writes
|
| [1] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notes/2021-q3-rsync.net
| _tech...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/rsyncnet/status/1402397708329967618
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That's not how SSD wear works because nobody completely
| writes to their SSD, erases it, and writes again.
|
| You can't wear-level against blocks that are in use, only
| blocks that are free.
|
| If every person I've helped socially and professionally is
| any indication, people keep their storage anywhere between
| 80% and 95% full.
|
| At 95% full, all your write cycles are focused on just 5%
| (plus spare provisioned blocks.)
|
| Think about how browsers consume all available memory and
| then readily push the system into using a lot of swap. I
| have to restart my browser regularly because of how much
| ram it uses even if I've closed every tab.
|
| Think about how whole-system file content indexing is the
| norm, and all the write operations that occur every time a
| file is added or updated.
|
| Think about how a lot of applications are just electron
| apps and they routinely update themselves.
|
| Think about all the filesystem metadata changes.
|
| Etc.
| wtallis wrote:
| > You can't wear-level against blocks that are in use,
| only blocks that are free.
|
| It only takes a bit of arithmetic to prove that this
| cannot possibly be true, or else all of those 95%-full
| drives would have long since failed, and QLC SSDs would
| have been a disaster and never would have been adopted by
| system OEMs that provide multi-year warranties. (And if
| it were true, then SSDs prior to TRIM wouldn't have been
| viable.)
|
| You _can_ include static data in wear leveling, and all
| SSDs do. It does lead to some write amplification, but
| that 's already factored in to a drive's endurance specs.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I did not say SSD wear works that way. All of that is
| factored into the usage I cited---swap, system writes,
| etc. do not wear the drive as much as you appear to think
| for most users.
| sofixa wrote:
| You're forgetting swap. Not to mention professionals in
| domains like photography, design, video, etc. who might
| chew through big files frequently.
| nottorp wrote:
| > You're forgetting swap.
|
| 8 Gb should be enough for everyone :)
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Yes. Don't RAM-max at your own peril.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Swap and other system activity is factored. Most heavy
| workloads wear other parts of the system as well. As
| another user pointed out, truly heavy storage and scratch
| system based workloads want to use large externals
| anyway, for other reasons.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I finished the life of a SSD in a single year of regular
| use; it was great to find it should not happen, but it did.
| wtallis wrote:
| What drive? What was the end of life behavior you
| observed? Catastrophic failure, or SMART data showing
| wearout?
| nightski wrote:
| Not the parent but I had this happen to me. It was a top
| of the line Samsung SSD at the time. Catastrophic
| failure. Was working fine then one day I rebooted and it
| never came back. I usually plan for failure of each drive
| every 2-3 years and buy them on Black Friday. But if that
| took out my entire 3.5k-4k m1 max laptop I'd be rather
| disappointed. It's $200 to replace a SSD.
| wtallis wrote:
| So, that failure mode makes it pretty much impossible to
| conclusively attribute it to wearing out the NAND write
| endurance. You probably hit a firmware bug or failure in
| a different SSD component, otherwise you would most
| likely have been getting warnings from your OS about
| impending drive failure based on SMART data.
|
| SSD wrote endurance _is_ an unavoidable ticking time
| bomb. But it is nowhere near as unpredictable or imminent
| as many people assume. It 's a failure mode that doesn't
| sneak up on you, and usually takes real effort to
| trigger. Other failure mechanisms are much more
| important.
| xondono wrote:
| Limited write cycles will produce data corruption, but what
| the article explains is that Apple is using the Flash in M1
| macs in a similar way to other ARM devices, that is, they
| have the firmware there.
|
| I don't know how much time do you expect your mac to last,
| but write cycles _on your firmware_ should not be much of a
| concern.
| exikyut wrote:
| Right, but I get the impression that the firmware vies for
| space with the rest of / et al.
|
| Sooo that means the wear leveling had better be ahead of
| whatever lifetime writes you throw at the system, or...
| gruez wrote:
| that's true, but it's far more likely for the mainboard to
| get soaked/smashed than the NAND running out of write cycles.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Heh, I wrote pretty much exactly the same thing, should have
| read all the comments first.
| bserge wrote:
| Lol, bad flash recovery has been solved a long time ago without
| retarded side effects like _not being able to boot off an
| external drive_.
| asdff wrote:
| This seems like a failure on a part of M1 systems rather than
| the T2 chip. I have an intel Macbook Air with the T2 chip for
| touchid, and I have a bootcamp partition that I boot off of via
| an external ssd over usb3 no problem.
| mlindner wrote:
| The article is only saying if the internal drive fails, you
| can't boot off an external drive, not that you can't boot off
| an external drive at all.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| I think the article is talking about when the internal drive
| is physically damaged/not working, and not just simple USB
| booting. USB booting is definitely supported on M1 Macs since
| I did it last week, but I don't have a machine with an
| actually broken SSD to test with.
|
| It can be observed that even T2 systems will fail to power up
| the Intel CPU system if the BridgeOS cannot be read properly.
| The system will only power up the T2 until it is reflashed
| through Apple Configurator.
| concinds wrote:
| Note that AS Macs still support external boot, just not when
| the internal drive is dead, since booting relies on the iBoot
| volume stored on the internal drive.
| throw3849 wrote:
| >> The primary argument against soldering the SSD, or really
| any other part, down like this tends to be that "Oh, now you
| can't just save money by upgrading it yourself|replacing it
| when it breaks
|
| Are you trolling? The primary argument is data recovery.
| Anything on laptop can die: charging port, motherboard... With
| soldered ssd your data are gone! You need to resolder SSD into
| exact same machine type, it may take 5 weeks if you are lucky!
|
| It takes 5 minutes to swap normal SSD into new machine and
| reboot! Maybe 1 hour if you have to go into shop!
| djrogers wrote:
| Given that the encryption keys for the SSD are stored in the
| Secure Enclave, moving the SSD elsewhere wouldn't do you any
| good anyway.
| throw3849 wrote:
| I think that can be disabled, or encryption key exported
| for backup.
|
| Anyway, it is stupid argument. It is like saying car does
| not need spare tire, because wheels are welded to save 10
| ounces on bolts.
| userbinator wrote:
| ...and that's the second problem they created.
| kube-system wrote:
| Disaster recovery is not a backup, nor should it
| supersede physical security in importance. Time Machine
| solves all of these problems.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I don't see how data recovery is an issue. You should be
| backing up off-site and locally anyway. Why would you
| optimize for the specific case of most of the laptop dying
| but not the SSD? It's more likely your laptop will get stolen
| or lost or dunked in water or burned in a fire. The soldering
| will make no difference in that case. Use backups.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> and should it fail, I don't consider the inability to
| externally boot to be a huge problem
|
| ...the flying fuck?!
|
| I stopped reading here. I was all for your comment until I
| heard this nonsense.
|
| ...in what world is this acceptable? What computer have you
| personally purchased between 1980-2010 that could not have had
| this core essential part simply replaced if it did not function
| correctly?
|
| I'm not sorry for complaining; either. I've been used to the
| $2k-4k machines I invest in to have replaceable parts that I
| can fix in the city or town (that may not have an Apple Store)
| I am in without any excess effort or extended time.
|
| This has been the standard for decades. It is not unreasonable
| to ask for an offering from this company whom I've almost
| exclusively purchased hardware from for more than 15 years.
|
| It's a fucking _huge_ deal if I can't simply boot from an
| external drive if my main one doesn't work - mainly because the
| internal one _can't be replaced_!
|
| I mean; I get defending Apple - I'm in their camp - but this is
| just absolute nonsense. Yes. That's a _huge_ fucking deal. A
| deal-breaker; even.
| shawnz wrote:
| I don't see why maintaining past expectations is such an
| important design consideration as you're making it out to be.
| Expectations change as needs change. Do you still expect to
| be able to replace your BIOS flash chip, or the controller on
| your HDD?
|
| Furthermore, do you really believe it's a realistic scenario
| that a customer would be buying a top-of-the-line flagship
| device for which portability is a main selling feature, only
| to be carrying around some aftermarket storage everywhere to
| boot it with when it begins to fail?
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I want to get my job done! When I have had a drive fail in
| the past, I boot off my periodic clone drive and keep
| going. With the no external boot scenario, I have to keep a
| backup _computer_ rather than a backup _drive_.
|
| I don't travel constantly, just occasionally. I am
| typically close to my external clone. If I was going to be
| on extended travel, yes, I would bring the external clone
| SSD with me.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| This seems absurd to me, yeah ok the SSD failing could be
| indicative of a bigger issue. But also now if any single
| component required to boot the machine fails then I also lose
| my data.
|
| We've turned several potential failure points resulting in data
| loss into almost every component on the board failing resulting
| in data loss.
|
| We all know how much they charge for a full board replacement
| though and why this change will reflect well in Tim Cook's
| charts.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| >This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to
| brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash
|
| It is now however possible to brick the system with a failed
| disk drive, which is vastly more likely
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The SSD is reasonably considered to last the "lifetime" of
| the product
|
| Except for simply running of out drive space.
|
| So if you want to buy something and have it last 5+ years you
| need to spec it out from the start to have way more drive space
| than you think you'll ever use.
|
| Or else when it runs out and you really need that extra space
| you're forced to upgrade everything in order to get the extra
| space since you made an initial mistake in specing out the
| machine when you first bought it.
|
| (I also strongly question the idea that un-removability
| provides much better lifetime over simply removing the spinning
| parts. That seems of questionable benefit to the end user,
| while taking upgradability away creates planned obsolescence
| that increases someone's financial metrics at apple and takes
| away consumer freedom).
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Yup. I just got a M1 Max with the 32-core GPU, 64GB of RAM,
| etc. The only area I cheaped out, relatively speaking, was
| with storage. Where I kept it at 1TB. I sort of regret this
| now (despite having a 2TB SSD in my iMac, a 2TB SSD in my
| gaming PC, several 1TB external SSDs, and a NAS with 24TB all
| in my home), but after spending over $4300 with tax/Apple
| Care, I just couldn't stomach a $400 upsell. But I spent
| $4300 in the hopes that this will be a five year laptop. I
| think I'll be fine as far as storage goes, since so much of
| what I do is on clouds anyway, but I am already having minor
| "what if" pangs, since I can't upgrade the SSD.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Except for simply running of out drive space.
|
| > So if you want to buy something and have it last 5+ years
| you need to spec it out from the start to have way more drive
| space than you think you'll ever use.
|
| Yup. When I bought my MBP M1 2020, I foolishly went with
| 256GB of storage.
|
| Installed Xcode and that was like 15GB of available storage
| space gone right then and there. The simulators take another
| few GB on top of that.
|
| Add to that all of the other software that I use, another
| significant portion of storage space is taken.
|
| And with my own files on top, I routinely have only about
| 10-15 GB of available space out of the 256 GB, which is quite
| annoying. And it also means not being able to install some
| stuff that I use only sometimes, because with the limited
| amount of space I have I cannot waste it on things that I
| only rarely use. But that means I don't get to use those
| things at all unfortunately.
|
| Not being able to do anything about this is about the only
| gripe I have with this machine. So all in all I am still very
| happy with it. But not as happy as I would've been if I
| wasn't constantly running out of storage space.
|
| And I even thought I was giving myself enough room for
| everything, because my previous computer was a MacBook Air
| 2018 model with 128GB storage, where I was also running out
| of space all the time, so even though I really wanted to buy
| the 1TB model of MBP M1 2020 I landed on the 256GB thinking
| that hey it's still twice what I had so it should be enough
| right. Well, no, not quite enough as it soon turned out.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah I just ordered a 16" MBP M1 and my math was that I
| routinely run with about 1TB of storage with a lot of
| fussiness, I would have ordered 2TB, but since it isn't
| upgradeable I ordered 4TB.
|
| That made someone's numbers at apple like $400 better at
| least.
|
| And it would probably be better for me financially to wait
| 4-5 years until I really needed 4TB before upgrading (if I
| ever needed to, which I might not).
|
| Same thing with RAM. 16GB is proving to simply not be quite
| enough, so I would have gone with 32GB, but instead I went
| for 64GB for future-proofing.
|
| I'd much rather have bought 32GB now, and then upgraded to
| 64GB maybe multiple years down the road when I needed it.
| radley wrote:
| FWIW, a 4TB SSD with the same speed (7GB/sec) is
| currently $1200 ($750 more than the 2TB). So Apple's
| price is decent for the current market.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q54GHTC/
|
| I'm certainly not enthused about being stuck with current
| market capacities, but at least I don't feel gouged on
| price.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to
| brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never
| need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover.
|
| Apple-branded SSD module failures are pretty common. Bricked
| BIOS/EFI images are not.
|
| I've been supporting Mac users for two decades and the only
| time I've used a hardware SPI flasher was when I needed to pull
| my firmware image, modify the EFI bootloader to include NVME
| drivers, and flash it back. It wasn't hard. I attached a clip
| to the motherboard that connected the chip to a Raspberry Pi.
|
| Seriously, my first mac was an LC. I've never seen a Mac brick
| itself doing a firmware update.
|
| I had to do that because my Apple SSD died about 5 years into
| owning the system. That system uses an m2 PCIe port but it's a
| weird pinout. Apple doesn't sell parts, the local apple
| authorized shop wanted $250 just for diagnostics, the only
| thing on ebay were used drives of the same and, and only one
| company makes an overpriced replacement aftermarket drive for
| Apple's weird pre-NVME pcie storage connector and they have
| compatibility issues, underperform compared to much cheaper
| standard NVME drives, etc.
|
| Thankfully, you can plug in a standard NVME drive via a $10
| adapter from ebay.
|
| I was back in business for a fraction of what a used 512GB
| Apple drive would have cost me, with twice the storage and even
| more speed over the already fast Apple module. But I had to
| pull NVME drivers from a later revision of the system and flash
| them to my ROM.
|
| What pisses me off the most in the whole thing is that Samsung
| and Apple designed the drive such that when it runs out of
| write cycles, it completely fails; it doesn't even show up on
| the PCIe bus.
|
| I'm typing this now on that very system, which is now almost
| exactly 8 years old. Do you think there will be 8 year old T2
| macs? Not if they see daily use.
|
| Repeat after me: user storage for a computer should never be
| permanently attached.
|
| > This kind of failure (high voltage parts close to low voltage
| ones, close to liquid damage prone areas, without any
| underfilling) is documented by Louis Rossmann.
|
| > It is, however, not always feasible or possible to entirely
| prevent.
|
| It is 100% feasible/possible to entirely prevent.
|
| Don't permanently attach storage on non-mobile devices.
|
| Use conformal coating, something Apple could definitely afford
| to do with their profit margin on these machines. Even if they
| just coated the high voltage stuff. In fact, there's no reason
| T2 mac owners can't buy a can of conformal spray off Digikey or
| Mouser and do it themselves.
|
| Don't put high voltage components near low voltage ones;
| especially ones that have user data and are non-replaceable.
| There's a reason Apple used to have a board for the DC input.
|
| Every T2 mac has a finite lifetime before it becomes completely
| useless scrap thanks to SSD wear. And it's even worse for the
| M1 people because reportedly they do a great job of wearing out
| their SSDs.
|
| This isn't about boot flash reliability or tiny increments in
| security-for-user-privacy. It's about slowly walling everyone
| in. Every new update of MacOS, every new hardware update - has
| put another brick in the wall.
| bogantech wrote:
| > This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to
| brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never
| need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover.
|
| T2 could have been designed to store / recover the rom in an
| SPI flash too. It's just cheaper to store it on the SSD
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The software fails before the hardware with apple products in
| my experience. I have an ipod touch 16GB from 2013, that I
| still use to play music, and itunes still supports it. But I
| can't browse the internet on it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > since whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically
| likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board
|
| That's a pretty big assumption.
|
| The SSD is the component that is most likely to fail next to
| the battery.
|
| So effectively this makes the lifetime of the computer the
| lifetime of the SSD, which is just one shade away from planned
| obsolescence due to the write limitations of SSDs.
|
| edit: ChuckNorris89 wrote pretty much the same but four hours
| earlier.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I'd be curious what Marcan (Asahi Linux founder/hacker) would
| have to say about this. Perhaps there's a workaround?
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >In fact, they do not support external boot disks at all, by
| design.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417
| NobodyNada wrote:
| He's talked about this quite extensively in the past. Here's a
| link to the Asahi project docs:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot
|
| > iBoot is the main bootloader on M1 machines. It is small. It
| cannot understand external storage. It does not support USB. It
| does not have a UI. All it can do is boot from internal
| storage, and show an Apple logo, a progress bar, and a few
| error messages.
|
| IIRC he's said before that iBoot doesn't even have keyboard
| support; it can tell if you're holding down the power button to
| enter recovery mode, but that's it. There is no workaround for
| this; it is not possible to boot over USB if the bootloader
| does not speak USB.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I bought an iMac in 2008. When it started getting slow, I bought
| an external SSD and booted over FireWire 800. It gave my machine
| many more years of life, and in fact it still works just fine!
| It's not my daily driver, but I'm glad that I can boot it from an
| external drive.
|
| Too bad my next Mac won't be so flexible!
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