Apple drops soldered storage for 2024 Mac Mini The iFixit team has pulled apart Apple's new Mac Mini, revealing replaceable storage and a slightly more modular design - concessions to repairability that warrant an impressive provisional score. Apple's Mac Mini product line has been around for a while, and the latest model was launched this month, replete with M4 or M4 Pro …
It's basically a daughterboard with the two NAND chips and some supporting passives; the actual storage controller is on the mainboard, so no, can't just put an adapter in place and drop in a WD Black, etc, unlike the old Mac Air/Pro from a good few years ago (as I recall)
Dosdude1 has, unsurprisingly, already tried it and managed to upgrade a 256gb (2 x 128) storage module to 1tb (2 x 512) by swapping the NAND modules out - very similar to other modern Macs, but the solder reflow work is done on the removable board, not the mainboard.
https://youtu.be/cJPXLE9uPr8
His channel is a great resource to see just how much work is required to do work on these devices (that, and reflow work is fun to watch if you've never seen it done before)
Steven R
I watched the video at
https://youtu.be/cJPXLE9uPr8
and that's some serious soldering. I solder a lot, and do some SMD work as well, but BGA soldering like this I would never attempt.
The solution is to have someone producing compatible modules with the NANDs already on. Seems likely it will happen.
Installing macOS on the new NANDs also seemed quite a challenge. So perhaps that will end any aspirations to have after market upgrades.
It's just so bloody predictable and tiresome of Apple. It's practically impossible to source replacement SSDs for 2010-2018 MacBook Airs now unless you take a gamble with adaptors and SSDs from Ali Express and pray you don't lose your data.
Because it isn't an SSD.
Apple's SoC has an on board NAND controller, so their "SSD" is raw NAND. It wouldn't be that difficult for someone else to produce them, but the addressable market is pretty small (Mac owners with failed drives or wanting to replace with bigger drives) so I wonder if anyone will bother. Maybe if they make the SSDs in the laptops replaceable when they do the next redesign of the Macbook Pro line?
Apple doesn't have the greatest rationale for keeping people out of their hard earned purchases.
Let's be honest, as we move towards a more universal approach to standards on most electronics, the gap between Mac "superiority" and other platforms will decrease considerably.
Just me 10p's worth, and I am neither a fanboi, nor a nay sayer of Apple products.
With the LPCAMM2 standard for LPDDR there's a chance Apple will switch from soldering the RAM to LPCAMM modules. They'd have to change how the memory controllers are organized because LPCAMM2 is designed to support 96 or 192 bit wide memory not the 128 bit chunks Apple uses. But LPDDR6 provides a strong incentive to go to 96/192 because the base controller width goes from 16 to 24 bit, so I'm pretty sure that's what LPCAMM2 is targeted at.
LPDDR6 is a year or two away, and Apple is typically rather slow to adopt faster LPDDR standards, so it'll be a while before we find out.
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In my experience, storage is both the most commonly damaged component in a desktop, only exceeded by a laptop battery which doesn't apply to this, and the most common spec where users want to increase it before there is a problem with the rest of the computer. I might agree a little more if we were talking about RAM upgrades, because a lot of people don't know when they're doing something RAM-intensive and therefore don't bother to upgrade it. Running out of storage space and not wanting to delete the files there is something that a lot of users can understand and some of them want to do something about it.
until they get nearly filled up. not uncommon to fine 512 GB ssd's on macs nearly filled. then you are exercising just that last bit or ssd continuously, and the drive slows down to a crawl or fails. you should always get the largest ssd you can afford to try to avoid those scenarios. alternatively, keep the drive as empty as possible.
It's quite easy to wear out an SSD, especially for people who didn't specify enough because Apple charges a massive amount for any upgrade. If someone doesn't specify enough storage and runs close to the limit, and they also occasionally use enough of their RAM that it pages, it will wear the same free space over and over. They're not aware it is happening so they don't do the things that would extend the disk's life. Or they're just unlucky; not all SSDs last as long as specified. I've seen it happen to me and to others. Fortunately, on many computers it's a cheap fix. Apple is one of the exceptions to that.
You might be right, I don't have the numbers to prove or disprove it. I expect that you don't either, so this looks a lot like a snide comment to the effect that Apple buyers have more money than sense.
Personally speaking I expect to have to upgrade either or both of the primary and secondary storage at some point in the machine's lifecycle, for one or more of three reasons:
1. The workload gets harder over time as expectations change;
2. I couldn't justify the expense of the optimum spec at the time of purchase, but found later upgrade an acceptable alternative (especially since hardware prices trend downwards over time).
3. The manufacturer simply didn't offer the right spec to the retail channel.
Reason 3. applied to the (non-Apple) laptop I'm typing this on. Despite featuring a nicely capable i9 CPU and spiffy nVidia graphics, the model on offer at UK high street outlets was fitted with a thoroughly inadequate 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD, presumably to hit some arbitrary price point. Fortunately both were easily upgraded, which is what happened within days of purchase.
-A.
Even if it were simply an SSD, and not just a daughterboard, the tendency for Apple hardware is to do a boot check to see if everything is sending the 'authorized' id for that component. I am pretty sure that there is no condition where the purchaser is going to be in a position to save money bypassing the Apple tax. It's designed that way for a reason.
Upside down next to a dead rodent…
I am considering mounting it to the back of a monitor, with a bit of a stand-off to access the power switch. Though I worry about the effects on the thermal performance.
The 200 quid for a RAM upgrade is just insulting.
And why can’t I have physical switches for turning off wi-fi and on those that have integrated mics and cameras physical switches for those too.
Almost everyone turns it off when they don't intend to use it for a while. Either to save energy or avoid issues if there's a power event while they're away.
Most people turn it off every day, either when they finish work or when they go to bed.
Aside from that, if you really do only turn it off once or twice a year then you'll forget where the button is.
Have a lot of mac users here, and none of them turn the computer off or shut it down. Usually keep their machines running as they don't want to wait for them too boot up as they're too busy. When things stop working then and they call me then they finally get restarted to get things working again. Same with iphones.
I once boarded a European short-haul flight and was seated next to a Mac-wielding American youth who insisted on interacting with the lappie right up until the moment that the cabin crew demanded the switching off of portable devices. At which point he simply closed the lid.
I pointed out that this was not, in fact, switching it off.
Incomprehension followed.
-A.
Modern PCs use a single digit number of watts when they're just sitting there, I bet a Mac Mini uses less than a watt. If you allow it to hibernate it will basically zero. The energy savings over a year from turning off probably don't amount to the price of a fast food burger.
I don't know what "most people" you're around. I don't know anyone who turns it off. At work the IT department tells everyone to leave them on so they can install patches overnight or over the weekend. At home you do it because otherwise Windows will hassle you to update the moment you turn it on after patches have been delivered.
I bought an M1 Mac mini because it seemed a really nice trade off between price and computing power.
I had to double up my usual RAM expectation for future proofing, which cost quite a lot more than a subsequent upgrade probably would have for a non-Apple device. Nonetheless it was, and is, pretty wonderful.
And yet I hardly ever use it. Commodity PC hardware isn't as good, but it is good enough. I run Windows 10 in a VM, on top of Linux on vanilla x86, perfectly well.
Doesn't bode well for Windows 11.
-A.
RTRJ - Right Tool Right Job.
You buy macs for graphics design or possibly video editing because they're good at it and have colour correct monitors available etc (Yes I know you can get these for PC too). You use Linux on a web server because it's secure and lightweight. You run Windows on your corporate desktops because everyone uses Office and you want document compatibility. Therefore you need a Windows server estate (file servers, AD, patching infra) to manage them etc.
Yes, Apple used proprietary SSDs in older Intel-based MacBooks, so why not in the newer Mac Mini? Apple always finds a way to destroy a good idea about repair and maintenance of its computer products. All this does is open the door for extremely pricey SSD upgrades from Apple and maybe a company the dotes on Apple upgrades like OWC.
I have owned a late 2011 intel Macbook Pro 13" from new, bought when the Retina macbooks hit the market and still use it.. It got dragged out into the light from under the bed where it had sat for a few years, and refurbished heavily. Found it Incredibly easy to service, upgrade the RAM, fit a brand new battery and swap the spinning rust for an SSD (pleasingly it used a completely standard SATA interface). Installed Ubuntu on it and use it daily - the only complaint is that it runs a little hot and loud due to no ventilation on the bottom casing.
The "Retina" model in 2012 was the start of the decline at Apple with proprietary SSD's and non-upgradable RAM.
If I'd bought that machine instead it would have gone off to landfill long ago.
I ran an 2013 MBP as my daily until not that long ago. Upgraded the SSD with an off the shelf 2TB stick. Its only the connector pinout thats different so you just need a small interface board to connect the two.
My wife still uses a 2015 MBA which is due to inherit the same 2TB stick once I can be bothered cloning the current disk onto it.
The first 80486 computer my company got me had its memory soldered to the motherboard.
It had 1Mb but you could upgrade it by adding another 4Mb taking the total to 5 Mb - which was a bit pointless as nothing could access more than 4.
It was the first 80486 to cost less than £4k but, by the time they had upgraded the memory and the HD to a massive 100Mb it actually cost £5695
Luckily I wasn’t paying because that was quite a bit back then.
They don’t want you to turn if off! They want you to interact with it like people do with Echo, they want Siri to be your got for information mgmt obviously but it can’t do that when the computer is powered off. Its soooo blindingly obvious. Put the power button out of the way to make people not bother their lazy fat selves putting the effort in reach for it.
Why buy an apple -- annoying things without an open standard in sight?
But the M-series modules are the fastest CPUs anyone is building right now, because they have the lowest latency DRAM (that's latency as seen by the CPU, of which latency as quoted by DRAM suppliers is only a part).
Apart from the M's, all fast 2024 computers are way too fast for their memory systems, and spend half or more of their time waiting for memory data (each cache miss costs ~60ns with an intel core using DDR5 memory, cache misses on about 1% of instructions, 4GHz CPU). M's closely-coupled DRAM responds a lot quicker: I wonder who's measured it? It's really hard to make a CPU 10% faster inside, but Apple got a lot of 10%s that way.
It may be Apple's annoying insularity which let them do it. There's no technical reason not to apply the same thoroughgoing ingenuity to an x86-compatible CPU/memory.
I do wish El Reg (or what's left of it) would stop following this nonsense with the word "Drop". It is frequently used with diametrically opposite meanings.
In this case I assume it is supposed to mean 'no longer done" but the term is also used to mean 'has just been made available'.
Proprietary is part of Apple DNA, just like degree of difficulty to repair. Like competitive diving, Apple gets a perfect 10 on both difficult to repair and proprietary. That's why their products cash machines, and they've dupe the Apple cult into spend, spend, spend big bucks.
A bit of a rant.
Bleeding money to boost internal memory and storage is one thing. Other things are external devices, like bubs, monitors, backup storage, cameras, cables, audio interfaces. To upgrade an old (late 2012, 16G, 1TB) system, like mine, requires besides a small forand new gear that funnels its way through tiny lesions in the surface of a thing which is more a sleek art object than a computing utility. The expense, when you add it up, is , for the sake of, aextraordinary. When you factor in struggling with flaws that persist in ill-specified operating systems for the best part of a decade, and maybe another decade, losing sleep, rag, and data, you feel like weighing things up. Do I need a neural engine? Is that what we used to call an array processor? Am I made of money?
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