2018 Mac mini Teardown: User-Upgradeable RAM, But Soldered Down CPU and Storage

There were 1TB NVME drives that are almost as fast as Apple's NVME that went for $135 shipped on BF. Even now, Samsung 970 EVO NVME is going for $225. That's a far cry from the $800 Apple charges you to go from the worthless 128gb to the 1TB option on the base model.

 

You may want to consider using an external SSD unit. I am using a tiny Samsung T5 device that plugs directly into the USB-C port. I offload files such as dropbox and music to it and it works well at over 500 MB/second transfer rate. https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t5/. I reserve the internal SSD drive for system use only. It is crazy fast. I wish Apple provided more and upgradable internal storage but the external option is pretty good if you use the USB-C ports.

One note – if you want to format the Samsung device to APFS, follow this procedure. That works well as well - http://www.colejoplin.com/2018/05/13/formatting-a-samsung-t5-ssd-to-apfs/. Be sure to at least reformat it from the default format. Though it is possible to make it bootable I wouldn’t do that since the performance is good though not as great as the internal storage.

 

Apple sticking with the Jobs idea of closing machines off versus Woz's idea of slots and the ability to upgrade and customize machines is my biggest issue with Apple. I own a 2017 Macbook Pro but it is likely to be my last. I'll probably get a Mac Mini next just to keep something for IOS development and because I can at least upgrade the RAM now(I thank Apple for that small favor), but my main computer will probably be a Windows laptop that allows me to upgrade both my storage and RAM when I need to. My second biggest issue is the keyboard. I have tried to get used to this low travel keyboard, but I find myself using my older HP laptop with a much better keyboard when my work doesn't require Mac OS, or I use an external keyboard, which isn't good for travelling. It's sad that Apple has frozen out the more technical people with their decisions like this. We don't get choices except at the time of purchase, so you had better buy a big SSD and all the RAM you think you'll need for the life of the product.