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Affordable Third-Party Mac Studio Storage Upgrades Coming in 2025
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Because Apple Silicon processor acts as a storage controller, and it interfaces directly with NANDs.
It's an interesting design decision, but painful for end users because there are no standard M.2-like interface for NAND access.
You don't want to see my desk then! 3 monitors, a Mac Mini, a Thunderbolt dock, an amp, a headphone amp/DAC, a microphone, about 1000 cables, headphones, remotes (for the amps), a UPS, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and a Windows desktop computer. No, I don't have a problem...
I think this is the most important part we're overlooking with these 3rd-party hacks (yes it is a hack, while clever the machine is definitely not intended to be user-upgradable).
Yes you get more storage at a lower price (some may argue 2 TB for 400€ isn't exactly cheap, only cheaper than what Apple charges), but in case of any sort of problem Apple will deny your tech support claim.
I personally wouldn't risk it and use fast external storage instead, but to each their own.
There's a reason why I remove my BMW engine's flash tune before I bring it in for service.
This is a major win for consumers. Take your 15 year old flash drive prices somewhere else Apple!
Pretty sure all the encryption is handled by the M1/M2/M3/M4 chips. The NAND chips handle no part of the encryption. Also, this is one of those times where the EU's consumer friendly laws should help. We'll see if the EU courts are friendly towards Apple's anti consumer behavior when it comes to storage upgrades.
As it should. Apple can't guarantee third party hardware won't cause issues that aren't their fault.
If it's anything like my VW Golf R, they'll know. lol. Had a $7k repair on my transmission, took the tune off.. their system instantly caught it.
No. In most cases, nothing beats internal storage. In some cases, apps won't use external storage for certain things (for example, After Effects for cache - you cannot force it to use an external drive for it).
You absolutely can. I have my TV, Photos and Music libraries all on an external drive and it works perfectly. All of those apps officially support moving their content libraries to whatever local drive you want -- while still doing iCloud syncing.
I don't know about Mail, but I have a hunch you could do that as well if you did a bit of work.
But then he can pay someone $50 to do it for him - it's not that hard to unscrew a few bolts and restore the system. It's a half an hour job.
Unlike flashing your car's ECU/DME, swapping the module does not involve any flashing of the logic board's firmware. Just keep the original modules and swap them back in if your studio starts having problems.
Maybe MR can set up a countdown clock for the lawsuits to begin.
How about Apple not screw their customer base on storage upgrades? A 8 TB Western Digital SN850X nvme drive went for $550 on Black Friday. Apple charges $2,200 to upgrade to 8 TB. Disgusting. I really wish apple’s customer base would call them out on this.
It's not really that far off from top m.2 SSD's. You pay around 200-300 euros extra for the plate, which is kinda fairplay.
We do all the time. Only shareholders and Applestans defend this greedy practice. Even the press have started calling out against Apple's 8gb RAM base models. Thanks to the Ai hype/bubble, they finaly relented and gave us 16gb base.
Dont forget that you must have a second mac to restore the upgradet mac in dfu mode.
But anyway it is good news for us.
But anyway it is good news for us.
I see these cases all the time. People think that if they buy a device from a certain brand they can't criticize them, and suddenly they become huge defenders of that corporation. Not only can you, but you should criticize the bad practices of a company even if you own those devices.
And yet it provides basically no benefit other than massive profits for them
Apple should be getting raked over the coals publicly for not using standard interfaces for storage
Yes - but for the Mini there is a case of having everything in one package (as it is easily transportable).
Also I didn't want my wife to struggle with external disks and cables - so I took the 8TB (still shaking from the price).
It has a number of drawbacks. The biggest one I ran into was with Time Machine. If you try to move to a new mac with a split system like that then your new system must have the same external drive configuration to do a restore, you can’t just say “restore all this to the new drive that has more space than the prior two combined” or “I only want to restore the OS drive and not the secondary.”