...and (since you need a product serial number to order) will they sell you any size you want?
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Apple Expands Do-It-Yourself Repair Program to Desktop Macs With M1 Chips and Studio Display
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Average customers never take the lids off their fully upgradeable PCs.
What is good news is that the Mac Studio looks like it is repairable with a set of screwdrivers and a steady hand, and that all of the bits that are likely to go wrong - the flash memory, all the various sockets - are on replaceable boards. No more "new logic board when the headphone jack breaks".
Are you on behalf of the de-vill?De-vill’s advocate? Just curious to know where is this coming from?
This is a more technical crowd replying here, and your point is spot-on. Your post reminds me of the brow-beating small iPhone lovers often get on this forum by being the vocal minority for a smaller form size. We got it (I love my 13 Mini btw), but it’s failed commercially. So be it- the right to repair crowd now have their opportunity. At least Apple will be able to move these repair kits among its stores, as little or as much as they get used. And indi repair shops get a head start with Apple’s tech manuals. A small price for Apple to pay to avoid government sanction from the right to repair folks.
They won't sell you a larger SSD.
I've tried to do it via the Do It Yourself program and they simply won't sell you a larger SSD.
It is f*cking ridiculous to insist customers sell their current machine and buy a new one simply to get a bigger SSD.
Fed up with Apple doing this sort of thing.
I've tried to do it via the Do It Yourself program and they simply won't sell you a larger SSD.
It is f*cking ridiculous to insist customers sell their current machine and buy a new one simply to get a bigger SSD.
Fed up with Apple doing this sort of thing.
You cannot upgrade the storage. Must be the same size modules.
Source: I’m an AASP Technician
The Storage Controller is not a part of the storage modules. The MLB requires a specific configuration and order
For most do-it yourself upgrades on the Mac Studio, you’d have to be very good, very lucky, or very dumb to risk your investment in that way. As for repairs, don’t even think about saving yourself $160 by not getting the three year Applecare coverage. That’s penny wise and pound foolish. AppleCare can be very expensive for Macbooks. For the Mac Studio, especially as one configures up beyond the low end base configuration, it‘s a bargain.
It’s not to save some money, many people have sensitive info on their iphone mac etc..like work emails, crypto wallets, etc.. that they do not trust just handing it over to some apple employees, who are nothing more than bunch young guys with minimum background check and making just above fast food salaries.
Good to see the program expand to Desktops. Now would like to see it available in other countries too.
Better than nothing, but still nowhere near where it should be.
At a minimum you should be able to walk into an Apple Store and say "I want to buy part number XXXX" and they should sell it to you, no questions asked.
At a minimum you should be able to walk into an Apple Store and say "I want to buy part number XXXX" and they should sell it to you, no questions asked.
I can confirm, mine is a base model with 512GB, entering the serial on the website and it only list the 512GB module as replacement, unlike the screen capture by someone else in page 1.
I haven't seen a single report of someone successfully upgrading theirs.
No, they sell them in different sizes because you can configure it in different sizes.
Which gets to the bottom of the issue: can you reconfigure the controller to expect a different size, or can you not?
SSD upgrade restrictions on these might be a hardware limit. The controller may be specified for handling only certain amounts of flash or PCIe lanes at test time due to yield issues and the chips ”bucketed” and installed in matching capacity machines.
Typically when they make chips they don’t all work properly but they can design in bucketing to pick out partially working ones as lower spec parts. This makes the difference between throwing away 80% of the wafer and throwing away 20% of it.
Historically on some parts you can work around this in software / firmware but don’t expect it to work correctly. But usually it’s configured by burning hardware fuses or zapping stuff with a laser now.
I’m not sure if the SSD controller is integrated on the CPU SoC on these but if it is, it would explain an actual hardware limitation. You don’t want to throw away a whole chip because one tiny bit doesn’t work.
Either way I’m not sure what the issues is. There are a fair number of TB holes in it to stick storage in. Going back to the old days, all our compute storage other than a small boot/system disk was outboard anyway (Sun SPARCstation/Ultra).
Typically when they make chips they don’t all work properly but they can design in bucketing to pick out partially working ones as lower spec parts. This makes the difference between throwing away 80% of the wafer and throwing away 20% of it.
Historically on some parts you can work around this in software / firmware but don’t expect it to work correctly. But usually it’s configured by burning hardware fuses or zapping stuff with a laser now.
I’m not sure if the SSD controller is integrated on the CPU SoC on these but if it is, it would explain an actual hardware limitation. You don’t want to throw away a whole chip because one tiny bit doesn’t work.
Either way I’m not sure what the issues is. There are a fair number of TB holes in it to stick storage in. Going back to the old days, all our compute storage other than a small boot/system disk was outboard anyway (Sun SPARCstation/Ultra).
I assume if you realize it’s the wrong part, too difficult to install, or won’t fix your issue then you should be able to return it no questions asked? Genuinely curious.
I am always shocked at the price, you are basically paying double the price for storage. The whole serviceability is really just a mute point for me at the moment. Really wish Apple would stop going proprietary with everything and build an actual pro computer with great specs all while giving the user freedom. Of course if they did that they would not make as much money so they make all this look like an engineering marvel and pretending they actually care about the pro segment.
They’re really not expensive. Seriously.
We foot £7k for a 6.4TB enterprise SSD. And we have 12 of them in one computer. That’s the “pro” segment of the market. The macs are dirt cheap!
If you’re comparing stuff to a cheap ass sabrent NVME SSD from Amazon, perhaps!
They're… sort of in the range of Seagate enterprise SSDs, yeah.
Apple:
1TB @ $527.12
2TB @ $836.00
4TB @ $1,285.80
Seagate:
3.84TB @ $1,064.09
Well, not exactly.
I feel so conflicted about apple these days.
One one hand we have great stuff such as this, the improved iCloud security and apple silicon and the removal of ths csam thing.
On the other we have the commercials in the appstore and tje botched os updates.
One one hand we have great stuff such as this, the improved iCloud security and apple silicon and the removal of ths csam thing.
On the other we have the commercials in the appstore and tje botched os updates.
If you're paying £7k for 6.4TB just for fast PCIe SSD, when a 2TB, M.2 PCIe 4.0x4 stick costs under £300 retail then something is very wrong.
But that's probably not what you are paying for. Either you're paying for better technical specs for server-class hardware with better throughput, error-checking, life span, multi-user performance etc. or you're paying for guaranteed MTBF, extended warranties, compliance certification, service agreements etc. Or your company has an exclusive contract with the supplier that involves paying a premium for "off-contract" items but (hopefully) pays back in other ways, like service agreements and better prices for the items on the contract. Or, maybe, you've made the fatal mistake of going to an enterprise-centric supplier (who make their money from contracts with large businesses) and naively paying their one-off retail prices without going through the tendering/contract negotiation process.
There's no evidence that Apple's SSDs are "enterprise grade" in terms of technical specs or guaranteed longevity.