This is moving in a misleading fashion, largely due to Apple's method of not informing the public that their current drives are not much quicker than previous ones despite having the MBP supporting SATA3.
You are actually comparing SSDs using SATA2 to ones using SATA3. The current SSD used in the MBP is NOT SATA3 and despite the logic board/system supporting SATA3 (6.0 GBPS), it caps at SATA2 max, at about 3.0 GBPS.
The devil? No...anything you buy from the manufacturer is going to cost more, unless they are having a special. With that said, Apple did a poor job of letting people know how the current SSD performs. This is like when they advertised SATA2 years ago but sold systems currently running SATA1.5. It is somewhat deceptive and IMO it is kind of crappy of them. The 128GB SSD upgrade from Apple is only $100 more than the HDD...why? I would assume that they are trying to get rid of them given that SATA3 SSDs can double the data transfer rates. With that said, the SSD they are using was released in January of 2011, so perhaps they just got a good deal?
The current SSD that comes in the MBP is SATA2 SSD is made by Toshiba, who currently does not even make a SATA3 drive. I would expect people to report other brands shortly as Apple will almost surely switch. The question is when though, as the timing seems rather odd.
It appears the Toshiba model that Apple uses is their performance model, the HG3. Speed wise, the Toshiba drive is quick, but not like the SF1200 SATA2 drives such as the Vertex2 or OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, or the Micron driven Crucial C300. It really lacks in sustained write speed, as the SF1200 drives will run double to ten times more speed in regards to sustained write. The drive is rated at 220MBps read and 180MBps write, but I am yet to see sustained write speeds anywhere close to 180MBps in the new MBP...that may just be because people are not maxing them out with what they do though.
Toshiba is still using 32nm technology, in which there is nothing wrong with that as 32nm SSDs have proven themselves. The quality of the flash memory used in the drive is excellent, and it provides reliability and longevity that you can count on, even if it is not as durable as the 'enthusiast' or enterprise models.
IIRC Toshiba makes their own controller and those for Samsung...or it may be Samsung makes the controllers for Toshiba...I am not positive. It is not a SandForce driven drive, but their new drives run circles around their previous ones so they may have changed that up. With that said, it does have native wear leveling firmware (and of course TRIM support as well which IMO is not needed with today's SSDs).
I think Apple should have explained this better as I would not have purchased an SSD from them, even if it was $50 more. While most users will not max out SATA2, we are talking about very high end laptops that are commonly used for more resource intensive tasks.
