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Apple Seemingly Unable to Recover Data From 2018 MacBook Pro With Touch Bar When Logic Board Fails
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This is just a worse example of planned obsolescence. Putting yet another obstacle in the way of repairing your computer. With the ram and flash soldered to the board, these parts become out of reach to replace when your computer gets out of warranty in 3 years. I remember the days when a logic board replacement on a MacBook Pro was $700, seen as insane at the time, is now a bargain compared with the price of these parts today.
Apple better hope these logic boards don't become lemons like their 2010 and 2011 models, otherwise the lawsuits will be incoming.
Apple better hope these logic boards don't become lemons like their 2010 and 2011 models, otherwise the lawsuits will be incoming.
As another poster correctly pointed out, with the T2 this port would be literally useless anyway.
This could easily be solved if Apple did not solder in their SSD. I am surprise someone in lawsuit happy USA has not tried and sue Apple for not making the laptops user repairable.
My laptop does the Time Machine complete backup thing with my NAS when at home and when out and about it backups to a permanently installed micro SD card in the SD card reader. But I switch to a 2018 MBP later this week so no more mobile backups on the laptop itself.
Not that I always have internet connection when out and about but when I do I run into the issue that Time Machine will not let me backup to my NAS (Synology Cloud Server) over the internet. So from my perspective and usage the MacOS backup universe is getting worse. Single built in SSD, no Time Machine over the internet to my NAS and even when we get to plug-in local removable SSD backups we find that Time Machine does not work with the current default Apple filing system (APFS).
It's a bit of a mess. Time Machine needs to support proper self-hosted remote backups and support AFPS to look modern and useful. We seem to be loosing functionality faster than gaining replacements.
Not that I always have internet connection when out and about but when I do I run into the issue that Time Machine will not let me backup to my NAS (Synology Cloud Server) over the internet. So from my perspective and usage the MacOS backup universe is getting worse. Single built in SSD, no Time Machine over the internet to my NAS and even when we get to plug-in local removable SSD backups we find that Time Machine does not work with the current default Apple filing system (APFS).
It's a bit of a mess. Time Machine needs to support proper self-hosted remote backups and support AFPS to look modern and useful. We seem to be loosing functionality faster than gaining replacements.
I've been using a Western Digital external USB 3.0 connected hard drive for 5 years now without failure to both backup and restore operations for two successive iMacs. I'm probably going to get a new one soon, as it's running out of space, and the newer 3.1 and C standards double the data transfer speed. It's not difficult to find reliable and reasonably priced external drives which will work fine for Time Machine backups of Macs. Cloud solutions are more reasonable for mobile devices and laptops, as they typically store much less data than desktops and are rarely in close proximity to hard backup solutions. You can get WD My Book HDD drives from 3 TB to 10 TB for $90 at the low end to $280 or so for 10 TB. I'm not surprised that Apple dropped the Time Capsule drives, as they were basically a more expensive alternative to offerings of other high quality disk manufacturers like WD and Seagate. As long as the drives can be formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Time Machine is happy.
The data would still be unrecoverable even if you could remove the SDD, as you wouldn't be able to decrypt the data.
You missed out on
if the battery fails you loose your data
if the CPU fails you loose your data
if RAM fails you loose your data
in fact is damn near ANY fault happens you loose your data.
Compare that to my 2011 MBP with a dead GPU, I pop the the drive out , and drop it into a caddy or another Mac laptop and BOOM, all my data is back.
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Because people are stupid and lazy.
Now .... if only there was a wireless option with a built in HD that could do backups quietly in the background, you could call it something like a time capsule ....wait... oh no it been Timmed
So... suddenly every apple SSD is about to fail or can we get back to reality now?
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I’m using Seagate NAS and it’s backing up without failure for couple years now. It’s also pretty cheap.
They could ask the FBI to help figure it out as the FBI works with third party security companies who have workarounds.
So, are the non touchbar versions shipping with replaceable SSDs?
The only differences I think I see on the 13 inchers, are slight dip on the Intel GPU, and two instead of four T3 ports. You can still get a decent i5 2.3Ghz, though gen seven, not gen eight.
The i7/i9s, and their heat dissipation likely doesn't bode well for long term use, I'd assume possibly with a higher rate of logicboard issues like solder loss. For a $3000 + machine, I'd like to believe I could reliably use the machine for 6-7 plus years.
(Still rockin a mid 2009 Macbook Pro)
The only differences I think I see on the 13 inchers, are slight dip on the Intel GPU, and two instead of four T3 ports. You can still get a decent i5 2.3Ghz, though gen seven, not gen eight.
The i7/i9s, and their heat dissipation likely doesn't bode well for long term use, I'd assume possibly with a higher rate of logicboard issues like solder loss. For a $3000 + machine, I'd like to believe I could reliably use the machine for 6-7 plus years.
(Still rockin a mid 2009 Macbook Pro)
Are you claiming that only Time Capsules and Airports Support Time machine?
I get sticking to the Apple ecosystem but unless something has changed Time Machine is available on other routers.
Some people aren't idiots that blindly trust corporations with their private data. How do you know that someone else isn't accessing it? Do you personally encrypt everything before sending info to these services?
I totally agree with this. If a company, no matter how it may have been in the past, continues to produce products that are disappointing, overpriced, or no longer meet your needs, then indeed it is time to move on. Apple no longer wants to provide a variety of currently useful ports or sound jacks, they no longer provide easily reparable and modular hardware, and prices continue to skyrocket. So far they appear to be doing good business regardless, as the people who continue to buy their products don't miss the ports and jacks, or care about repairability and high prices. If these changes are more than just a little irritating to you, then buy from competing brands that still provide the functionality you need. There were times when that wasn't possible, as other hardware/software offerings were so inferior - that is not so much the case anymore.
Apple doesn't _want_ to create a Macbook Pro full of problems. They just _can't_ help it!
That's because the iPhone mentality now permeates the company. They see the Mac through the prism of the iphone. They can't see any other way. This device makes so much money for them that they're hypnotized by it.
For your average iJustine customer the criteria are:
thin? check!
looks cool? check!
Fancy screen? check!
solid piece of metal? check!
What they don't care about is:
modern operating system? Who cares! (this thing still runs stone-age versions of most *nix applications)
High ram? What? What's RAM? (they're 2 years late on 32 GB just as 64GB sodimm x 2 is literally weeks away at the competition)
High performance? PuhLEEZ don't ask me to compromise on the looks. I'm a beauty queen, not an engineer!! (thermal throttling makes the i9 version *worse* than the old i7)
Data integrity? BACKUP dude. Don't expect us to be able to do what any old NVME or SATA SSD can do! We're about content CONSUMERS, not you boring, old fashioned, content CREATORS? We're creating our own damn content. We're about to take on Netflix. We don't care about you content creator nazis.
That's because the iPhone mentality now permeates the company. They see the Mac through the prism of the iphone. They can't see any other way. This device makes so much money for them that they're hypnotized by it.
For your average iJustine customer the criteria are:
thin? check!
looks cool? check!
Fancy screen? check!
solid piece of metal? check!
What they don't care about is:
modern operating system? Who cares! (this thing still runs stone-age versions of most *nix applications)
High ram? What? What's RAM? (they're 2 years late on 32 GB just as 64GB sodimm x 2 is literally weeks away at the competition)
High performance? PuhLEEZ don't ask me to compromise on the looks. I'm a beauty queen, not an engineer!! (thermal throttling makes the i9 version *worse* than the old i7)
Data integrity? BACKUP dude. Don't expect us to be able to do what any old NVME or SATA SSD can do! We're about content CONSUMERS, not you boring, old fashioned, content CREATORS? We're creating our own damn content. We're about to take on Netflix. We don't care about you content creator nazis.
I have been using DriveDX to monitor my drives for around two years. It is a great piece of software and will alert of and drive issues in real time. You can carry out a short test or extended test at any time.
As a daily driver, you might be pushing your limits. I think MbP's were quite fine machines until 2016, though they had been suffering from lack of modularity and ease of upgradability and repairability for a few years before that. I still have a 2006 vintage MbP that runs pretty well and still looks nice, but has lost true practical functionality in being able to run recent OS's and other software. A Core Duo 32-bit processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 80 GB HDD just no longer get the job done, and as amazing that it is for an 11 year old laptop to still be working (good Apple product!), I finally had to purchase newer "daily drivers" in the laptop category. I chose top-of-the-line PC laptops starting around 2012, purchasing a new one (generally at half the price of MbP's of the time) every 3 years or so - installed various flavors of Linux on each and am happy with my choice. I still use iMacs for my desktop and goto reliable daily use at home. You will soon likely face a similar choice in replacing your old MbP - MacOS will still be "old familiar" but I think you'll find the hardware much changed, both with Apple and competing PC offerings. BTW, if my only alternative to Apple Macs was to have to use Windows as my OS, I honestly would be really miffed at what Apple has done the last few years to the Mac laptop line. Higher quality PC hardware coupled with Linux gave me a needed alternative.
The user interface on these other options varies from bad to worse.
They invariably have external hard drives, so thats 2 power outlets you need + USB cables
etc etc etc
MY home solution is a Mac mini with a 12TB RAID array attached
Are you sure about that? How long is it since you confirmed that it's working by recovering a test file?
THAT is exactly what I am about to do.
My 2011 MBP has had a GPU failure, and when I went to look at a replacement I came away with the realisation that Apple no longer makes anything I want to buy.
I have now joined a Linux users group and am getting advice on what laptop to buy and what software can replace what I use.
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No one cares what YOU are capable of, its the average person that matters, and the average person is now in a much worse position than they were.
Worse, the US government has already decided that if you willingly give your data to a 3rd party they do NOT need a warrant to get access to it from that 3rd party. AND the government is now saying that any US company is obligated even if the data is housed in another country and has never been stored in the USA.
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Yes they are. Damn near anything more than just a keycap falling off the laptop is a write off and no data is recoverable.
where as my 2011 MBP with a dead GPU, well I undid 12 screws, pulled the SSD out, stuck it in a caddy and all my data was there, I can even boot from it.
Not only that, but if it were a non-Apple laptop, you could use the BIOS to force integrated graphics and just use your laptop as is (less the dedicated graphics).
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For a desktop, sure you can have an external drive hanging off of it at all times. Not so desirable with a laptop.
Cool. I actually am getting a kick out of getting more familiar with Linux. Having been a steady user the last 7 years, and having past experience with Unix in a previous life before I retired (and with MacOS), it has become sort of an enjoyable hobby, and its open source community provides a great source of support in the learning process. I could make some suggestions based upon my experiences, but I'm sure you are already getting some good advice from whatever forums you are joining. The biggest challenge will be in figuring out which Linux distro works best for you - and in some cases, various ones might work better for particular needs. I started with Ubuntu, but have over the years gravitated to Linux Mint as my daily driver, and Arch and Arch based distros like Manjaro and Arcolinux for really playing with the OS possibilities. As per Linux laptop hardware, here's one I salivate over, but which currently is only available in Europe (the CEO of StationX, the manufacturing company, disassembles one in the second video of the link - reminds me of iFixit - and when was the last time you saw a CEO of a computer company actually deal with the guts of the product?):
https://manjaro.org/hardware/
Happy hunting on your Linux adventure! And BTW, I still keep my old MbP around (now double booted with OSX Lion and Linux Mint 17) for nostalgic purposes, and only boot her up about once a month for security updates and to make sure she still works.
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