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Apple Stops PhotoFast's MacBook Air SSD Replacement?

MacRumors said:
9to5Mac claims that Apple has asked Taiwanese company PhotoFast to stop sales of their SSD upgrade kits for the new MacBook Air.The reason for Apple's demand is unclear, as the same SSD parts are also available from Toshiba.
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All we know is that "sources close to the company claimed". Could be that these guys have problems sourcing their SSD drives or problems getting them to work properly, and instead of admitting that they can't deliver, they try putting the blame onto Apple. Or someone at Apple found that installing these drives voids the MBA warranty, and they asked the company to say that prominently in their advertising. Maybe someone installed a drive, it broke the MBA, Apple refused to repair it and told them to ask this company to pay for the damage. Maybe Apple just told them not to use Apple's trademarks in their ads. All kinds of possible explanations.

Since I can put any hard drive I want and any RAM I want into my MBP, it seems unlikely that Apple just doesn't want anyone selling bigger drives for the MBA. It is quite possible that companies selling rubbish RAM or rubbish hard drives that don't work with other Macs have received similar requests "stop selling your rubbish aimed at Mac users, when we (Apple) know and you (manufacturer) know that it doesn't work".

wizard said:
As to the SSD who really knows what is up. It could very well be a technical glitch or compatibility problem. In any event for Photofast to have this product ready at AIRs introduction they must have been on the team that developed the product. I just think there is more to this than the imagined greed of Apple.
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According to an article from TUAW on Oct 27th, "There's no word on pricing or availability yet, but we're guessing it won't be cheap. Still, it's a nifty little device". So it wasn't ready at the MBA's introduction. So has anybody ever seen this actually for sale? Anybody bought one? If it has never been sold, then Apple hasn't stopped any sales, and we just have the usual internet rumor flying around and growing and growing.

Mackan said:
The problem is there is never solid information when Apple is doing something. Due to the nature of their secrecy, people are left wasting time on debating various explanations.
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You are making the assumption that Apple actually has done anything. There is no actual evidence for that.
 
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neutrino23 said:
I'm happy to criticize Apple if they are acting improperly, but at this point I haven't seen enough solid information to understand clearly what happened.
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The problem is there is never solid information when Apple is doing something. Due to the nature of their secrecy, people are left wasting time on debating various explanations.
 
Apple are acting illegally here i reckon. You cant just bully your way through this just because someone offers a superior product at a more respectable price.

Photofast has only to simply remove the marketing as a MBA upgrade and market it as an external drive as it comes with a caddy does it not? Put that in your pipe Apple and smoke it. Its called competition and if Apple dont like it they can do one. In reality there is absolutely nothing they can do. How about your stop ripping us off for upgrades you greedy ****s?? Im all for the little guy here. Screw you SJ.
 
kntgsp said:
And yet.....Dell,Toshiba,Gateway,HP, etc. aren't trying to shut down OCZ, Crucial, Corsair, etc.
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Its impossible that they could ever get away with it just as Apple cannot do jack about the Photofast thing.

It would be like Coca Cola trying to shut down every other cola company in the world just because they make a similar product. And what is its a mixture of vegetable extracts available to everyone on the planet so unfortunately they cant! Apple cannot have the monopoly on this tech. It merely shows that Apple are ripping people off with standard components during the upgrade.
 
GilsMethod said:
Don't you guys think that perhaps Apple is afraid of having parts shortages as we approach the holiday season? If this company is selling these things to others then they wont have the capacity Apple may require. It takes a couple of months for factories to ramp up production to new demand levels.

Perhaps this is Apple's way of protecting its memory supply...wouldn't you do the same? Just a thought.
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Not a chance - the number of ppl buying this upgrade is <<< number of people that buy a MBA
 
CplBadboy said:
Apple are acting illegally here i reckon. You cant just bully your way through this just because someone offers a superior product at a more respectable price.

Photofast has only to simply remove the marketing as a MBA upgrade and market it as an external drive as it comes with a caddy does it not? Put that in your pipe Apple and smoke it. Its called competition and if Apple dont like it they can do one. In reality there is absolutely nothing they can do. How about your stop ripping us off for upgrades you greedy ****s?? Im all for the little guy here. Screw you SJ.
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You have very strong opinions based on very, very little evidence. All that you have is a rumor that "sources close to the company said". Have you actually ever seen this product for sale? All that I know is that one month ago, it was not ready, and there was no pricing available, so this may just be a lame excuse for not being able to ship products. So I would suggest you wait with your judgement until the company itself says something officially (something that would make them liable if it is not the truth, not some rumors being spread out), and until Apple replies.


CplBadboy said:
It would be like Coca Cola trying to shut down every other cola company in the world just because they make a similar product. And what is its a mixture of vegetable extracts available to everyone on the planet so unfortunately they cant! Apple cannot have the monopoly on this tech. It merely shows that Apple are ripping people off with standard components during the upgrade.
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No, it would be like some company announcing that they will produce straws that make Coke taste a lot better, but they are not ready yet and don't know how much they are going to sell for, and a month later when no product is there, "sources close to the company" claim that Coca Cola ordered them to stop making those straws. And since Coca Cola can't do that, reasonable people would then ask themselves if maybe something else is going on that has nothing to do with Coca Cola.
 
crackermac said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Is it possible that there is something wrong with this part they are manufacturing and Apple is trying to help? These are fairly new parts. As Toshiba is still making and selling these, greed doesn't seem to be the motivator. If it was all about greed, they would have made it a connection that was proprietary. Geez people, take a moment and chill. Why all the hate on something that might be?
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Agreed. Is it possible, perhaps, since Apple isn't saying anything to Toshiba that Apple is concerned with the PhotoFast manufacturing process/unit quality, and doesn't want inferior parts in the supply chain?

Apple is smart enough to know at this point that any part that is not soldered to the board will eventually end up in the aftermarket upgrade channel. Trying to stop these SSD chips from getting into that channel is like trying to paddle upstream with a chopstick. Can some of the haters give them a little credit for being the same company with enough foresight to become the largest market cap tech company in the world?
 
The amount of pure, misinformed dumb in this thread is incredible...

First, Apple ASKED them to stop. While it may be a bit of verbal strong-arming, there is no real bullying here. No evidence of lawsuits or such.

But then, the ONLY information that we have is that they asked this one company to stop manufacturing this one particular upgrade. What does that mean? I certainly don't know, and I'm not stupid enough to try and guess. Could mean the company has violated some unknown patent law. Could mean the particular part is problematic, due to either manufacturing or form factor. Could be that Apple doesn't want the warranties on their machines prematurely voided by self-installers trying to put in the upgrade. Could mean that Apple's gonna buy the company. Way too little information to go on.

It's fun to speculate. Just don't do so while drunk or paranoid, folks.
 
rdlink said:
Agreed. Is it possible, perhaps, since Apple isn't saying anything to Toshiba that Apple is concerned with the PhotoFast manufacturing process/unit quality, and doesn't want inferior parts in the supply chain?

Apple is smart enough to know at this point that any part that is not soldered to the board will eventually end up in the aftermarket upgrade channel. Trying to stop these SSD chips from getting into that channel is like trying to paddle upstream with a chopstick. Can some of the haters give them a little credit for being the same company with enough foresight to become the largest market cap tech company in the world?
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They are also one of the greediest too. This has got nothing to do with delivering quality to the consumer. Its all about Apple trying to beat down the little guy for its own gains. They are forcing the customer to buy the inferior slower Toshiba units at undoubtedly absurd prices.
 
herro said:
A good chunk of Apple users aren't tech savvy enough to do just that unfortunately.
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I would say that a good chunk of Apple users don't know that one could replace the SSD in a MacBook Air, or even replace the hard drive on a regular MB or MBP. They just know that it turns on and they click on the compass logo to get on the internet.
 
TMRaven said:
The motivation is simple. Just like every other capitalistic company, they're wanting to make more money for themselves-- ie, sell those ssd capacity upgrades for a premium.
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I think you've got your terms confused... A "Capitalistic" company would welcome competition, ,and the innovation, customer satisfaction and profit that comes with it. While on the other had, a "Monopolistic" company seeks to limit, or eliminate others from the market, there by reaping the profits for themselfs.

Now, what kind of company has Apple become?
 
I wonder if windows would have gotten in trouble in the 90s if they had just "asked" that rival companies not to release or sell competing Internet browsers.
 
If Apple wanna play this game, I'd suggest two choices,
1) Supply MBA's with higher performing SSD's (not the lowest common denominator).
2) Open you doors the DOJ for investigation of monopolistic practices.

Big FscK-U Apple, greedy scroogee scumbags!!
 
gnasher729 said:
You have very strong opinions based on very, very little evidence.
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Keep defending Apple (Engadget):

we just confirmed it directly with the PhotoFast GM2_SFV1_Air product manager. The risk of losing access to Apple's product licensing program was just too grave a threat to ignore.
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Yep, Photofast is lying, their product was bunk and Apple did not threaten to pull them out of the MFi program. No siree, not Apple's MO at all... :rolleyes:
 
KnightWRX said:
Keep defending Apple (Engadget): :rolleyes:
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That's the thing with evidence. People shouldn't judge _before_ they have evidence, which everyone before your post very clearly did. Now we would want to know _why_ Apple asked them to stop (which Engadget didn't say), maybe someone will find out as well.
 
GilsMethod said:
It may be less, but what if supplies are tight due to the MBA's success this past weekend and Apple is just being cautious, just offering another possibility here.
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That's a little - naive ? Palinesque, even . :D

All that flash memory is going to smartphones , iPads and whatnot, that's what keeps demand and prices high, imho.
 
Apple must be totally stupid.

Sorry, but it has to be said.

If you were a world leading company and you wanted to maintain a very good, and clean company image then it does not take two brain cells to work out you need to explain these things.

Be honest.

If you were at Apple ans wanting to keep an excellent public profile, then one day the Internet AGAIN was flooded by bad news, bad feeling, criticism towards your company.

Would you just sit there in silence, let the rumours grow, let all the bed feeling get spread around and create more anti Apple vibe.

Or would you wish to clarify the story officially to the public to explain the story and the legitimate reasons the decision was made?

Apple could issue a statement, give a good reason and clear up and bad feeling and bad press about topics like this very quickly, rather than let it rumble on creating anti company feeling.

I have no idea why they just sit there in silence, letting bad feelings towards them as a company get spread around.
 
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