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Apple Stops PhotoFast's MacBook Air SSD Replacement?

logandzwon said:
awful lot of speculation here... Even if it's completely true and everything it seems, Apple has never treated me wrong. In fact they have repeatedly gone above and beyond what Dell or Sony would ever do to make it right whenever I've been upset with anything.

If you feel Apple is "nothing but a greedy company" please, please stop buying Apple products. Personally, it would make me dirty to buy from a company I felt that negatively about if I had any other choice. I avoid buying Dell, Oracle, and MS as much as I can for this very reason.
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imagine you like coca cola and all of a sudden, they raise the price to 39 us$ per liter. of course you can also drink pepsi or fanta, but you want cola. is the coca cola company bad to you because it raises the price? it is your choice, you can also drink pepsi or fanta!

fact is, that apple is charging many people here in europe a lot more than you in the us. nice? not really. fact is, that apple products in general cost a lot more than the machines of the competitors.

now back to the memory blocks sold here: of course apple wants to make the profit. if you want to have 128 gig (or more), then you burn, baby! may i remember that in the past it was totally normal that the user bought a new harddrive or more ram and added it after HE wanted it? if you have an ipad, you can not do anything. if it has not enough ram, throw it into the bin!

so honestly: imagine your 16 gb ram in your ipad is not enough, would you throw it into the bin and buy a new one for 699 us$, or would you like to unscrew some screws, add more memory for 49 us$ and continue using your old one?
 
carmenodie said:
...Hey, when is the last time you saw a Dell preinstalled with two competing OSes? MS wouldn't allow it. On the retail floor you never see dual boot pcs MS/Linux do you?Go write a letter to Steve Balmer about that and see what you get.
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Hem, when was the last time you saw a Mac "preinstalled" with competing OSes?
Just curious... ;)

Sure, you might see a few demo units at the Mac store with Parallel (or VM Fusion) installed just for the "show" but Mac never comes "preinstalled" with other OSes (and never will, of course)...
 
alent1234 said:
i'm with apple on this one

it's the controlled hardware configurations that make Mac's just work
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well, actually they DON'T work in some cases. remember the strange graphicscard problems in the MBA?

however, if someone wants to change the harddisk, he shall do so. if it goes wrong, it is HIS own problem afterwards. it's like with a car: if you buy the wrong tires, it's not your car manufacturers problem.

the real problem is, that apple is FORCING you. and who - as a client - wants to be forced? apple is turning into dictatorship, and that is very sad to see as a client.
 
Has anyone actually tried this?

So I see everyone is complaining, but has anyone here actually tried the upgrade to see if it works and how much performance is gained? I have thought about the upgrade but would love to hear from others first.

Thanks!
 
alust2013 said:
That really doesn't make sense. They can't tell them not to do something, it's not like they have that authority, they can ask (which is dumb), but there is no way they can enforce that if they don't have a specific patent for it.
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That doesn't really matter.

They can say "if you ever want to do business in any way with Apple ever again, stop producing this. Now."

That usually works really well when you have a name like "Apple".
 
Piggie said:
Large supermarkets do this all the time.

Say you supply me with Wheat Flakes cereal, and you sell 80% of your stock through me. You're whole survival is based upon my massive orders with you.

Then I find out you are selling the popular Wheat Flakes to someone else.

I don't like that, as it means customers can get their tasty Wheat Flakes from someone else who may be undercutting me.

I can then go to you and give you two choices.

Either you do as I tell you, and stop selling Wheat Flakes to this other retailer, or I will cancel my order with you and you will go bust.

Your choice.
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not sure about america but in the uk and europe that sort of practice is illegal and contravenes competition law. could even result in a prison sentence for those found gulity same as price fixing
 
barmann said:
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.
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I was referring to that specific module not flash memory as a whole...referring to the entire flash memory market would be...Palinesque ;)
 
magbarn said:
You do realize photofast's prototypes used Sandforce controllers and Intel flash memory? None of which are used in OEM Air SSDs... they use Toshiba controllers and Toshiba memory!

Also as it seems phtofast was involved in developing these SSD's, they already had much of the R&D done to produce these ssds, making it cost-effective for them to make these for a niche product. Unless the next gen MBP's also use the same form factor, I doubt we'll be seeing third party ssds for airs anytime soon. Get your applecare while you can as if your air's ssd goes bad outside warranty, you're going to be forced to buy from the "company store!"
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I see...so the SSD's Apple is telling Photofast to stop selling are not even in the OEM MBA's? Ok...now I see why there's an uproar over this. That's kinda ****** that they would do that.

Could it be that Apple and Photofast worked together R&D on the design of the SSD modules for the MBA, then Photofast used that knowledge (that cost Apple some money) to develop these Sandforce/Intel SSD's to sell on their own....and Apple isn't too happy about that.

Not defending Apple, just trying to give them the benefit of doubt. What are your thoughts?
 
Does anybody knows the Quality control of Photofast?

Maybe Apple found some chips failing, and after all if the stick fails, people wont blame Photofast but Apple...

:apple:
 
slattery69 said:
not sure about america but in the uk and europe that sort of practice is illegal and contravenes competition law. could even result in a prison sentence for those found gulity same as price fixing
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And how would this be illegal? If a company wants to pull out from supporting you financially because you're secretly sabotaging their business by selling to other companies then that company should have that right to pull financial support. I doubt if that's illegal. Show proof to support your claim.
 
gnasher729 said:
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.
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Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is more often than not the correct one. So what reasonable people would assume is that the explanation given, being very simple - "Apple asked them to stop" - is the correct one until evidence presents itself to the contrary. Reasonable people also keep their mind open to other possibilities as well.
 
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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Agreed!
 
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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I'm with you on this one. Make sure it works before offering this. If it doesn't work, guess who gets blamed?
 
GilsMethod said:
Could it be that Apple and Photofast worked together R&D on the design of the SSD modules for the MBA, then Photofast used that knowledge (that cost Apple some money) to develop these Sandforce/Intel SSD's to sell on their own....and Apple isn't too happy about that.

Not defending Apple, just trying to give them the benefit of doubt. What are your thoughts?
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ecapdeville said:
Does anybody knows the Quality control of Photofast?

Maybe Apple found some chips failing, and after all if the stick fails, people wont blame Photofast but Apple...

:apple:
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You guys are really stretching it. If it was ever those cases, it will be in Apple interest to disclose that. And Apple will be looking like a champion of the customer again. If they maintained their silence, most likely it will be a business decision to protect themselves.
 
HLdan said:
And how would this be illegal? If a company wants to pull out from supporting you financially because you're secretly sabotaging their business by selling to other companies then that company should have that right to pull financial support. I doubt if that's illegal. Show proof to support your claim.
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In the U.S. there are laws against being anti-competitive. Whether this situation would fit one of them is beyond me though. Photofast was openly offering SSDs for sale that fit the open standard connector found in the MBA. They weren't doing this secretly.
 
slattery69 said:
not sure about america but in the uk and europe that sort of practice is illegal and contravenes competition law. could even result in a prison sentence for those found gulity same as price fixing
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it's not price fixing, it's advertising

in the US in a lot of these cases the manufacturer pays the retailer to put their products by the check out aisle as an impulse high margin purchase. you don't have to pay to have your products, but they may end up in the back of the store in some corner
 
There's a tendency here, I think, to jump to conclusions always in the guise of "think of the little guy" as just a thinly veiled and poorly conceived argument that everything should always be available, as cheap as possible (preferably free), and exactly as the consumer wants through as many channels possible... without, of course, any regard for the complexities (read: impossibility) of trying to please all of the people all of the time.

Imagine you run a business, and someone starts making parts that they market specifically as upgrades for your products. If you've got the highest customer satisfaction and technical support marks in the business, does it benefit you or harm you if the third party is releasing a product that you can't be certain is up to your standards? It doesn't matter what their standards may actually be... what matters is whether or not you know and can be assured of them, and whether or not they asked your permission to associate their product so closely with your brand before putting their product on the market.

One of the oldest rules of branding is that when you're the leader, associating with other products only risks tarnishing your image. When you're a few rungs down the ladder, associating with better brands can help your image.

This is true at almost any scale... and all the more important if you're a sole proprietor whose personal reputation is directly attached to the products you associate with.
 
KnightWRX said:
Your logic is completely sound. :rolleyes:

Guy installs new SSD in his MBA. It fails. Guy blames Apple instead of the new SSD. Yep, I totally see that happening.
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You have been on this forum long enough to know that this would totally happen.
 
GilsMethod said:
I see...so the SSD's Apple is telling Photofast to stop selling are not even in the OEM MBA's? Ok...now I see why there's an uproar over this. That's kinda ****** that they would do that.

Could it be that Apple and Photofast worked together R&D on the design of the SSD modules for the MBA, then Photofast used that knowledge (that cost Apple some money) to develop these Sandforce/Intel SSD's to sell on their own....and Apple isn't too happy about that.

Not defending Apple, just trying to give them the benefit of doubt. What are your thoughts?
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This is precisely what I'm thinking right now. In a way Apple does have the right to do this, but at the same time it doesn't make it "right"
I'm just hoping the next MBP refresh has these "blade" ssd's, this will spur other 3rd parties to develop this ssd format. IF it remains Air exclusive, then we'll be stuck with Toshiba/Apple SSDs for our airs.
 
moderately said:
You have been on this forum long enough to know that this would totally happen.
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I have been here long enough to see many "Apple can't wrong!" folks try to assert it as a reason for Apple doing unethical stuff, but I've never seen anyone posting "My 3rd party RAM's defect is Apple's fault!".
 
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