Guys, I just chatted with Apple, and I found out that you cannot change the SSD if it fails... hmmm....
That isn't really what is talked about in the thread. You are asking for a couple of things there. One, is for Apple to sell you just SSD drive all by itself. Apple doesn't sell blade SSDs as retail products. It isn't for sale, but that doesn't necessarily means user can't change it.
The second was for some sort of replacement parts failed. Apple
DID say they would replace it for a cost. It can be changed if it fails. At this point in time the only replacement is the Apple part and only Apple is going to change that part.
The major problem with that whole conversation is that it asks the
WRONG questions. The question should be something along the lines of
" Is Apple using a standards based M.2(NGFF) connector for the PCIe SSD drive".
a. That has a yes or no answer.
b. It addresses the core issue of what evolves to be your rant of finding standards based replacement parts.
And SSDs have limited write amount, when you reach it, it will wear out - recently I made a research and for example one review talked about a higher-end SSD which had 700TB write amount. And that's it. Sounds a lot, but when you autosave your 3-4 GB files every 15 min.... it will wear out quickly.
Hmmm, 700,000/4 => 175,000 . 175K * 15 = 2,625K mins. , 43,750 hours , 1,822 days , about 5 years.
5 years is about the warranty you'd get on a higher end 3rd party drive.
This isn't particularly high at all.
So to make it short, after your 3 year protection plan is over, Apple may replace it for service charge.
There is no "may replace" there at all in the conversation. The might be feeling generous and cover by warranty anyway but if something is broken the standard Apple policy is that you pay for the part and it is repaired.
Apple's vintage and obsolete hardware support policy is quite clear.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1752
You cannot replace it yourself for sure, guy did confirm.
Right now there is no 3rd party replacement. What you did NOT do was lock down the viability of 3rd party replacement because you asked the wrong questions.
And there is no upgrade for a larger one either.
Again not particularly new. Apple doesn't sell Apple labeled HDDs either.
I had another chat session and they confirmed the same with graphics card: no upgrade and no "swip-swap" if you happen to need a better one. I knew I cannot swap it myself, but Apple will not upgrade it either - I got very specific answer about it.
This one is something that might be worthwhile for actually Mac Pro owners to feedback on .
http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac-pro.html
If Apple sold an upgrade service would you buy it in a couple of years. Would Apple consider doing that or not. Extremely few folks are going to upgrade insider of a year. This is one of those things where it may be possible to move Apple to a shift in policy if they think there is some very large substantial demand.
I doubt can move them into retail card sales but upgrades at a depot would cover the what is inevitably going to pop up ( an "underground" spare parts
market that will grow as Mac Pros die for various reason and get abandoned and sold onto the boneyard market as parts. )
....
And if it fails after the warranty, you have to pay for the service to be swapped and fixed.
In other words, what normally happens when a warranty expires. You have to pay to get it fixed.
That is very sad decision from Apple. Cost are adding up quickly.. Imagine, you computer may be down easily for a week if SSD fails (you need to ask for appointment, get a date, get there (there is no Apple where I live) they may not be able to fix it straight away, so you may have to wait a few days, go again......all this is money and time)
Or could be up in mintues by just removing the drive and booting off an external drive. Restoring from back-up would likely only be the time sink.
If I have a hard drive failure now, I just walk into Pc world, get a new drive, go home, swap drive, use time machine to get everything back. Less than 4-5 hours is lost - not to mention that we don't know the cost of repair..
Because you didn't ask the cost of repair. It isn't like Apple doesn't have service charges on a fixed schedule.
You also didn't ask if they were using standard parts. So you don't know.
They also confirmed me that no graphics card upgrade, not even by Apple !!!
So I need to know my needs 4-5 years ahead.. and buy accordingly now.
I am ok with D500 now, but who knows my workflow in a few years time.
4-5 years ago Thunderbolt didn't exist. Not sure why trying to evaluate hardware 4-5 years into the future when most of it isn't even being designed yet. The capabilities and the price points are all fogging crystal ball at this point.
It is also doubtful that the majority of your software will be completely effectively using the hardware in your new Mac Pro when you first get it.
As for your resource consumption requirements, if you haven't been measuring and recording them over the last 2-3 years that isn't Apple's problem.
