www.zdnet.com
Exactly this! Get AppleCare. I just got the new iMac and like any other M1 model it's all on one board. If something fails that probably means the whole board will need to be replaced. This is a non issue if you have AppleCare
Thats fckd if you ask me.How bad is the M1 Mac's SSD failure problem?
If your M1 Mac's SSD fails, you can't boot off an external drive, a change from past decades. Here's the problem and strategies to manage the risk.
So if the internal drive on your M1 Mac fails completely, even an external bootable drive won't boot. Yep, your Mac is bricked.
Right! If you do buy a brand new computer for 1000$+(my ultimate would be a 2049$ 16gb 2tb Air at this point), I would spend the extra money and buy the insurance. It's sad that you really have to do that, but accidents do happen, and sometimes it seems, their hardware has issues at no fault of the user... I am so careful and aware of my devices, but things do happen. For that amount of money, I would expect their hardware to work well for several years. I like most of their products, but I don't like some of the things they do. That recent keyboard nightmare, insufficient cooling, design faults like that. For the most part their products are quite good. I still have a 6S+, and this 2015 Air. I wouldn't have a problem with their products if they would make the standard components replaceable, and EASILY user replaceable. I bought this used Air and at least I can replace the battery and the SSD. I suppose at some point in the near future I'll have to get a newer phone, and hopefully sometime further in the future, I'll get another Air, as a better screen would be nice. I just wish at least the memory, storage, battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen were easily user replaceable, and they would design their boards better with good liquid protection somehow, and not putting a 48v power line right next to a 3v data line in a connector, or making it so you can open your MBP and the display not blanking out, you know, dumb stuff like that.
Also, AppleCare won’t bring back your data if the drive dies.
Backups *will*, but plenty of people think backups are beneath them, and would rather blame someone else when they lose data.
If buying insurance for an imaginary problem brings peace of mind to some, let them do it.
by who? it certainly wasn't' obvious to those who relied on the feature
here in the US, it is wise to not make a home insurance claim on less than your deductible (usually 2000 or so) and especially if not a home related issue or be at risk of being dropped from making too many claims.
except in the past, you could take out the hdd and you know, access it after the computer stopped working
Right! ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP Plan and Execute it!!! and Multiples!! in different locales! Not 2 in your house only. Have one offsite somewhere, and rotate them!
While I'm totally with you on the importance of backups (I have several), I know how many of my friends and family members are too lazy to do this and mostly bank on the reliability of SSDs and Macs in general. If there's something that can be done to reduce unnecessary wear on these drives, Apple should be doing it, especially since they've been so user-hostile as to solder them to the boards.
There is a huge thread addressing the SSD issue in M1 issue. That thread seems to be in the agreement that macOS 11.4 has quietly resolved the issueS.
Yup, fully aware. I'm talking about reducing wear in general, not specifically this one issue.
Exactly. I work in cloud computing, and the mantra is "everything fails, all the time". You plan for failure in your design so that there is always redundancy, failover and automated backups, versioning and restore paths.
MacOS 11.4 has fixed most of the excessive SSD write issues on M1 (or other) Macs.
Yup, fully aware. I'm talking about reducing wear in general, not specifically this one issue.
Again, totally agree, but that doesn't mean you can't also expect drives to last a long time.
Yup, no argument there.It's easy to re-image the computer with a new OS and restore from a backup. Not so easy to rewrite all your documents or re-take all your photos
I wouldn't ever call Dropbox or Google Drive a backup, of course. I back *them* up, to my Synology.
I stopped being support for friends and especially family years ago. I do that in my professional life, I have zero reason to do it in my personal life. What they break, what they lose, is their own problem.
I back up my iCloud data very easily. It’s in the cloud of course, but it is also stored locally on my machine because it is synced. When I back up my machine, the iCloud data is included.
Okay? That still doesn't change my point that I'd prefer if Apple did whatever they could to reduce wear on soldered drives.
appleinsider.com