There's no doubt about the quality but I think that regarding the display the feature set is wrong for people like me. I don't want speakers (I have better monitors), I want height adjustment as standard (It's not a lot to ask) and I don't need a camera. I need it also to work with Windows but of course Apple doesn't care about this. It would incidentally be handy if the cable could be unplugged. That's it. Apple obviously don't see small-time video producers as their target market so I will need to look elsewhere. Rather cross as I held back for this.I've learned to read these. That is, completely ignore the 'likes and dislikes', which have nothing to do with quality.
Sort of like Consumer Reports, but much worse
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iFixit Tears Down Mac Studio and Studio Display
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I bought mine when it came out in 2009. Since then I updated the CPUs twice, the GPU once and added several HDD/SSDs.
I've had my iMac for over 12 years... I've never cleaned the fans. I've vacuumed the grill on the bottom, but that's it.
That seems to be more of an issue for systems that sit on or close to the floor. And no non-tech person would ever think to take apart their computers and dust them. Something like that happens only when they're taken in for some upgrade or repair. It's really not an issue.
Also... when cleaning the inside of a computer, it is always wise to clean the whole thing, so taking it all apart is not a serious maintenance issue.
The worst things I cleaned out are from people who live like hobos and smoke a lot.
Prevention is better than cure!
Prevention is better than cure!
Storage is not soldered, everything else is and it makes RAM or CPU upgrades impossible, but there's a tiny chance we may be given the extraordinary chance to replace the SSDs without replacing the whole logic board.
Why stop there, we may even be allowed to upgrade SSDs - this is too much, has anyone followed up with Apple about this to insure they didn't just forget customers may rob them of potentiel profits by allowing some nobody to upgrade their Mac Studio?
Why stop there, we may even be allowed to upgrade SSDs - this is too much, has anyone followed up with Apple about this to insure they didn't just forget customers may rob them of potentiel profits by allowing some nobody to upgrade their Mac Studio?
Thank you Apple for not letting your customers upgrade the internal SSD.
SSDs wear (I know it's not intuitive for a solid state device to wear, but there we are), so it makes sense Apple has made them field replaceable if not field upgradable. And storage, at least, is easy to upgrade using external thunderbolt drives as well. I'm more concerned by the lack of ability to use an external GPU, but that's the price we pay for progress I guess.
It's great to hear that you've kept your Mac for 12 years. My 5 year old iMac started getting hotter and the fan speed was up. Vacuuming the bottom slots pulled out lots of dust (going by the sounds) The CPU temp dropped about 20 degrees F and the fan speed dropped to 1200RPM.
Yes, it would be best to do a complete blowout of dust but cleaning the air flow system (vents and fan blades) goes a long way to keeping things cooler. I clean the blades of my room fan regularly. It increases efficiency by about 30%.
If Max Yuryev from Max Tech was able to put back together his, I don't think iFixit had any problem.
I was about to say... Some pros work on their own stuff, some don't. I know many of both types.
I wonder why no other display manufacturer makes computer monitors in aluminum enclosures.
For me SSD upgrades is a basic customer need for a desktop machine. For home use I can live with soldered CPUs and RAM but the ability to increase local storage over time (e.g. photo/movie library growth) with having a batch of TB drives hanging out the back shouldn't be too difficult to manage.
I liked the way my old mac mini 2014 SSD+HDD fusion drives could evolve over time (until Monterey came out and did a great job at killing its performance).
I liked the way my old mac mini 2014 SSD+HDD fusion drives could evolve over time (until Monterey came out and did a great job at killing its performance).
Slightly irritating that the machine needs to be completely taken apart to clean the fans and heat sinks. At some point that will need to be done. I live in a very dusty climate and will be seeking some type of filter at the base to keep the system from blocking up. Otherwise this looks like a great update to my iMac 2017.
I’m assuming because that way someone could buy the 512GB configuration and then upgrade to 2TB cheaper than if they bought the 2TB configuration in the first place? Doesn‘t everything come down to $$ in the end?
I bet it's not going to be that bad. The intake grille on the bottom has very tiny holes. In my experience, small slots or holes on intake grilles tend to collect a thin layer of dust right away, which then acts as a "filter" to keep more dust from going in. You pretty much just have to vacuum off the accumulated dust every now and then.
I have a server where the front grille gets covered with a literal blanket of dust after a few months, yet very little of it actually makes its way inside. This may end up being the case with the Mac Studio.
Also, if this machine is designed as efficiently as other Apple Silicon Macs, the fans might not even run until the machine gets a bit busy. So unless you're running big CPU/GPU heavy jobs 24/7 the fans won't even be running full time. The big massive heat sink will likely help here, keeping the fans from being necessary for short bursts of activity.
I have to agree with most of what you said. I also had the "dust blanket" on the systems I maintained. When I first saw it, it was so perfect I thought it was an actual filter.
I like to keep my stuff as clean as possible so I like to be able to open them up once in a while. But I'm a dinosaur.
I mean, sure, the exposed power supply *is* dangerous, but how often do you need to crack open your machines to clean them? Surely every three years, the first cleaning being performed after any extended warranty expires, is enough, no?
Also, while there are a lot of ports to be unscrewed, it doesn't seem to be too difficult to do. About the only truly hard part in all that process is removing the rubber disc from the bottom lid.
it would be nice (if engineered properly) a small 'HEPA disc insert' to sit inside the "intake vent" on the bottom cover. once a year just replace—instead of a complete teardown to get to the fan shroud.
I wonder if R&D did any testing on dust buildup. Possible testing could have showed the velocity of airflow sufficiently cleared dust? and/or the elapsed buildup would outdate the unit (ie over the estimated lifespan of 5-6yrs).
Still I like the HEPA filter disc idea
If the drive itself has a total, catastrophic failure then no. The macOS partition gets corrupted, sure can muddle around that . But if iSC ( iBoot preboot volume and Secure Enclave extended storage)and/or 1TR (one true recovery) is borked, it is bricked.
"...
As Howard notes in his article, Apple introduced the notion of the 1 True Recovery (1TR) partition with M1-based Macs. This additional partition, separate from a Big Sur startup volume group, holds the code and data that controls boot-time behavior. On Intel-based Macs, firmware serves this role.
One way 1TR differs from the firmware on Intel-based Macs is that the 1TR partition stores your decisions about startup security policies, the directives you set in the Startup Security Utility available in recoveryOS. You can set a separate policy for each external volume you allow to boot your Mac, but that policy is stored only on the internal drive in the 1TR partition. ..."
An M1 Mac Can’t Boot from an External Drive If Its Internal Drive Is Dead - TidBITS
A little-noticed fact about M1-based Macs has started to get some attention. If the Mac’s internal drive is dead or fully erased, you can’t boot from an otherwise valid external drive. Why would Apple make that choice? Security, security, security.
Minus hacking around at the iBoot level this doesn't have a 'work around by the Linux guys'. The policy of whether optional Linux bootloader is an option is stored on the Apple drive. iBoot doesn't talk to anything, but the Apple primary internal drive. (not surprising since iPhones/iPads/etc can only possible have one and only one internal drive.)
There is no "Internet Recovery" either. Can't boot to a minimalistic recovery system off the Internet from a minimized sized UEFI 'application'. The minimalistic down to smallest ROM possible is just the power/system management and secure enclave "OS" running shrunk down to just get the DFU process done. But that is about it. If the internal drive is 'lost' then the system just into a deeper , secure mode (not looser).
Apple has hyper integrated the security and boot subsystems here. They are extremely co-dependent.
In part, this "there is always a mac just around the corner" philosophy that probably works insanely great inside of Apple probably contributed to why Apple thinks this set up is a decent trade off. Even if the internal drive drops into a "failing so go read only" mode then still could external boot if had the policy set up in advance. But if the drive metadata is completely screwed up then can start over. And if the NAND chip(s) themselves are the root cause of problem then at least in Studio ( and perhaps some other desktops) replace and start over from scratch.
But for the soldered down NAND chip systems that logic board is done.