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Mac Studio Storage Not User-Upgradeable Due to Software Block [Updated]
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Depends on how you see it.
The longest period of warranty guaranteed by consumer law I have seen is 4 years. And that's for free.
Then there are laws specifically asking for availability of spare parts for future repair for 10 years, if with a reasonable fee.
I myself have more than a few Macs sitting around that are older than 7 years. In a Mac mini say the HDDs and SSDs have broken more than a few times, but it is not like I expect to buy a replacement from Apple, since they made the minis to accept industry standard that is SATA. Then for an Apple specific part like a fan chamber or an iMac PSU they can be easily sourced from China. But that bit is getting harder nowadays.
So in the perspective of Apple Silicon Macs, it seems a longer than usual coverage is needed since most things are soldered in, and with how Apple designs its system and software these days it will be harder to source for 3rd party or even self-repair.
In many cases, after 5 years, when a product becomes vintage, they won’t repair it anymore.
What is the average time before a product becomes vintage? Someone above suggested 7 years.
Actually I’ve just read that a product becomes vintage after 5 years and obsolete after 7. You may or may not be able to get a vintage product repaired and you won’t be able to get an obsolete product repaired.
"Vintage" and "Obsolete" are different concepts in Apple-speak:
Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support
Learn about your options for getting service and parts for Apple devices that are past their warranty period.
- Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.
- Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago. Apple discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, with the sole exception of Mac notebooks that are eligible for an additional battery-only repair period. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.
So does that mean if Apple released the Mac Studio in 2022, sold it until 2023, it would be 5 and 7 years from 2023?"Vintage" and "Obsolete" are different concepts in Apple-speak:
Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support
Learn about your options for getting service and parts for Apple devices that are past their warranty period.support.apple.com
- Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.
- Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago. Apple discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, with the sole exception of Mac notebooks that are eligible for an additional battery-only repair period. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
see the link above. The product is vintage after five years in Apple’s world. In many cases, They only guarantee support with repairs for five years.
you bet your bottom dollar that if I put down between 4000~$5000, I would want to make the computer go for much longer than five years. And I would want to be able to service it myself, when the company that sold it to me no longer supported it for repairs.
see the link above. The product is vintage after five years in Apple’s world. In many cases, They only guarantee support with repairs for five years.
you bet your bottom dollar that if I put down between 4000~$5000, I would want to make the computer go for much longer than five years. And I would want to be able to service it myself, when the company that sold it to me no longer supported it for repairs.
Is 5 years acceptable for the target market for these machines? How often do creative professionals normally replace their machines?
this is sounding more and more like the textbook definition of a monopoly with each passing day. You are sold a product by company, only they can repair it, and then they decide when it is obsolete.
Apple doesn’t have exclusive possession or control of supply of computers. They have exclusive possession and control over supply of Macs, but then of course they do, the Mac is their product.
You can’t have a monopoly of your own product, it’s defined by the wider market that the product exists in.
There are people still using Mac pros with upgraded graphics cards,firmware and ssds from 2010 (Or even earlier)..
That’s not how a monopoly is defined for legal purposes.
they are getting hit left and right with antitrust lawsuits and complaints about monopolistic business practices.
and thAt trend will probably only continue.
If a company sells you a product, only they can repair it, only they can service it, and then they decide when the product is retired, that is enough of a monopoly for a lot of legislators all over the world to wanna take action against Apple. And that’s exactly what is happening.
The very first thing you have to do when trying a monopoly case is define the market that is being monopolised. You can’t define the market as Macs because they are but a single player in the larger personal computer market.
I don’t think that’s how that would work. If regulators want to implement a ‘right to repair’ bill, or any minimum standards on warranties etc, it would apply to all personal computer manufacturers, not just Apple.
Let's be honest, the moment when Apple announced the Apple Silicon transition for Macs we knew the Macs are going to be expensive "iPhones". The only observation remains is how far away they are going from it. Even with the later Intel MacBooks, the glued battery cells, the top case with embedded keyboards, the soldered in storage etc, none of it speaks the same language as your brick and mortar PC building methodology as far as repairs are concerned.
I am not saying it is a good or bad thing, but it is indeed different. If the buyer sees the added performance gains (which is evident in the M1 SoC approach), or the "ease" of owning a disposable piece of equipment which you can recycle as is, then it is a choice for you.
I am not saying it is a good or bad thing, but it is indeed different. If the buyer sees the added performance gains (which is evident in the M1 SoC approach), or the "ease" of owning a disposable piece of equipment which you can recycle as is, then it is a choice for you.
The trick is to think of Macs as appliances rather than traditional PCs. I think we are moving towards a world where computers become more like appliances than traditional computers that have standardised parts. Requiring standardisation of parts limits innovation, and if there’s one thing Apple definitely is is innovative!
The same thing is happening to cars.
Its an interesting dichotomy. We want Apple to be innovative, but then we complain when they are because it’s not the innovation we want. It’s exactly why Apple shouldn’t, and doesn’t, pay that much attention to what people ask for. Or certainly are more selective about what feedback they listen to and rank some feedback more highly than others.
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If that's where the industry is heading then it leaves not much room for the consumers. But at the very least the consumer can change his/her purchasing habits.
Take the base M1 MBA for example. At that base binned price point, forgo the so called 8Gb RAM swapping SSD wearing danger, just roll with this model even for professional workflows, many people managed to survive more than a year. I myself purchased it with the intend to just test the waters, as I almost always had to BTO higher configs in the Intel days or even the PPC days of buying Macs. But it turns out the base M1 MBA is more computer than most people needs. The saving in that model against a BTO MBP 14" for instance is huge, like 1 for 2. I can forget about repairing or even didn't think twice on getting AC+ for the MBA, which is like 20% of it cost, just no.
However, things change dramatically for the higher tier Macs. With the laptops I can see an integrated system is the norm, but for a desktop? The Ultra configs starts at $4000, and easily scales to 6+ even with sensible upgrades. The risk vs prospects of owning this thing becomes a much harder math compared to the "pre-appliance" days of Mac ownership. And the performance gains do not seem to scale as well as the entry level Apple Silicon, maybe because of efficiency is not quite necessary on the top end.
Therefore I suggest modern Mac buyers at least change your mindset a bit, stop future-proofing, maybe even under-spec your Mac purchase nowadays. The M2 next year even the base binned chip is rumored to have higher single core performance than the M1 Ultra, for one.
I agree, Apple are probably way out ahead on the hardware front vs what software is capable of using! Try the lower end model first to see if it meets your needs, and if not, send it back and go upwards from there.
And to be fair, its consumers buying these products as appliances that is driving the change forward. If people didn’t buy appliance like products, manufacturers would stop making them. And it’s also the case that the will of majority (of people who don’t care if their computer is an appliance) will outweigh the will of the minority (despite how load they protest).
regarding the "norm" of repairability or even upgradability i can add some typical scenarios from the PC side of things... typically every 2 CPU-generations there is a change in chipset and/or socket. if either your cpu or motherboard fail after 3 years you can either try to source an old spare (hard to get and expensive) or you get both parts new. if you get a new mobo there's a good chance you will need a new cooler and you also might need a new set of RAM-chips. you usually can reuse discrete gpus and hdds/ssds, but both will act as bottlenecks. the PSU will typically also need replacement because of (mostly) higher power demand of newer components.
pcs are super modular, but the modularity is being cannibalised by compatibility issues...
pcs are super modular, but the modularity is being cannibalised by compatibility issues...
I can add to that in Mac context:
When every other SODIMM you can find is already DDR4 because of the PC market, for upgrading RAMs in older Macs which lagged behind still using DDR3, there was a brief period that you were literally paying more for the same 8GB module to get DDR3 over DDR4, due to supply and demand.
Now cost is one thing but at least the upgrade path is there, for instance all the Mac mini 2012 and MBP 2012 I have are fitted with 8+8GB pairs towards the end of their life, but none of them were purchased by Apple with that much amount.
So the whole equation is simply different nowadays.
When every other SODIMM you can find is already DDR4 because of the PC market, for upgrading RAMs in older Macs which lagged behind still using DDR3, there was a brief period that you were literally paying more for the same 8GB module to get DDR3 over DDR4, due to supply and demand.
Now cost is one thing but at least the upgrade path is there, for instance all the Mac mini 2012 and MBP 2012 I have are fitted with 8+8GB pairs towards the end of their life, but none of them were purchased by Apple with that much amount.
So the whole equation is simply different nowadays.
did you know that using pc-components in apple products could kill the products?... i can remember upgrading my 2008 MBP with an SSD. must have been around the year 2009. a colleague did the same with his 2009 MBP. we used the same ssd but his failed after a couple of days. he got an replacement which failed again... turned out: the new MBP used a different controller that somehow killed the ssd. the company eventually came up with a mac-certified ssd-version that ran a different firmware.
just in case if you ever wondered why there are mac-certified RAMs or SSDs floating around
just in case if you ever wondered why there are mac-certified RAMs or SSDs floating around
yes, and if they sell it until 2025, you can start counting from then, even if you bought it in 2022