What are the chances that the 2TB OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD I have in my 2015 MacBook Pro will go inside the M1 Mini?
No chance get outta here or maybe a chance?
No chance get outta here or maybe a chance?
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Mini M1 SSD upgrade?
- Thread starter mrianforest
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The SSD cannot be upgraded in the 2018 Mini and AFAIK the M1 Mini is the same.
I don't believe the M1 Minis (nor any ARM Minis that come after them) will be "upgradeable" in any way... RAM or SSD.
In fact, with the possible exception of the [supposedly upcoming] ARM Mac Pro, I doubt ANY ARM Macs will have upgradeable RAM or drives)...
In fact, with the possible exception of the [supposedly upcoming] ARM Mac Pro, I doubt ANY ARM Macs will have upgradeable RAM or drives)...
Yes, for durability. Especially on desktops. I’m expecting my 2008 MBP to develop socket problems any day now...
Yup, user repairability and upgradability is a big no. It does make components more durable but there is no need to soldier the memory and ram unless you want consumers to pay crazy amounts of money for “upgrades”. Like paying $200 for 8gb more of ram, biggest joke ever. My 2010 unibody has 16gb of ram that I bought for $75.
"[In M1] the SoC [system on a chip] and RAM chips are mounted together in a system-in-a-package design." Yes, in Apple's Intel days there was no real need or reason for RAM and SSD to be non-upgradeable. However, the things are now stacked within a single package and the architecture that provides the excellent performance we're seeing simply doesn't allow such upgrades to be done.
it is plain and simple nonsense that upgradeable SSDs and RAM are not possible because of "excellent performance". how do you think upgradeable SSDs in workstations operate at the same speed as in a macbook pro? it is a decision to stop repairability and upgradability to force the "higher" tier SSD and RAM prices onto the customers that are completely overpriced.
the SSDs and RAM are not possible to update since Mac mini late 2012, completely because Apple want users to buy new Macs.
The SSD is upgradeable in the 2014 Mini, but not the RAM. And the RAM is upgradeable on the 2018 Mini, but not the SSD. The RAM is part of the same chip as the processor on the 2020 Mini, so obviously that is not upgradeable.
To be clear, I would like for everything to be upgradeable on the Mini. However, I really don't see this as any kind of "conspiracy" by Apple. I have 2012, 2014 and 2018 Minis and each is fine in its own right, I have no regrets.
To be clear, I would like for everything to be upgradeable on the Mini. However, I really don't see this as any kind of "conspiracy" by Apple. I have 2012, 2014 and 2018 Minis and each is fine in its own right, I have no regrets.
Nobody said, it is a "conspiracy" - it is purely a business decision that puts Apples supposedly higher profits ahead of the users convenience and right to repair. But it is pretty clear, that Apple is making repair-ability and upgrade-ability extra hard, not because it is such a clever and smart thing to do or technically it needs to be done, but to push their high prices on higher RAM and SSD options, WHEN you buy a Mac. This in turn contradicts their stance on being environmentally friendly, because a Mac Mini with a broken SSD can not be repaired anymore. It also contradicts usability and user friendliness, because a Mac hard-drive that can not be simply removed from a failing logic-board to extract the data, is unnecessarily user unfriendly to service.
Microsoft used to have everything soldered in their Surface Book line and people were saying - it needs to be done, because soldering on RAM and the hard-drive keeps the system small. Surprisingly enough they were able to pack the recent line of Surface Book 3s (15 inch model) together even thinner and at the same time make it much simpler to upgrade and service defect parts. Still far from perfect at least they made the "jump" from an ifixit score of 0/10 to 5/10. So it is definitely possible to move in the direction of more repair-ability and upgrade-ability. Microsoft is far from perfect - most of the the surface pro line still holds 0-1/10 ifixit scores to this day, but it is just an example that shows a change is easily possible.
Apple just moves in this direction of soldering everything because of their OS monopoly and a focus on profits, opposed to a focus on the end users comfort and productivity (a soldered non servicable harddrive is a productivity nightmare). The new Mac Mini M1 has no upgrade-ability / serviceability of the hard drive nor the RAM. This is by design and a pure profit driven - business decision. It is an anti-tech decision. An anti-user decision. An anti-environment decision. This has nothing to do with a conspiracy, it is just plain the wrong decision in my opinion, also business wise in the long term. Maxing out profits by unnecessarily polluting the planet is not the kind of business todays tech companies should be in.
Would this not include making products that last as long as possible by making them repairable and upgradeable?
Most of these Mac Minis are still upgrade-able, we are talking about the Mac Mini M1 here. It is not a good stance to try to sugarcoat the direction the tech giant is moving. As soon as YOUR hard-drive fails and you have no option to repair it or sell a piece of hardware that is otherwise completely fine, YOU will think differently about these "business" decisions. Right now you are only ok with it, because it does not affect you.
"Think different" was yesterday. Now it is simply: "Think max profit".
Microsoft used to have everything soldered in their Surface Book line and people were saying - it needs to be done, because soldering on RAM and the hard-drive keeps the system small. Surprisingly enough they were able to pack the recent line of Surface Book 3s (15 inch model) together even thinner and at the same time make it much simpler to upgrade and service defect parts. Still far from perfect at least they made the "jump" from an ifixit score of 0/10 to 5/10. So it is definitely possible to move in the direction of more repair-ability and upgrade-ability. Microsoft is far from perfect - most of the the surface pro line still holds 0-1/10 ifixit scores to this day, but it is just an example that shows a change is easily possible.
Apple just moves in this direction of soldering everything because of their OS monopoly and a focus on profits, opposed to a focus on the end users comfort and productivity (a soldered non servicable harddrive is a productivity nightmare). The new Mac Mini M1 has no upgrade-ability / serviceability of the hard drive nor the RAM. This is by design and a pure profit driven - business decision. It is an anti-tech decision. An anti-user decision. An anti-environment decision. This has nothing to do with a conspiracy, it is just plain the wrong decision in my opinion, also business wise in the long term. Maxing out profits by unnecessarily polluting the planet is not the kind of business todays tech companies should be in.
Environment
Apple 2030 is our plan to use recycled and renewable materials, clean electricity, and low-carbon shipping to bring our net emissions to zero.
www.apple.com
Would this not include making products that last as long as possible by making them repairable and upgradeable?
Most of these Mac Minis are still upgrade-able, we are talking about the Mac Mini M1 here. It is not a good stance to try to sugarcoat the direction the tech giant is moving. As soon as YOUR hard-drive fails and you have no option to repair it or sell a piece of hardware that is otherwise completely fine, YOU will think differently about these "business" decisions. Right now you are only ok with it, because it does not affect you.
"Think different" was yesterday. Now it is simply: "Think max profit".
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I'm not disagreeing that Apple have used some sharp/shady business practices, e.g. the $200 charge for upgrading 8GB to 16GB RAM entails a loot of profit for them, no doubt.
However, the reason the M1 machines are not user upgradeable isn't as simple as "Apple are price gouging their customers".
The new direction Apple are following with SoC (system on a chip) has technical benefits, because it can do away with bottlenecks caused by the various interfaces necessary for discrete parts of a computer to communicate with each other.
There are without doubt efficiencies gained by SoC, efficiencies of both performance and also cost... but the downside is it means people who like to tinker and upgrade parts are out of luck with such designs.
However, the reason the M1 machines are not user upgradeable isn't as simple as "Apple are price gouging their customers".
The new direction Apple are following with SoC (system on a chip) has technical benefits, because it can do away with bottlenecks caused by the various interfaces necessary for discrete parts of a computer to communicate with each other.
There are without doubt efficiencies gained by SoC, efficiencies of both performance and also cost... but the downside is it means people who like to tinker and upgrade parts are out of luck with such designs.
Just sold my 2012 i7 Mac Mini Server for $475 which helped pay for the M1 Mini base.
Thinking about the same form factor between the 8 year gap, I have to say that the 2012 Mini had replaceable RAM and dual 2.5" HDD/SSD compared to the non replaceable M1.
I do miss the upgradeability....
Thinking about the same form factor between the 8 year gap, I have to say that the 2012 Mini had replaceable RAM and dual 2.5" HDD/SSD compared to the non replaceable M1.
I do miss the upgradeability....
I highly doubt SoC processors have much to do with the SSD being soldered on to the motherboard. The SSD could easily be in a slot, which would make the system easier to repair and upgrade.
If apple really cared for the environment and their users, they would not try to screw them over by limiting repairability and even trying to close down repair shops:
Apple crushes one-man repair shop in Norway’s Supreme Court, after three-year battle - Right to Repair Europe
Norwegian small business owner and repairer Henrik Huseby lost his legal battle against $1 trillion company Apple in Norway’s Supreme Court.
repair.eu
It is a fairytale and pure greenwashing that Apple cares for the environment and that they want their products to last as long as possible.
Apple was conflicted over right-to-repair stance, emails show
It opposed legislation yet uploaded iMac manuals online
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My 2008 Mac Pro just suffered a catastrophic hardware failure today. As in it would cost more to repair it then it would be to simply buy a M1 Mac Pro
Just buy an external SATA USB-C enclosure. Newegg sells them for like 20 bucks. Else, for like 80 you can buy an M2 enclosure with full 40GB/s up and down; 130 dollars for a 2TB M2 drive, plus opportunity to upgrade later. Still less than the cost of the upgrade. Little box stuck to the side of the Mac mini(top, or command stripped to the underside of the table works too); but, than upgrading/repair/etc is easier in the future.
My concern is when failure occurs in a historically easily replaceable part. We’re faced with the same decision to replace the whole system for a part that is relatively inexpensive. Apple has a poor track record here. At least now the SoC provides huge performance gains and there is a
more meaningful purpose behind the integration.
You mean 40Gb/s bits not bytes. Still ~5GB/s but is still looking slower than the built in Storage.
I am thinking along these lines too.
I think 16GB M1 mini, 512GB ssd and an external thunderbolt fast storage. The internal ssd needs to be large enough for OS and programs while external big enough for dara but is readily upgradeable anyway.
More thunderbolt/usb-c ports would have been welcome 2 seems a bit mean even on a low end machine.
When I had the 2012 i7 Mini Server running flawlessly for years, I had switched over to 2 of the LaCie external Thunderbolt SSD (1TB each) and ran the entire OS and apps off of them.
I left the internal 1TB x 2 spinning HDD wiped as APFS and left them for storage / archive.
That Thunderbolt 2 port is amazing - super quick and got my wife's 2013 iMac to run like a newer SSD iMac using the LaCie SSD TB drive I stuck to the back of the iMac...
Now I am trying to figure out how to use the external SSD TB2 with a TB3-TB2 adapter on my new M1....
My other half’s 2013 iMac was destined for the scrap until I installed a 1tb Samsung ssd in a usb3 enclosure, runs better than new now and is snappier than my 2016 MBP. 540MB/s read / write is far better than the internal 1TB that reports less than 50MB/s. Catalina is the last supported OS for it. also getting 200MB/s from a WD elements on usb3, not bad for a 2013 machine no longer able to run the latest os. high Sierra and Catalina where unusable on that machine with the internal spiny disk.
before M1 I was looking at replacing my TS440 i use as an esxi server with something more energy efficient.
thunderbolt is slated to be faster than usb3 and can be daisy chained adding to its appeal.
usb3 is cheaper and more readily available.
I think a thunderbolt enclosure with a fast cheap M2 ssd could be a great solution, just cost getting in the way.
a 4 bay usb3/thunderbolt disk enclosure for my TS440’s raided drives could help out too.
The 2012 Mac Mini and 2013 iMac use TB1 not TB2. The port looks the same and TB2 devices are compatible with TB1 Macs. The TB3 to TB2 adapter does not transfer power so if your TB1/2 devices are bus powered you would need an AC powered TB1/2 device in-between. Considering the cost of that you may be better off getting new TB3 M2 NVMe SSDs. Better technology and faster.
I knew my 2020 2018 Mac Mini couldn't be updated but decided to go with the standard 256gb and bought a decent external X8 series drive from Crucial. Read/Write is around 950MB/s compared to the really quick internal drive (2600/1500MB/s) but for most uses I find it is perfect - I run my Lightroom catalog off it.
https://uk.crucial.com/catalog/ssd/x8 - They are currently discounted by around 30% in the UK/US (not checked others) at the moment.
https://uk.crucial.com/catalog/ssd/x8 - They are currently discounted by around 30% in the UK/US (not checked others) at the moment.
Did you replace it with a Mini? And what do you think? (Faster than if you'd fixed the 2008 MP?)
Yes, it's nonsense, but that's not what I said - the upgradeable RAM and SSD are not possible due to the SoC design, main benefit of which is excellent performance. It's a deeper design decision, not simply a business one. If your eight-grade reading level allows, take a look at https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 for further details. But the gist of it is in this paragraph: "Getting this high bandwidth memory (big servings) require full integration which means you take away the opportunity from customers to upgrade their memory. But Apple seeks to minimize this problem by making the communication with the SSD disks so fast, that they essentially work like old fashion memory." Hope it's clearer now.