With the AS design, the RAM is shared between cpu & gpu. I'm 99.9% sure that AS machines will come with non-upgradable RAM. Many are waiting for the redesign but they will complain about the ram price upgrade for sure! I think this iMac is a very fine machine.
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New 27-Inch iMac's Storage Affixed to Logic Board, 4TB and 8TB Configurations Have Expansion Connector
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With the AS design, the RAM is shared between cpu & gpu. I'm 99.9% sure that AS machines will come with non-upgradable RAM. Many are waiting for the redesign but they will complain about the ram price upgrade for sure! I think this iMac is a very fine machine.
Because Apple's product managers are masters at structuring their product segments and product specs to compel all but the most price sensitive shoppers to step up to the higher model, whose additional component costs are probably marginal, compared to the retail price delta.
This has been acutely noticeable with iOS devices for years, where the paltry storage on the base models used to practically force users to step up. Apple has relaxed that somewhat, but it's still the case with the 11 Pros and plain iPad, which still have large gaps between the base and next model up.
Or, ever shop for a car, and find that one feature you want is only available if you buy a package or trim level with a bunch of extra stuff you don't want?
There are ancillary benefits to these strategies as well, but it's primarily a business technique to drive sales to more profitable models, and raise the ASP.
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Well I'm on the sideline until the new apple hardware is ready. That said, if the hardware looks like this I will build a desktop PC for my home office.
Tell that to my 2016 rMBP with an SSD that failed just outside of warranty. Now I have to use an external SSD as my primary drive.
Soldered RAM is bad enough, Soldered SSD's are inexcusable. Storage drives fail far more commonly than RAM.
Pretty much just like every single giant Corp in the world. Why they care about environmental damage when more money can go to CEO’s pocket and their families?
You can have the same speed from a removable drive, and you can be just as secure with a generic drive encryption. I'd rather be able to repair my computer than have it become a brick after the limited SSD write cycles cause the drive to fail.
No, really sorry but no.
The 4 TB and 8 TB 2020 iMacs, although they have a connector and flash module, can't be upgraded at all.
In fact, on those models, half of the storage is still soldered on the logic board (e.g on the 4 TB iMac, 2 TB are 2 chips soldered on the logic board, and the 2 other TB are on a flash module board).
You won't be able to change the 2 TB module by a higher capacity module : it wont work. The module has to be the same capacity as the soldered ram.
Easiers repairs yes, but not by Apple :
Apple will only replace the whole logic board with 2Tb soldered flash + 2TB module both together).
When the iMac will be out of warranty, one can only hope that any flash storage failure occurs on the separate 2TB flash module, not on the 2TB flash nands soldered on the logic board...
Speed is not related in any way to the storage beeing soldered or not.
At all.
the iMac Pro (2017) and Mac Pro (2019) both have non soldered Flash storage, and both performs very fast at 3GB/s either with or without encryption.
This is the same speed as on the MacBook Pro 16" 2019 which storage is fully soldered.
In the opposite, the MacBook Air (2020) and the iMac 27" 5K (2020) with 256GB of soldered storage both are limited to 1.5GB/s... speed improvement really ?
So definitely, speed is not related with the SSD being soldered on the logic board.
Not in any way.
Speed is related to the performance of the controler and speed of the memory.
Apple's T2 chip is really fast and also Apple uses super high quality NAND that barely fails. I think they sill use MLC as performance is very constant and there seems not to be any SLC cache.
As for security, to that point encryption of T2 chips seems not broken (to public knowledge, who knows if a vulnerability has not yet been discovered), but soldering the SSD has nothing to do with that, again.
encryption is protected the same way on iMac Pros and Mac Pro with non soldered NAND
Maybe one bad point is that the os inside T2 chip sometimes get corrupted...
You may also suffer any damage on the logic board.
In either case, you loose all your datas, every single bit of your data. I don't count the number of times, on computer with damaged logic board and non soldered SSD we simply pull out the SSD to get the datas.. (being it encrypted or not) : see, a non soldered SSD was no threat to security in any ay because we still needed encryption password !
But it was simple to safety recover data. A full, independant and separate SSD keeps storage simple, reliable, resilient, while not giving any security issue because encryption is still there.
Of course, that's not a problem, no ? After all, at least 50% of computer users do their backup once a month yes ?
But for the 50% others..
Maybe another bad point is that no Mac Mini 2018, no iMac 2020, no MacBook Pro from 2016, and no MacbookAir 2018 will never, ever get any storage upgrade in their life.
Never, ever.
Not enough storage has been choosen at purchase ?
Just sold your computer or recycle it, and buy a new one.
Defective Storage ?
Just pay for a full new logic board and labor, or recycle your computer if it's too expensive for you.
This is not cool by any way. Not good at all for your Total Cost of Ownership.
Not good by any economic or resources footprint meaning.
So , yes, why so many complaning about soldering storage ? Really you don't get it ?
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If the internal drive fails, will I be able to boot macOS from an external drive? Or will that force me to buy a new computer?
They should also throw in a year of free iCloud storage at a level commensurate to the device purchased. If you spend $2000 on an iMac or a MacBook Pro you should get at least (say) 500 GB of iCloud space for a while. And while they’re at it, iCloud should be able to back up a Mac’s preferences and configuration info so a Mac be restored the way an iPhone can.
Someone serious about their data should still be running local backups, obviously, but something like this would save a lot of casual and non-techie users’ bacon when their Macs go stolen, break, etc.
For what it’s worth, Time Machine offers encryption with a single checkbox when setting it up. Not sure it’s the default or that people are using it, but it’s very easy.
Sure. Boom.
And what about USB SSD not supporting TRIM and getting sloooooow as hell after a few days of use ?
And what about iMacs in openspace / administrations / any place were stealing a whole 27" iMac is difficult, but getting an external SSD stolen is as easy as boom ! magic !
Half.
for the 4TB and 8TB configurations, half of the storage is on one (not two, one) expansion board.
And the other half of the storage is still soldered on the logic board.
Before I go into responding to these many quotes here, it's probably a good idea to refresh some of you on some key tidbits of the T2:
- The T2 chip acts as the SSD controller (as in the chip that, on literally every other SSDs, is on the SSD itself); meaning that any removable SSD module on a T2 Mac (such as the 4TB and 8TB configurations of this 2020 27" iMac, the iMac Pro, and the Mac Pro) is effectively useless on its own.
- The storage and the T2 chip are paired at the factory. If this pairing is, for whatever reason broken, the T2 needs to be restored via Apple Configurator 2 (like it was an iOS device or iPad); the data on the storage modules is then irretrievably lost. All that to say that even if the storage wasn't soldered to the logic board, it wouldn't change the fact that a failure of the logic board renders the data completely lost.
- The answer to the question of "Why is Apple making the storage non-removable?" is because the T2 mandates that it be that way. It's got nothing to do with corporate greed, it's got nothing to do with anything other than the fact that's how Apple designed that security chip.
- The fact that Apple removed all Hard and Fusion Drive options from the 27" iMac paved the way for the T2 to be on that model; the 21.5" iMac doesn't have a T2 chip because there is still a hard drive present (in Fusion Drive models).
You're lumping IT and computer repair as though they are the same thing. I can assure you, especially from a pay grade standpoint, they are definitely different. Also, there are IT positions that pay about as much as a coding job does...they just don't focus on Apple technologies front and center.
Just because you see a hundred SSDs not fail doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds more that do. It's also a very poor justification for soldering an SSD on a freakin' desktop computer. A laptop designed to be stupidly thin is one thing (and still a stupid one, at that), but on a desktop, it's asinine.
You must not have ever had the experience of buying a Mac that came out with a boot drive with x GB/TB only to find that, several years later, you want to upgrade to a bigger one. Or the other equally infuriating experience of buying a Mac, having its drive fail out of AppleCare+ and being forced to go through Apple for a replacement (even OWC drives are cheaper). Yes, on a desktop, external drives are less of a pain than on a laptop, but in many use cases, it's still REALLY annoying.
Speed boosts are nice, but doing it in this fashion is not NECESSARY to attain such speeds. Similarly, there are several enterprise grade drive encryption implementations (BitLocker, anyone?) that don't require semi-permanently pairing the drive to the logic board such that the former is useless without the latter.
I know the T2 gives some people the warm fuzzies, but, for what it does, it's seriously overkill considering the drawbacks. Then again, that's a moot point because everything being done by the T2 chip on Intel Macs today is going to be furthered by the Apple Silicon Macs tomorrow.
The 4TB and 8TB 2020 27" iMacs are STILL NOT UPGRADABLE. Apple doesn't support you opening up that machine to do anything other than add RAM. Never has, never will. Getting to those drives is a pain unless you order the right repair kit from iFixIt and know what you're doing; but even then; it's a crapshoot whether the process to upgrade the Mac Pro's drives will even work on the 2020 27" iMac. Certainly Apple doesn't support it for anything that isn't the Mac Pro. But even if you do it; you still need another Mac to restore the T2's bridgeOS. If it wasn't a pain in the ass before, it REALLY is a pain in the ass now.
The electrocution danger has apparently lessened since the 2011 iMac days, but there is still an exposed power supply there and it's still user-hostile (and not even that technician-friendly).
This was never a problem on past iMacs. The average consumer has no clue about how their storage medium is attached to their Mac.
I've done that one before; much easier than anything iSight G5 through current, for sure.
You do realize that is two different sets of MacRumors posters, right? We're not all the same people with multiple personality disorders.
It has been done that way on the Intel 15" and 16" MacBook Pros as well as the four-port 13" MacBook Pros since 2016; since 2019, the two-port 13" MacBook Pros have followed suit. Nothing new as far as Mac notebooks are concerned. But yeah, not an unreasonable assumption given T2 Mac desktops. Apple did make a note when launching the 2018 Mac mini that users really wanted upgradable RAM (in response to its 2014 predecessor removing that capability), so I have a feeling that will probably stick around (albeit only on the Mac mini, higher-end iMac [if any iMac], and Mac Pro). There's nothing in their stated system architecture that states that the RAM can't be removable; just the CPU, GPU, and storage.
You're not going to be able to shoehorn a third party SSD here, if that's what you're getting at. The T2 is king of the land here and it won't work with just any third-party set of modules. Also, let it be noted that the Mac Pro is the only Mac that Apple supports upgrading the modules of (and even then the data from the old modules is as good as gone the second you remove those modules and wipe the T2's bridgeOS.
In short, even if you could add the connector, the logic board wouldn't support it. You'd be left with an aftermarket drive that can't do what you paid for it to do.
Your T2 argument sadly goes both ways. Having it removable doesn't make a difference in terms of speed, yes. But it also doesn't make a difference in terms of the storage being either upgradable or replaceable either.
You're not wrong. But the T2 mandates that it not be removable. Even on T2 Macs with removable storage (4TB and 8TB 2020 27" iMacs, iMac Pros, and Mac Pros), you can't just remove the drive, plug it into another Mac and have the storage be usable. Having it be removable is mostly moot at this point because you can't decouple the modules from their SSD controller (the T2 chip) and have them just work anywhere else.
Right, but it's only a one-or-the-other situation as far as Apple is concerned. There are plenty of enterprise grade drive encryption platforms out there for Windows and they don't mandate that the drive be semi-permanently paired to the logic board. And the data therein is no less secure than the data on any T2 Mac, with or without FileVault 2 enabled. You speak of data safety like it HAS to be THIS way or it isn't secure at all.
The Mac Pro still has the "benefit" of the T2 chip. Though, to be fair, it is the only Mac that has an Apple Supported upgrade procedure for the storage modules.
The process has much improved. The 2009-2011 iMacs were not so forgiving. I almost got electrocuted by one for not being careful. Scared the crap out of me.
Bro, this is an iMac discussion. Not a Mac Pro discussion. Compare Apples to Apples, please.
Read the thread and post. You will find your answer there (spoiler alert: the answer is "no"; the storage is fixed and upgrades are not supported by Apple).
As far as iMacs go, this will be a great final Intel iMac.
I'm not sure that all Apple Silicon Mac desktops won't have removable RAM. There's nothing in their system architecture documentation and WWDC 2020 videos that outright states that's a limitation. I'm positive that they all won't have upgradable storage (save for maybe the Mac Pro replacement). That's a T2-ism that is definitely carrying over to Apple Silicon, for sure.
- The T2 chip acts as the SSD controller (as in the chip that, on literally every other SSDs, is on the SSD itself); meaning that any removable SSD module on a T2 Mac (such as the 4TB and 8TB configurations of this 2020 27" iMac, the iMac Pro, and the Mac Pro) is effectively useless on its own.
- The storage and the T2 chip are paired at the factory. If this pairing is, for whatever reason broken, the T2 needs to be restored via Apple Configurator 2 (like it was an iOS device or iPad); the data on the storage modules is then irretrievably lost. All that to say that even if the storage wasn't soldered to the logic board, it wouldn't change the fact that a failure of the logic board renders the data completely lost.
- The answer to the question of "Why is Apple making the storage non-removable?" is because the T2 mandates that it be that way. It's got nothing to do with corporate greed, it's got nothing to do with anything other than the fact that's how Apple designed that security chip.
- The fact that Apple removed all Hard and Fusion Drive options from the 27" iMac paved the way for the T2 to be on that model; the 21.5" iMac doesn't have a T2 chip because there is still a hard drive present (in Fusion Drive models).
You're lumping IT and computer repair as though they are the same thing. I can assure you, especially from a pay grade standpoint, they are definitely different. Also, there are IT positions that pay about as much as a coding job does...they just don't focus on Apple technologies front and center.
Just because you see a hundred SSDs not fail doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds more that do. It's also a very poor justification for soldering an SSD on a freakin' desktop computer. A laptop designed to be stupidly thin is one thing (and still a stupid one, at that), but on a desktop, it's asinine.
You must not have ever had the experience of buying a Mac that came out with a boot drive with x GB/TB only to find that, several years later, you want to upgrade to a bigger one. Or the other equally infuriating experience of buying a Mac, having its drive fail out of AppleCare+ and being forced to go through Apple for a replacement (even OWC drives are cheaper). Yes, on a desktop, external drives are less of a pain than on a laptop, but in many use cases, it's still REALLY annoying.
Speed boosts are nice, but doing it in this fashion is not NECESSARY to attain such speeds. Similarly, there are several enterprise grade drive encryption implementations (BitLocker, anyone?) that don't require semi-permanently pairing the drive to the logic board such that the former is useless without the latter.
I know the T2 gives some people the warm fuzzies, but, for what it does, it's seriously overkill considering the drawbacks. Then again, that's a moot point because everything being done by the T2 chip on Intel Macs today is going to be furthered by the Apple Silicon Macs tomorrow.
The 4TB and 8TB 2020 27" iMacs are STILL NOT UPGRADABLE. Apple doesn't support you opening up that machine to do anything other than add RAM. Never has, never will. Getting to those drives is a pain unless you order the right repair kit from iFixIt and know what you're doing; but even then; it's a crapshoot whether the process to upgrade the Mac Pro's drives will even work on the 2020 27" iMac. Certainly Apple doesn't support it for anything that isn't the Mac Pro. But even if you do it; you still need another Mac to restore the T2's bridgeOS. If it wasn't a pain in the ass before, it REALLY is a pain in the ass now.
The electrocution danger has apparently lessened since the 2011 iMac days, but there is still an exposed power supply there and it's still user-hostile (and not even that technician-friendly).
This was never a problem on past iMacs. The average consumer has no clue about how their storage medium is attached to their Mac.
I've done that one before; much easier than anything iSight G5 through current, for sure.
You do realize that is two different sets of MacRumors posters, right? We're not all the same people with multiple personality disorders.
It has been done that way on the Intel 15" and 16" MacBook Pros as well as the four-port 13" MacBook Pros since 2016; since 2019, the two-port 13" MacBook Pros have followed suit. Nothing new as far as Mac notebooks are concerned. But yeah, not an unreasonable assumption given T2 Mac desktops. Apple did make a note when launching the 2018 Mac mini that users really wanted upgradable RAM (in response to its 2014 predecessor removing that capability), so I have a feeling that will probably stick around (albeit only on the Mac mini, higher-end iMac [if any iMac], and Mac Pro). There's nothing in their stated system architecture that states that the RAM can't be removable; just the CPU, GPU, and storage.
You're not going to be able to shoehorn a third party SSD here, if that's what you're getting at. The T2 is king of the land here and it won't work with just any third-party set of modules. Also, let it be noted that the Mac Pro is the only Mac that Apple supports upgrading the modules of (and even then the data from the old modules is as good as gone the second you remove those modules and wipe the T2's bridgeOS.
In short, even if you could add the connector, the logic board wouldn't support it. You'd be left with an aftermarket drive that can't do what you paid for it to do.
Your T2 argument sadly goes both ways. Having it removable doesn't make a difference in terms of speed, yes. But it also doesn't make a difference in terms of the storage being either upgradable or replaceable either.
You're not wrong. But the T2 mandates that it not be removable. Even on T2 Macs with removable storage (4TB and 8TB 2020 27" iMacs, iMac Pros, and Mac Pros), you can't just remove the drive, plug it into another Mac and have the storage be usable. Having it be removable is mostly moot at this point because you can't decouple the modules from their SSD controller (the T2 chip) and have them just work anywhere else.
Right, but it's only a one-or-the-other situation as far as Apple is concerned. There are plenty of enterprise grade drive encryption platforms out there for Windows and they don't mandate that the drive be semi-permanently paired to the logic board. And the data therein is no less secure than the data on any T2 Mac, with or without FileVault 2 enabled. You speak of data safety like it HAS to be THIS way or it isn't secure at all.
The Mac Pro still has the "benefit" of the T2 chip. Though, to be fair, it is the only Mac that has an Apple Supported upgrade procedure for the storage modules.
The process has much improved. The 2009-2011 iMacs were not so forgiving. I almost got electrocuted by one for not being careful. Scared the crap out of me.
Bro, this is an iMac discussion. Not a Mac Pro discussion. Compare Apples to Apples, please.
Read the thread and post. You will find your answer there (spoiler alert: the answer is "no"; the storage is fixed and upgrades are not supported by Apple).
As far as iMacs go, this will be a great final Intel iMac.
I'm not sure that all Apple Silicon Mac desktops won't have removable RAM. There's nothing in their system architecture documentation and WWDC 2020 videos that outright states that's a limitation. I'm positive that they all won't have upgradable storage (save for maybe the Mac Pro replacement). That's a T2-ism that is definitely carrying over to Apple Silicon, for sure.
I give ZERO f's about the physical security of my system storage - I'm not doing anything illegal and couldn't care in the slightest if someone who physically had my system could access my information. It's no worse than someone stealing something out of a file cabinet. Besides, if you're making external backups the content would be no more secure than removable internal storage.
I do care about repairability and expandability, don't buy in the slightest the "security" excuse for making the product non-repairable and upgradable.
I do care about repairability and expandability, don't buy in the slightest the "security" excuse for making the product non-repairable and upgradable.
Not quite true. When you look at a M.2 SSD, the chips are soldered and secured on a PCB, and this is a reliable as soldering chips on a logic board, if not more (on some computers, logic boards suffer from warping and this create solder joint failures).
What makes Apple flash storage reliable is not soldering them, it's the quality of nand, and their type (possibly still MLC).
Talking or reliability, when you have a failure on a logic board, you would be happy that your SSD is not soldered on the logic board, no ?
with a SSD soldered to the logic board, any failure of either the storage either the rest of the logic board produce failure of both...
On the iMac the removable storage is not the storage modules that is PCIe based, it's the T2 chip.
A similar system is Opal encryption which when properly done provide the same exact level of hardware encryption and security than T2 encryption...
Maybe we can trust more Apple for their implementation of T2 encryption than, say, Samsung for their implentation of Opal encryption, maybe, but at least with a M.2 SSD opal compliant you get security, reliability AND more resilience to failure
The 2017 and 2019 iMacs did have a nonstandard SSD. However, there were plenty of inexpensive adapters available that allowed you to install a regular NVMe m.2 SSDs from Samsung, Western Digital etc. in the primary SSD slot and run them at full x4 PCIe speed (speed was not an issue at all with the SSDs of the previous iMacs).
A previous commentator on page 1 stated that having the SSD chips soldered onto the logic board makes them more reliable. I don't believe that statement has significant evidence behind it (particularly on a desktop that sits on a desk) and in any case would still prefer the ability to swap a defective part or worn out SSD far into the future. The potential security improvement with the new hardware encryption appears to be the only benefit (which isn't that great a deal for my use cases)
A previous commentator on page 1 stated that having the SSD chips soldered onto the logic board makes them more reliable. I don't believe that statement has significant evidence behind it (particularly on a desktop that sits on a desk) and in any case would still prefer the ability to swap a defective part or worn out SSD far into the future. The potential security improvement with the new hardware encryption appears to be the only benefit (which isn't that great a deal for my use cases)
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I’ll take upgradeable. Never had any security issues with my upgradeable Macs.
Half or a little more than half of folks buying Macs every year are new to the platform. What’s important to those people actually purchasing machines will always be more important than those NOT buying machines. Apple Silicon will very likely be focused on these new users, and the new users of the future as well.
They are preparing us for Apple Silicon, where everything is etched on a single die, no question of soldered or unsoldered.
This is being held hostage by Apple in a nutshell.
Why does the T2 mandate storage being non-removable?
Inevitable design necessity? Or just a clever way of selling you obsolescence through security?
Wow, a mature sensible comment. That still exists on these message boards?
You should be able to boot from an external drive. Maybe 1 in 1000 failures will be because of a held down address line stopping the system initialising properly or a short circuit that will instantly trip the PSU which it is switched on, but the majority of failures will just result in the drive not being available, or read/write errors.