unfortunately I can't share your view here. Had a MBP 15" 2015 SSD fail around second year in without any warnings (usually how it is with ssds in contrast to hdds slowly creeping in errors). To be fair, I also have another Mac with a SSD that hasn't failed over several years now, so while rare not impossible. Should those ever fail out of warranty... I don't even want to think about the costs. Whereas if it was repairable, a quick swap of just the ssd would be all it takes.
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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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unfortunately I can't share your view here. Had a MBP 15" 2015 SSD fail around second year in without any warnings (usually how it is with ssds in contrast to hdds slowly creeping in errors). To be fair, I also have another Mac with a SSD that hasn't failed over several years now, so while rare not impossible. Should those ever fail out of warranty... I don't even want to think about the costs. Whereas if it was repairable, a quick swap of just the ssd would be all it takes.
Oh sod off Apple... I remember when even Jobs showed how easy the PowerMac G4 was to open and service.
If you buy a high end stationary computer these days you expect it to last 5-10 years. It is not the 90s anymore, when a PC turned in to obsolete junk in a couple of years. But i still want to be able to update it myself if needed.
If you buy a high end stationary computer these days you expect it to last 5-10 years. It is not the 90s anymore, when a PC turned in to obsolete junk in a couple of years. But i still want to be able to update it myself if needed.
The thing is, most people, as in the vast majority, have zero expectations or desire of upgrading or replacing parts on their iMac, or MacBook Air/Pro, in the same way they don’t expect or want to upgrade parts on their iPhone or iPad.
Personally, I’ve had my early 2013 iMac 21.5” with Fusion drive running every day since the day I bought it, and it has needed nothing as far as repairs or upgrades. It’s not the fastest in anything I do on it, but it’s been rock solid as far as service. If Apple was hearing or seeing millions of iMac owners experiencing problems that required the case to be opened and components replaced / upgraded regularly, they would be designing the iMac differently to address these issues. But they’re not, which in part explains why they’re going this direction now. Also, other than with ram, you can easily and inexpensively get around a small internal ssd simply by adding an external storage unit or two. It’s not the ’90’s where an external drive is slow and problematic to use.
I understand your point, and i have used a late 2013 27" iMac as my main machine for almost seven years by now.
But what i oppose is not that it is hard to replace a broken HDD/SSD, but that they have taken active steps to make it impossible.
I own the device, if i want to replace parts of it i should be able to do so. If i screw up while attempting to do so it is my own fault.
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To be fair, Apple went from 8 upgradable slots in the Apple II to zero in the iMac because Steve Jobs led that team. He was the original king up no upgradability. He always wanted computers to be seen as appliances.
iMac Pro owner here & the power board died on me under the first-year warranty. Did that help anything with the socketed NAND flash on the iMac Pro... err, no, not a bit. Apple replaced the main board complete with the socketed CPU and the socketed flash (cannot really call it an SSD anymore with the controller living on the T2). So I got back a completely wiped and gutted system with no attempt at data recovery.
It's just the way it is now and in fairness, recovering a TM backup across the 10GbE LAN is no drama for an office machine. It just feel very different to the old experience of getting your machine back with the data or physical drive migrated during the repair.
There is another reply about Apple "herding" folks into the higher SKU. That is part of it.
But there is a subset of users in group settings where this could be useful. If add 10GbE , then your bulk storage can be on the network. Once down to just OS + Apps + small "stub" for local user home ( or even just network "home folder" login ), then there isn't a big driver for a large capacity inside system.
Think school project lab. Where these are not assigned or belong to individuals. Users come in and their projects can't be tied to any one machine. You login on any one of 10-30 machines and your data is present. A workplace that has a "hot desktop" policy where workers don't get a fixed assignment location to work ( in and out office where not 100% of the folks come in every day).
The other major factor is the "hate Apple BTO options" group. Apple's SSD are "too high priced" to their taste (and the RAM). So those folks will buy as minimal "bare bones" as Apple will sell. For this entry price 27" model, that is probably a pretty substantive percentage of buyers. If selling to folks who don't want a T2 drive then sell as small as reasonable. In short, I think Apple knows they price a substantive number of folks out, and this end up being outreach.
Stepping up the $1999 model also in part buys more SSD capacity ( 256 -> 512 ). If wanted to pay more for increased capacity that is also built into the $200 difference. If it was $200 just for the CPU then it would be a bigger ask. If split the $200 into $100 for each new component getting then that is about what would pay with Apple SSD pricing ( $400/1TB/4 -> $100/256GB ). Pay $100 more on top of that SSD cost increase would have to pay anyway in BTO pricing and get faster CPU. It is bit odd to be a in "frugal" state on the CPU price and also be somewhat enthusiastic about the $100 for a 256GB SSD price.
Part of the reason it is a 256GB and not 512GB or 1TB is Apple's pricing of $400 per TB. The capacity is set to what is "left" of the fixed price (and margins) they are shooting at. It is one reason why they held onto HDDs (and Fusion) drives for as long as they did. Lower cost component to hit more price sensitive buyers.
The Mac Minis just went to a much higher entry price level when Apple dropped the HDD/Fusion options from it completely. Same thing is really happening here, but they are blunting that blow a bit by having this "entry" model that fixes the storage to one configuration. The nominal model they are expecting folks to pick is the $1999 model. ( which is like the Mini an increase at the pragmatic entry price. )
P.S. the 128GB RAM being a BTO option is in part because it not soldered to the board. Every single iMac 27" assembled has to have some person put DIMMS into the slots. Putting in two 4GB DIMMs and four 32GB DIMMs doesn't take that much different amount of time if the rest of the board is just left standard. That is probably more so a "value add" that perhaps some of the value added resellers can leverage more than real substantive BTO sales directly by Apple. It is offered because some other sales channels might do it and Apple would just be consistent. And for the minute subset that has to buy via corporate purchase order directly to Apple it is just fat profit margin 'gravy' for Apple. They could reconfig that machine for something else if have to 'refurb" it or shift inventory.
I sometimes try to play devil's advocate on these things because I see so many comments acting as if these changes are the end of the world, when at worst they're just an inconvenience.
Sometimes I look back at the old Aluminum Macbooks where you could swap the battery, RAM, hard drive, etc. and miss that ease of repairability, but then I look at how heavy and bulky they were. It really is all about compromises.
Anyone know the name of the cool lamp on left?
Following a report from German blog iFun.de that claimed the new 27-inch iMac's flash storage is soldered to the logic board, MacRumors has obtained additional information in an internal document for Apple technicians.
In the document, Apple says that the flash storage is indeed affixed to the logic board and cannot be removed. However, for the 4TB and 8TB configurations, Apple says that a flash storage expansion board is attached to a connector on the logic board. In the 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations, the expansion board and connector are not present.
Apple adds that the flash storage and logic board are paired together for hardware encryption, so data will be lost if the logic board is replaced. For this reason, it is recommended that customers back up their files on a regular basis.
The new 27-inch iMac features 10th-generation Intel Core processors, AMD Radeon Pro 5000 series graphics, up to 128GB of RAM, up to 8TB of storage, a 1080p front-facing FaceTime camera, a True Tone display with a nano-texture glass option, higher fidelity speakers, studio-quality microphones, and more.
Article Link: New 27-Inch iMac's Storage Affixed to Logic Board, 4TB and 8TB Configurations Have Expansion Connector
I work for the federal govt and need to maintain a security clearance. My life is an open book to them as a requirement.
He wanted the original 1984 Macintosh (128K) to be sealed shut, but it was hugely impractical at the time and got so much pushback internally that he had to give up, IIRC.
It's a JWDA Lamp, by Jonas Wagell. Hopefully, its light bulb is upgradable and replaceable 😁
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But what obligation is a company under to make it easier to replace parts?
This would simplify manufacturing and lower cost. Legally increasing profits is a companies primary obligation in a capitalist society. If you want to pass laws to say they need to consider repair in design and manufacturing well thats a slippery slope.
Well most of us do not work for the government and some are looking forward to Apple “my life is not an open book to the government” product line. Should be a real hot seller
Why is it not possible for a user to configure a non soldered ssd with the T2 chip? That seems like something easy enough to configure when a user initially installs and sets up that ssd (or any internally installed storage device) as a one time thing in disk utility. The user would be logged in...
If apple wanted to support that scenario, they could.
If apple wanted to support that scenario, they could.
Governments can enact laws. Some people don't like auto emission standards, but we have them - and there's a case that they are for the public good. In the same way governments can enact repairability laws, because one can make a case that policy is better for the environment (less unrepairable junk), precisely because companies won't look out for the public good on their own...
Repairability doesn’t really have anything to do with the environment. Someone who will recycle, will recycle whether it’s recycling that RAM they just took out or SSD they just replaced with a new one OR an entire computer that is at the end of it’s useful life. And, when they give it to Apple, the way it’s made will ensure that Apple can best repurpose the components.
Someone who won’t recycle is going to throw it all in the trash regardless, doesn’t matter how repairable it is. Once it’s not needed, it’s going to the landfill.
So many people in this thread acting surprised that this thing isn't repairable..
Get a short enough cable and it wouldn't even touch the surface the computer is on.
This proves that all their claims regarding eco friendly is hoax.
I'm not expecting this kind of decisions in mobile as those are specialized to be smaller and more mobile. But as for an iMac, this has pleeeeeeeeeeeenty of space inside. The only reason they made this decision is to earn more money in CTO no other.
I'm not expecting this kind of decisions in mobile as those are specialized to be smaller and more mobile. But as for an iMac, this has pleeeeeeeeeeeenty of space inside. The only reason they made this decision is to earn more money in CTO no other.
Pragmatically the T2 is the SSD. It contains the SSD controller (the brains of the SSD). So a non soldered SSD would be yet another SSD in addition to the T2 SSD. The T2 is still there.
The T2 has sever things mixed into it. It is also the boot firmware "controller". ( it verifies and loads the firmware of the whole overall system). In fact the T2 only hands a copy of the firmware to the host CPU. The host CPU can't get to the primary stored copy of the firmware at all. The power on bootloader can't both be removable and highly secure. The T2 also takes over some of the "System Management Integrated Controller" (SMIC) duties as well. In general historic Mac/PC implementations, the SMICs are always soldered to the board.
The T2 does several things. Those several things are being joined up in one chip in part to get to a more highly trusted, secure boot stack. So what the operating system is sitting on top of is secure. ( If the foundation has "security holes" then hard or sometimes impossible to 'fix it op" higher in the stack. )
This is way before anything disk utility ( an app running on an active operating system instance) gets running.
What Apple has done with the iMac Pro and Mac Pro ( and somewhat with the new iMac 4-8TB configurations) is break up the internal structure of the SSD the T2 implements. The chips that do the "at rest" storage of the data , (Flash NAND chips) are put onto a daughterboard ( what Apple calls a "SSD module" . That isn't a SSD that is a module. It is pragmatically a module of a SSD). The 'dumb" storage is on a detachable board. The SSD "brains" is still inside the T2 chips. Over a long extended period of time NAND chips wear out. If they fail then the SSD can be repaired by essentially pairing new NAND to the old SSD controller (in the T2).
[ Similar a company that has "destroy internal drives at system retirement" can just pull those daugther cards and shred just them. ]
However, that really isn't "Disk Utility". It is done with a second Mac running Configurator 2.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210626
That basically gets a 'brand new" , clean slate SSD which requires a major "reset" of the T2. Really operating on the internals of the SSD; not doing a SSD replacement.
Apple could go back to a scenario where there was substantially less boot security. It is not impossible, but it is unlikely given their stance on cranking up security and privacy.
I certainly respect your knowledge, but we probably disagree on what the scenario is.
In my opinion, and one that's probably a bit more closely aligned to that of legislators in right to repair states, the scenario should not be "Make the SSD secure by integrating storage to T2 security and therefore impossible to change.", The scenario is: "Can we make disks secure without removing the option for expandability and repairability". If I were a legislator, I'd maybe insist on Apple finding a better way to implement security. Or if they really wanted to be upright about it, they'd work with standard bodies to define separate controller/storage boards in the SSD space... or even say "here's our open SSD implementation. Feel free to use it."
I think Apple would look more reasonable on this issue if their storage pricing wasn't so awfully expensive compared to the market.
Not at all, but something is only as secure as its weakest link. This is the way that has no by-design weak link.
The mandatory drive pairing, SIP, Filevault enabled by default, mandatory 2FA, etc. feel more like a middle finger to the FBI IMO.
Honestly given Apple’s hardline stance on security the past few years I’m surprised they aren’t pushing Yubikeys or biometrics even harder (though I’m scared of a dongle-based future, so many IT calls from family members will ensue).
There's no weak link in something like BitLocker or any of the other enterprise-grade drive encryption software products out there that don't semi-permanently lock the drive to the logic board's security chip. That's why it's in use by the military and the federal government. No need whatsoever for this degree of hardening.