Kind of reminds me when a friend and I upgraded his 128K Mac to 512K, by unsoldering the 4164 DRAM chips, and installing new 41256 DRAM chips. That was tediously fun evening in about 1987.
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New Mac Mini's Storage Can Be Upgraded, But It's Not Easy
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Those were just DIP but BGA are just so much more fun
Will the new mini design last another ~14 years? There is no logical reason Apple needed to shrink it down more, and not add a user-removable ssd to the new mini.
/wishful thinking
/wishful thinking
The M1 Mini was mostly just empty space so while Apple didn't need to shrink it down, doing so doesn't really have a negative. Who knows how long Apple will keep this new design around, but it now matches the style of the Studio.
Do you think Apple will allow for third party to sell those SSD boards without any patent infringement ?
Personally, I think that in 14 years, phones will be the replacement from r desktops, laptops, etc.
Imagine all phones having something like Samsung DeX and all that will be needed is a docking station.
I don't know ... Apple will probably find some way to make sure iPhone 31 can't do all that, just so you have to keep buying a Mac
Sadly, I think that will be what ends up happening.
Apple doesn't have a case against anyone mass producing these. There's no firmware on the board, there's nothing patentable, Apple didn't design the connector.
The Mac Pro and Studio were too low production for somebody to start building boards in large quantities. Minis are not low production, we'll see 3rd party storage boards in mass production within months.
I ended up reordering my Mac mini pro configuration with a lower SSD spec and simultaneously ordered an OWC TB4 enclosure (only) for $119 and an 8 TB WD NVMe for $650. At some point, I'll be able to update the TB4 enclosure to TB5 (when OWC sells one without a pre-installed drive), slipping that same NVMe into that enclosure. But for now, I think I should be good.
I'd love to have the 8TB SSD be internal, but I cannot justify that price just to house my photo library and accumulation of stuff over many years of computing.
Now the question I have is whether I should make the external drive the startup, or just put the Home folder on that external, keeping the applications and stuff on the internal 512GB drive. For years, that's how I had a Mac Pro (2009) set up, with apps and stuff on a super-fast (for the time) OWC Accelsior card and everything else on a spinning hard drive. I kept that bifurcation with a 2018 Mac mini -- 512 internal startup drive and Home on a 4TB Thunderbolt SSD.
So what do people think makes the most sense:
1. Internal SSD has apps and system, external houses the Home folder
2. Everything on external SSD
Thanks!
I'd love to have the 8TB SSD be internal, but I cannot justify that price just to house my photo library and accumulation of stuff over many years of computing.
Now the question I have is whether I should make the external drive the startup, or just put the Home folder on that external, keeping the applications and stuff on the internal 512GB drive. For years, that's how I had a Mac Pro (2009) set up, with apps and stuff on a super-fast (for the time) OWC Accelsior card and everything else on a spinning hard drive. I kept that bifurcation with a 2018 Mac mini -- 512 internal startup drive and Home on a 4TB Thunderbolt SSD.
So what do people think makes the most sense:
1. Internal SSD has apps and system, external houses the Home folder
2. Everything on external SSD
Thanks!
Dex doesn't even run desktop apps so its pretty useless to me as docking solution, but really I cant wait for my phone to throttle as soon as I look at the Photoshop icon.
In your rush to belittle my post, you clearly missed the part (or perhaps selective reading) where we clearly said 14 years in the future.
But hey, what can I say ...
I don't see it as realistic.
Moore's law is dead. Transistor counts don't double every two years any more, not even close.
And even 14 years ago we had very capable machines. One of the laptops I use regularly (and was my primary laptop until just a bit over a year ago) has 16GB RAM and 4TB SSD. It's a 2012 MacBook Pro. 16GB RAM just became the standard 14 years later, and Apple is charging highway robbery prices for the 4TB that should be the minimum standard now. Apple still doesn't make a phone that has more than 1TB SSD or more than 8GB RAM.
I just don't see it being realistic (or a good idea) for something the size of a phone to make sense as a computer replacement in 14 years. Maybe in 50, maybe (probably) not.
Those were just DIP but BGA are just so much more fun
BGAs are much easier! Scrape off the filler, warm up on a heat bed and hit with hot air and they come right off in a few seconds. Cleaning and reballing is dead easy as well.
Not many people know this but when you remove a DIP package you should really cut the legs off at the body of the IC and then desolder the pins, preferably with a vacuum desoldering iron (not a pump!). This stops the board getting overheated and the pads damaged which is difficult to repair.
Now do that to a whole board of DIPs. Urgh.
The difficulty with these upgrades is preprogramming the chips. You can probably do that easier if they are mounted on a carrier board though which is nice!
Well to be fair I think one could argue this as an AAPL shareholder looking for maximum margins and earnings... and until their spreadsheet shows massive numbers of customers not upgrading and choosing additional external storage they probably won't change.
I update my first post in this thread to reflect this, but here is what was just discovered about a major limitation by Apple if you Boot off an external drive as your Startup Drive on your Mac:
WARNING I was not aware of previously: If you boot off an external Startup Drive with your Mac, due to Apple's New Security, you can NOT run Apple Intelligence, and likely Apple Pay, and other security related things from your external Thunderbolt or SSD drive. See this video from a guy who just discovered this limitation:
Thanks to gargetfreak98 for this potential workaround of moving your home folder to the external SSD drive:
appleinsider.com
WARNING I was not aware of previously: If you boot off an external Startup Drive with your Mac, due to Apple's New Security, you can NOT run Apple Intelligence, and likely Apple Pay, and other security related things from your external Thunderbolt or SSD drive. See this video from a guy who just discovered this limitation:
Thanks to gargetfreak98 for this potential workaround of moving your home folder to the external SSD drive:
How to move the Home Directory in macOS Ventura
In macOS Ventura you can move your user's Home directory to a larger or faster external drive. Here's how.
appleinsider.com
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Good question, and I have no idea. The connector seems to be a proprietary Apple design, so maybe there is indeed some intellectual property involved.
However, the objective fact is that Apple have been using a similar, proprietary, modular flash-only storage system since the 2019 Mac Pro and the 2022 M1 Studio - and yet none of the mainstream suppliers have come up with third-party modules or upgrade services. (Kudos to the handful of cottage-industry enthusiasts doing this on what looks like a 'paying hobby' basis, but they're a drop in the ocean - and while I'm sure they're mostly honest and conscientious it does take a leap of faith to trust them with your kit).
I suspect a more serious problem than any hypothetical patent is that the SSD (and RAM?) upgrade process requires a second Mac running Apple's proprietary "configurator" software - and it also sounds like doing things in the wrong order can easily irrevocably brick the replacement parts by initialising them in the wrong way. It would also be possible for Apple block this overnight with a patch to the configurator software. So it would be a can of worms as far as customer support was concerned. Plus, with the Studio and new Mini, it involves completely dismantling the machine - so a supplier would either run the gauntlet of irate users blaming them for their mistakes or only offer it as a mail-in service (which would add to the expense and reduce the uptake).
Then if Apple did want to retaliate (and note, this is speculation) they could do it via the ever-mutable, one-sided T&Cs of "approved Apple service providers" or even users' Apple IDs. Which brings us to...
(Let's forget RAM for the moment - this thread started out about storage & there are technical justifications for soldering in the RAM, not least that until the recent arrival of LPCAMM modules, low-power (LPDDR) RAM had to be surface-mount soldered to the logic board, even on PCs that used LPDDR.)
Again, to repeat the objective fact, Apple are already using a potentially upgradeable, modular storage system - and have been for years in the Mac Pro and Studio. You can even get replacement modules for the Studio under Apple's home repair program - but you have to give them your serial number and they won't let you order a larger module than the one you are replacing. Some people claim to have worked around this by giving a fake serial number, but that means breaking their T&Cs - anyway, you have to rely on their proprietary software to complete the upgrade.
So all would be needed from the EU (and, remember several US states have, or are considering, "right to repair laws") would be to stop companies like Apple using artificial constraints to block upgrades that were, otherwise, already possible, or using T&Cs to retaliate against users or suppliers. Maybe, even then, no third party would bother to make their own upgrades - but that would be a commercial/free market decision, not because Apple had erected hurdles. I suspect it's yet to be put to a legal test as to whether Apple's home repair program actually complies with existing EU and US State right-to-repair laws.
So, yes you could "vote with your feet" and not buy Apple... you could get Microsoft instead and enjoy start-menu ads and forced OS updates (80% of users seem to cope), or Linux (unless your work requires Office, Adobe CS etc.) - but unless you really only do email, social media and cloud apps be prepared for a significant secondary cost associated with switching software and re-learning skills. Got a bunch of FCP or Logic projects? Tough. Developing iPhone Apps? Hey - who needs the iPhone market. Heaven forfend you're running a business with multiple users who'll all suffer a couple of months of poor productivity while they change their workflow. So, sorry, no, the real world is nothing like the magical-thinking "free market" where every decision is just like deciding that 50oz of sugar for $3 is better than 40oz for $3. Using technological lock-in to get away with anticompetetive practices is a huge problem, especially in IT.
I think you meant to say "If you boot off of an external startup drive", since every Mac has a startup drive
I am probably one of a few people like this YouTuber who has the tools and skills to do this.
I will not be doing this.
I will not be doing this.
Corrected for better clarification. Thanks!I think you meant to say "If you boot off of an external startup drive", since every Mac has a startup drive
I doubt they have or can patent the electrical or mechanical interface as the general idea is prior art. On top of that, you don't have to replicate the socket half - the other bit is just a gold fingered/chamfered PCB edge connector.