Swapgate and Rosetta 2

[Yebubbleman]

I was following the story of M1 Macs having unusually high disk wear in short periods of time. I watched and read various coverage of it. It sounds like it was linked to Rosetta 2 usage (and maybe even to specific apps running in Rosetta 2). But that's all that I really got from that. Max Tech's videos on the matter seemed to dismiss it while ZDNet seemed to over-sensationalize it. Past that point, I can't really tell what ended up specifically being a culprit (in terms of apps causing the SSD wear) and/or if it stopped being an issue with an update and/or how widespread it eventually got (especially considering that there are significantly more M1 Macs in the wild out there now than there were previously).

Does anyone have a more thorough/complete picture of what happened here? I'd love to get a clearer picture of what all this fuss was about.

In the meantime, I'm not using Rosetta 2 on the one M1 Mac I currently have (though, admittedly at least 60% of that is a lazy way of determining whether or not an app I install is Apple Silicon Native yet).

 

[Kung gu]

Pretty sure there is already a major thread about this topic.

macOS was needlessly swapping to the disk and therefore causing excessive writes to the SSD.
Many reported that 11.4 fixed the excessive swapping and there is plenty proof it did but as I said it was for most
people the swap problem was fixed not all as Rosetta 2 can sometimes cause swapping.

IMO, ARM macOS is sorta in a beta phrase just like ARM Windows. Unless Apple gets rid of Rosseta 2, macOS will have to deal with this baggage. I bet Apple's goal is remove rossetta 2 from macOS within 2 years time.

The 256 GB ssd used in the M1 Macs has a 1500TBW. The 512GB SSD has around 4200TBW. The more capacity the more TBW a drive can handle.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Pretty sure there is already a major thread about this topic.

There totally are many threads about this topic, but like many other 15-60 page posts, it becomes hard to navigate after a while.

macOS was needlessly swapping to the disk and therefore causing excessive writes to the SSD.
Many reported that 11.4 fixed the excessive swapping and there is plenty proof it did but as I said it was for most
people the swap problem was fixed not all as Rosetta 2 can sometimes cause swapping.

So, just to clarify (because you do kinda bounce around a bit here), the vast majority of the issues were resolved by 11.4. But some of them still linger as some of them are caused by Rosetta 2 (though not for all users as, I'm guessing, like I guessed, it varies on an Intel App by Intel App basis)?

IMO, ARM macOS is sorta in a beta phrase just like ARM Windows.

That certainly makes a large degree of sense. It seems to have stabilized in 11.4 in ways that it wasn't in 11.1 and 11.0.1.

Unless Apple gets rid of Rosseta 2, macOS will have to deal with this baggage.

You really think so? What makes you say this? Surely, they can improve upon it over time, no?

I bet Apple's goal is remove rossetta 2 from macOS within 2 years time.

That seems highly agressive. Certainly, I could see it lingering around in the first one or two Apple Silicon only macOS releases before they pull a Mac OS X Lion and yank it. And very likely not much more than that given that they care more about supporting those who purchased the hardware rather than those who are still struggling (or are otherwise unable) to update their apps to either be Universal or Apple Silicon only.

The 256 GB ssd used in the M1 Macs has a 1500TBW. The 512GB SSD has around 4200TBW. The more capacity the more TBW a drive can handle.

That I didn't know. But I guess that makes sense. Certainly it cements my recommendation to others to buy at least a 1TB drive with their M1 Macs.

 

[cmaier]

I haven’t heard anything about Rosetta causing swap. That doesn’t even make sense.

 

[Kung gu]

So, just to clarify (because you do kinda bounce around a bit here), the vast majority of the issues were resolved by 11.4. But some of them still linger as some of them are caused by Rosetta 2 (though not for all users as, I'm guessing, like I guessed, it varies on an Intel App by Intel App basis)?

Yes the vast majority of swap issues was resolved in 11.4 but macOS still writes a LOT to the disk when the M1 Mac is
sleeping. This is a major problem that apple still has not fixed yet.

I am really hesitant to recommend a M1 Mac because of this issue. A computer should have not a soldered SSD,
it just becomes useless when the SSD dies. All Windows laptops have user-replaceable SSD, even the Surface line from MS have SSD's that are replaceable.

this is the place where you find a LOT of info regrading M1 swap and write issues:
ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

 

[cupcakes2000]

A computer should have not a soldered SSD,
it just becomes useless when the SSD dies. All Windows laptops have user-replaceable SSD, even the Surface line from MS have SSD's that are replaceable.

And herein lies the bias of the post you’re making. It’s a well documented bug that has been fixed for the most part, as you’re aware of you have been following the issue. Being personally hung up on a fact that exists with the macs design, such as non user replaceable parts (pretty old news by now), isn’t a great start to serious impartial advice.

 

[Kung gu]

And herein lies the bias of the post you’re making. It’s a well documented bug that has been fixed for the most part, as you’re aware of you have been following the issue. Being personally hung up on a fact that exists with the macs design, such as non user replaceable parts (pretty old news by now), isn’t a great start to serious impartial advice.

Well the drives on the M1 Macs have been thrashed. Will Apple provide the user with a new SSD??
It was apples fault after all.

 

[cmaier]

Well the drives on the M1 Macs have been thrashed. Will Apple provide the user with a new SSD??
It was apples fault after all.

What drives have been thrashed? I haven’t seen anyone complain about their drive actually failing,

 

[cupcakes2000]

Well the drives on the M1 Macs have been thrashed. Will Apple provide the user with a new SSD??
It was apples fault after all.

But no drives have failed, have they? Show me the link that proves this wrong.

 

[Silvestru Hosszu]

As I and many others pointed out in other threads, this is not M1 but Big Sur issue.
I had much more writes on the Intel MBP 16 than on my M1 MBP, both on Big Sur.
Personally, after the 11.2.3 update I had no more issues.

 

[MrGunny94]

After the recent .4 update my swap never passes the 5-6GB a day.

 

[Fishrrman]

Get 16gb of RAM and use the terminal to TURN OFF VM disk swapping.
I'll bet this solves the problem.

My Mac is an Intel, but here's my VM disk usage (in terminal):
vm.swapusage: total = 0.00M used = 0.00M free = 0.00M (encrypted)

 

[mj_]

Like most things on the internet, and particularly so things that affect everybody's favorite darling/bogeyman (depending on what side of the argument you are on), this issue has been blown way out of proportion and developed a self-propelling life of its own once it got into the hands of clickbait journalists and sketchy YouTube influencers.

Yes, there was an issue where in some rare circumstances the operating system caused more writes to SSDs than it should have.
No, not all Macs were affected.
No, it was not caused by Rosetta2, nor was it caused by a specific application.
No, it was not an M1 issue but affected Intel Macs as well.
Yes, the original issue has been fixed as of 11.4.
No, not a single SSD has died because of this (at least as far as the general public is aware).
No, affected SSDs are not going to start dying by the dozens in a few years because SSDs are much more robust than you would think.

Long story short: it's a non-issue. No need to worry about it.

PS: I once thrashed a 250 GB Samsung 830 consumer SSD to 15x its specified TBW on purpose to evaluate its potential use in affordable storage solutions. It held up well without any issues and is still in use today in my spare ThinkPad X220 laptop.