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Transcend Debuts JetDrive SSD Upgrade Kits Up to 960GB for MacBook Air, Retina Macbook Pro

Transcend across the board

The transcend items across the board are on sale, sd cards, usb sticks, etc. These just fell in the mix..

Hopefully, they are just trying to pump some revenue and nothing more dire. Pretty it up for a sale to SNDK or maybe another buyer, or just need some revenue.
 
tivoboy said:
If you've been on the fence, now is the time to jump. Amazon just dropped the price of the 720 and 725 480GB models for the 2012 rMBP to 269$, another 100$ off. Almost a no brainer at that point.

If could be that memory prices are dropping that fast or it could be that the new rMBP has twice the current SSD space as before, whatever I'll take it.
Click to expand...

Ugh, only in the US. amazon.ca is full price.
 
tivoboy said:
The transcend items across the board are on sale, sd cards, usb sticks, etc. These just fell in the mix..

Hopefully, they are just trying to pump some revenue and nothing more dire. Pretty it up for a sale to SNDK or maybe another buyer, or just need some revenue.
Click to expand...

I'm worried that it has something to do with Trim support in Yosemite . . .

http://www.cindori.org/update-on-trim-in-yosemite/

I recently canceled my order after reading this . . .

I'd rather not have to modify NVRAM, which is inherently easy to reset, just to boot my Mac and have Trim support . . .

This new discount tempts me, but I'm not exactly desperate for space yet, and I still have a year left on my AppleCare Warranty . . .

Maybe I'll just give it another year and see what's available . . .

Maybe OWC will get their act together and offer higher capacity drives . . . 480 GB just doesn't cut it . . .
 
ReddestDream said:
. Maybe OWC will get their act together and offer higher capacity drives . . . 480 GB just doesn't cut it . . .
Click to expand...

IMHO, OWC Drives are JUNK! Read my review on P. 9 of this thread. Furthermore, OWC claims their drives don't need TRIM, which IMO is pure BS. They just never wanted to spend the money to do the programming to enable it.

Lou
 
STAY AWAY FROM TRANSCEND, if you value customer service!!!

Product was not ready for primetime. Terrible product. As an early adopter I got screwed by a faulty PCB (size) and buggy firmware. After reinstalling OS X and swapping drives many times.... having worked through these issues I contacted Transcend for a refund of the difference between the price I paid and the current sale price, just the difference. They refused, saying it's not part of their business model (Andrew Hinkle). Complete arrogance towards their customers. So I got overcharged $100 for the privilege to beta test for them and help work out all their niggles? Wonderful, now can I send them an invoice for all the time they wasted? The hubris is unbelievable. Instead of helping me, he was throwing screenshots in my face of all the current Amazon reviews and how many stars it has. In other words, "Screw you sucker, you got an early faulty version, paid WAY more then the new customers are paying for the newer fixed version, and you're not going to get any help" ....WOW, just wow.....so disappointed with Transcend. Maybe it's just this Andrews in their customer service dept. that is the problem, I don't know.
 
moebis said:
Product was not ready for primetime. Terrible product. As an early adopter I got screwed by a faulty PCB (size) and buggy firmware. After reinstalling OS X and swapping drives many times.... having worked through these issues I contacted Transcend for a refund of the difference between the price I paid and the current sale price, just the difference. They refused, saying it's not part of their business model (Andrew Hinkle). Complete arrogance towards their customers. So I got overcharged $100 for the privilege to beta test for them and help work out all their niggles? Wonderful, now can I send them an invoice for all the time they wasted? The hubris is unbelievable. Instead of helping me, he was throwing screenshots in my face of all the current Amazon reviews and how many stars it has. In other words, "Screw you sucker, you got an early faulty version, paid WAY more then the new customers are paying for the newer fixed version, and you're not going to get any help" ....WOW, just wow.....so disappointed with Transcend. Maybe it's just this Andrews in their customer service dept. that is the problem, I don't know.
Click to expand...

In the honor of being transparent, I've attached the email correspondence for the MacRumors community...

Carl,

The product you’re discussing has had multiple reviews on Amazon – 43 to be exact. 34 of those reviews are 5 stars. Transcend doesn’t engage in dismissive customer service. If you feel like it’s a faulty product, we’ve offered an exchange for the JDM725 which is perfectly fair. I can assure you the product is tested thoroughly. If you want to post on the forums about your opinions, that’s your right. Have a good day.

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com

From: Carl Moebis
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 3:24 PM
To: andrew_hinkle
Subject: Re: Transcend Sales Department has received your message

No, I will contact Amex about these issues and have the unit sent back for a full refund now. I will also let the other users on macrumors forums know about your dismissive customer service. You sell a faulty product that was clearly not ready for primetime, overcharge $100 and when asked to do the right thing you balk. Let me ask you, selling untested products, is that part of this same “business”?

On Jul 31, 2014, at 6:03 PM, andrew_hinkle <andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com> wrote:

Sorry Carl, promotions come and go and prices aren’t retroactively set in our business. I can personally assign one of my Tech Support Engineers to sit down and go over step by step of the installation when you get the JetDrive 725 unit if you’d like.

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com

From: Carl Moebis
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 2:55 PM
To: andrew_hinkle
Subject: Re: Transcend Sales Department has received your message

Andrew,

That is just not fair. I have been battling with this thing since I bought it, and would have been better off if I had waited. Now for the privilege of working out the bugs (with the help of other members on Macrumors forums) I had to pay $100 more. I would have happily waited until now to purchase had I known about the dimensional issues and the firmware bugs, and not only would have saved myself some grief, but apparently $100 in the process. Do you know how many reinstalls and swapping of the drives I had to do? I wasted an immense amount of time, and it has left a bad taste. Refunding me the $100 that the new buyers are enjoyed after having all of the niggles worked out would only be fair to someone that had to toil through the early issues.

Regards,
Carl Moebis


On Jul 31, 2014, at 5:45 PM, andrew_hinkle <andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com> wrote:

Carl,

Good afternoon. Thank you for being an early adopter of our JetDrive 720, we appreciate it. We didn’t look at the promotion with Amazon as punishment for those that had bought the SSD upgrade in the past. We really wanted to harness the Amazon customer breadth to promote our JDM line more extensively. Amazon has 237M active customers and we used our Deal of the Day slotting to get the word out. Tomorrow it goes back to the regular retail price. Unfortunately, we won’t be refunding money to consumers.

If you have any questions, feel free to call/email me directly.

Best regards,

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com
 
TranscendAndy said:
In the honor of being transparent, I've attached the email correspondence for the MacRumors community...
Click to expand...

Andy, thank you for saving me the trouble of having to post the email thread. I'm also working on a blog post with a full review of the JetDrive, where you are also welcome to comment.

Again, MacRumors community be aware of their customer service and spiteful tactics. They do not put the customer first, and as already witnessed by all, have used us as their beta testers, launching faulty products.
 
moebis said:
Andy, thank you for saving me the trouble of having to post the email thread. I'm also working on a blog post with a full review of the JetDrive, where you are also welcome to comment.

Again, MacRumors community be aware of their customer service and spiteful tactics. They do not put the customer first, and as already witnessed by all, have used us as their beta testers, launching faulty products.
Click to expand...

The exchange offer to swap your JDM720 to JDM725 for free still stands. I've also asked Amazon what's their policy on refunds in a case such as this since they handle the financial piece of the transaction. I'll let you know what they say. Have a good weekend.
 
TranscendAndy said:
Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com
Click to expand...

Since you are here, do you know if there are any plans to update Jetdrive Toolbox to support enabling Trim on 10.10 Yosemite once it is publicly released?

Thanks!
 
moebis said:
Product was not ready for primetime. Terrible product. As an early adopter I got screwed by a faulty PCB (size) and buggy firmware. After reinstalling OS X and swapping drives many times.... having worked through these issues I contacted Transcend for a refund of the difference between the price I paid and the current sale price, just the difference. They refused, saying it's not part of their business model (Andrew Hinkle). Complete arrogance towards their customers. So I got overcharged $100 for the privilege to beta test for them and help work out all their niggles? Wonderful, now can I send them an invoice for all the time they wasted? The hubris is unbelievable. Instead of helping me, he was throwing screenshots in my face of all the current Amazon reviews and how many stars it has. In other words, "Screw you sucker, you got an early faulty version, paid WAY more then the new customers are paying for the newer fixed version, and you're not going to get any help" ....WOW, just wow.....so disappointed with Transcend. Maybe it's just this Andrews in their customer service dept. that is the problem, I don't know.
Click to expand...

Forgot to add, for anyone thinking about purchasing a JetDrive. TRIM does not work in Yosemite, and most likely Transcend will never get signed kext drivers to allow it. A 3rd party tool called "Trim Enabler" by Cindori does work, with a little hack. Even the developer of Trim Enabler doubts that Apple will allow signed kext drivers to enable TRIM on unsupported SSD drives in 10.10 Yosemite. Plus the current version of the Transcend tools is complete garbage. It disabled TRIM at one point in Mavericks without me changing anything and it was so buggy. Why the permissions dialog to "install" a helper tool every single time it launched? I would suggest using the app by Cindori as it is much better, supported and polished if you must buy a JetDrive. Again, these are the issues you will encounter over the years (if they're still around) with a company like Transcend which puts support of customers last.
 
moebis said:
Forgot to add, for anyone thinking about purchasing a JetDrive. TRIM does not work in Yosemite, and most likely Transcend will never get signed kext drivers to allow it. A 3rd party tool called "Trim Enabler" by Cindori does work, with a little hack. Even the developer of Trim Enabler doubts that Apple will allow signed kext drivers to enable TRIM on unsupported SSD drives in 10.10 Yosemite.
Click to expand...

This is my problem exactly.

The hack used by Trim Enabler will not survive resetting NVRAM, something that can be done with a key command: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

That's a bit too much "hack" for my tastes . . .

I can't justify spending this much on something that will cause me issues for the rest of the life of my Mac . . .

moebis said:
Plus the current version of the Transcend tools is complete garbage. It disabled TRIM at one point in Mavericks without me changing anything and it was so buggy. Why the permissions dialog to "install" a helper tool every single time it launched? I would suggest using the app by Cindori as it is much better, supported and polished if you must buy a JetDrive. Again, these are the issues you will encounter over the years (if they're still around) with a company like Transcend which puts support of customers last.
Click to expand...

I've heard this before. I don't mind a 3rd party app to enable hardware features, but, for this price, it should "just work."
 
Last edited:
TranscendAndy said:
The exchange offer to swap your JDM720 to JDM725 for free still stands. I've also asked Amazon what's their policy on refunds in a case such as this since they handle the financial piece of the transaction. I'll let you know what they say. Have a good weekend.
Click to expand...

From Amazon management:

Amazon would credit the difference (or even returns) within 30 days, but 90 days would be beyond that threshold. They could try calling Amazon customer service and asking (perhaps customer service would offer some type of concession), but other than that there is nothing else systemic that would kick out a credit at this point.

----------
ReddestDream said:
Since you are here, do you know if there are any plans to update Jetdrive Toolbox to support enabling Trim on 10.10 Yosemite once it is publicly released?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes, they are updating this issue and will release the new Toolbox when Yosemite is officially launched and not in beta.
 
TranscendAndy said:
From Amazon management:

Amazon would credit the difference (or even returns) within 30 days, but 90 days would be beyond that threshold. They could try calling Amazon customer service and asking (perhaps customer service would offer some type of concession), but other than that there is nothing else systemic that would kick out a credit at this point.
Click to expand...

Andy I appreciate the newfound effort to advocate on the behalf of your customers. This is what I would have expected during our initial contact. However, you chose to be very dismissive at first. I will explore this route with Amazon, but ultimately it is your call. I've sold products from my business through Amazon and I know how this works. I've issued refunds to my customers after many months have passed, due to QC issues from our manufacturer. I always put my customers first, after all they showed faith in my products and support by purchasing them in the first place, why would I want to alienate them?
 
posting

TranscendAndy said:
In the honor of being transparent, I've attached the email correspondence for the MacRumors community...

Carl,

The product you’re discussing has had multiple reviews on Amazon – 43 to be exact. 34 of those reviews are 5 stars. Transcend doesn’t engage in dismissive customer service. If you feel like it’s a faulty product, we’ve offered an exchange for the JDM725 which is perfectly fair. I can assure you the product is tested thoroughly. If you want to post on the forums about your opinions, that’s your right. Have a good day.

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com

From: Carl Moebis
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 3:24 PM
To: andrew_hinkle
Subject: Re: Transcend Sales Department has received your message

No, I will contact Amex about these issues and have the unit sent back for a full refund now. I will also let the other users on macrumors forums know about your dismissive customer service. You sell a faulty product that was clearly not ready for primetime, overcharge $100 and when asked to do the right thing you balk. Let me ask you, selling untested products, is that part of this same “business”?

On Jul 31, 2014, at 6:03 PM, andrew_hinkle <andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com> wrote:

Sorry Carl, promotions come and go and prices aren’t retroactively set in our business. I can personally assign one of my Tech Support Engineers to sit down and go over step by step of the installation when you get the JetDrive 725 unit if you’d like.

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com

From: Carl Moebis
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 2:55 PM
To: andrew_hinkle
Subject: Re: Transcend Sales Department has received your message

Andrew,

That is just not fair. I have been battling with this thing since I bought it, and would have been better off if I had waited. Now for the privilege of working out the bugs (with the help of other members on Macrumors forums) I had to pay $100 more. I would have happily waited until now to purchase had I known about the dimensional issues and the firmware bugs, and not only would have saved myself some grief, but apparently $100 in the process. Do you know how many reinstalls and swapping of the drives I had to do? I wasted an immense amount of time, and it has left a bad taste. Refunding me the $100 that the new buyers are enjoyed after having all of the niggles worked out would only be fair to someone that had to toil through the early issues.

Regards,
Carl Moebis


On Jul 31, 2014, at 5:45 PM, andrew_hinkle <andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com> wrote:

Carl,

Good afternoon. Thank you for being an early adopter of our JetDrive 720, we appreciate it. We didn’t look at the promotion with Amazon as punishment for those that had bought the SSD upgrade in the past. We really wanted to harness the Amazon customer breadth to promote our JDM line more extensively. Amazon has 237M active customers and we used our Deal of the Day slotting to get the word out. Tomorrow it goes back to the regular retail price. Unfortunately, we won’t be refunding money to consumers.

If you have any questions, feel free to call/email me directly.

Best regards,

Andy Hinkle
Transcend Information Inc. Silicon Valley | General Manager
2350 Mission College Blvd., Suite 1050, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Direct: +1-408-454-4085 | Skype & LINE: TranscendAndy
Web: www.transcend-info.com | email: andrew_hinkle@transcend-info.com
Click to expand...

I think you may have a problem with this post. you're essentially posting a private conversation between two parties most likely without at least one of their consent?

While I understand the objective, the method is probably not the right path.

----------
ReddestDream said:
This is my problem exactly.

The hack used by Trim Enabler will not survive resetting NVRAM, something that can be done with a key command: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

That's a bit too much "hack" for my tastes . . .

I can't justify spending this much on something that will cause me issues for the rest of the life of my Mac . . .



I've heard this before. I don't mind a 3rd party app to enable hardware features, but, for this price, it should "just work."
Click to expand...

hmm, this really is beginning to concern me. While I think companies like OWC and Transcend now are going to be able to get signed credentials to allow this, it could be that one can only really successfully get Mavericks support? I'd really like to know what the OWC and Transcends of the world have to say about Yosemite TRIM support.
 
tivoboy said:
I think you may have a problem with this post. you're essentially posting a private conversation between two parties most likely without at least one of their consent?

While I understand the objective, the method is probably not the right path.
Click to expand...


Both parties are actively in this thread.
One party paraphrased the conversation and the other party posted it in its entirety.
The first party then thanked the second party for doing so.
What's the problem?
 
beg to differ

Gjwilly said:
Both parties are actively in this thread.
One party paraphrased the conversation and the other party posted it in its entirety.
The first party then thanked the second party for doing so.
What's the problem?
Click to expand...

I beg to differ. One party referenced a discourse outside this forum, and the other party posted private party to party email correspondence that was not part of this forum at all and most likely not without any prior consent.

Simply referencing that an external discourse has taken place does not allow it's content to be publicly disclosed without consent.

And not only that, but the identity of a forum member was revealed in the correspondence, possibly as well without consent.

I think the thanking was more in jest than in true recognition though.

but I'm more concerned with the Yosemite TRIM support issue. My SSD is on the way as we speak, might just go back soon though.
 
tivoboy said:
I'd really like to know what the OWC and Transcends of the world have to say about Yosemite TRIM support.
Click to expand...

Transcend has already posted it's stance on TRIM in Yosemite above:

TranscendAndy said:
Yes, they are updating this issue and will release the new Toolbox when Yosemite is officially launched and not in beta.
Click to expand...

Also I have stated OWC's position on TRIM, also above:

flowrider said:
Furthermore, OWC claims their drives don't need TRIM, which IMO is pure BS.

Lou
Click to expand...

OWC's own verbiage:

If you have an OWC SSD, though, you don’t need TRIM. The SandForce controller in our SSDs takes care of this “garbage collection” as well as performs various other tasks that keep your drive running at optimal speed, without the drop-off that you see with other brands.
Click to expand...

Lou
 
tivoboy said:
I beg to differ. One party referenced a discourse outside this forum, and the other party posted private party to party email correspondence that was not part of this forum at all and most likely not without any prior consent.
Click to expand...

But, the first party gave his implied consent after the fact:

moebis said:
Andy, thank you for saving me the trouble of having to post the email thread.
Click to expand...

Lou
 
MacRumors said:
[url=http://images.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


Transcend has introduced new JetDrive SSD upgrade kits designed for the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina display. The upgrade kits offer up to 960GB of internal storage capacity and come with both installation tools and instructions.

JetDrive kits also ship with an aluminum USB 3.0 enclosure, which allows upgraders to reuse their original SSD, and all kits include a five year warranty.

YouTube: video​
The JetDrive SSDs are able to take advantage of JetDrive Toolbox monitoring software, which keeps track of the health of the drive and enables TRIM support for optimum write speeds and SSD life. JetDrive SSDs also have maximum read speeds of 495MB/s and maximum write speeds of 495MB/s.

The company has three separate products for early MacBook Airs, mid-2012 MacBook Airs, and mid-2012 Retina Macbook Pros, in multiple capacities. While mid-2012 MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros can be upgraded with 240, 480, or 960 GB of storage space, earlier MacBook Airs (late 2010 and mid-2011) are limited to 240 or 480 GB. Transcend's JetDrive kits are not PCIe and are not compatible with the most recently released 2013 MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros.

Transcend's JetDrives can be found on Amazon.com, with prices ranging from $190 for the lower end upgrade to $600 for the higher end upgrade. Ordering information and specific links can be accessed on Transcend's website, but the 960 GB SSDs have yet to make their way to Amazon.

Article Link: Transcend Debuts JetDrive SSD Upgrade Kits Up to 960GB for MacBook Air, Retina Macbook Pro
Click to expand...

Pretty expensive for SSD's.

I've seen one terabyte drives from Samsung go on sale for 400
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
As I knew some iMac users have rMBP SSD installed to run FusionDrive. I wonder if JetDrive 725 for rMBP 15" also fits iMac late 2012 (non PCIe model)?
 
ReddestDream said:
I'm worried that it has something to do with Trim support in Yosemite . . .
Click to expand...

Just a quick note. I have not installed Yosemite on my MBA, but I have installed it on My Mac Pro on one of my internal disks. My Pac Pro has a PCIe card with a Samsung SSD mounted to it. With Trim Enabler 3.2.5, TRIM is working in Yosemite as well as Mavericks.

Lou
 
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