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Comment by slownews45 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone laugh a bit at these types of comments?

Using these "stupid" and "unjustifiable" approaches, apple has delivered highly reliable / fast machines to lots of users. They come with applecare if you want, which gets you walk in fix/replace at their stores.

Note, they've already don't this on iphones - millions shipped.

They are going for as much reliability / speed out of this for the 90%+ of users who are not going in to manually swap out SSDs. They are also huge on part simplification, they probably got rid of the bios flash and are just using the SSD flash.

My own predication, as in many other areas others will COPY this "stupid" design - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My guess is others will also stop shipping another set of chargers with everything (again copying apple).

They now also sell indefinite applecare, by getting normal breakage down low enough you can keep apple care as long as you want if you keep paying.

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You are arguing without any arguments.

1) I agree that some integration is intimately tied to how well the machines performs. I also referenced this in my comment. What I don't agree to is the SSD being soldered on. It uses the same PCIe lanes it would use if it was swappable ! As for the "stupid" approach, it really doesn't make much sense to tie the capability of the machine FUNCTIONING to a storage that you cannot change (and that is bound to break eventually from wear & tear, because it's an SSD).

2) The iPhone are a different story. It's a different requirement all together. You have to fit EVERYTHING in a couple of mm2 of surface. That's a very tough requirement, and everyone understands that you can't have the ability of swapping an SSD and having the portability that the iPhone offers at the same time. The same is simply not true for a professional laptop.

3) I sincerely don't see how an iBoot-inspired design would replace UEFI anytime soon. The latter is more powerful as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong).

4) The "support" plan you're describing is in my eyes extortion. If I can buy an SSD for 100€ on Amazon, and replace it down the line 5 years from now, it really doesn't compare to paying 200€ / year for an insurance, when all it covers is bringing your laptop to its original state. A swappable SSD can be expanded down the line when storage gets denser / cheaper.

All-in-all, I do agree and fully support a degree of integration that's backed by technical motives (i.e. Otherwise unattainable performance), but when the motives start turning into more lock-in and sell-up motives, that's where my support ends.

I genuinely do not understand how you could view this as a "good" thing. As for the 90% users who are not going to manually swap out SSDs, it would still be the same ! They won't have to touch them !

Your assumption is incorrect. The SSD on any Mac with a T2/M1 is not like an NVME SSD you'd pick up from the store. The soldered modules themselves are just NAND storage, the T2/M1 is the actual storage controller. They're literally non-functional otherwise.

My impression was they were also going to try and move the T2 off being a separate (potentially replaceable) chip and integrate it with the M1 - did that happen yet or still to happen? But one thing you get on a mac is basically hardware level security for the SSD.

Bad news, data recovery will be hard / impossible. Good news, if you sell the thing on pretty unlikely next person will get your data or can remove the "drive" and try to crack it offline. Not sure how imaging a mac drive works these days either?

Yep on M1 macs there is no T2, it's already been integrated.

You are not in the business of shipping a million+ devices.

* Any connector is a potential failure point. Generally with a connector you double the connection points (ie, SSD -> Connector -> now soldered to board). So if you are soldering anyways, and can solder to board directly, then you save yourself both a part and a bunch of connection points. This is good news for everything (signal loss, noise / RFI / durability etc). When you warranty and offer applecare on expensive devices, you want these warrenty claims to be low.

* Apple's mode has been to integrate / tighten things up - that is their design philosophy. They are going to integrate as many chips into one as they can (ie, you won't be even able to unsolder a T2 chip because there won't be one). There stuff, again, is meant to be used as an integrated whole, there is no mix / match here.

* They are going to solder memory as well down - you won't be able to replace that either. Then they are going to try and integrate memory into same package as CPU / GPU. I realize this makes folks mad, but it's what they do and it's been very successful for them. I think some of their LPDDR stuff only comes in a solder on format (and M1 is going towards even more integration - I actually like mix and match on my desktops so don't use macs so not following so closely but I know they were thinking of literally not even soldering but integrating fully).

* I saw first hand a number of claims BTW where replacement batteries had been put into macbooks and iphones as part of resales and people then went and complained to apple or about apple online when those batteries had problems. I think even when replaceable, they've added warnings in these cases. But it goes to show the quality in the mix and match department is hit and miss.

Frankly, it's probably 95%+ of their millions / billions of devices that won't get an upgrade. They've done same with airpods, no removable batteries. A ton of companies, again, or COPYING these designs.

Laughing at other peoples' opinions doesn't make you more correct. Corporations copying each other to increase profit does not prove this is the right thing to do for all users.

The point is having separate eeproms, separate bios flash memory, separate storage controller in SSD drive etc etc - apple focuses very hard on NOT doing any of that.

They are CONSTANTLY pushing down part counts.

The claim that there is "no reason" for this is ridiculous. There are at least 10 good businesses reasons, from part count / inventory complexity, to assembly time, to durability to get rid of parts, connectors, ribbon cables etc etc.

The best part is no part.

And yes, it makes folks putting in (often crap) replacement parts and reselling things (without disclosure) harder too. Does apple care about that? No. And there is a good business reason for them not to care, their users want a trusted device. Apple brand strength is at record highs.

As speeds scale, bus speeds scale, frankly apple is going to have the advantage if they can tie things in better. At some point you can't run PCI full speed over things like a replaceable cable, the tolerances are too tight (16GT/s etc).

On HN it's like reading of folks who are used to stone blocks, very modular and stackable and replaceable, yes, complain about something like concrete with rebar in it.

You really realize the mentality advantage apple has when you come here. While other companies are dumping tons of parts, connectors, EEPROM flash ships (which BTW can brick the system if the update doesn't work) Apple is streamlining and integrating.

Maybe others will also take after apple selling $99 stands and $7 small microfiber cloths.

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