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Comment by Einherji | Hacker News Reader

Why do you say butchered? I don't think it's any worse (or better) than standard mSATA. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The physical connector is different, so you can't plug in a standard mSATA drive.

"Keep in mind that although the interface is electrically SATA, it is not physically SATA or mSATA or any other standardized interface - this is entirely Apple's own creation."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast

Don't blame Apple too much for this.

mSATA's reused mini-PCIe card form factor was physically too small to contain all the chips needed for a high capacity SSD, given the capacities per chip that were available when the MacBook Air/Retina were released.

There is a new "NGFF" standard that basically apes Apple's longer form factor with a standardized connector, but I haven't seen any devices that use it yet:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6293/ngff-ssds-putting-an-end-...

In exchange for "butchering" the connector, the drive is significantly smaller. As an rMBP owner, I feel that that's a perfectly cromulent trade-off to make. Somebody has to be first; since Apple is invested in improving their hardware in ways unconstrained by the requirements of "bolt 'em together" OEMs, it makes perfect sense to me.

As long as people know, it's fine for Apple to use weird connectors.

Asus soldered the (tiny) SSD into the EEE PC and that's worse.

Incompatible with the rest of the world is a pretty good, if non-standard, definition of "worse" in my book.

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