JustSomeGuy1

"I had an inkling things would play out exactly as they have," said Sbiral. "Had they not, I would be shopping for a Microsoft Surface Desktop about now."

Seriously?? There is virtually no overlap between the Surface and the nnMP.

melgross said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

melgross said:

avon b7 said:

melgross said:

colinng said:

StrangeDays said:

dougd said:

Apple greed at work, they will charge 3x what other SSDs cost.

I really doubt that. Apple has shown time & again that their engineers lead with what they believe is the best solution for the product. The pundits and rumormongers just come up with their own invented reasons, which are conjecture only. 

Actually, Apple has been known to just take a standard connector, flip the pins to different locations, and charge you differently. AirPort cards were just PCMCIA cards with 2 pins swapped. They started cheaper than PCMCIA cards but eventually the cost of a PCMCIA card dropped but the AirPort card stayed the same. 

When it comes to flash storage, same thing. 

As proof, here is a simple adapter that turns a standard SSD into one that works in your MacBook Air or Pro. The adapter is tiny because it contains no logic converters - it just, **surprise** swaps the pins! 

https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2016-2013-2015/dp/B07FYY3H5F/

To courageously innovate around that, in 2016 they soldered the flash straight on to the logic board - giving you no choice but to pre-buy all the storage you anxiously worried that you might need down the road - and they charged handsomely for it. 

Fanboys will say nobody upgrades. Pro users will say they upgrade if they can (that is why the new Mac Pro is the most upgradeable Mac ever - a course correction against the cylindrical Mac Pro). So who is right? Would MacBook Pro users buy less flash to start with, and buy more flash later (when it dropped in price) - if they could? 

A company doesn’t boast a 38% margin (while the rest of the industry struggles to get past single-digit margin) and higher ASP just because they were able to be 38% cost efficient when everyone else was only 9% cost efficient. It is very hard to be 400% better than your long-lived competitors. 

I’m not saying Apple is evil. They’re just doing business. They can compete any (legal) way they want to. 

What I am saying is, some of us have had enough of these shenanigans. And we have proof that is what these actions are - shenanigans. 

While I’m expressing my disappointment, “Apple pays every tax dollar it owes” is mindless drivel. Of course it does! Else they end up in jail! But “what it owes” isn’t some fair number arrived at that is mutually beneficial to the countries it operates in - it is a number arrived at where one country (Ireland) decides to be corrupt and set an artificially low tax rate in hopes of getting some revenue and shutting out other countries. 

Oh, for crying out loud. I’ve been using Macs since 1988, but PCs since 1981, and computers since 1966. I’ve seen it all. Most of what you’re saying is pure drivel. Industries that mostly use Macs don’t use them because they’re overpriced, and marketed well. If you don’t understand that, then don’t bother to be in the conversation.

for those who do understand it, professional level equipment is always expensive. While Apple gets pilloried for a $995 monitor stand that’s a machined, large piece of metal, with a complex, and supposedly reliable mechanism, RED charges $500 for a simple aluminum handle for their video cameras. Others charge similarly for simple parts. I had automatic paper cutters in my lab. A small circuit board, about 3” x 5” cost $1,000 as a replacement part before 2004 (when we sold the lab). There was nothing special about that part. Agfa charged $1,200, for a power supply, that I found out later, could be bought from the manufacturer for $250. And even worse, all of the broken ones I had were still under original manufacturer’s warrantee! They told me to send them in, and they repaired them for free.

apple is not only not worse, but they’re better. Yes, you can buy cheap Wintel computers, but that’s what you’re getting. Most Wintel users won’t pay more than a minimum, so that’s what those companies make, and their margins are at the bone, so they have financial problems. Look at Dell’s problems. And look at what happened to Hp. Are those the shining examples that Apple is supposed to follow? I hope not.

as far as taxes go. If it’s legal, then I hope a company is taking every advantage of that. The reality is that Apple did nothing illegal in Europe. Many European companies do exactly the same thing. So I say, change the laws. Companies will then be forced to follow them. But if the laws allow something, a company should do it. It’s not their responsibility to pay more taxes than they have to. It’s not like tipping in a restaurant. It’s like paying the bill itself.

Let's be fair. 'pure drivel'?

Not at all. He provided a balanced opinion and supported it clearly. It was totally valid.

Is there anything in there that wasn't actually true? I'd be more interested in that angle.

I was nodding in agreement to almost all of it as we share largely the same opinion.

Now, if you have anything factual to dismantle the argument I'd be interested in hearing that too.

No, it wasn’t valid. Most wasn’t true. I’m not going to argue with you, because it’s not worth it.

I don't understand. You seem like a reasonable guy with mostly reasonable points. Why are you backing yourself into a corner over this nonsense? Most of the post was factual, with a slight smattering of emotional reaction. You might not react the same way he does, but the post *is* *true*. The hardware is as he states.

Most of the post wasn’t factual. It was statements he made, that’s all.

melgross said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

melgross said:

DuhSesame said:

Right, which is why I think locking your SSD in the T2 isn’t a good idea.
1. No upgrade options, once obsolete, forever obsolete.
2. (Some) nearly impossible to remove, you’ll need to perform SMD soldering.

I’m not so sure that the controller architecture should matter, as the computer doesn’t interact with it on a low level. I believe that Apple is doing this for security purposes. These drives are locked with the T2 chip. It’s possible that Apple has some circuit on the drive that enhances this. If so, will a third party drive work? I guess we’ll find out.

its like the Touch ID button being replaced by third party repair services. I’m sure we remember that. Apple serializes the button because it’s part of the security system involving touch and the Secure Enclave. When they were replaced by parts that may have been genuine, or maybe not, they weren’t synced with the enclave, and Touch ID didn’t work. That was where the furor over “Right to Repair” partly came from. But Apple was right. Allowing third parties to replace that button would have been a problem. If Apple sold them the equipment to sync it up, then it could have been corrupted, and the security bypassed.

no win there either way. So I think that Apple may be doing something like that here for security.

It's not built the way you think it is.

The flash modules in the MP are like the flash chips on the MBPs: raw flash. There is no separate flash controller, that entire function is built into the T2.

The T2 has upsides and downsides. Some of those downsides (like occasional crashes) are on their way out, as Apple fixes up their software. However they're unlikely to be able to improve flash read/write speed, as that's something they would have put a ton of effort into right up front, optimizing software + hardware, and probably even putting fixed-function blocks into the T2 for this purpose. You're not going to speed up those with software.

I don't have anything against the T2 per se, it's that it prevents us from using a faster SSD (with onboard controller). And that's because you can't give the T2 an NVMe flash drive, it wants raw flash. (Edit: I mean, using the builtin flash slots. As I said elsewhere, you can always drop in a single PCIe card holding 4x NVMes if you like, as the T2 isn't involved in that.)

Note that this could be fixed by Apple, with a trivial update to the T2, such that it could also talk NVMe. (Edit: That would degrade I/O latency to the NVMe compared to direct PCIe connection, but probably not by all that much.) Or they could built a wider T2X for the next nnMP with more throughput (you'd want that in your MBPs by 2021 anyway, to compete with PCIe 4/5 NVMe). But it doesn't work right now. They could also simply provide a couple of NVMe slots in addition to whatever builtin flash they provide. I'd prefer that, but I consider it unlikely.

Who knows though? There are two SATA connectors in the nnMP, and I'd have given 2:1 odds they're do SAS instead. Still no clue why they used SATA.

I’d like to see evidence of that.

Andrew_OSU said:

lorin schultz said:

Andrew_OSU said:

lorin schultz said:

Two questions:

1. What mode was the drive in for the speed tests? I get roughly the same speed from a single M.2 drive. Seems like four of ‘em should be a lot faster.

2. Is the power brick required to run the drive? Will the power from a Thunderbolt port on the MacBook Pro be enough to run the drive?

It was the default MacOS Extended (Journaled) and yes, the power brick is required.

I was inquiring about the mode, not the format. I’m guessing JBOD and not a RAID configuration? Did it show 4 separate drives on your desktop? 

It was RAID 0 as we talked about in the review. Going for peak performance.

melgross said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

No, what's he saying up until the detour to taxes is accurate and factual, not opinion, except for one sentence ("shenanigans" was opinion). I'm OK with paying Apple's higher prices, for the most part - I own a 2018 MBP with top configuration. Except... it's not really the top config, it's got 1TB SSD instead of 4TB, because Apple's SSD prices are *nuts*. RAM prices too, but they're easier to stomach and harder to work around. No RAM on thunderbolt, after all. I also own a 2013 Air, and I was seriously unhappy when the SSD died and I couldn't source a replacement (that ebay connector board is fairly new). Didn't change my mind about the value of the Mac when I first bought it - I knew about the SSD connector then.

I think Apple's making a mistake pricing their upgrades as high as they do - I think they'd grow their market, and improve cust sat rate, by dropping RAM prices some and SSD prices a LOT (given the cratering of SSD costs/prices in the last year). Oh, and get rid of the HD-only iMac option, that's seriously stupid. But in the end, you buy the package or you don't, and getting angry about it is silly. Either it's worth it or it's not, and that includes option prices and whatever standard or non-standard parts and ports are in the machine.

As for taxes... That was a bizarre digression, and unrelated to the main topic. I like your restaurant analogy.

Over the years, Apple HAS been dropping their RAM and drive prices closer to market.  But they can’t follow market pricing. Apple, and other large organizations, buy memory some time in advance, at fixed prices. If prices drop, or rise, they charge the same. After a year, or two, they get new pricing, and their prices reflect that. But they’re always a good year behind, because they have to wrap this up early to make sure they have the supply they need. It’s not like us buying from OWC, or from someone on eBay.