JustSomeGuy1

About

Banned
Username
JustSomeGuy1
Joined
Visits
60
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
1,172
Badges
1
Posts
330

Reactions

472Like0Dislike121Informative

  • Apple is using a custom connector for the SSD in the new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    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.
    elijahgfastasleep

  • Apple is using a custom connector for the SSD in the new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    melgross said:
    colinng 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.

    [deleted]

    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.
    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.
    colinngfastasleep

  • Apple is using a custom connector for the SSD in the new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    elijahg said:
    rezwits said:
    The way Catalina installs with the OS on one Drive and the User + Apps on a different "Drive", I think 256GB should be enough, although people are going to HAVE to setup external storage (or the internal carriage), with whatever drives they want/can...  but I am looking for the command line / tools that help with this... LOL
    That's interesting, I wonder if they're doing that so they can use APFS snapshots to revert the OS if there's a problem. Is this documented online or did you discover it through the developer beta?
    This was touched on in their "platform" keynote (the session after the big one). It's confirmed. But I don't have details. It's exciting though, and long overdue in principle, though they haven't had the technology (APFS with flexible volume sizing) to manage it until now. If they're not using snapshots, they should, and probably will soon enough.
    maltztenthousandthingscornchip

  • Apple is using a custom connector for the SSD in the new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    davgreg said:
    This gives me reason to pause on ordering one of these.

    As much as I want to have a headless desktop Mac that (hopefully) will have a long service life, Apple's propensity for proprietary connectors and stuff is a serious concern. I want to see the thing for myself and see what aftermarket stuff will be possible as Apple charges a king's ransom for memory on everything it sells.

    I would love to order one of these and have it on day one, but at these prices, I will have to wait and see.
    This is foolish.

    You have a pile of PCIe slots, into which you can put PCIe cards that can hold (for example) up to 4x NVMe SSDs from any maker (Samsung, WD, Intel, whatever). This can easily hit 10GB/s in an x16 slot, and I can pretty much guarantee that you're not going to need that any time soon. But if some day you do, the option is there.

    That said... I'm surprised and disappointed that Apple didn't improve the T2 to offer more bandwidth to the flash. This is the only way that the nnMP is slightly subpar compared to high-end workstations (bandwidth to SSDs can be >10% better with some SSDs, and >20% soon if not already, even not counting the PCIe4 SSDs on AMD
     x570 boards).

    I think they backed themselves into a bit of a corner with the T2 design, and it now seems that it was a grievous error to put the flash controller inside it. What they should have done was to use standard NVMes (possibly fiddling with the connector, if they wanted to keep it expensive and proprietary), and have the T2 do encryption before handing off to the NVMes. They could have increased BW to flash much more easily that way, just by adding cores or MHz to the T2. The current T2 situation - at least until the nnMP, which may be a little better since the cards are removable - is completely stupid: if your logic board dies, it's likely you'll never be able to recover your data. Of course, this all depends on *how* the encryption key is stored - you'd still need to put your hands on that, even if you had removable NVMEs (or, as with the nnMP, removable Apple flash modules).

    ...which is actually a really good question. Mike, if you talk to any Apple people about this, ask them if there's a way to recover the data if your logic board dies but you have working flash modules?
    dysamoriafastasleepcolinng

  • Hands on with Apple's new voice control accessibility feature in iOS 13

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    Can you confirm that general voice dictation works without an internet connection? They seemed to say that in the platform session.
    watto_cobra