atonaldenim

Glad you covered this project, it mostly got missed by the Apple news ecosystem. Hopefully the early adopters of these Mac Studio storage upgrades will find that it does work well, some of the skeptics can be reassured, and the Mac Mini version they're working on next will get even more attention.

Personally I've upgraded the RAM and SSD in basically every Mac I've ever owned that allowed it, and it's always been a very positive experience for me, and that's mostly been buying used PC parts on eBay, never something officially Apple-branded and usually not even specifically designed for Macs. I've even upgraded the CPUs in old Mac Pros, the ability to do DIY upgrades long after purchase can keep older machines useful for many more years. I really look forward to improving the future upgradeability of Apple Silicon Macs, as their great performance should mean they could remain useful for at least a decade, if not two.

In this particular case, the fact that the Apple Silicon will remain the SSD controller "brains" and the storage upgrades are just "dumb" NAND storage chips that are controlled by the Apple chips, this seems like it should be an even more foolproof piece of hardware. All previous Mac SSD upgrades prior to Apple Silicon used their own SSD controller chips not made by Apple, and they mostly worked well nevertheless. For the 10+ years of SATA to AHCI to NVMe generations of SSD hardware, "just put an SSD in it" was the default advice given for how to breathe new life into an old Mac. Let's hope that "just put a bigger SSD in it" can continue to be good advice for the next 10 years!

jvm156 said:

you can get 4tb NVME drives for $250 If ya time it right

Yes, and warning to Mac Mini buyers looking for external storage - for now it's best to avoid Sandisk Extreme / Pro external USB SSDs due to many reports of hardware failures over the past 2 years on those models.  (Also avoid Western Digital SSDs, same company different labels.)  Sandisk used to be my go-to recommendation, but now I recommend the Samsung T7 Shield or T9 instead as similarly high performance, decently priced SSD options. (The claimed extra speed of the T9 is not possible on a Mac, both T7 and T9 run about the 10Gbps USB 3.2 limit and no faster.)

If you're willing to spend a little more, a USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 or 5 SSD will offer 2-3X faster speeds than USB 3.2 too.

Great review, Mike, as usual! 

Pretty funny how you all want to keep arguing over a hypothetical “OWC” drive, when there is in fact another company that is actually offering storage upgrades for sale right now.

For the Mac Studio currently, for the Mini in the near future. Who cares if OWC isn’t interested, as long as PolySoft is?

And the number of backers on their Kickstarter campaign is a useful metric for how much consumer interest there may or may not be. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio-drive/posts/4247624 ;

Speaking for myself, I bought my Mac Studio in 2022 with the amount of storage that I wanted, as no other options existed then. However now that this potential solution is out there, the next Mac Mini or Studio that I buy, I personally would consider this upgrade route instead. The main drawback to me is the hassle of opening up the case and putting it back together neatly enough.

Yes, it will be upgradeable, just like the Mac Studio storage is upgradeable now. 

There is currently a Kickstarter campaign with 2 days left for 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB storage upgrades for M1 and M2 Mac Studios. The 2TB module can upgrade an existing 2TB mac to 4TB, otherwise they have to completely  replace your existing storage. 

They worked with dosdude1 to develop it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio-drive

As the Mac Mini M4 launched after the campaign started, they stated they will soon launch a new campaign for Mac Mini storage upgrades too!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio-drive/posts/4247624

Personally if I was about to buy an M4 Mac Mini I would not pay Apple for the SSD upgrade, I’d rather wait and get an upgrade from PolySoft. The only thing to keep in mind is you probably can’t combine the existing storage with the new storage in most cases, it will be a replacement rather than an addition.