nht

Mike Wuerthele said:

nht said:

I'm surprised you didn't mention the Mantiz Venus as it has a bay for a SATA SSD.  It's an odd duck when discussing external drive bays but so is the Node Lite.  Presumably you can stick an optane drive in the Mantiz instead of a video card AND have a SSD.

I wonder if you can make a fusion drive out of a 480GB optane and a cheaper 2TB SSD....

We recommend the Mantiz Venus in a different piece about eGPUs. It's a good eGPU, it is less efficient as a storage enclosure. I tried pci-E NVMe storage in my Mantiz, and it didn't work. Beyond a simple plug-in and connection effort, I didn't try that much harder beyond that, though.

bloggerblog said:

auxio said:

bloggerblog said:

techprod1gy said:

bloggerblog said:

StrangeDays said:

bloggerblog said:

This is such a dick move from Apple

Previous version: soldered RAM, people complain.
New version: slotted RAM, people complain. 

Look man, if you're not comfortable using screwdrivers, you're not even a real DIY tinkerer, so why even both complaining since this is something only DIY folks do?

I am an avid tinkerer and maker, thank you. But upgrading RAM shouldn't be this risky for the average user. Apple could've made the RAM easier to access, but they decided otherwise. Which is a dick move.

The average user is NOT messing with this stuff...

Dunno why people are backing Apple on this one, it's a lazy implementation of a premium product and a crappy user experience. They managed to block more tinkerers from attempting to upgrade their own RAM. Fewer people will buy it and Apple will end-up discontinuing it.

Look, I'm someone who has done very difficult tinkering with computers in the past.  For example, to get more performance out of an old G4 TiBook, I moved one of the resistors on the motherboard which controlled the CPU speed (the hardware equivalent of BIOS overclocking on PCs).

However, I also am open minded enough to see that I'm in a very small group of people who knows how to do this, cares about it, and/or is willing to spend my time doing it.  And I also understand that it requires extra product design, engineering, and assembly line complexity to include a RAM access panel or similarly easy access.  If this was an Arduino or Raspberry Pi type of device targeted at tinkerers, then I'd definitely question the decision.  But because it's a device targeted at the mass market, I completely understand why it was made.

So you're saying that for a device to be user upgradable it must to fall in the category of an Arduino. Gotcha!
Apple could've easily made the bottom twistable, or require a standard screwdriver, or even better, no screws at all, no hidden access points. Any combination of these efforts, which Apple has done beautifully in the past, would've kept the same circuitry yet made the RAM accessible.

AppleInsider said:

Update: The Mac mini has a pair of Thunderbolt 3 controllers, as opposed to one. This makes it equivalent to the bandwidth and performance of the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro, and iMac Pro.