New Mac Mini Has Modular Storage, 256GB Model Will Have Faster SSD (macrumors.com) 24
According to a partial teardown video of Apple's new Mac mini, the new machine features modular storage that can be removed. "As we saw with the Mac Studio, however, replacing the modular storage is complicated," notes MacRumors. The teardown also reveals two 128GB storage chips in the 256GB model, enabling faster SSD speeds comparable to higher-capacity versions. From the report: The criticism surrounding Apple's decision to use a single 256GB chip in some base-model Macs a few years ago primarily came from a vocal contingent of tech enthusiasts, and the average customer is unlikely to even notice the slower speeds in common day-to-day tasks. Nevertheless, it appears that customers who do want the fastest SSD speeds do not need to worry about which storage capacity they choose when ordering the new Mac mini.
Opening with a spudger (Score:2, Insightful)
I also open all laptops in the household once a year to clean out the hair and dust from them. Make computers last so much longer.
Apple products are not designed to be serviced. Or usable for that matter, like a mouse with the charging port on the bottom. Or making a touch function key line
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Re:Opening with a spudger (Score:5, Funny)
We definitely need to reduce e-waste by forcing manufacturers back to more modular and serviceable designs. But then again on the other hand, fuck Apple.
Re:Opening with a spudger (Score:4, Insightful)
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How are the two chips organized... (Score:2)
It's great that the capacity is reached by using two chips, but do we KNOW the storage is faster than single-chip storage?
Also, as a pre-release model (right?), we have no guarantee that production models will have the exact same configuration.
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> but do we KNOW the storage is faster than single-chip storage?
you may want to consider reading the article to answer this and other questions you might have.
Re: How are the two chips organized... (Score:3)
They like to have things stuck into their bottoms?
Joking aside, they don't expect people will need to turn off their Macs - just put them to slept or reboot when necessary.
The Apple Mouse holds a charge for a long time. When you do have to charge it, you can do it overnight. Mine lasts at least 2 months a charge.
I only turn off my 2017 MBP when I travel. I can only recall having to use force shutdown twice in 7 years.
DFU restores are interesting... (Score:3)
Since the last rev of the Intel Mac Pro... no, not the trashcan, but the one after that with the cheese grater case and the wheels, Apple has used a configuration with the SSD controller on the motherboard and the NAND chips separate. This works with Apple Silicon, and has helped as a relatively fast way to evacuate RAM pages to disk.
You could replace the SSDs on the cheese grater Mac Pro, but it took a DFU restore to do so. Mainly because the SepOS Secure Enclave is a part of the SSD controller, and replacing the NAND board means the encryption keys stay on the machine. One DFU restore later which will generate new keys, TRIM and format the NAND chips, and they are working, although this means the data on the old SSDs will never be readable again [1].
Maybe this is a good thing, because moving to a decent amount of fast internal storage on the Mini is expensive [2]... the most expensive part of the machine, and perhaps Apple will offer upgrades, so one can go in at 1-2 TB, then after a year or two, go for a storage upgrade. The razor and blade school of marketing does work, and even though Apple has had success with forcing people to pay up front for the high end stuff, in a recession, people can't afford that, but they can generally afford to expand a machine over time. I'd probably guess that if Apple offered CPU/RAM/DASD/GPU upgrades, they probably would make more money than forcing people to buy new hardware.
Guessing, I'd probably say Apple's separation of the drive controller and NAND flash is more about getting speed to flush RAM to disk, with FDE encryption built in.
Overall, I hope Apple keeps the NAND chips on a removable card. This way, when it comes time to decommission machines in commercial and government, one just needs to toss that board into the shredder, as opposed to the entire machine, to comply with data destruction requirements.
[1]: Wish Apple could provide some type of adapter and controller so removed SSD modules can be used as an external, Thunderbolt SSD, just so they don't go to waste.
[2]: Of course, if one is willing to sacrifice 1/2 to 1/3 of the performance, there is always using a TB3/TB5 SSD and boot from that, or for lightweight tasks, maybe even a USB 3.2 SSD would be okay.
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The problem with modular upgrades was when the iMac used them the first time around (Intel era) - after a year or two, Apple started getting support calls because people were replacing the SSD modules. Problem was, they lost all their data because when you re-initialize the SSD, you regenerate the encryption keys which mean now your old module with all your data on it is gone.
So far too many people kept asking how to recover their data and they couldn't because the encryption key was lost. So it kind of for
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The NAND chips are on a removable card. dosdube1 on Youtube successfully upgraded the NAND chips [yewtu.be] on such a card.
Like when swapping SSDs, this did also require a DFU restore to install MacOS from another Mac, and that Mac had to run the latest MacOS Sequoia.
Wow it's quiet in here. (Score:2)
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True.
Running diskmgmt.msc I see that I have 8+ drives in my home workstation; the bulk being NVMe drives ranging from 512 GB to 4 TB with a few being M.2.
It is almost as if 256 GB is a joke amongst us developers; these machines are aimed at casual users. :-)
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these machines are aimed at casual users. :-)
Of course. "Mini" is right in the name.
A Mac Mini is a laptop squeezed into a little box with no display or keyboard.
I have one from 2018, and I love it. It does what it's designed to do.
But it's not for power users.
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Speak for yourself.
We have almost 2 petabytes of storage available to our various mac minis in my office. None of them have anything other than the OS and a few applications installed on them. 256GB is just fine (I think many of our machines actually only have 128GB of internal storage). We do professional work (though maybe we're too casual about it?). Also I'm a software developer and I don't use any substantial local storage on my mac at work either.
Arm home lab recommendations? (Score:2)
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TuringPi2 + RK1 ?
TuringPi2 is just a carrier board.
RK1 is RK3588, so 4 A55 "efficiency" cores, 4 A76 "performance" cores. The Pi5 has the same, roughly, performance cores. Different clock rates no doubt.
The TuringPi2 holds 4 of them, and takes a standard ATX PSU or 12V+ATX adapter
a vendor PSU + carrier board + ITX case + 4xRK1-16GB RAM + shipping = ~1300USD
Possibilities also exist for the OdroidM2. Mostly the same CPU, albeit a bit stripped of IO, and a package that may be harder to cool [the RK3588 is meta
Size is No Excuse (Score:1)
I've been buying these cheapos:
https://amzn.to/3YKyMAX [amzn.to]
for a solar computing project and the lid to do upgrades just pops off with your fingernails.
Too bad we can't post photos here - swipe over to photo 10 and zoom in. Perfect layout.
These computers are smaller than a Mac Mini and I order them with a second SSD and a 32GB dimm then install a current linux kernel and zfs and it's off to the races. The upgrades are literally five minutes.
For years Apple has hidden their nasty behavior and blamed it on size.
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Thanks for the recommendation!
I am wedded to macOS (and ZFS) but for the stuff where it could very well be a BSD or Linux, have often wondered what's a really good mini.
As for German toaster guy, after years, I never got used to that flat laptop keyboard.