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I've had my 256GB SSD + 16GB RAM M1 MBA for a little over 2 months now. There was one time that I noticed a strangely large amount of swap usage for no discerni
by coder543 6y ago
I've had my 256GB SSD + 16GB RAM M1 MBA for a little over 2 months now. There was one time that I noticed a strangely large amount of swap usage for no discernible reason, and rebooted immediately. Otherwise, swap doesn't seem to be used that often.
I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs.
Seeing this thread made me concerned, but it looks like my SSD isn't something to be worried about yet:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 34 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 6,963,442 [3.56 TB]
Data Units Written: 3,626,988 [1.85 TB]
Host Read Commands: 110,283,456
Host Write Commands: 59,878,323
- SXX 6y ago> I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs. Are you even serious? Because then they wouldn't be able to charge $250 premium for 250GB of SSD.
- coder543 6y agoApple still charges that kind of premium on RAM even on the Intel Mac mini where you can replace the RAM. People still pay it, because most people probably don't know the RAM is replaceable, don't want to be bothered with doing it themselves, don't want to accidentally damage their new computer, don't realize the upgrade prices are high, or other reasons. Apple has always charged high premiums for upgrades... premium upgrades aren't a strategy they suddenly invented when they started soldering components down. Apple has reasons for soldering down components, reasons which I don't really agree with, but I don't think they're all that worried about a small percentage of people avoiding their upgrade prices.
- webmobdev 6y ago> People still pay it Not everyone does. There is even a thriving market for such kinds of user replaceable upgrade proving that more and more people were opting to do the upgrades from reliable third-parties than Apple.
- coder543 6y agoAs I said: > Apple has reasons for soldering down components, reasons which I don't really agree with, but I don't think they're all that worried about a small percentage of people avoiding their upgrade prices.
- rStar 6y agowhile i don’t think many of us are used to thinking at scale, any percentage of apple’s customers making literally any choice about something that purchase from apple, is a f-ton of money.
- Smoosh 6y agoI agree with you but I also think that part of it is: - If you make the SSD replaceable, many more people will replace theirs. - Apple doesn't want to put an SSD access port into their laptops for design/strength/reliability reasons. - Replacing the SSD would therefore entail people disassembling the computer. - Apple doesn't want people disassembling the computer * solution = solder it onto the motherboard.
- simonh 6y ago- If you make the SSD replaceable, many more people will replace theirs. Very few non technical consumers, which is the vast majority, ever upgrade their computer.
- gumby 6y agoWhich means designing in an affordance for it adds a cost for a feature used by a few.
- grishka 6y agoThey have the "pro" line for a reason. It's meant for professionals. It's okay to solder RAM and SSD in lower-end models I suppose, but not in those people actually use to get their job done.
- vesinisa 6y agoI must agree with this. About a year ago, our company's iOS development team was replaced. The managers bought the new developers company MBPs. However, after about six months they started complaining that they could not make progress on one feature because Xcode kept crashing when they opened an existing Storyboard file. Turns out the managers had of course cheaped out and bought the developers Macs with the lowest 8GB memory option. Meanwhile, the consultants who originally created those files had had much more sensible 32GB. Now the MBPs for the whole team need to be replaced at great cost and double the environmental resource use. Without Apple soldering the memory our IT department would have certainly just upgraded the memory. In fact, when I ran into similar issue with needing 32GB to my 16GB Dell laptop, that's exactly what we did.
- Const-me 6y ago> premium upgrades aren't a strategy they suddenly invented when they started soldering components down. What you wrote is only a part of the story. Another one happens after using the computer for couple of years. RAM and SSD prices are declining over time, while software developers are finding exciting new ways to use more of them. It’s more profitable for Apple when users replacing entire computers than just RAM + SSD. Unlike the initial premium upgrades, users have more motivation. Warranty’s expired, and the price difference is way larger.
- mnsc 6y ago> It’s more profitable for Apple when users replacing entire computers than just RAM + SSD. Are there any hard cold data on how often a mac user gets a new laptop vs a pc user? It would also be interesting to see how common it is for pc users to add ram/disk during their pc:s lifetime.
- bickeringyokel 6y agoI've only just got a new Mac after having my last one for nearly a decade. I've had to replace two windows machines in that same time period. Not exactly cold hard data, but a sample size of 1. There are also windows machines that make it hard to replace things mind you.
- abhinav22 6y agoSame with me and a lot of people I Know. Macs are so reliable (in general, don’t want to get into a debate as a lot of viruses don’t target them as Windows is larger) that upgrading is not required for a long time. It may change in the future if Apple introduces planned obsolescence, but so far no issues
- wooger 6y agoCounterpoint: it's a lot more wasteful, especially for desktops, to own Apple. Look at all the iMacs with recent, high quality 5K monitors that'll be scrapped, as they can't be used with another video source. Such a waste.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- diego 6y agoMine, also 256, 8GB RAM, bought on 12/26/2020. Primarily a browsing machine (Chrome). SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 35 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 3% Data Units Read: 117,454,110 [60.1 TB] Data Units Written: 108,475,036 [55.5 TB] Host Read Commands: 471,949,425 Host Write Commands: 309,499,261
- fspeech 6y agoMight want to consider browsing using something else (a large tablet e.g.?) until this issue is resolved. My machine is almost identical to yours. My reported writes are about 1.31TB or less than 1/40th your number. I do some native compiling and some browsing. Chrome is a well known memory hog. SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 25 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 0% Data Units Read: 5,849,123 [2.99 TB] Data Units Written: 2,568,550 [1.31 TB] Host Read Commands: 75,126,642 Host Write Commands: 32,909,838 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 160 Power On Hours: 42 Unsafe Shutdowns: 3 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0
- coder543 6y agoI haven't even installed Chrome on this laptop. I switch between Safari and Firefox. I wonder if Chrome's memory usage pattern is a contributing factor.
- Thaxll 6y agowtf, 55TB+ read/write in 2month? what the heck are you doing with your laptop? This is my 11y/o SSD ( OCZ Vertex2 64GB ) on my laptop: 241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 3904 242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 5120
- jolux 6y agoUsing socketed M.2 SSDs introduces a class of problems ("the SSD isn't seated correctly") and also makes the device thicker. There are probably other reasons but I'll bet those are the two big ones.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- StillBored 6y agoThe socket doesn't have to be on top of a pcb, given apple's history of "tweaking" standards its hard to believe the thicker argument. Given how reliable m.2 is (I've personally never seen a problem with one that seems to be seating related). I'm betting socketing the SSD actually makes the device more reliable long term since your looking at just replacing a disk in a couple years if it fails vs basically replacing the entire motherboard, which has got to be the most expensive part. So, this is likely just penny pinching the manufacture, and assuming the customer will bear the repair fee if it breaks.
- kmeisthax 6y agoYou're thinking about reliability in a different way from Apple. By the time the SSD fails, it's not Apple's problem anymore, it's your problem. (Or, more likely, Louis Rossman's problem.) Conversely, an SSD that gets jostled out of a socket if the product gets bumped the wrong way (maybe because the courier kicked the package around) means time and money spent on in-warranty repairs. Also, Apple never actually used M.2. All of their socketed SSDs are proprietary form factors, though there are cheap adapters you can buy that will let you use M.2 drives.
- StillBored 6y ago<i>an SSD that gets jostled out of a socket if the product gets bumped the wrong way</i> You know the other side of m.2 is screwed in, right? Anything that manages to "jostle" a m.2 drive out of the socket has likely also destroyed the machine.
- 6y ago
- morpheuskafka 6y agoIs there something different about the drives on non-M1 Macs? My MBP 16 is showing way more read/write than that and still zero percent used. SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 36 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 0% Data Units Read: 108,058,416 [55.3 TB] Data Units Written: 95,524,343 [48.9 TB] Host Read Commands: 1,004,502,098 Host Write Commands: 558,965,971 Power Cycles: 155 Power On Hours: 644 Unsafe Shutdowns: 36
- ddoeth 6y agoMy 2016 MPB is also at around those R/W numbers but a bit higher in the used area. I am however not sure what those Power On Hours are refering to, since I have been using this machine daily for many hours. SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 37 Celsius Available Spare: 87% Available Spare Threshold: 2% Percentage Used: 5% Data Units Read: 98,665,764 [50.5 TB] Data Units Written: 84,525,474 [43.2 TB] Host Read Commands: 980,835,796 Host Write Commands: 811,309,011 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 14,955 Power On Hours: 359 Unsafe Shutdowns: 21 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's been ~1700 days since mid 2016, I would guess the power cycles value there is swapped with the power on hours. Or you power cycle 10 times almost every day.
- wtallis 6y agoThe SSD will experience a power cycle every time you close the lid and the laptop goes to sleep.
- zelon88 6y agoIt's not that they are incapable. They are unwilling. Nobody should be surprised that one of the most successful proprietary technology companies on the planet sells highly proprietary technology. The 2011 Macbook Air had a 1.8" PATA ZIF hard drive.
- gumby 6y ago> The 2011 Macbook Air had a 1.8" PATA ZIF hard drive. I.e. standard, high volume drive used in iPods and other small devices
- tremon 6y agoIt doesn't help your argument that the only device you mention by name is also built by Apple.
- ricardobeat 6y agoA quick search shows PATA ZIF drives were also used in Thinkpads, Dell / HP / Acer / Asus laptops, and other portables like the iRiver. Replacement drives for that model of Macbook Air are available, doesn't seem like it is proprietary tech at all.
- chinmaythosar 6y agoI'm guessing supply chain and repair and troubleshooting and a lot more things. the Macbook Air now comes with a single board and a daughter board for the headphone jack. when it breaks the service replaces the board reducing any time (money) wasted on troubleshooting like ssds etc. also it allows apple to make their manufacturing a lot more streamlined. the more complicated the assembly (yes even an ssd means additional assembly and tests then you gotta provide support for third party ssds etc and troubleshoot that etc.). Adding more parts means the more complications and more chance of failures not less.
- rasz 6y agoWhat that really means is less opportunity to fix individual components, more opportunity for $1499 upsells when warranty runs out. Cutting off third party repair and secondary used markets. Win win win in Apple eyes.
- simonh 6y agoYet these highly integrated Macs have very long average service lives, high customer satisfaction and maintain high second hand resale values. So clearly that isn’t true.
- rStar 6y agoclearly these machines are a few months old at most. we clearly have a lot to learn about how they work and what’s likely to break. If they’re anything like the last time apple made a big new hardware change, if you want a functional computer, you’ll have to watch out for dust.
- coldtea 6y ago>What that really means is less opportunity to fix individual components That has been the trend in the PC and electronics industry for a century though. Notice how people don't fix their TVs/Radios/etc. anymore? Heck, even in the car industry. >Cutting off third party repair and secondary used markets. Well, and somehow these machines get high "consumer satisfaction" ratings, and have high use periods, and retain a lot of resale value. Something seems contradictory here...
- bitwize 6y ago> I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs. Because those SSDs don't have Apple magic. Apple's SSDs are designed to be directly attached to the M1 CPU to provide low latency, high throughput storage -- what amounts to nonvolatile RAM, allowing an M1 Mac with 16 GiB max to vastly outperform an x86 PC with much more RAM at the same tasks. No, really, though, it's so they can charge an arm and a leg at the Genius Bar for SSD replacements.
- coldtea 6y ago>making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs Because not using them gives Apple control of the exact specifications and capabilities of their M1 SSDs. Else they're bound to be compatible with the lowest common denominator standard connectors and drive implementations. Aside from profit ("paying more for custom parts"), this is also how they control "the whole widget", and how they can innovate (like with the M1 CPUs/SoC components) when others drag themselves with me-too standard parts. Was the allure of a Mac ever that "you can build your own from standard parts"? If anything, it was always the opposite: it's not a PC.
- jeswin 6y ago> Else they're bound to be compatible with the lowest common denominator standard connectors and drive implementations. The fairly common Samsung 9x0 Pro Nvme SSDs are way faster in almost all benchmarks. So I don't think that argument holds. This really is about charging a premium for additional storage - and not due to technical reasons.
- varjag 6y agoFWIW my 256GB SSD + 116GB RAM M1 MBP13 had 0.9 TB writes in 6 weeks, so very close. A similar configuration Intel MB12 I use in 3.5 years also had writes at the same rate.
- 72deluxe 6y agoThat's an impressive amount of RAM!
- sinak 6y agoIt seems I have it worse than almost anyone. 2.5 month old, 1 TB, M1 MBA: SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 46 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 5% Data Units Read: 315,158,527 [161 TB] Data Units Written: 303,071,863 [155 TB] Host Read Commands: 1,331,719,025 Host Write Commands: 1,036,195,203 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 167 Power On Hours: 762 Unsafe Shutdowns: 7
- cozzyd 6y agoThat's... close to 2TB / day?
- therouwboat 6y agoI have almost 3 months old 1TB KINGSTON SA2000M81000G as linux root and data written includes transfering 400GB of old stuff to this drive. SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 44 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 10% Percentage Used: 0% Data Units Read: 627,718 [321 GB] Data Units Written: 1,845,489 [944 GB] Host Read Commands: 5,302,076 Host Write Commands: 204,065,596 Controller Busy Time: 107 Power Cycles: 117 Power On Hours: 765 Unsafe Shutdowns: 0
- serge-ivamov 6y agoJust try to run the Activity Monitor.app, click on Disk tab and look for disk-hungry process.
- batterylow 6y ago"kernel_task" ... wrote 142GB in 80 minutes
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago>I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs. Profit.
- riobard 6y ago> I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs. Coz there's no standard M.2 form factor NVMe SSDs without a controller chip, and even if you can find one, there's no standard protocol to talk to it. Recall that 3rd-party drive manufacturers are really bad at properly making Self-Encrypting Drives (lots of HN stories previously, just search for SED). It's very likely a factor for Apple to decide to implement its own SSD controller inside the T1/T2 chip on recent Intel Macs, and directly on die on Apple Silicon, so that Apple can fully control the data written to raw flash and be confident in its own implementation of encryption. Charging a premium for more capacity is a standard Apple practice anyway, and the fact that such security-focused approach makes it unavoidable is a side-effect.
- wtallis 6y agoAside from encryption, commodity NVMe SSDs are also really bad at correctly implementing idle power management. The Linux kernel is constantly adding to its list of drives that cannot safely use the deepest idle state because on many systems the drive won't wake back up after being put to sleep. Apple might be able to have a bit of an easier time since they control the host system so tightly, but they would still end up having to accommodate plenty of SSD bugs/quirks.
- neop1x 6y agoApple could have made their own replaceable SSD boards. It looks like they want their devices to become obsolete sooner which seems to be a good business idea but there is a risk of upsetting many customers. Time will tell.
- ostapru 6y agoThat's a reason why I don't buy apple computers any more. Just cannot get used that whole $1000 laptop is basically though away device.
- dan33l 6y ago3 month old, 8GB/512GB, M1 Air SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 56 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 2% Data Units Read: 153,706,243 [78.6 TB] Data Units Written: 133,607,337 [68.4 TB] Host Read Commands: 2,004,724,611 Host Write Commands: 380,685,816 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 178 Power On Hours: 358
- curryst 6y agoThat's a lot of write. I think that's 157 full writes of your disk. You're writing out almost a terabyte (or is this terabits?) per day. Your reads are also low in ratio to your write. Are you swapping? This almost looks like pages swapping in and out of memory.
- apricot 6y ago> I really don't understand why Apple is apparently incapable of making these laptops use standard, replaceable m.2 NVMe SSDs. Because if they did that, users would be able to replace them.
- shawnz 6y agoIf that was the concern they could just solder a plain NVMe drive. Blocking user repairs doesn't require the creation of a whole new purpose-built storage controller interface, so that can't explain their rationale here.
- lineard 6y agoFor perspective: 2 year old MacBook Pro 2018 256Gb. (Mostly used for development purposes) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 37 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 42% Data Units Read: 892,035,478 [456 TB] Data Units Written: 786,976,871 [402 TB] Host Read Commands: 4,989,739,415 Host Write Commands: 2,554,081,641 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 137 Power On Hours: 2,132 Unsafe Shutdowns: 70 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0 And a 6 month old Intel i3 MacBook Air 256Gb Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 48 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 1% Data Units Read: 59,113,734 [30.2 TB] Data Units Written: 47,319,687 [24.2 TB] Host Read Commands: 596,571,150 Host Write Commands: 318,913,173 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 93 Power On Hours: 384 Unsafe Shutdowns: 21 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0
- WOTERMEON 6y agoto give a comparison: PM951 NVMe SAMSUNG 512GB SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 52 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 50% Percentage Used: 4% Data Units Read: 30,314,686 [15.5 TB] Data Units Written: 35,402,028 [18.1 TB] Host Read Commands: 601,326,085 Host Write Commands: 793,617,758 Controller Busy Time: 17,248 Power Cycles: 3,897 Power On Hours: 9,506 Unsafe Shutdowns: 343 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 5,351 This is from my daily driver 2016 Dell XPS13 9350. Used for years with rolling-release linux + windows for gaming. multiple reinstall of every OS and since a year, hackintosh.