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> the flash controller is internal to the M1 SoC Okay, it was part of the T2 chip before. And they were able to put replaceable SSDs into the Mac Pro. Those on

> the flash controller is internal to the M1 SoC Okay, it was part of the T2 chip before. And they were able to put replaceable SSDs into the Mac Pro. Those only contained the NAND chips and were proprietary, but still. The problem I have with soldered SSDs is that flash memory has a limited lifespan in terms of writes. Once you're out of writes, then what? This is aggravated by the fact that M1 can't boot even from external media if the internal SSD isn't working.

marcan_42 5y ago
It's worth noting that Apple's SSDs tend to be on the high side of the industry for write endurance. I think their calculus is that no reasonable user would exhaust the lifespan before the rest of the computer is well and truly obsolete. (This was briefly not the case with that Big Sur SSD thrashing bug, but that's been fixed now)