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I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a hardware perspective I would say it’s a good change. Instead of having a SPI flash memory with t

I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a hardware perspective I would say it’s a good change. Instead of having a SPI flash memory with the firmware they’ve gone ahead and merged that into a single flash memory. It’s weird because we are used to see disks as independent modules, but for these devices that’s simply a useless distinction, something that we keep for legacy reasons, not because it provides any meaningful advantage.

mywittyname 5y ago
Being able to swap disks is a meaningful advantage. After all, it's the part most likely to fail first, and often first limitation people hit on a machine. Storage tech is still advancing at a decent clip. In 5 years, there will probably be 4-6TB drives on the market with 2-4x the throughput for the same price as 1TB drives today.
- slownews45 5y ago
  We keep on hearing about folks needing to swap out disks out that are broken who ALSO don't have apple care AND are out of warranty? I mean, how many people is this vs the millions / billions of idevices out there? Apple simplifies / integrates like crazy - that is a focus for them. No separate bios flash - my guess is others start copying them personally. Because apple products hold value so well, I just sell me 2 year old stuff and it can really knock down cost of the new stuff.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    And the people buying your used devices have no apple care and are out of warranty, so they’ll complain if they can’t repair it. Apple devices will stop holding value so well the less repairable they get, which in turn will also increase your costs.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      The "unrepairable" apple devices have far FAR higher resale value and lifetimes than most the Huawei / OPPO / etc used phones out there. This is really the proof point. This is a combination of apples total system engineering and software update story. You don't need applecare to get updtes on an iphone. For example, looking at recently sold items on Ebay - Iphone 5S 32GB is going for $100. That's an 8 year old phone. Take your 8 year old HTC - nothing close to that.
      - kuschku 5y ago
        The 8 year old iPhone has such high value because it can still be repaired. A 2021 iPhone will hold less of its initial value in 2029 than the mentioned 5S holds today.
        slownews45 5y ago
        I was an original iphone user, and have been hearing about how unrepairable and how battery can't be swapped since then. I'll believe the iphone is unrepairable when I see it. For those of your who suspect that these types of claims are a lie, they basically are. If you have elderly relatives, they often DO NOT want to upgrade their phone once they've got it working. A great gift is actually to take it into an apple store and pay for the "impossible" battery replacement for them. It's $49-$69. You get a fresh new battery, all labor as well. OEM parts. My wife also doesn't care about the new phone, this is a nice and pretty cheap way to keep her old one ticking over. Happy to do a comparison in 6 years on a Huawei vs Apple phone in terms of resale. One thing to be careful of. I've been burned by used apple phones with second hand batteries in them. Apple now gives you a warning - worth checking for that if you buy used.
        kuschku 5y ago
        The price of screen repair through Apple increased from the old iPhones at 50€ to the new iPhones with worse repairability at 75€ Screen repair increased from 150€ to 360€. Independent repair shops even used to offer these services at 25-60€ (old iPhones, screen repair) to 25-50€ (old iPhones, battery replacement). Going from 60€ to 360€ for a screen repair is a steep ask and significantly harms resell value.
- xondono 5y ago
  But that’s another different battle, and has nothing to do with this change. Disks were already soldered down, and that’s a tradeoff. I get that for some people swappable disks are great, but those people couldn’t really use pre-M1 macs. The only change is that instead of two different interfaces for non volatile storage, now there’s one.
Chocola 5y ago
There is still a SPI chip from Winbond on board. Also the NVRAM contains variables like "boot-volume". Question is if you can easily change it.
crvdgc 5y ago
Isn't the case described here the exact reason to keep the separation? To prevent a single point of failure?

mywittyname 5y ago

Being able to swap disks is a meaningful advantage. After all, it's the part most likely to fail first, and often first limitation people hit on a machine. Storage tech is still advancing at a decent clip. In 5 years, there will probably be 4-6TB drives on the market with 2-4x the throughput for the same price as 1TB drives today.

slownews45 5y ago
We keep on hearing about folks needing to swap out disks out that are broken who ALSO don't have apple care AND are out of warranty? I mean, how many people is this vs the millions / billions of idevices out there? Apple simplifies / integrates like crazy - that is a focus for them. No separate bios flash - my guess is others start copying them personally. Because apple products hold value so well, I just sell me 2 year old stuff and it can really knock down cost of the new stuff.
- kuschku 5y ago
  And the people buying your used devices have no apple care and are out of warranty, so they’ll complain if they can’t repair it. Apple devices will stop holding value so well the less repairable they get, which in turn will also increase your costs.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    The "unrepairable" apple devices have far FAR higher resale value and lifetimes than most the Huawei / OPPO / etc used phones out there. This is really the proof point. This is a combination of apples total system engineering and software update story. You don't need applecare to get updtes on an iphone. For example, looking at recently sold items on Ebay - Iphone 5S 32GB is going for $100. That's an 8 year old phone. Take your 8 year old HTC - nothing close to that.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      The 8 year old iPhone has such high value because it can still be repaired. A 2021 iPhone will hold less of its initial value in 2029 than the mentioned 5S holds today.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        I was an original iphone user, and have been hearing about how unrepairable and how battery can't be swapped since then. I'll believe the iphone is unrepairable when I see it. For those of your who suspect that these types of claims are a lie, they basically are. If you have elderly relatives, they often DO NOT want to upgrade their phone once they've got it working. A great gift is actually to take it into an apple store and pay for the "impossible" battery replacement for them. It's $49-$69. You get a fresh new battery, all labor as well. OEM parts. My wife also doesn't care about the new phone, this is a nice and pretty cheap way to keep her old one ticking over. Happy to do a comparison in 6 years on a Huawei vs Apple phone in terms of resale. One thing to be careful of. I've been burned by used apple phones with second hand batteries in them. Apple now gives you a warning - worth checking for that if you buy used.
        kuschku 5y ago
        The price of screen repair through Apple increased from the old iPhones at 50€ to the new iPhones with worse repairability at 75€ Screen repair increased from 150€ to 360€. Independent repair shops even used to offer these services at 25-60€ (old iPhones, screen repair) to 25-50€ (old iPhones, battery replacement). Going from 60€ to 360€ for a screen repair is a steep ask and significantly harms resell value.
xondono 5y ago
But that’s another different battle, and has nothing to do with this change. Disks were already soldered down, and that’s a tradeoff. I get that for some people swappable disks are great, but those people couldn’t really use pre-M1 macs. The only change is that instead of two different interfaces for non volatile storage, now there’s one.

Chocola 5y ago

There is still a SPI chip from Winbond on board. Also the NVRAM contains variables like "boot-volume". Question is if you can easily change it.

crvdgc 5y ago

Isn't the case described here the exact reason to keep the separation? To prevent a single point of failure?