6 ms·

Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? The baseline model is 8GB / 256GB, and very reasonably priced at $600. Upgrading to 24GB is a whopping $400, and to 1TB is anot

Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? The baseline model is 8GB / 256GB, and very reasonably priced at $600. Upgrading to 24GB is a whopping $400, and to 1TB is another $400. The $700 baseline seems reasonable. $1500 for a minimum usable machine seems more than a little excessive.

izacus 4y ago
Nope, soldered.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - coder543 4y ago
    >>> Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? >> Nope, soldered. > Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU. The SSD certainly isn't in the same package as the CPU and GPU, so your comment is simply wrong, given the question that was actually asked. Whether the RAM is on-package or not is irrelevant to the question asked further upthread. It is soldered. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can realistically be upgraded after the fact. That's the answer to the question. I don't understand the purpose of your comment.
    - tadfisher 4y ago
      The SSD controller is part of the SOC, so you're both half-right.
      - coder543 4y ago
        True, but it is a rather lame excuse for soldering the SSD, considering Apple's SSDs have not really performed better than anyone else's SSDs for a long time. Moving the controller into the SoC is a cost saving measure for Apple, but none of the cost savings are passed onto the consumer. Something as huge as the Mac mini could easily have a regular m.2 NVMe socket. Apple could presumably still do their proprietary thing with direct NAND access through the same physical socket, while still letting you swap in your own SSD that brings its own controller... but this would interfere with their goal of profiting from crazy upgrade pricing. For Mac Studio, the NAND actually was socketed; it just used a proprietary connector instead of letting you bring your own SSD, so it still offered no aftermarket upgrade path to extend the life of these machines.
        nimish 4y ago
        Integrating the ssd controller into the soc allows for it to scale with the process used for the soc and also removes what is essentially a multicore system from being an external, potentially compromised unit. This way there is never any chance unencrypted data is written to the flash. Not the best reason but it's there. Thunderbolt 4 is fast enough to attach external flash anyway.
        coder543 4y ago
        > This way there is never any chance unencrypted data is written to the flash. That has nothing to do with the SSD controller. The OS never has to send unencrypted data to the SSD in the first place. Offloading encryption to SEDs (self encrypting drives) is probably more helpful in server environments where you have dozens of disks and mind-bogglingly large amounts of data flowing around, but SEDs are completely uninteresting for consumer applications, and if Apple is integrating the SSD controller directly into their SoC, then it's effectively no different from using an integrated crypto accelerator prior to sending data to an external SSD controller.
  - izacus 4y ago
    Fair point, accepting the nitpick: packaged.
mstolpm 4y ago
Not upgradable. But "minimum usable" all depends on usage - for a lot of users, 8GB / 256GB is sufficient, especially in office or education.
adolph 4y ago
Apple's pricing is pretty interesting. On the low side they annoy with a hobbled option (256G storage); on the high side they price things to ask "do you _really_ want 2T ssd in this thing?" In the middle is the product they'd like to sell the most. An $800 box with a power cord. Spend the same and get a therma-throttled cpu with iOS and display (iPad); a little more and get a monitor (MBA). Spend double and get a larger monitor with a keyboard and mouse (iMac). Maybe the primary question is if the user is cloud first (minimal storage) or classic filesystem packrat (better buy big).
- Kerrick 4y ago
  With a desktop device, the classic filesystem packrat might be best off just buying an external HDD with double-digit TB worth of storage and leaving it plugged in all the time.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah. For a desktop system, I'm not sure there's a good reason to pay a big premium for a really big SSD.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Or a petabyte of NAS storage. It's not like you need millisecond access times to every terabyte of your data anyway.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    That presupposes that the user knows how to deal with that. I did it for my wife’s current Mac Mini and never again. Photos is all janky and anything that causes an inconvenience is my fault.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - isolli 4y ago
      So you're answering my question here with a no? "Is it realistic to have an external drive for photos that integrates seamlessly with the native Photos app?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413791
peanuty1 4y ago
Welcome to Apple pricing.
- Maursault 4y ago
  If you max out the configuration of an M2 Pro mini with upgraded 12-core M2 Pro processor 19-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine 32GB memory 8TB storage 10Gb ethernet 4 Thunderbolt ports it costs $4,099, which is exactly the same price as a base configured Ultra Mac Studio with 20-core M1 Ultra processor 48-core GPU 32-core Neural Engine 64GB memory 1TB storage 10Gb ethernet 6 Thunderbolt ports or two base configured Max Mac Studios with 10-core M1 Max processor 24-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine 32GB memory 512TB storage 10Gb ethernet 4 Thunderbolt ports So, clearly, Apple doesn't want to sell maxed out M2 Pro minis with 8TB SSD because an M1 Ultra Studio will likely beat the M2 Pro, or at least match it with more resources, and two M1 Max Studios will wipe the floor with both the M1 Ultra Studio and M2 Pro mini.
coder543 4y ago
As I mentioned here[0], it is worth considering using an external, upgradeable SSD instead of paying Apple's exorbitant prices for more internal storage on a Mac mini. For a laptop, you would definitely want to upgrade the internal storage. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413582
- asdff 4y ago
  This is not a worthwhile solution. The jacks on mac laptops are prone to fail after a few years of regular use in my experience. I have to imagine usb-c ports are even more fragile than type a.
  - coder543 4y ago
    The point is that you wouldn’t be removing it… ever. It would be your primary OS drive, sitting on the table forever with your Mac mini desktop. How would you wear out a port by leaving something plugged in? I’m not talking about laptops. I specifically said that. Regardless, USB-C has the springs in the cable, not the port (unlike Lightning), so the port should never fail with regular use anyways, but you may need to replace the cable at some point. You may need to clean the port out eventually, since gunk build up could make the connection feel looser with enough cycles, but then it should be fine again after cleaning. But again, I’m not talking about a laptop where you would be removing and reattaching the drive constantly, so this is completely off topic.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    From https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-specifications-finalized https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-spec... 1,500 connect/disconnect cycles for A 5,000 for the Mini 10,000 for micro and type-c
    - asdff 4y ago
      What about when the laptop on your lap slides slightly off and the connector is now being torqued against your leg and the couch? Factor in the use from plugging it in and out, then also the wear and tear from a laptop being a mobile computer, and those cycles will diminish a lot sooner than what was extrapolated from lab testing.

izacus 4y ago

Nope, soldered.

samwillis 4y ago
Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- coder543 4y ago
  >>> Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? >> Nope, soldered. > Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU. The SSD certainly isn't in the same package as the CPU and GPU, so your comment is simply wrong, given the question that was actually asked. Whether the RAM is on-package or not is irrelevant to the question asked further upthread. It is soldered. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can realistically be upgraded after the fact. That's the answer to the question. I don't understand the purpose of your comment.
  - tadfisher 4y ago
    The SSD controller is part of the SOC, so you're both half-right.
    - coder543 4y ago
      True, but it is a rather lame excuse for soldering the SSD, considering Apple's SSDs have not really performed better than anyone else's SSDs for a long time. Moving the controller into the SoC is a cost saving measure for Apple, but none of the cost savings are passed onto the consumer. Something as huge as the Mac mini could easily have a regular m.2 NVMe socket. Apple could presumably still do their proprietary thing with direct NAND access through the same physical socket, while still letting you swap in your own SSD that brings its own controller... but this would interfere with their goal of profiting from crazy upgrade pricing. For Mac Studio, the NAND actually was socketed; it just used a proprietary connector instead of letting you bring your own SSD, so it still offered no aftermarket upgrade path to extend the life of these machines.
      - nimish 4y ago
        Integrating the ssd controller into the soc allows for it to scale with the process used for the soc and also removes what is essentially a multicore system from being an external, potentially compromised unit. This way there is never any chance unencrypted data is written to the flash. Not the best reason but it's there. Thunderbolt 4 is fast enough to attach external flash anyway.
        coder543 4y ago
        > This way there is never any chance unencrypted data is written to the flash. That has nothing to do with the SSD controller. The OS never has to send unencrypted data to the SSD in the first place. Offloading encryption to SEDs (self encrypting drives) is probably more helpful in server environments where you have dozens of disks and mind-bogglingly large amounts of data flowing around, but SEDs are completely uninteresting for consumer applications, and if Apple is integrating the SSD controller directly into their SoC, then it's effectively no different from using an integrated crypto accelerator prior to sending data to an external SSD controller.
- izacus 4y ago
  Fair point, accepting the nitpick: packaged.

mstolpm 4y ago

Not upgradable. But "minimum usable" all depends on usage - for a lot of users, 8GB / 256GB is sufficient, especially in office or education.

adolph 4y ago

Apple's pricing is pretty interesting. On the low side they annoy with a hobbled option (256G storage); on the high side they price things to ask "do you _really_ want 2T ssd in this thing?" In the middle is the product they'd like to sell the most. An $800 box with a power cord. Spend the same and get a therma-throttled cpu with iOS and display (iPad); a little more and get a monitor (MBA). Spend double and get a larger monitor with a keyboard and mouse (iMac). Maybe the primary question is if the user is cloud first (minimal storage) or classic filesystem packrat (better buy big).

Kerrick 4y ago
With a desktop device, the classic filesystem packrat might be best off just buying an external HDD with double-digit TB worth of storage and leaving it plugged in all the time.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah. For a desktop system, I'm not sure there's a good reason to pay a big premium for a really big SSD.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Or a petabyte of NAS storage. It's not like you need millisecond access times to every terabyte of your data anyway.
- coredog64 4y ago
  That presupposes that the user knows how to deal with that. I did it for my wife’s current Mac Mini and never again. Photos is all janky and anything that causes an inconvenience is my fault.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - isolli 4y ago
    So you're answering my question here with a no? "Is it realistic to have an external drive for photos that integrates seamlessly with the native Photos app?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413791

peanuty1 4y ago

Welcome to Apple pricing.

Maursault 4y ago
If you max out the configuration of an M2 Pro mini with upgraded 12-core M2 Pro processor 19-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine 32GB memory 8TB storage 10Gb ethernet 4 Thunderbolt ports it costs $4,099, which is exactly the same price as a base configured Ultra Mac Studio with 20-core M1 Ultra processor 48-core GPU 32-core Neural Engine 64GB memory 1TB storage 10Gb ethernet 6 Thunderbolt ports or two base configured Max Mac Studios with 10-core M1 Max processor 24-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine 32GB memory 512TB storage 10Gb ethernet 4 Thunderbolt ports So, clearly, Apple doesn't want to sell maxed out M2 Pro minis with 8TB SSD because an M1 Ultra Studio will likely beat the M2 Pro, or at least match it with more resources, and two M1 Max Studios will wipe the floor with both the M1 Ultra Studio and M2 Pro mini.

coder543 4y ago

As I mentioned here[0], it is worth considering using an external, upgradeable SSD instead of paying Apple's exorbitant prices for more internal storage on a Mac mini. For a laptop, you would definitely want to upgrade the internal storage. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413582

asdff 4y ago
This is not a worthwhile solution. The jacks on mac laptops are prone to fail after a few years of regular use in my experience. I have to imagine usb-c ports are even more fragile than type a.
- coder543 4y ago
  The point is that you wouldn’t be removing it… ever. It would be your primary OS drive, sitting on the table forever with your Mac mini desktop. How would you wear out a port by leaving something plugged in? I’m not talking about laptops. I specifically said that. Regardless, USB-C has the springs in the cable, not the port (unlike Lightning), so the port should never fail with regular use anyways, but you may need to replace the cable at some point. You may need to clean the port out eventually, since gunk build up could make the connection feel looser with enough cycles, but then it should be fine again after cleaning. But again, I’m not talking about a laptop where you would be removing and reattaching the drive constantly, so this is completely off topic.
- MikusR 4y ago
  From https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-specifications-finalized https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-spec... 1,500 connect/disconnect cycles for A 5,000 for the Mini 10,000 for micro and type-c
  - asdff 4y ago
    What about when the laptop on your lap slides slightly off and the connector is now being torqued against your leg and the couch? Factor in the use from plugging it in and out, then also the wear and tear from a laptop being a mobile computer, and those cycles will diminish a lot sooner than what was extrapolated from lab testing.