6 ms·

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "community repair fair", they want to market a sheen of social responsibility without actually taking part the

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "community repair fair", they want to market a sheen of social responsibility without actually taking part themselves.

ranunez64 2y ago
It is interesting that one of their examples is a "Mahjong Club", they want to market a sheen of board game enthusiasm without actually taking part themselves.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Lowkey wish their laptops would be as they used to be. Being able to swap RAM or hard drives is so basic but so useful.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Drives in particular. Let them solder the memory if they absolutely have to, but exposing even an empty NVMe slot should be standard for laptops. Unfortunately, Apple makes a pretty penny off the storage surcharge so I wouldn't really anticipate that anytime soon.
  - franciscop 2y ago
    They no longer even have a "memory" chip anymore, it's all part of the same SOC AFAIK, so they cannot "solder" it.
    - angoragoats 2y ago
      The RAM is still very much bog-standard DDR4/DDR5 chips, soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU. Here's an example pic of an M3 motherboard. The CPU/GPU is under the metal piece with the Apple logo on it, and the memory is the two rectangular chips immediately above that. https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M3-Macs.jpg https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M3-Macs....
    - delfinom 2y ago
      You are thinking of the iPhones. All the ARM Macs are separate memory chips.
  - loopdoend 2y ago
    I will accept the trade off for the performance boost tbh.
    - lucb1e 2y ago
      What performance boost? As in, same software running for comparison on the hardware of interest, one soldered and the other not. I never heard that soldering your SSD on makes it faster...
      - jsheard 2y ago
        It doesn't, Apples SSD performance is fine but unremarkable. Their current machines will do around ~6GB/sec read and ~5GB/sec write, which isn't even at the limit of socketed PCIe4 NVMe drives, nevermind the bleeding edge PCIe5 drives which can do up to ~14GB/sec read and ~12GB/sec write (albeit with excessive heat and power consumption for a laptop). Soldering the RAM has legitimate performance benefits, but soldering the SSD is just to save space and upsell overpriced upgrades.
        throwaway48476 2y ago
        It's crazy that some people think it's apple so it must be special and better not realizing NVMe is a industry standard.
      - loopdoend 2y ago
        Sorry I was referring to the boost you get from having ram integrated into the chip vis-à-vis apple’s M-line of processors. Having replaceable ram is not really a marketable feature these days.
        angoragoats 2y ago
        This might be nitpicking but 1) the ram is not integrated into the chip, per se, it's still discrete and soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU, and 2) the increased speed comes from additional memory channels built into the M-series CPUs, not necessarily the fact that the memory is closer to the CPU. It is true that it's not currently feasible to have socketed memory in a laptop offering 8+ memory channels to enable 200GB/sec+ bandwidth, but you can absolutely get the same (or greater!) memory speeds as an M-series CPU from an x86 desktop workstation. If Intel/AMD wanted to prioritize memory bandwidth, they could probably work with JEDEC or another industry org to develop a new standard for socketed memory with multiple channels per socket, to enable the kind of speeds that Apple offers. The fact that they haven't (to my knowledge) indicates to me that they don't see it as a big enough priority or benefit.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    Even when Apple laptops had removable solid state storage, it used a non-standard connector[1]. Very consumer and repair hostile. While OWC still made thirds party drives for these[2], few (no?) other companies did. [1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades#hdr-5 https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu... [2] https://www.owc.com/solutions/aura-n2 https://www.owc.com/solutions/aura-n2
- adolph 2y ago
  Hot air rework is more accessible than ever. This video is kinda over-the-top breathless, but removing components and reballing new ones isn't rocket science. https://youtu.be/apEKAY11NQs?t=328 https://youtu.be/apEKAY11NQs?t=328
  - wasabinator 2y ago
    It is and will always be rocket science to most people, and orders of magnitude more difficult than swapping a drive or ram sticks.
    - adolph 2y ago
      I disagree that the current state of an art will not change. Consider the solution-state as a vector. 18 years ago people were performing reflow repair with candles! [0] Pathfinding hackers are able to perform the task now more precisely and with consumer priced tools. SMD and BGA are definitely headed in a direction of non-specialized solubility at an individual level. What will drive it most quickly is that it is easier and more precise than holding an iron, solder wire and two components together. 0. https://www.geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair.html https://www.geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ib...
  - e44858 2y ago
    Apple has been gluing down the NAND on their phones: https://youtu.be/KRRNR4HyYaw https://youtu.be/KRRNR4HyYaw If that practice spreads to the MacBooks, you'll also need a CNC mill.
- aucisson_masque 2y ago
  I have a mac, absolutely love it, hate windows and yet my next laptop will be windows because of that. You don't realize how much it matters until it does, and then it changes everything. Always having to carry an external drive just because my email takes 150gb of the 256gb MacBook storage is even more annoying than windows puting candy crush saga on the start menu.
  - bschwindHN 2y ago
    > just because my email takes 150gb You have a very different email life than me. Is that like, all emails received in your life, or just huge attachments?
    - dankwizard 2y ago
      He's replaced Github repos with local email archives because a Medium article said "One trick to enhance your version control"
    - aucisson_masque 2y ago
      It's only a few years but lot and lot of attachment. Unoptimized pdf takes a big chunk.
      - myroon5 2y ago
        Could look into email attachment optimization tooling like https://unattach.app/ https://unattach.app/
      - brailsafe 2y ago
        The total size isn't so surprising to me, many have large archives, but why would it all be local to your main or external drive instead of just loaded on-demand over IMAP or whatever?
  - chemmail 2y ago
    Unfortunately with DDR5L speeds, they need to be embedded to keep signal stability, so you need to find at least a 16GB laptop which is STILL pretty gatekept with a higher chip like i7 so you have to pay $300 more for that extra 8GB, pulling a page from Apple. Luckily m.2 is still a thing and 99% of Windows still use it.
- crossroadsguy 2y ago
  My next self-purchased laptop is also going to be one that is not a Mac and buying a 2-3 year extended warranty wouldn't cost half or one third of its price. It will also not increase its price by 25-30% if I choose to double the RAM (and by double I mean 8 to 16, not 32 or so). I asked an Apple fan once why Apple still has 8GB RAM even in their pro models and I got the response because it's Apple, you don't need more than 8GB RAM. And I actually realised why Apple gets away with such practises. They are like the 99.978% of Apple's customer base. They stand in queues to get the latest Apple device and then cry out of joy. I bought a Dell laptop in 2007 and I was able to "deselect" Windows and it actually had reduced the price. I could do that in the third world and online and in 2007 (again!). I also got home repair in not a tier 1 city of that third world country. I think we went degradingly backwards from there.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
duskwuff 2y ago
It's a bit of filler text in a demo. You might be reading a little too much into it.
geon 2y ago
At least the iphone 16 has electrically released adhesive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  That is actually innovative and a feature. It shows what smart engineering can do when the design goal is not user hostile.
illwrks 2y ago
I spotted that too, I got a laugh out of it. Committed non-commitment.

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "community repair fair", they want to market a sheen of social responsibility without actually taking part themselves.

ranunez64 2y ago

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "Mahjong Club", they want to market a sheen of board game enthusiasm without actually taking part themselves.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

Lowkey wish their laptops would be as they used to be. Being able to swap RAM or hard drives is so basic but so useful.

talldayo 2y ago
Drives in particular. Let them solder the memory if they absolutely have to, but exposing even an empty NVMe slot should be standard for laptops. Unfortunately, Apple makes a pretty penny off the storage surcharge so I wouldn't really anticipate that anytime soon.
- franciscop 2y ago
  They no longer even have a "memory" chip anymore, it's all part of the same SOC AFAIK, so they cannot "solder" it.
  - angoragoats 2y ago
    The RAM is still very much bog-standard DDR4/DDR5 chips, soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU. Here's an example pic of an M3 motherboard. The CPU/GPU is under the metal piece with the Apple logo on it, and the memory is the two rectangular chips immediately above that. https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M3-Macs.jpg https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M3-Macs....
  - delfinom 2y ago
    You are thinking of the iPhones. All the ARM Macs are separate memory chips.
- loopdoend 2y ago
  I will accept the trade off for the performance boost tbh.
  - lucb1e 2y ago
    What performance boost? As in, same software running for comparison on the hardware of interest, one soldered and the other not. I never heard that soldering your SSD on makes it faster...
    - jsheard 2y ago
      It doesn't, Apples SSD performance is fine but unremarkable. Their current machines will do around ~6GB/sec read and ~5GB/sec write, which isn't even at the limit of socketed PCIe4 NVMe drives, nevermind the bleeding edge PCIe5 drives which can do up to ~14GB/sec read and ~12GB/sec write (albeit with excessive heat and power consumption for a laptop). Soldering the RAM has legitimate performance benefits, but soldering the SSD is just to save space and upsell overpriced upgrades.
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        It's crazy that some people think it's apple so it must be special and better not realizing NVMe is a industry standard.
    - loopdoend 2y ago
      Sorry I was referring to the boost you get from having ram integrated into the chip vis-à-vis apple’s M-line of processors. Having replaceable ram is not really a marketable feature these days.
      - angoragoats 2y ago
        This might be nitpicking but 1) the ram is not integrated into the chip, per se, it's still discrete and soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU, and 2) the increased speed comes from additional memory channels built into the M-series CPUs, not necessarily the fact that the memory is closer to the CPU. It is true that it's not currently feasible to have socketed memory in a laptop offering 8+ memory channels to enable 200GB/sec+ bandwidth, but you can absolutely get the same (or greater!) memory speeds as an M-series CPU from an x86 desktop workstation. If Intel/AMD wanted to prioritize memory bandwidth, they could probably work with JEDEC or another industry org to develop a new standard for socketed memory with multiple channels per socket, to enable the kind of speeds that Apple offers. The fact that they haven't (to my knowledge) indicates to me that they don't see it as a big enough priority or benefit.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Even when Apple laptops had removable solid state storage, it used a non-standard connector[1]. Very consumer and repair hostile. While OWC still made thirds party drives for these[2], few (no?) other companies did. [1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades#hdr-5 https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu... [2] https://www.owc.com/solutions/aura-n2 https://www.owc.com/solutions/aura-n2
adolph 2y ago
Hot air rework is more accessible than ever. This video is kinda over-the-top breathless, but removing components and reballing new ones isn't rocket science. https://youtu.be/apEKAY11NQs?t=328 https://youtu.be/apEKAY11NQs?t=328
- wasabinator 2y ago
  It is and will always be rocket science to most people, and orders of magnitude more difficult than swapping a drive or ram sticks.
  - adolph 2y ago
    I disagree that the current state of an art will not change. Consider the solution-state as a vector. 18 years ago people were performing reflow repair with candles! [0] Pathfinding hackers are able to perform the task now more precisely and with consumer priced tools. SMD and BGA are definitely headed in a direction of non-specialized solubility at an individual level. What will drive it most quickly is that it is easier and more precise than holding an iron, solder wire and two components together. 0. https://www.geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair.html https://www.geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ib...
- e44858 2y ago
  Apple has been gluing down the NAND on their phones: https://youtu.be/KRRNR4HyYaw https://youtu.be/KRRNR4HyYaw If that practice spreads to the MacBooks, you'll also need a CNC mill.
aucisson_masque 2y ago
I have a mac, absolutely love it, hate windows and yet my next laptop will be windows because of that. You don't realize how much it matters until it does, and then it changes everything. Always having to carry an external drive just because my email takes 150gb of the 256gb MacBook storage is even more annoying than windows puting candy crush saga on the start menu.
- bschwindHN 2y ago
  > just because my email takes 150gb You have a very different email life than me. Is that like, all emails received in your life, or just huge attachments?
  - dankwizard 2y ago
    He's replaced Github repos with local email archives because a Medium article said "One trick to enhance your version control"
  - aucisson_masque 2y ago
    It's only a few years but lot and lot of attachment. Unoptimized pdf takes a big chunk.
    - myroon5 2y ago
      Could look into email attachment optimization tooling like https://unattach.app/ https://unattach.app/
    - brailsafe 2y ago
      The total size isn't so surprising to me, many have large archives, but why would it all be local to your main or external drive instead of just loaded on-demand over IMAP or whatever?
- chemmail 2y ago
  Unfortunately with DDR5L speeds, they need to be embedded to keep signal stability, so you need to find at least a 16GB laptop which is STILL pretty gatekept with a higher chip like i7 so you have to pay $300 more for that extra 8GB, pulling a page from Apple. Luckily m.2 is still a thing and 99% of Windows still use it.
crossroadsguy 2y ago
My next self-purchased laptop is also going to be one that is not a Mac and buying a 2-3 year extended warranty wouldn't cost half or one third of its price. It will also not increase its price by 25-30% if I choose to double the RAM (and by double I mean 8 to 16, not 32 or so). I asked an Apple fan once why Apple still has 8GB RAM even in their pro models and I got the response because it's Apple, you don't need more than 8GB RAM. And I actually realised why Apple gets away with such practises. They are like the 99.978% of Apple's customer base. They stand in queues to get the latest Apple device and then cry out of joy. I bought a Dell laptop in 2007 and I was able to "deselect" Windows and it actually had reduced the price. I could do that in the third world and online and in 2007 (again!). I also got home repair in not a tier 1 city of that third world country. I think we went degradingly backwards from there.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

duskwuff 2y ago

It's a bit of filler text in a demo. You might be reading a little too much into it.

geon 2y ago

At least the iphone 16 has electrically released adhesive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251

throwaway48476 2y ago
That is actually innovative and a feature. It shows what smart engineering can do when the design goal is not user hostile.

illwrks 2y ago

I spotted that too, I got a laugh out of it. Committed non-commitment.