6 ms·

I'm not sure I agree with his premises (so, I also don't agree with his conclusions). A cheap, slow, bottom-of-the-line 128GB SSD (with lots of negative review

I'm not sure I agree with his premises (so, I also don't agree with his conclusions). A cheap, slow, bottom-of-the-line 128GB SSD (with lots of negative reviews on Amazon[1]) is $85, and Apple is charging $250 (the author lies at the end by calling it $450 to make it more sensational!) for it, so that's evil? And anti-consumer?! How about Fusion Drive's seamless integration with OS X? How about the fact that it works as a "single" logical drive (which is preferred over multiple logical drives if you were to purchase HDD/SSD separately)? How about "you don't have to worry about putting which file, where"? That's not worthy of putting in your BOM - only hardware is worth paying money for? If it's just a minor software tweak, then I (in good heart) suggest the author to quit his job and create an equivalent for Linux/Windows and sell it for half what Apple sells FusionDrives and make a huge amount of money. I've been wanting to buy one of those shiny Seagate Momentus XT ($180 for 768GB version) for almost two years I think, but apparently it's not good. The firmware is buggy as hell, especially for Mac. I remember there was a thread on Seagate's support forums with like a thousand angry messages, and after 2 months someone from Seagate told that "they're reaching out to some select customers to iron out minor problems that some people were having" and it took them months (again) to fix them. So it's not like "fusing" HDD and SSD is a solved problem... Bottom line: We pay Apple, Google (well, indirectly), Intel and others to make decisions for us. I can buy a (slower) $85 SSD, put it in my Mac Pro and try to make it work like a fusion drive (which, contrary to what the author said, is not a caching mechanism!), or I can give Apple $250 for something that's better than that and be sure that my data wouldn't be removed because of some stupid configuration (and save hours of maintenance). I prefer paying for the service. Edit: I love this comment from the article: OMG… The parts in a Ford, and the parts in a Mercedes cost almost the same, but Mercedes is RIPPING OFF customers by over-charging! Edit 2: I forgot: The author clearly doesn't understand what FusionDrive is, and still thinks it's a caching system! (despite apparently reading the Ars article (that gets the facts right) and* the ExtremeTect link-baity article (that got the fact terribly wrong, but later corrected the article at the end)*. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00826WE9Y http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00826WE9Y

JuDue 14y ago
Interesting that he lied about the price. Or at the very least added lots of spin. People trust Apple. Are happy with Apple care. Don't mind paying a little extra for solutions that actually work and for a comparatively seamless user experience. Haters gonna hate.
allerratio 14y ago
> If it's just a minor software tweak, then I (in good heart) suggest the author to quit his job and create an equivalent for Linux/Windows and sell it for half what Apple sells FusionDrives and make a huge amount of money. http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org for Linux https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test for ZFS And yes, Fusion drive is effectively a caching system.
- taligent 14y ago
  You have to patch the kernel ? That doesn't like a good solution at all.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  @taligent: You're hellbanned, it seems!!!
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  I can't view the oracle link (http://www.oracle.com/splash/rpls/embargoed.html http://www.oracle.com/splash/rpls/embargoed.html) - it's something enterprisy I'm sure, so it's even more expensive than FusionDrive (with much better support and more features), but the Linux thing you linked is a caching system, which FusionDrive is not. > Fusion drive is effectively a caching system. Oh... No, it's not. It's a block-level tiering solution which (mostly) promotes important "blocks" automatically and intelligently when computer is idle (so as not to slow things down when the user is working). Very, very different from caching, very different technology (Apple has been working on CoreStorage, Apple's logical volume manager for years). Ars article[1] has more info. [1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/more-on-fusion-drive-how-it-works-and-how-to-roll-your-own/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/more-on-fusion-drive-ho...
  - mercurial 14y ago
    Thanks for the Ars link, very informative. Based on this article, it looks more like a kind of intelligent, dynamic RAID0 than a cache, which makes me dubitative with regards to its reliability (talk about multiplying SPOFs...). I'd rather go for a smaller SSD holding the system in this case.
fernly 14y ago
$450 isn't a "lie". Just above in the article he made clear he considered the requirement to take the next higher model before you could order the FD -- when (he says) the cheaper model could support it -- adds a $200 premium to the $250 price.

JuDue 14y ago

Interesting that he lied about the price. Or at the very least added lots of spin. People trust Apple. Are happy with Apple care. Don't mind paying a little extra for solutions that actually work and for a comparatively seamless user experience. Haters gonna hate.

allerratio 14y ago

> If it's just a minor software tweak, then I (in good heart) suggest the author to quit his job and create an equivalent for Linux/Windows and sell it for half what Apple sells FusionDrives and make a huge amount of money. http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org for Linux https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test for ZFS And yes, Fusion drive is effectively a caching system.

taligent 14y ago
You have to patch the kernel ? That doesn't like a good solution at all.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
@taligent: You're hellbanned, it seems!!!
pooriaazimi 14y ago
I can't view the oracle link (http://www.oracle.com/splash/rpls/embargoed.html http://www.oracle.com/splash/rpls/embargoed.html) - it's something enterprisy I'm sure, so it's even more expensive than FusionDrive (with much better support and more features), but the Linux thing you linked is a caching system, which FusionDrive is not. > Fusion drive is effectively a caching system. Oh... No, it's not. It's a block-level tiering solution which (mostly) promotes important "blocks" automatically and intelligently when computer is idle (so as not to slow things down when the user is working). Very, very different from caching, very different technology (Apple has been working on CoreStorage, Apple's logical volume manager for years). Ars article[1] has more info. [1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/more-on-fusion-drive-how-it-works-and-how-to-roll-your-own/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/more-on-fusion-drive-ho...
- mercurial 14y ago
  Thanks for the Ars link, very informative. Based on this article, it looks more like a kind of intelligent, dynamic RAID0 than a cache, which makes me dubitative with regards to its reliability (talk about multiplying SPOFs...). I'd rather go for a smaller SSD holding the system in this case.

fernly 14y ago

$450 isn't a "lie". Just above in the article he made clear he considered the requirement to take the next higher model before you could order the FD -- when (he says) the cheaper model could support it -- adds a $200 premium to the $250 price.