Summary

The article expresses concern over Apple's design choice to solder SSDs in MacBooks, advocating for socketed storage to allow for easier upgrades and repairs.

Abstract

The author of the article, who appreciates Apple's products like AirDrop, FaceTime, and macOS, criticizes the company's decision to solder SSDs directly to the system board in MacBooks. This design choice limits the ability to upgrade or replace storage, which is problematic in the event of sudden SSD failure or when more storage is needed. The article points out that while SSDs are generally reliable, they can fail without warning, rendering a MacBook inoperable unless the entire logic board is replaced. The inability to upgrade the SSD after purchase forces users to decide on storage capacity at the time of purchase, which may not meet their future needs. The author also notes that accidents can damage the SSD, making data recovery difficult, and highlights the limited write lifespan of SSDs, which is a concern for power users. The article concludes with a hopeful note for the future, mentioning the Mac Studio's socketed storage as a step in the right direction, and expresses the desire for Apple to embrace user-replaceable storage in line with the right to repair movement.

Opinions

The author likes many of Apple's innovations but disagrees with the soldered SSD design.
Apple's soldered SSDs are seen as a major drawback because they cannot be upgraded or easily replaced.
The risk of sudden SSD failure without the possibility of simple replacement is considered unacceptable.
The inability to upgrade the SSD after purchase is viewed as inflexible and inconvenient for users whose storage needs may change over time.
The author believes that the ability to recover data from a damaged laptop is crucial, especially for professionals, and soldered SSDs complicate this process.
There is skepticism about the longevity of SSDs given their limited write lifespan, particularly for power users.
The author is cautiously optimistic about the inclusion of socketed storage in the Mac Studio, seeing it as a potential shift in Apple's design philosophy.
The article advocates for Apple to align with the right to repair movement by making MacBook storage user-upgradable.

Dear Apple: Please Stop Soldering SSDs

Soldering data to the board is unacceptable, and it needs to stop.

Apple has done a lot right. AirDrop. FaceTime. iMessage. iCloud. All great.

I love my iPhone and iPad Pro. The latter I use nearly every day for writing or design work.

I love macOS. While it’s not perfect, I think it’s easily one of the best consumer operating systems on the market today. But I don’t (currently) own a macOS device.

Why? Largely because of one design decision that I simply can’t get behind: the fact that every current model MacBook’s storage drive is soldered to its system board.

That’s problematic.

I don’t hate Macs

On the contrary, I like them — and I want to like them. It’s because I like them that I want to see Apple make this change. While I’m certainly not holding my breath, and I’m not holding on to the hope that Apple is going to care about my opinion.

Honestly, if Apple were to bring back socketed storage in their MacBook line, I would very likely purchase one. I want Apple to make design decisions that allow Mac users to be able to upgrade and repair their own computers.

Sudden drive failure does happen

While it’s rare, solid state drives can and do fail suddenly. Without warning. Just… poof. Data gone. Hard work gone. Hope-you-had-a-backup gone.

Just like any other electronic component, they can fail with or without warning. It may be working fine one day and simply not work the next.

That’s not unique to any brand or manufacturer. Windows machine or Mac.

If the SSD in my Dell laptop were to bite the dust, I could easily pop in another one, install Windows from a USB drive, and be up and running quickly.

But on a Mac, that solid state drive is soldered to the computer’s logic board. If that storage fails, your Mac is toast apart from a complete logic board replacement or board-level repair. On the M1 Macs, you can forget about installing and booting a copy of macOS on an external drive. No working internal SSD means no working Mac.

Apple. Why?

Soldered SSDs can’t be upgraded after purchase

Due to the fact that Apple’s drives are soldered in, they cannot be upgraded down the road. If you buy a 512 GB model and decide in 6 months that you would be better off with a 1TB drive, you’re out of luck. Sure, you can always pick up an external drive and work off of that. After all, there are some pretty excellent options out there currently.

I myself have a Samsung T7 that’s perfect for my needs — but it stays at my desk 95% of the time

If you need more storage and don’t want to lug around another SSD? You’re out of luck.

If you think you will ever need 1 TB of storage, you’ll have to buy a model with a 1 TB drive.

I know many times I have purchased machines with what I would need at the time and then upgraded as necessary. Additional RAM. More space. Needs change. You may buy a machine thinking a certain spec is enough for what you want to do only to discover the hard way that maybe it isn’t after all. In the Windows laptop world, you can typically just get a larger drive or more RAM (though even some Windows laptops do have soldered RAM — yet even these rarely have soldered storage). These components are typically easy enough to install yourself.

My current laptop came with 1 TB of storage. I decided I’d like more storage. So, I ordered a 2 TB drive, installed it myself, and was back up and running quickly.

On a MacBook? Nope.

Accidental damage happens

Years ago I had a ThinkPad 440. That was a great machine. One day while I was working, I got a little carried away with my protein drink. It spilled all over the keyboard, soaking the machine.

I was so angry at myself.

Fortunately, I was able to remove the SSD and salvage my data. Easy. Simple. Annoying that it was necessary, but easy. If that had been a MacBook, my data likely would have been destroyed.

No matter how careful you are with your laptop — accidents can and do happen. Drops, spills, electrical damage. It happens. Being able to quickly recover from accidents or at least salvage your data is very important — especially for professional users.

Solid State Drives have a limited write lifespan

While it’s hard to kill a solid state drive with normal use, they do have a limited lifespan. Not in terms of age but in terms of use. The cells that make up flash memory can only be written to and erased a limited number of times before they begin to wear out. This limit is expressed in a couple of different ways — one being a drive’s TBW or “terabytes written” rating.

A drive with a TBW rating of 150 is typically warranted to withstand at least 150 terabytes of data written to it. Larger capacity drives tend to have a higher TBW limit. (Now that doesn’t mean that once you write that 150th terabyte that the drive will suddenly stop working. But that’s the endurance rating the manufacturer has assigned to the drive. That’s the warranted guesstimate of how much the drive can be expected to endure. But it’s important to note that drives can fail far before that limit or they can blow right past it and keep on going for a long long time.

For the average user, SSD write endurance isn’t a huge concern. It’s highly unlikely that your web surfing and light content creation work would seriously degrade your drive for at least a decade. But for power users? Very possibly.

And again, this isn’t something that the vast majority of users need to be concerned about unless they’re daily writing many many gigabytes to their drives. (Although it is worth noting that toward the beginning of the M1 product cycle, many users were reporting oddly high SSD wear in their M1 machines. Whether or not this has indeed been fixed is debated. Some say it is. Some say it isn’t.)

But either way, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue if Apple’s solid state drives were not soldered in.

Will Apple stop soldering SSDs?

That’s the question. My hope is that one day they will bring back socketed storage — storage that can be replaced or upgraded by the end user very easily and quickly.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Mac Studio has socketed storage. Although currently Apple seems to be preventing users from upgrading their drives via software. I hope that changes in time.

It will be interesting to watch how the right to repair movement impacts Apple in the future. I do love macOS, and I think Apple does many things right. But this is not one of them.