Apple’s in-house chips have some impressive specs, but user serviceability is something Apple left behind for consumer machines around a decade ago. Repair legend [dosdude1] shows us how the new M4 Mac mini can get a sizeable storage upgrade without paying the Apple tax.
The Mac mini is Apple’s least expensive machine, and in the old days you could swap a SATA drive for more storage and not pay the exorbitant prices that OEMs demand. Never one to turn down a walled garden, later Intel machines and now the ARM-based M-series chips soldered storage into the machine leaving an upgrade out of the hands of anyone without a hot air station.
Both the Mac Studio and Mac mini now have proprietary storage cards, and after some tinkering, [dosdude1] has successfully upgraded the storage on the base model M4 mini. While most people don’t casually reball NAND chips while chatting on a video, his previous work with others in the space to make a Mac Studio upgrade kit give us hope we’ll soon see economical storage upgrades that keep the Mac mini affordable.
We’ve previously covered the first time Apple tried to make its own processors, and some of their more recent attempts at repairability.
It’s criminal that they intentionally wall users in on a device with easily enough physical space. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple start using serialization to prevent this from being offered as a service.
I accidentally read “serialization” as “sterilization”, and thought “Wow, that’s a bit harsh.”
Not really, once in the Apple ecosystem they got you by the balls.
YMMD! 😂😭
Harsh, unfair but covered by the EULA
Why is he reballing the new chips? Did he pull them out of some assembly instead of buying new?
Good grief,
Seems most than a little masochistic if you ask me.
I’ve never seen, much less touched a Mac and this certainly doesn’t inspire me to do so.
I watched the video a while ago so i might not be remembering correctly. But i believe there are several reasons. First you need to initialize a new HD/SSD for the mac so to do that he needed new apple proprietary HD. Next Apple marks up the HD so much it is cheaper to purchase the smallest HD you can, remove the chips and install new chips on them and re-initialize it. Yes it sounds crazy but IIRC those were just a couple of the reasons.
Probably because they come with oxidized RoHS solder balls. Better replace them with fresh non-oxidized lead-bearing solder balls that gives a much better connection and has a lower melting point.
Well, here we go – an article mentioning upgrading an Apple device past the buy/build configs.
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth about how it could have been done this way or that, cheaper or better, blah and to be brutally honest blah f’ing BLAH, here we go again.
Let’s shortcut all that nonsense, and recognise that a) All the evil plots to steal your money are true, and Apple is doing all of this out of corporate greed….but b) PEOPLE ARE STILL BUYING THE PRODUCTS.
So, while yes – there is this barrier, and that obstacle in your way in order to complete hacks like the one shown – we need to focus on how interesting the hacks are, not on the root cause of them being necessary.
As long as there is a consumer base willing to pay for these products, WITH all the inherent limitations, they will sell.
It annoys me the engineering mindset that can not see the wood for the trees – in other words all it takes to remove the evil scourge of these difficult to upgrade products is for the demand to cease, which it is not, therefore they are products that meet the current market demand. Not all purchasers are engineers.
Typed on my Thinkpad, 19 years old, 4th battery, don’t even know what hard drive, maybe 7th?
None of that has anything to do with Apples right to control their own income projections nothing wrong with that, they’re a for profit company. Meaning they could care less about providing the products you need.
There is a Kickstarter offering plug n play upgrade modules, but they are far from economic. The price difference between those and the Apple Tax is not worth the damage you will do to your warranty (ie entirely invalidate it), apart from possibly the 8TB variant, but if you can afford that even at the ‘cheap’ price, then you probably can afford the Apple Tax anyway (which you can spread over a 2year interest free period).
I wish it weren’t so, but if cheap SSD upgrades were ever going to happen they would exist for Mac Studio already.
They don’t so likely won’t.
is not a thing
Maybe, though to be fair I would imagine a lot more people will buy $500 Mini-s than $2000 Studio-s, so the potential market will be bigger, at least.
Let’s be honest, this is just to make views. Anything related to an Apple product used/modded in a way it was not attented will drive views.
Like those big open mouths on video thumbnails, this is ridiculous 101 “getting youtube views”.
This is pathetic
IF Apple were really smart they would just offer to sell the larger drives as upgrades through authorized repair centers. That way you could buy what you can afford now and have the storage upgraded later. Even if at the “Apple tax” rate