Had a new Macbook for a few months now. The new models have soldered onboard NAND chips. I have a tingling at the back of my mind that I should be using other hardware for my mindless forum roaming or obsessing on ebay because the more the NAND chips are used, the more they decay. I have other machines that have removable storage. One of the SSDs in some dogshit machine died the other day, it was a bit annoying but I can just buy another and swap it in, however not so for the Macbook. I’m also led to believe there’s a chance the NAND chip failure can cause a short to ground shituation on these motherboards and prevent the machine from powering up at all.
Is this paranoia or would you advise to use the Macbook a bit more prudently? I’m expecting to get at least five years good use out of it.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. I have a number of machines but most of them I couldn’t really use in a professional setting, that’s why I bought the Macbook. I really am not a big fan of Windows at all (although I’m not dogmatic but why suffer) but wanted something well built and well-supported in terms of hardware drivers. “New” and “well-supported” on Linux and BSD operating systems don’t go well together. That leaves Mac OS.
To highlight the issue why I can’t use my other stuff, I have a coding project I used as a benchmark. My “main desktop” takes about a minute to build it. The Macbook takes 1 second. The age difference is about 15 years.
Additionally, the biggest killer (from old age) for open source operating systems appears to be graphics card driver support, they just can’t keep up with Chrome and all this reactive Web 3.0 bullshit.
The nand on MacBook pros are not only soldered, but to make it even more difficult you must buy blank nand chip and have it programmed with the right firmware or else it will not work at all, as in it will boot loop. Also if your MacBook has single nand chip and you want to solder in another one, you must add some extra components or else they won’t work either. This is assuming you have what it takes to mess with bga soldering. To top this off apple charges a crap ton of money for higher storage, more ram, to the point that a 4tb storage on MacBooks adds about 900 freedom dollars to the price of the Mac, when a 4tb nvme drive is about 300 freedom dollars.
Ram is even more expensive, max ram and storage adds more than the cost of a base level MacBook pro. The base level MacBook pro has insufficient ram and storage.
I’m sorry that you’re stuck with apple but until the government of big markets like the EU forces apple to do it, their mission statement is to make rework by even professionals impossible.
Oh and by the way MacBook nand chips are underfilled to the hilt. If they could encase the whole thing in epoxy, they would.
Sure, all fair points. But I think everyone onows what Apple is. Just like everyone knows what various brands using wi dos OS or Linux are.
I see 2 obvious options, both are long term evolutions not a fo, to your immediate issue: stop supporting those companies doing stupid shit. Ie switch brands. More importantly, constantly remind them why you are not supporting them. Idealy through a company setting in hopes after a decade or so they may choose to stop such stupidity.even more ideally through multiple companies name.
Or. Accept the alternatives and work with those. As shitty as windows is, and sadly it is becoming more Apple like by the day it seems, it is still more flexible. Granted my concerns are more security based or simple, so I don’t really need super robust systems that can handle super computers. My modest needs aren’t met by windows but Apple is so far past my line of acceptance that windows, android, Linux, Ubuntu, tails etc are still very much acceptable. People in mor energy intensive industries likely will disagree.
The main alternatives at the moment are Intel/Nvidia based laptops and those companies aren’t great either. Especially Nvidia. At least Apple is promoting the ARM architecture for desktop and not just throwing overheating underpowered “efficiency” cores for marketing purpose.
I got a Raspberry Pi 5 the other day as well with an NVMe expansion card. It works OK for my purpose. But just ok. If I could return my macbook and use the Pi instead I probably would but I can’t. And the Pi isn’t helpful for meetings where I have to travel.
The principle of the Framework laptops I like but I’m fed up with that Linus Tech Tips lot.