Before these models yes. After, no. It won't POST now. The NAND functioning is necessary to the device being usable at all with modern macbooks. You cannot boot off a Debian live USB like you could back in the A1706 days. An A1706 can still boot off a SATA SSD using USBC to SATA adapter, into Mac OS, or Debian, etc. This model can't. T2 firmware is on the NAND, the wear part they soldered to the motherboard. This is called _"innovation"_
@@rossmanngroup the T2 chip is one of the reasons I don't own a MacBook anymore. macOS will run, but Windows and Linux are very unstable [UNDER A T2 MAC], if they even have working drivers. Also, one of my friend's 2018 15" MacBook Pro is dead, probably due to the same reason in this video. His MacBook once refused to boot any Mac OS of any type, only Windows, ironically. He sent it to a repair shop, got it fixed, and it straight up stopped working about a year later. Edit: Clarified in brackets something
@@papzcharles dude no way in hell am I taking an hour out of the day to take NAND off a donor board that might have 50 tb of write cycles and giving it to another customer. Not to mention the fun of not being able to tell how much they had - it's a lottery! The customer asks how much space they're getting - _"whatever the donor had"_
We are really going backwards with tech. One of the most normal things for tech used to be storage expansion or replacement. Not anymore. And consumers did this by not caring enough for features like this, and just buying whatever Apple spits out. I would never get an Apple product because of this reason. Some of their tech is impressive, but their strategy is disgusting. They just need to go away.
It's so that you can't go buy an SD card, and instead are forced to buy their over-priced storage for $200 more, or buy a cloud storage subscription. They took out the headphone jack, so you might buy their wireless headphones. And then they stopped including the wireless headphones or the charger in the box, so they could squeeze another 60 bucks.
Remember that Woz actually fought with Jobs to include expansion slots in Apple II. Jobs was always a money grabbing douchebag. Once Woz left, you could see the downward decline in Apple design and modularity.
@@peppybocanno way, that would make it difficult for manufacturers to plan for when your device shall be obsolete and you be forced into Buying a new one
In all the years I use computers (30+ years), the hard drives were always the most vulnerable. I had to replace: 6 drives, 2 fans, 1 power supply. If these drives were soldered to the motherboard, I would have to replace whole 6 computers. This is ridiculous!
Lets be honest here... you need to chage your drives brand if you have 6 drive fails for 6 whole computers. ;) (unless u dropping mechanical drive when its powered)
6 drives in 30 years, so one every 5 years. That's not ridiculous. And he never mentioned which brand, type, or generation of drives. Or what kind of work environment he used them in, either.
In 20 years 2 or 3 hard drives, 1 SSD, 0 fans, 1 psu(not that it's broken, but I don't trust it). Hard drives in my experience work longer than SSD, tho it is very small sample.
i have made the same observation. the hdd or ssd died on me several times in different use cases. my pc, which accidently got drenched in beer while running and which i only noticed when artifacts appeared on screen due a pool of beer liquid forming on the graphics card was shrugging that off without any issues after drying out 0,5L of beer out of the graphics card, motherboard and powersupply , still running strong 2 years later with no issues. hdds? slight bump or no previous issue dying without notice. and apple think its "smart" to solder these in? wow
I gave up on Crapple laptops after the first MacBook Pros that had the touch bar. Logic board failed within a year. Keyboard went bad within the next year. It was this model where I started to understand the nightmare of soldered in components. If something goes bust the unit becomes a throw away. So consumer 0, Apple 1. This is a very profitable business model.
@@SPARTAN.JEROME-092nope gaming laptops on windows is awful, better get framework laptop on Linux with gnome de. Similar to macos/windows, better battery life and gestures. On gaming laptops you will get like 2 hours of battery lnao
Here is Apple's problem: If they used SSDs on plug-in boards instead of soldered-in ball grid arrays, then they couldn't sell you storage at ridiculously high prices. So, they have to do it this way to keep replacing Tim's jet when the carpets get dirty.
Every time that Apple tries to play the "green card" remember all the things that they design to fail, or be unrepairable that will end up in a landfill somewhere. You can't call your company green or net zero when you can't repair your offerings.
the problem is that SSD not only soldered, but serialized. You cannot just replace the NAND with any NAND from other MacBook, it has to be from specific place in donor MacBook (e.g. if you have 4 SSD modules there, and 2-d is died, you can have to replace all 4 of them in the same order as in donor one). This is what new serialization in M1 M2 does. in Intel T2 MacBook's, NAND chips can be at least reprogramed, so any chip can be used. in new M1 and M2, you are screwed
the more I read the worse it gets 🤣 i have refused to service apple products for the most part for the last decade, and that decision is reinforced daily as I watch these passion of the christ style videos of human suffering.
Its apple they create the problem and let people buy new things thats their solution, yay even more polution in the air by factories, even more Resources needed from the earth, environmentally friendly? Ha apple likes landfills to much they even belong there!
What's frustrating is- It's not like we're waiting for better technology to improve this situation. They literally engineered this backwards to prevent repair of the devices. And as the landfill gets fuller of repairable laptops, cell phones, tablets, whatever.. They'll all preach their "green initiatives" to us.
@@davidbiagini9048 yes, which they will sell us as keeping people from using older energy inefficient gear :) Just as they sell measures that mostly sabotage bulk surplus/recycler/business liquidation sales of used equipment as theft protection.
I was about to buy a MacBook M1 coz it is kind of affordable for me now ...then I decided to research a little bit about the problems of MacBooks ...then I came to know about the SSD issues .... Finally looking for a windows pc ...thanks to the creator like you.. you are doing great work
@@Gelembfi somehow it got corrupted and completely stopped working. Luckily I back up regularly and it was still under warranty so I came out of it fine. But I still had to wait like two weeks for it to be fixed and now I’m deeply worried about the lifespan of my laptop which was a huge investment for me
Everytime I get close to buying a MacBook I get a much needed reality check from Louis. Thank you! Had my 2019 Dell XPS 15 repasted last week and feel like I have a new laptop. I was blaming the age of the machine for months for being slow and never considered such a simple and affordable maintenance procedure. Telling everyone to consider repasting their old machines and getting a few more years out of them.
I got my reality check back in 2007 when I bought my first and last Macbook. I will spend less and get more with Windows or Linux based systems that have higher end GPUs, ample RAM (with many still giving you the option to expand it later on) and NVMe drives I can replace (for now).
Honestly, I think the only way Apple will ever release a Mac of any sort with a replaceable boot drive is if they are forced to do so by legislation with teeth so sharp and an enforcement mechanism so aggressive it risks violating the Eighth Amendment. European Union, we’re counting on you.
European Union of Socialist Republics will do that, no problem, but give them a bit more time. They need to destroy every viable business and enslave it's people first.
I wonder how Apple HR filters between hiring the typical engineer and an $$$Apple-Quality$$$ engineer. I imagine they just throw a wad of cash on the floor and time how long it takes the engineer to desperately crawl around for it.
Even the Msi Claw which has the ssd under heatpipes could be replaced, it’s really disgusting these Apple decisions to solder ssds, if you check the design of MacBooks a removable ssd could fit perfectly
On my 16" 2019 MBP ssd died in June 2023. I paid nearly 400$ to a 3rd party service to replace it. A year earlier I had to pay nearly 900$ to an authorised service to fix (replace) screen. Needless to say I won't spend my money on ANY new apple hardware in any foreseeable future.
Apple (and other companies) build things so that they can't be repaired but need to be replaced (for the most part). Creating a bunch of products that are landfill ready well before they should be. But then they will give a keynote and tells us how environmentally friendly they are 😂😂😂
They brainwash their employees into believing they actually care about the environment. I asked a “genius” who has been working there 20+ years about why they soldered the SSD’s and he responded with the biggest load of shit saying that soldered SSD’s have better performance
@@GK92__19 no as there is no way on the new m1/m2 macbooks to replace the nand flash as its locked to the motherboard so even if you remove working nand flash from one MacBook to another
I really appreciate your warnings about Apple’s shoddy practices. I was going to fork out £3,000 ($3,500) for a MacBook Pro, but after watching your warning videos, it’s now clear they have been designed to die quickly and die hard they will, due to its non-user swappable storage. I’ll be sticking to PC’s with there 100% user repairability/upgrade design for the foreseeable future.
@@josephj6521 Nah, Nowadays good windows laptops are as expensive as those macbooks. But still I will choose Windows because of expandability and easy to fix. I just install hackintosh on my Windows PC if I need macOS LOL.
I also don't get how theses devices are already hitting limits, I have had a SSD in my windows pc that was being abused with pagefile and massive transfers over and over. And its like 8 years old and I have only used up about 15% of its flash write life. That's kind of death this early would make me think your running a database or something like it on production server. Not something I would expect on a facebook machine. Or a poorly optimized non dram ssd.
Honestly. The Apple car isn't going to have any repairability, probably will cost 100,000 dollars base model, and will lock you out of it if you don't pay a daily Apple One subscription
The first new computer I bought myself was a 2010 MacBook Pro. Loved that thing to bits. So many ports and super easy to replace the hard drive, DVD drive, and battery. "Upgraded" to a 2017 MacBook Pro 15" and it's become one of my biggest regrets. Swollen battery and the iFixit guide shows like 500 steps to fix the thing. Apple Support said the only way to fix it is to replace the entire top case. I've since built a PC with an AMD 5600G, been stuffing it full of cheap, fast m.2 storage and loving life. Still don't totally love Windows but it does what I need it to.
I was a tech at a store (Experimac) when in 2016 they had the new redesign I realized how dumb this was. The store owner told me “Apple wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize their product in a bad state”. He was a die hard apple fan. I was like “What happened in 2011 with the graphic cards in the 1286? Either way this AFFECTS YOU because what is your business going to do if you can’t replace ram and SSDs?” He had nothing to say. 2023, his business does not exist.
The first things I check when buying a laptop: * Is the SSD soldered on the Mainboard? * Is the RAM soldered on the Mainboard? * Is the Battery glued? * Are there fewer than 2 RAM slots? If the answer to one of these questions is yes, I immediately move on.
These criteria focus on the upgradability and repairability of the laptop's key components. Soldered SSD: The commenter prefers laptops where the SSD (Solid State Drive) is not soldered onto the motherboard. Soldered storage components can make it challenging or impossible for users to upgrade or replace the SSD, limiting future storage expansion. Soldered RAM: Similarly, the commenter looks for laptops with user-upgradeable RAM (Random Access Memory) that is not soldered onto the motherboard. Soldered RAM prevents users from easily increasing the laptop's memory, potentially limiting its performance and longevity. Glued Battery: The commenter considers whether the laptop's battery is glued in place. Glued batteries can be difficult to replace or remove, and they may require professional assistance for battery replacement. RAM Slot Availability: The commenter prefers laptops with at least two RAM slots. This allows for more flexibility in upgrading or expanding the laptop's memory in the future.
I just bought a new laptop, I wanted the Swift 3 so I ordered it, it had 8GB of RAM I was planning on adding another 8 like I did with my 2018 Swift 3, I was browsing some articles after I ordered it only to realise that now on the new Swift the RAM is all soldered on with no chance of adding more. I know my 2018 model had 8GB soldered but you could add more, which was alright. Glad I hadn't opened it! I ended up returning it and getting the Aspire 5 instead which came with 16GB of RAM (2 slots, 8GB in each none of it soldered) and chance to expand to 32GB, and it has 2 M.2 slots as well which is nice. All this soldered on stuff in laptops annoying. Especially when the specs are not enough, 8GB of RAM will never do for windows 11 and going forward. They do do a 16GB model apparently but they didn't have it on the site I was looking on.
My 2022 ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 AMD unfortunately doesn't have replaceable RAM, but it's because it has LPDDR5 for which SODIMMs don't exist because it's quad channel. It was a bit of a peeve to me but I just optioned the maxed out 32GB. The battery is easily removable with screws and the SSD is a standard M.2 so it was the only thing not meeting these criteria. Interestingly the Intel version of this laptop does have semi-socketed RAM, it has one channel soldered and the other channel replaceable, but it's slower DDR4.
I am one of the lucky ones with an A2141 that was recovered by your team. I shited myself when I noticed that ssd shorts were common on this model. I tried to ask the tech what was wrong with it but no response. Nonetheless I’m a happy customer!! Thank you for what you do and missed these type of board repair type of videos.
*"...and maybe I'll move back to NYC and start a business again." Louis, that said it all. Also, from this PC guy's perspective your product knowledge, right down to board numbers is truly impressive. Thank you for inviting us into your repair lab. Oh, and you are one hell of a raconteur. Cheers!*
Soldered in SSDs or emmc is sadly becoming a thing outside of the apple world especially with some if the arm Notebooks that can be about as expansive as a macbook. It's very sad to see that change.
my idea exactly ever since i heard about the soldered SSD. anybody who choses to solder SSDs onto the mainboard should be ignored until he goes bankrupt and thinks more about the choices he made.
@@KingOfKYA people that are like :" well it doesn't really matter cause i just back up my files so it's alright" are such a big part of the problem....
This was absolutely done on purpose. There’s no way they have some of the best engineers in the word to ultimately make a wear part, soldiered in. Malicious, and to add to that they act like they are a green company, when in fact this is made so that you have to replace the whole machine.
I'm surprised they haven't put in a chip 2 make all their stuff fail the day after the warranty runs out. Don't worry ~ Apple is not a 'tech' company but a suicide cult, just like they worship phagz. The clowns will keep buying them as a symbol of their masochism, like voting democrat.
Of course it is, in the same way they delay improvements or new features so to spread the hype over several years. Apple is as expensive as living in the Big Apple
@@gertwallen Fascinating Louis doesn't simply subcontract laptop & phone makers 2 do 'hackintosh' versions = so people can load whatever they want & with reliable hardware & flexibility like removable battery, easy transfer of files via USB cable, etc.
I'm on a 2015 Macbook Pro. I've upgraded my SSD, replaced my speakers and battery a couple of times and I'm still good. I am buying these use old Macbooks for my family and friends because they're the most reliable and easy to repair. I will not upgrade until Apple returns replaceable SSDs, no matter how many cores or GPU Apple puts inside. 2015 MBP Pro is more than enough.
In the old days, things like this were caused by lack of skill on the assemblers’ side or design mistake. Do you get the feeling that, now, things like this are caused by intentional building in faults into our electronics out of greed and I’ll intent bordering on malice? I do.
Yes, exactly. I needed to disassemble the whole computer to change out the keyboard of a relatively modern Asus laptop, on the old laptop I have laying around changing the keyboard is just a matter of removing 2 screws, putting in a new one and screwing them back on again. As companies get greedier and greedier their products get shittier and shittier...
Apple has decades of experience in doing this on purpose. "Planned obsolescence" is the keyword for this. What do you think why Apple's devices usually don't have removable batteries?
Studied Electronics design at university and was taught about the "bathtub curve", which is failure rate of a device on the Y axis plotted against time on the X.. It looks like a bathtub where early failures on the left of the graph are high and don't pass QA, the graph levels off for a while then devices start failing and the failure rate rises again... The interesting thing is the right hand side of the curve and the time before the failure rate increases.. this can be tuned. With inventive component choices etc. the life of the device can be severely reduced. TV backlights are tuned to last about 2 years by adding phosphor to the blue LED's to make them glow white and leaving them exposed to the air. This causes the picture to turn blue slowly over about 2 years which is subtle and most people don't notice the degradation.. until someone mentions it then it cant be unseen. The engineering is sound, its just not good humaneering.
Dell also did this previously. People were pissed when the SSD failed. I think they have changed most models now and no longer solder the SSD to the motherboard.
Alienware m18 I want to buy, can upgrade the RAM and m.2 SSDs (2 2280s and 1 2230) yourself and save at least $400-500 if you use 2 4TB 2280s and 2TB 2230 as well as 64GB DDR5 5600MT/s RAM over DELL's 2 4TB 2280s and 512GB 2230 and 64GB DDR5 4800MT/s.
Finally.... these are the videos we joined this channel for! Please continue with the repair videos, not the rant videos. (i don't mind the occasional rant, but we want to see more repairs)
Except that Framework and Fairphone are just "scams". Framework laptops are just "modular", but i dont see much of a difference in replacing a computing unit, only manufacturered by Framework or changing a MacBook Pros logic-board, pretty much the same, except that one cared about easy repair and at the other device its a hassle (but possible!) Same goes for smartphones and Fairphone nonsense, in fact Fairphone doesnt do anything different than others, except selling the components to customers for DIY repairs unlike Apple...
fairphone sucks. why buy a slow upgradeable phone when you can just buy a faster one at a cheaper price than the upgrade with at least a water resistance rating?
@@miyui9269 because you have a conscience and dont want to cause mountains of unnecessary ewaste? because one might have an interest in everyone involved in making your gear being compensated fairly for your work? like... sure you can make these way cheaper... if you dont bother with fire safety in your factory... and forced labour... and child labour... and workplace safety in the mines your raw materials come from... if you are fine with a mountain of human suffering replacing a little bit of the price you pay for a phone... then sure its a bad deal
I'm very thankful 2 (((Ro$$mann))) 4 doing that bit on Linus Tech tips about all the $abotage in the iMacs, & the other '#BuiltForFailure' vids on his channel saved me lots of time I would have potentially WA$TED learning about Mac & stuff = pointless. Stick 2 Windows PCs on 7 or XP. Everything after that is unusable krap 2.
The fact that they even soldiered in a ssd even if its a good SSD is already a bad thing, even if I bought the best sdd in the world I wouldnt want or have it soldiered in place
You can't replace the battery, RAM and even storage on a Macbook while my old Lenovo laptop does allow all of that. Changing the battery only requires flipping 2 switches. No disassembly required. I recently replaced my old corrupted HDD with an SSD and it's a massive difference. Luckily the data was recoverable with DMDE.
The jacket vs underwear distinction for two different level of "used" for clothes is frickin' brilliant. Of course, as with all analogies, it isn't perfect, but it is a great example of how "used" should be treated does not mean the same thing every time.
That was a good thing about the surface pro. I had one years ago that got destroyed in an accident, but I was able to pull the ssd out and keep my data. Newer ones now have it easily accessible to upgrade/swap ssd. Repairing anything else on them is... not so easy though.
The sad thing about this is, that there is a high likelyhood that you can not even take the NAND chips from a donor board even if you would want to. I can tell you from experience, that in a big'ish company you have multiple sources for your components like that. So you buy a percentage from Micron, Hynix and Samsung. And chances are, that the chips are not compatible with each other because they likely require either a different configuration of the controller because of different timings (Yes there are standards but i've created multiple driver profiles for different NAND chips in the past because company X does Y different and that causes problems) or have a different Layout of the Pages and OOB area and where that is located. Also, there is a standard how to handle factory badblocks but that is, more often then not also vendor specific. I think this is a huge pain in the ass from the consumer POV and the reason why they are soldering on the NAND / SSD is GREED. It robs you of the ability of upgrading storage after the fact. Want to have more storage? Fork over more cash. Oh its broken after warranty? Fork over more cash! OH THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR STORAGE?? FORK OVER MORE CASH. thats what it is. Its cheaper and they have more ways of bleeding you dry. If they had done that shit 20 years ago, they would have went out of business. Nowadays all these Hipsters buy Macbooks to be cool and "in" and they dont even know what kind of garbage hardware they're buying. Rant over ;)
soldering the storage components onto the motherboard makes it extremely difficult for consumers to upgrade or replace their storage after purchase. They mention that in larger companies, different sources of components are used, and there can be incompatibilities between different chips from various manufacturers, making swapping NAND chips infeasible even if someone wanted to attempt it. The commenter believes that the practice of soldering storage components is driven by greed, as it limits consumers' options and forces them to buy higher-capacity models or pay for expensive repairs or replacements when issues arise. They criticize this approach as a way for companies to extract more money from customers. The comment also expresses dissatisfaction with the trend of some people buying Macbooks without fully understanding the hardware limitations or the implications of soldered components.
Apple’s brilliance was changing the entire culture of what people expected from their devices. It’s actually a beautiful thing of propaganda, to convince people to pay more money for something that is less fixable, and convince them that it’s perfectly okay, and even advantageous to just buy another one for an equivalent or slightly increased price, when the planned obsolescence kicks in. Oh, but they very much care about the environment and waste.
Their devices are social status tokens for computer illiterate people. Among their customers the only reason not to buy an Apple is being too poor. And by the time your device prematurely dies, you are supposed to crave the latest model anyways and welcome an excuse to finally get it. After all we live in a world where many people believe you can damage a computer by pressing too many keys at once and some consider a prestigous piece of electronics more vital than their own organs.
Shinny. Pretty. It just works. Is what I used to here. The problem is how many of these people go Right back and buy another Apple computer after these kinds of failures
When people buy 'Apple' products, they R not buying computers, but 'Fa$hion Acce$$ories' 2 showcase how much they H8 white people & want 2 burn the world 2 the ground, dead as ash. They even used 2 have a rainbow phag flag in their 'bitten apple of gay Eden sin' logo. It's basically 'homosexual jewelry', not 'technology'. N E thing U want 2 do on a Mac U can do on a PC E Z 4 about 1/10 the price or less.
To be fair, the devices are so above the competition at the moment that it’s hard to care too much. I’ve never had issues with macs except needing to replace the Battery after the 4 year mark. They always last me around 6-7 years before I want an upgrade. I know they’re not always perfectly engineering like the keyboard debacle, or they’ve gotten less and less upgradable over time, and I fully support right to repair, but there’s a reason a lot of people in technical disciplines, arts and students chose macs as their primary computers
you should literally watch LTT benchmarking M2 vs M1 vs a 13900k + RTX 4090, their silicon is inferior and other than the form factor, a beefy PC for the same price or even cheaper wipes the floor with Apple. You get standardized and fully modular hardware in case you need to replace something... Apple is literally a laughing stock by now if it wasn't for the cult of followers that literally keep them alive and well.
@@MultiTacs they work great until you have an issue then you’re stuck paying big bucks for a $30 ssd. SSD’s are a consumable and not meant to run forever.
@@robertkennedy8503 that sure seems to be the case. Oh hey my computer works right now but if I ever need more storage or RAM I’ll just drop another 3 grand. Oh and I’ll pray my ssd never goes bad. I guess the other option is to pay for a perpetual warranty so you can waste another $400/year to replace that $30 ssd.
I have never owned a soldered main memory or SSD pc and intend to keep it that way. If there is some future breakthrough that improves reliability by ~100x, maybe then I would consider. For phones I can tolerate the soldered components but that doesn't mean I like it. I've had a couple phones die from memory issues that I would have still used otherwise.
Not sure about soldered main memory. I mean sure if we accept it you bet they are making sure it brakes the moment warranty is up! Even now there is so many attack vectors they can take without being obvious like that. Far more impressed that not more stuff is designed to fail within say 4-5 years. With a warranty time of 3. Like it is silly for a desktop or server/workstation to use solder down memory. Have returned faulty out of the factory sticks so many times. But rarely do they brake after surviving passed warranty. What actually is more important is to make sure laws are put in place to extend warranty and make sure we do not find ourselves without a warranty of being screwed over. Aka solder down storage. Or planned to fail/obsolesce. That is the hole reason Apple is doing this. To make sure the used makred dies. We know this already. User storage? It should not even be allowed to sell a device with solder down storage. Like if it is a smart device let alone a freaking laptop? It should not have any storage solder down. Not even BIOS chips etc. It might be a problem on smartphones but really at the very least they should give you a SD card slot or just some kind of removable storage. You do not need your photos or personal stuff in the cloud or on super fast solder down storage. No. And cloud storage should not be a requirement for backups. That is not a excuse for soldering private data down. Never buying a computer with solder down storage. Out of the question. Or where the OS is off limits to the user. Bad enough with the stuff going on in the hardware itself. Flash a BIOS and something go wrong? Time to toss the motherboard! Grate. It is going to take allot before SATA III standard is going to be acceptable to remove from my machines. Like to imagine paying a premium just to buy a machine with a soldered down M.2 SSD is... I already consider M.2 storage devices to be soldered down storage. And only good for non personal files. It is like smartphones internal storage. It is there for performance and that is it. It is part of the main memory. Solder anything storage down and it is a faulty machine for me. No excuses in doing it. NONE. Performance in storage do not win over private user files being accessible. Not to mention how if it is not replaceable it is as said a wear item that dies before the rest of the machine. At least the worst item that can fail on you. So being able to replace it before it fails is a mandatory thing needed. Or it is a NO BUY.
@@TheDiner50 Storage, no matter the medium, is best done in redundancy. NVME storage is great but is not going to last forever. All storage though is consumable. Soldered main memory and secondary storage causes a device to just become completely unusable. Adding to matters, soldering secondary storage does not add to performance in any way. DDR5 memory currently is the only example of main memory where soldering offers performance and that is due to lack of a connection standard update(which is being worked on).
@@saccaed Yeah, but there are a lot of components that are required. I don't see high RAM failure rates anymore. However, soldered SSD's have a lot of problems, if just for data rescue / destruction. To be honest, I don't see much of a problem with TBW as most people will never even get close.
@@saccaed I doubt it is "lack of a connection standard" that limits the performance, it is more of a physical limitation. You can have all the bandwidth in the world, but the latency will be the hard limit to how much useful data you can work with in a timeframe, especially for lots of small data transfers. This can only be solved by having the RAM chips physically closer to the processor as longer traces will introduce more latency. But yes, for storage, there is no excuse to have it soldered (besides having the thinnest machine which is not that relevant for most people anyway).
@@LAndrewsChannel Your right about latency however pertaining to DDR5 and soldered memory it is a byproduct of an old standard lacking in performance for an intended application. Dell has their own swappable DDR5 modules that could replace the outdated SO DIMM standard for laptops. Desktop DDR5 memory modules are mostly unaffected as there are not the same size constraints as in something like a laptop.
Hey Louis, I want to thank you for convincing me to no longer purchase Macbook as a default. Hopefully I can support company like framework in the future so that the future won't suck as much.
I know in Linux you can edit your ftsab file to handle that stuff in tmpfs on your actual memory, but at the tradeoff of loosing all your cache whenever you reboot. But if you're using Windows, I don't know what to tell you
First video of yours I've seen. I like your personality, down to earth/real. Instantly subbed. Before watching this, I was going to get one of these Macbooks and was recommending them to friends and family... Now definitely avoiding laptops with soldered SSDs/RAM. The FlexBoard app looks crazy good. Wish I still worked with electronics
On Mac Studio, NAND is on detachable modules and it can be replaced. By Apple proprietary components and by their authorised technicians, to be sure, but it's serviceable. On their other computers, you would need to desolder the NAND chips and replace them, and activation is a problem.
I love your videos in the shop! If you have the opportunity to do more repair videos, or other stuff showing off the inner bits and bobs of computers, please make more!
I'm still on a mid 2014 MacBook Pro and have replaced the battery, had Louis' co fix the water damage (logic-board level) a few years ago and recently swapped in a 2 TB SSD (from original 256 GB which I now have in an enclosure for extra storage) - retina display is still beautiful and knowing I can do most repairs myself is definitely nice. Runs perfectly fine for what I need.
Apple has the best and brightest tech and engineering personnel available to them at all times - and in the past they've done outstanding things in the tech ecosystem. Their marketing teams didn't have to try so hard because their products did it for them. Knowing that makes watching them fight tooth and nail now against including some of the most obvious, bare-minimum, already-existing tech like replaceable storage... it makes me sick. But what really hurts the most is knowing they still "lead the industry" and other companies are just waiting for them to get away with this; so they can do it as well.
It's all part of the design criteria. Make it as difficult as possible to repair so customer has no choice but to buy another one. In the market for a new laptop, one of the criteria is replaceable ssd. Memory is a different matter. So long as it comes with at least 32GB I may overlook soldered ram. Still, willing to pay a premium to have replaceable/expandability options.
I don't mind soldered components but the thing that annoys me is that these things are locked, software/key locked so that it can never be repaired. Like wtf, I own this device and I can do whatever I want.
This is why people need to wisen up and speak with their wallets. *Buy the better product.* If people keep buying these self-destructive pieces of e-waste, its just enabling the apple greedcorp to make more of them instead of pulling their heads out of their cornholes to actually make better products.
I love my M1 Pro for video and photo editing but I am heavily concerned about the longevity of the SSD. Maybe I will shift to external storage for my large transfers so I can prolong the inevitable .
Cloud storage is rather cheap. I dont know about apple but its 2tb 9€ on google per month. On windows everything I chooser is being backuped automatically.
Easy fix. PC😊. I switched 8 years ago haven’t regretted it one day and can do all my photo and video work just as good and I can easily repair it if needed.
Nice to see repairing back! It's somewhat relaxing to have you working on another monitor. Too bad my wife doesn't enjoy your repairing videos during our bedtime.
@@Jigamanx2 Well it boots, but so many things are weird. I have never used macos before and this is on my old intel nuc. The keyboard layout is broken ctrl, win, alt are just very strange, win is ctrl which brings me beck to the annoying thinkpad keyboard that I've had on an X220 I think. It had a fn key in place of ctrl and it was annoying but you could change it in the BIOS. If the whole world is doing one thing and you do differently it's not inovation, it's a design fail. But aside from that the system is useless. I cannot use the terminal for anything. On windows there is at least some way to do something on powershell. As to should you waste your life to learn that horrifying syntax is another story but macos here just has vim that I like and it manages paths better since it's unix which is nice. Still what can i do on it? Not quite sure, maybe write C or python code but aside from that it's kinda useless. Going back to the real computer lol
Probably also because RAM is not expandable and rather expensive. 8 GB of non-expandable RAM on a $1300 laptop? Really? A 16 GB model seems to start at $2000. Again, non-expandable.
In 5 years from now everything on the MacBooks will be outdated. There will be faster and more capacity memory sticks on the market that wouldn't even be able to be added to any older laptops. Why would you sacrifice continuity and reliability on a product for the "possibility" to upgrade some parts of a laptop that are outdated? That's like upgrading a rusty 1970 Ford with an Apple Car play and a touch screen infotainment unit, sure it'll make part of the entire thing better but it won't change how outdated it is.
@@vigour6786 old ram is easy to come by, and it's usually quite reliable these days... Why should technology be 100% disposable when we should be trying to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many people use their computer just to look things up, check their email and do a bit of work on. .. that really isn't that demanding on the technology tbh
we don't need to outlaw every specific abuse of our right to ownership. if we simply had access to schematics *and software* for repairing the firmware, this wouldn't be possible. somebody would have released a procedure for repairing the firmware within hours of the issue being discovered and Apple couldn't stop you from replacing or even upgrading the storage in *your* device.
@@tissuepaper9962 Unfortunately for companies like Apple that think they can control everything, legislation is the only thing that they will understands, just like a rabid animal will understand only violence. Besides, storage devices *SHOULD* be replaceable (by the user, like it was in pre 2015 Macbooks and other machines) in a computer since it is a wear part. They are basically welding the wheels (with tyres) to the car. They could have designed a creative way to use M.2 slots, but simply chose not to. Just like the lightning port on their iPhone (which prompted a legislative measure from EU because they refused for so long to switch).
Curious @rossmanngroup - I'm frightened after watching one of your videos about NAND on A2141 shorting to ground and throwing 13 volts to the soldered on SSD. Working in tech for a small school district and we have 4 A2141. The superintendent has one of them and our CFO the other... A side for the bad design what do you thing makes this situation go sideways and short? cheap components or it's a design sooooooo bad, it's the gift that keeps on giving (in not such a good way).. Thanks for all the great work you do! Great stuff!
I've been working with old CRT TV repairs and upgrades, and I LOVE how easy they are to work with, if you can find the service manual. I mean, good luck finding a replacement tube nowadays if the tube is broken, but everything else is super easy to work on. (That said, you have to discharge the tube properly before working on it, or you could fatally shock yourself). I'm never buying a phone or a laptop that isn't designed to be as repairable as these TVs.
I dont know if you go over this but SSDs generally have a fixed number of writes each cell can take before it requires too much voltage to write more bits. And it just so happens that on my 256GB M1 Mac Mini Apple OS had written nearly 2PB within a year, i use this thing mostly as an HTPC and nothing should be using the local storage, either the external or network storage. Apple OS11 seems to be designed to wear out these SSDs weather you use them or not.
To test I once went a month without logging into the machine, and while this was after apple 'fixed' the problem, it still said it had written ~1.9TB since last boot after i logged in and checked the CLI, this isnt a 3rd party tool, but a built in apple command that tells you how much data has been written to the disk since it had been last powered on.
@@carstencroessmann one of the commands you can use on mac is iostat -Id disk0 change the number to whichever drive you'd like ot check, there is another command that giives you the write since last restart
@@denvera1g1 Thanks for the reply, I just came back to apple after 15 years. That said I'm not into the themes right now, hopefully mine last longer because I already bought additional 2TB external m.2 nvme. And got enough of 32GB RAM to prevent RAM swap. Back to the iostat, is it already on the mac or an additional app? Thanks again
Yeah, as a video editor, I use a scratch disk specifically so I can sacrifice my write cycles and have a practically pristine main drive as much as is reasonable(assuming it is in fact reading and writing to the same external drives). Aside from the laptops, are the mini and studio soldered in too?
5:00, about the flourescent vs LED display, to be fair I have a 15 year old flourescent tube LCD TV with daily use that is still kicking with a nice bright display, where many LED TVs start having LEDs failing even within warranty. LEDs are really unpredictable as they just they are working fine and suddenly not at all.
Louis, you are 2 weeks late with this video 😂. I was thinking about buying an M2 Macbook Air because i recently landed a good engineering job and finally had the means to buy more expensive device. I never had Apple products, so i started looking for what is good and what is bad for the device. Saw that it overheats and found i can attach some thermal pads to transfer the heat to the metal frame of the laptop. I even designed a small metal plate that goes inside the laptop to add more cooling capacity with SolidWorks. Then i saw that the midnight blue scratches like hell because Apple didn't put any protective layer of coating around the ports. I found a way to solve that too, with different clear coating materials. Then i found the SSD was soldered to the motherboard, which made me extremely mad. A soldered RAM is annoying, but i can live with that. Ram has a long life, and i don't expect it to fail if at all. Bite SSD's are more like when than if. So i said to myself ''Fine, i have soldering experience i am going to solder new ones when this fails and then i saw all the property crap they put and you are not even able to buy new Nan chips. This was the last nail for me buying the device. Excuse me, but i am paying quite the money for this laptop. This device felt soo flawed that i had to be an engineer and try to solve so many issues to try justify buying it, and even then, it didn't work out. How can Apple engineer this product so bad that it feels like you are paying this premium price just for the experience to start engineering solutions to thei problems. I dont see how anyone can buy such e-waste. Thank you for reading.
I feel for you man, the repair isn't the worst part of the job, it's the customer's reaction when you break the news to them that their data is most likely screwed... Me just assuming that your life gets much worse every time they blame you for Apple's problem.
Over the past 10 or so years (it feels like 15 tbh) I have seen you go from the biggest Apple fanboy on the internet who actually knew what he was talking about and was still fun to watch, to probably Apple's #1 enemy and I am aaaaallllll for it. I think they used to make okay hardware back in the day, and they were an important step in the world we see today, even if I was a windows kid and me and my nerd friends would spend hours talking crap about mac users when I was in high school. Apple has lost anything that they once had that made them good, and it's telling when they have messed up so bad, that there's a repair you simply can't do for a common failure - Apple is the reason why you can't buy a brand new, never before soldered SSD, and Apple, as a company, with their mistreatment of customers and repair techs, is the largest argument for right to repair that is only overshadowed by John Deere's BS, which, honestly? Jailbreaking a tractor might be easier than getting around some of the DRM Apple uses.
This is the reason why I bought a Zenbook instead of a Macbook. It also had more ram, for the same price as well, but the main reason was a 1tb non soldered SSD.
Is the problem that the NAND SSD fails and pulls power to ground or the 1920-vintage power converter shorts, driving power to 12 V shorting the NAND? (Is it the NAND or the ancient buck converter?). The 2023 Ćuk-buck2 does not have this failure node. It is also smaller and cheaper.
I wonder if a donor ssd/nand cipp would allow the user to boot from a external drive without any ware to the "new" one so a laptop like the ones you describe could be resurrected and the built in ssd avoided to prevent this to fail again? After all while working the laptop sound very capable, would it prevent this failure if a external ssd is used as a precaution prior to failure or does just turning it on ware out the ssd?
I dream of the day that big companies will turn to actual technicians like Louis for advice on improving their designs, engineers make lots of mistakes because they usually don’t have any technical skills. I have spent my life repairing industrial production machines and I often had to improve or repairs engineering defects and or mistakes...
@@bradhaines3142 then you’ve become the Louis Rossmann of those vehicles, where only you have the capabilities to do the work, the average person won’t be able to. That makes this even worse, ANYONE should have access to be able to do that sort of work.
I can count on one hand the number of times I bought a computer new over the last 40 years. Usually, nothing more that a screw driver and some patience can't fix. In the end I would just bring home what others trashed and would have ended up as e-waste.
Apple wants to have neat stuff to bring up at announcement events like WWDC that will turn heads, it’d be REAL neat to announce that they are making their computers harder to break or easier to be fixed or be upgraded. I think the real reason you’d want the 10 gigabit Ethernet on a Mac is so you can connect faster to a NAS cause they put so little storage in the things, and as Louis says in this very video, it’s not even reliable storage. Well, reliable but if it ever breaks, you’re screwed 😅
10:03 "This is the artistic nerds section." 😁 That was great but you almost made my drink come out my nose. 16:14 that's the same for employees too. I learnt that from your non-compete clause video.
Let's consider a computer which has relative small amount of RAM, 8GB. Soldered-in and non-expandable, obviously. Then let's make it use its soldered-in SSD for swapping.
yes, they are made to break. They were the original pioneers when people en mass came to understand that we make things to break on purpose so that you have to keep buying them. I believe, it was ALSO involving apples hard drives.
Is the A1278 a good machine ? i have had it since 2015 i was hoping to keep it or upgrade it and if the new Macs are unreliable in this way since i tend to keep my machines for a long time what upgrades can i give it to extend its life. Lastly which Windows Laptop do you recommend for both Power & Business Users. Thank you for enlightening us , i am a longtime mac fan & i have only ever used the 2012 13 Inch Macbook pro and it was so good i couldn't imagine things could get this bad.
I love the juxtaposition between the “hey guys hope you’re having a lovely day“ intro and the clear contained rage and discussed towards these companies and their business practices.
If there is one thing that I greatly dislike about Apple (and this is coming from an Apple user) these days is how all their computers have soldered-in-SSDs, wish they had left consumers with the option to be able to upgrade their SSDs if and when they die.
@@cielazul713 Which is ironic, since the maxed-spec version with the higher storage will have the same issue. I wish they could at least, with the new ARM-based models, allow for using an external SSD over USB-C and to boot from it - whether it be macOS or some form of Linux.
Back when we used to manufacture things in the US, I worked for one of the last circuit board manufacturers. Everything was manufactured to break after so many hours of use _except_ stuff used in medical electronics. And that was _our_ standard. Doubt the Chinese use a more stringent one.
@@asakayosapro Nope. Circuit boards for all manner of consumer electronics. HP printers, sun motherboards, sony VCR's, etc. It's everything. All of it is "el cheapo." Most of it is brand name - it's the name you pay for. Again, I'm sure the manufacturing standards are worse now. This was 25 years ago.
I've always hated this in modern phones. Especially when with the same care, I've opened enough of my phones after they stopped working to realize that's the main issue (besides battery charge retention). I bet more people are victim of something like a soldered SD card failing than is actually realized. I can't wait until Book of Eli era comes and all of our phones become usable because of an old Louis Rossmann who wants to trade his services for KFC wipes. 🙃
I can't imagine someone thinking soldering an SD card was ever a good idea, I killed 2 of those in under a year using them as boot drives. There good for bulk temporary photo storage, they don't give a warning before dying. They just die....
when the ssd dies can you pop in a thumb drive and boot off that?
Before these models yes. After, no. It won't POST now. The NAND functioning is necessary to the device being usable at all with modern macbooks. You cannot boot off a Debian live USB like you could back in the A1706 days.
An A1706 can still boot off a SATA SSD using USBC to SATA adapter, into Mac OS, or Debian, etc. This model can't. T2 firmware is on the NAND, the wear part they soldered to the motherboard.
This is called _"innovation"_
@@rossmanngroup the T2 chip is one of the reasons I don't own a MacBook anymore. macOS will run, but Windows and Linux are very unstable [UNDER A T2 MAC], if they even have working drivers. Also, one of my friend's 2018 15" MacBook Pro is dead, probably due to the same reason in this video. His MacBook once refused to boot any Mac OS of any type, only Windows, ironically. He sent it to a repair shop, got it fixed, and it straight up stopped working about a year later.
Edit: Clarified in brackets something
@@papzcharles dude no way in hell am I taking an hour out of the day to take NAND off a donor board that might have 50 tb of write cycles and giving it to another customer.
Not to mention the fun of not being able to tell how much they had - it's a lottery! The customer asks how much space they're getting - _"whatever the donor had"_
@@rossmanngroup We TrUlY lIvE iN aN aGe Of WoNdErS
thats part of the apple thats missing. reliabilitty and repairability. designed to fck da customer.
We are really going backwards with tech. One of the most normal things for tech used to be storage expansion or replacement. Not anymore. And consumers did this by not caring enough for features like this, and just buying whatever Apple spits out. I would never get an Apple product because of this reason. Some of their tech is impressive, but their strategy is disgusting. They just need to go away.
they are turning laptops into a bigger phone
It's so that you can't go buy an SD card, and instead are forced to buy their over-priced storage for $200 more, or buy a cloud storage subscription. They took out the headphone jack, so you might buy their wireless headphones. And then they stopped including the wireless headphones or the charger in the box, so they could squeeze another 60 bucks.
The enshittification of out technology has begun!
tech peaked upgradability wise somewhere between the early 2000s and 2014
Remember that Woz actually fought with Jobs to include expansion slots in Apple II. Jobs was always a money grabbing douchebag. Once Woz left, you could see the downward decline in Apple design and modularity.
....DFU revive, or restore, did not fix the first a2141... Paul Daniels cursed me. He was right :(
I watched ua-cam.com/video/yR7m4aUxHcM/v-deo.html on ways apple M devices can get SSD replace and it's really crazy.
Also SSD contains my most precious data. I want to take it out in case the device breaks!
If only there was a law that would prohibit the permanent attachment of wear-and-tear parts...
@@peppybocanno way, that would make it difficult for manufacturers to plan for when your device shall be obsolete and you be forced into Buying a new one
NEW VIDEO LETS GOO
In all the years I use computers (30+ years), the hard drives were always the most vulnerable. I had to replace: 6 drives, 2 fans, 1 power supply. If these drives were soldered to the motherboard, I would have to replace whole 6 computers. This is ridiculous!
Lets be honest here... you need to chage your drives brand if you have 6 drive fails for 6 whole computers. ;)
(unless u dropping mechanical drive when its powered)
20+ years. can confirm. Not sure how you've managed with just 6 drives. I change mine drives every 3 years or so.
6 drives in 30 years, so one every 5 years. That's not ridiculous.
And he never mentioned which brand, type, or generation of drives. Or what kind of work environment he used them in, either.
In 20 years 2 or 3 hard drives, 1 SSD, 0 fans, 1 psu(not that it's broken, but I don't trust it). Hard drives in my experience work longer than SSD, tho it is very small sample.
i have made the same observation. the hdd or ssd died on me several times in different use cases.
my pc, which accidently got drenched in beer while running and which i only noticed when artifacts appeared on screen due a pool of beer liquid forming on the graphics card was shrugging that off without any issues after drying out 0,5L of beer out of the graphics card, motherboard and powersupply , still running strong 2 years later with no issues.
hdds? slight bump or no previous issue dying without notice.
and apple think its "smart" to solder these in? wow
I gave up on Crapple laptops after the first MacBook Pros that had the touch bar. Logic board failed within a year. Keyboard went bad within the next year. It was this model where I started to understand the nightmare of soldered in components. If something goes bust the unit becomes a throw away. So consumer 0, Apple 1. This is a very profitable business model.
You really enjoy making stuff up don't you.
Just buy a 1,200 Gaming Laptop
@@SPARTAN.JEROME-092nope gaming laptops on windows is awful, better get framework laptop on Linux with gnome de. Similar to macos/windows, better battery life and gestures. On gaming laptops you will get like 2 hours of battery lnao
@@hardcodedreborn9650 That will happen with any gaming laptop, because games are way to demanding
Actually Apple 2 cause they figure people will buy another one.
Here is Apple's problem: If they used SSDs on plug-in boards instead of soldered-in ball grid arrays, then they couldn't sell you storage at ridiculously high prices. So, they have to do it this way to keep replacing Tim's jet when the carpets get dirty.
Every time that Apple tries to play the "green card" remember all the things that they design to fail, or be unrepairable that will end up in a landfill somewhere. You can't call your company green or net zero when you can't repair your offerings.
the problem is that SSD not only soldered, but serialized. You cannot just replace the NAND with any NAND from other MacBook, it has to be from specific place in donor MacBook (e.g. if you have 4 SSD modules there, and 2-d is died, you can have to replace all 4 of them in the same order as in donor one). This is what new serialization in M1 M2 does.
in Intel T2 MacBook's, NAND chips can be at least reprogramed, so any chip can be used. in new M1 and M2, you are screwed
yeah that is complete bs
exactly
the more I read the worse it gets 🤣 i have refused to service apple products for the most part for the last decade, and that decision is reinforced daily as I watch these passion of the christ style videos of human suffering.
@@johnmimbs5289lmao
Its apple they create the problem and let people buy new things thats their solution, yay even more polution in the air by factories, even more Resources needed from the earth, environmentally friendly? Ha apple likes landfills to much they even belong there!
What's frustrating is- It's not like we're waiting for better technology to improve this situation. They literally engineered this backwards to prevent repair of the devices. And as the landfill gets fuller of repairable laptops, cell phones, tablets, whatever.. They'll all preach their "green initiatives" to us.
"waste more greener!"
Buh-buh-buh they're using 10% recycled plastic in the body of their e-waste bait laptops! They're literally saving da earf!!!
What's frustrating is that people keep buying Apple shit, feeding their attitude
Apple is gradually eliminating the availability of used Macs.
@@davidbiagini9048 yes, which they will sell us as keeping people from using older energy inefficient gear :) Just as they sell measures that mostly sabotage bulk surplus/recycler/business liquidation sales of used equipment as theft protection.
I was about to buy a MacBook M1 coz it is kind of affordable for me now ...then I decided to research a little bit about the problems of MacBooks ...then I came to know about the SSD issues .... Finally looking for a windows pc ...thanks to the creator like you.. you are doing great work
You Africa people better buy the wii U !
apple is the Alpha system !
to be honest, the m1 is still an amazing piece of gear. i’ve had zero issues with it for three years. I use external SSDs for the most part however.
I’ve had issues with my SSDs after less than a year
@@The1996Shadow what issues exactly?
@@Gelembfi somehow it got corrupted and completely stopped working. Luckily I back up regularly and it was still under warranty so I came out of it fine. But I still had to wait like two weeks for it to be fixed and now I’m deeply worried about the lifespan of my laptop which was a huge investment for me
Everytime I get close to buying a MacBook I get a much needed reality check from Louis. Thank you! Had my 2019 Dell XPS 15 repasted last week and feel like I have a new laptop. I was blaming the age of the machine for months for being slow and never considered such a simple and affordable maintenance procedure. Telling everyone to consider repasting their old machines and getting a few more years out of them.
I need to repaste my laptop actually, thanks for the reminder haha
well u nid to repaste ur old comp instead of buying. it will save u a lot of money.
@@russellmontielmontojo1974 Up to a point yeah. It'll make it run better but ultimately all hardware will become obsolete
I got my reality check back in 2007 when I bought my first and last Macbook. I will spend less and get more with Windows or Linux based systems that have higher end GPUs, ample RAM (with many still giving you the option to expand it later on) and NVMe drives I can replace (for now).
@@NightMotorcyclistI was a guy with a Used IBM Thinkpad T43P back in 2007. best decision in the world. I still own it to these day
Honestly, I think the only way Apple will ever release a Mac of any sort with a replaceable boot drive is if they are forced to do so by legislation with teeth so sharp and an enforcement mechanism so aggressive it risks violating the Eighth Amendment.
European Union, we’re counting on you.
hopefully macs become more repairable than a t440p because eu legislation. Socketed cpu, gpu, ram, storage, tooless battery swaps etc
@@flamestoyershadowkill Imagine how awesome socketed Apple Silicon SoCs would be. It’s a shame Apple disagrees…
@@rokr0001 yeah and apple becoming a cpu manufacturer like amd or intel would be nice. With Aib motherboards for m1 and m2 etc.
European Union of Socialist Republics will do that, no problem, but give them a bit more time. They need to destroy every viable business and enslave it's people first.
Miss the times when the items on a laptop were easily replaceable or user serviceable
In Apple's eyes, the worst engineering decisions made, the better the profits.
Yeah, and that's also why they hate right to repair
I wonder how Apple HR filters between hiring the typical engineer and an $$$Apple-Quality$$$ engineer. I imagine they just throw a wad of cash on the floor and time how long it takes the engineer to desperately crawl around for it.
@@Nebbia_affaraccimiei just another reason Apple is trash and worth skipping the "apple routine"
May meteors hit the greedy peoples' houses over there.
@@cielazul713 You'd be hard pressed to find someone willingly pass on the opportunity to work at Apple I would think.
Holy crap, even my steam deck has a replaceable SSD, and it's a handheld.
Even the Msi Claw which has the ssd under heatpipes could be replaced, it’s really disgusting these Apple decisions to solder ssds, if you check the design of MacBooks a removable ssd could fit perfectly
On my 16" 2019 MBP ssd died in June 2023. I paid nearly 400$ to a 3rd party service to replace it. A year earlier I had to pay nearly 900$ to an authorised service to fix (replace) screen. Needless to say I won't spend my money on ANY new apple hardware in any foreseeable future.
was the replacement of the SSD successful on your MacBook ? have you notice any changes after the replacement ?
Apple (and other companies) build things so that they can't be repaired but need to be replaced (for the most part). Creating a bunch of products that are landfill ready well before they should be. But then they will give a keynote and tells us how environmentally friendly they are 😂😂😂
Aren't those devices repaired to be sold as refurbished??
They brainwash their employees into believing they actually care about the environment. I asked a “genius” who has been working there 20+ years about why they soldered the SSD’s and he responded with the biggest load of shit saying that soldered SSD’s have better performance
@@GK92__19 no as there is no way on the new m1/m2 macbooks to replace the nand flash as its locked to the motherboard so even if you remove working nand flash from one MacBook to another
@@TCBOT
I’m pretty sure he’s referring to the refurbished products that are sold directly from Apple and is from its trade-in program.
@@khoanguyen0001 even apple cant fix that its the way its made
I really appreciate your warnings about Apple’s shoddy practices. I was going to fork out £3,000 ($3,500) for a MacBook Pro, but after watching your warning videos, it’s now clear they have been designed to die quickly and die hard they will, due to its non-user swappable storage. I’ll be sticking to PC’s with there 100% user repairability/upgrade design for the foreseeable future.
Another advantage of avoiding macs. Your wallet.
with pc laptop, I just put extra 4tb ssd for $170. which I can just replace whenever I need it
@@josephj6521 Nah, Nowadays good windows laptops are as expensive as those macbooks. But still I will choose Windows because of expandability and easy to fix. I just install hackintosh on my Windows PC if I need macOS LOL.
Maybe you meant "foreseeable"? Way things are going, the future doesn't look very "formidable"...
@@bagasfabianmaulana no lol
Yes, permanently solder a drive that only has 10k write cycles in its lifetime! Good thinking!
I heard in Apple Headquarters the toilet paper is soldered onto the cubicle doors and they have to replace the door everytime it runs out.
@@GeordiLaForgery They just build a new headquarters when it comes to that
Genius!
And then they are like "We Love the environment! Wasting stuff bad!1111!1@@horiciOwO
I also don't get how theses devices are already hitting limits, I have had a SSD in my windows pc that was being abused with pagefile and massive transfers over and over. And its like 8 years old and I have only used up about 15% of its flash write life. That's kind of death this early would make me think your running a database or something like it on production server. Not something I would expect on a facebook machine. Or a poorly optimized non dram ssd.
Apple found a way to sell a car where the tyres are soldered on and convinced their customers to buy a new one when they wear out 😂
They also Paid extra for Apple to give them poor gas mileage on said cars (having to be fined by EU to start using USBC which has existed for years)
Welded on you mean, but yes, Apple would totally do that.
No, that's Tesla
Honestly. The Apple car isn't going to have any repairability, probably will cost 100,000 dollars base model, and will lock you out of it if you don't pay a daily Apple One subscription
@@bigbubba0439great comment mate😊
The first new computer I bought myself was a 2010 MacBook Pro. Loved that thing to bits. So many ports and super easy to replace the hard drive, DVD drive, and battery. "Upgraded" to a 2017 MacBook Pro 15" and it's become one of my biggest regrets. Swollen battery and the iFixit guide shows like 500 steps to fix the thing. Apple Support said the only way to fix it is to replace the entire top case. I've since built a PC with an AMD 5600G, been stuffing it full of cheap, fast m.2 storage and loving life. Still don't totally love Windows but it does what I need it to.
I was a tech at a store (Experimac) when in 2016 they had the new redesign I realized how dumb this was. The store owner told me “Apple wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize their product in a bad state”. He was a die hard apple fan. I was like “What happened in 2011 with the graphic cards in the 1286? Either way this AFFECTS YOU because what is your business going to do if you can’t replace ram and SSDs?” He had nothing to say. 2023, his business does not exist.
The first things I check when buying a laptop:
* Is the SSD soldered on the Mainboard?
* Is the RAM soldered on the Mainboard?
* Is the Battery glued?
* Are there fewer than 2 RAM slots?
If the answer to one of these questions is yes, I immediately move on.
These criteria focus on the upgradability and repairability of the laptop's key components.
Soldered SSD: The commenter prefers laptops where the SSD (Solid State Drive) is not soldered onto the motherboard. Soldered storage components can make it challenging or impossible for users to upgrade or replace the SSD, limiting future storage expansion.
Soldered RAM: Similarly, the commenter looks for laptops with user-upgradeable RAM (Random Access Memory) that is not soldered onto the motherboard. Soldered RAM prevents users from easily increasing the laptop's memory, potentially limiting its performance and longevity.
Glued Battery: The commenter considers whether the laptop's battery is glued in place. Glued batteries can be difficult to replace or remove, and they may require professional assistance for battery replacement.
RAM Slot Availability: The commenter prefers laptops with at least two RAM slots. This allows for more flexibility in upgrading or expanding the laptop's memory in the future.
That’s true of consumer grade laptops. On the other hand, mobile workstations are designed to be upgradeable and repairable.
I just bought a new laptop, I wanted the Swift 3 so I ordered it, it had 8GB of RAM I was planning on adding another 8 like I did with my 2018 Swift 3, I was browsing some articles after I ordered it only to realise that now on the new Swift the RAM is all soldered on with no chance of adding more. I know my 2018 model had 8GB soldered but you could add more, which was alright. Glad I hadn't opened it! I ended up returning it and getting the Aspire 5 instead which came with 16GB of RAM (2 slots, 8GB in each none of it soldered) and chance to expand to 32GB, and it has 2 M.2 slots as well which is nice.
All this soldered on stuff in laptops annoying. Especially when the specs are not enough, 8GB of RAM will never do for windows 11 and going forward. They do do a 16GB model apparently but they didn't have it on the site I was looking on.
My 2022 ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 AMD unfortunately doesn't have replaceable RAM, but it's because it has LPDDR5 for which SODIMMs don't exist because it's quad channel. It was a bit of a peeve to me but I just optioned the maxed out 32GB. The battery is easily removable with screws and the SSD is a standard M.2 so it was the only thing not meeting these criteria. Interestingly the Intel version of this laptop does have semi-socketed RAM, it has one channel soldered and the other channel replaceable, but it's slower DDR4.
then get a framework
I am one of the lucky ones with an A2141 that was recovered by your team. I shited myself when I noticed that ssd shorts were common on this model. I tried to ask the tech what was wrong with it but no response. Nonetheless I’m a happy customer!! Thank you for what you do and missed these type of board repair type of videos.
*"...and maybe I'll move back to NYC and start a business again." Louis, that said it all. Also, from this PC guy's perspective your product knowledge, right down to board numbers is truly impressive. Thank you for inviting us into your repair lab. Oh, and you are one hell of a raconteur. Cheers!*
That lab guy, muahahahaha, if he could glue a SAS driver on ATA ports, he would sell it below apple prices
Why you need this weirdo guy ?
Soldered in SSDs or emmc is sadly becoming a thing outside of the apple world especially with some if the arm Notebooks that can be about as expansive as a macbook. It's very sad to see that change.
Any component with a measurable shelf life should be serviceable (non-volatile memeory, batteries, electrolytic caps, buttons, etc.)
my idea exactly ever since i heard about the soldered SSD. anybody who choses to solder SSDs onto the mainboard should be ignored until he goes bankrupt and thinks more about the choices he made.
Don't worry users are always really good at backing up files so it will never be an issue right....
🤣
@@KingOfKYA people that are like :" well it doesn't really matter cause i just back up my files so it's alright" are such a big part of the problem....
This was absolutely done on purpose. There’s no way they have some of the best engineers in the word to ultimately make a wear part, soldiered in. Malicious, and to add to that they act like they are a green company, when in fact this is made so that you have to replace the whole machine.
They have the best engineers in the world to make components wear in a timely manner (Average of two years to buy the next apple product)
I'm surprised they haven't put in a chip 2 make all their stuff fail the day after the warranty runs out. Don't worry ~ Apple is not a 'tech' company but a suicide cult, just like they worship phagz. The clowns will keep buying them as a symbol of their masochism, like voting democrat.
This is the price you pay for using Apple products.
Of course it is, in the same way they delay improvements or new features so to spread the hype over several years. Apple is as expensive as living in the Big Apple
@@gertwallen Fascinating Louis doesn't simply subcontract laptop & phone makers 2 do 'hackintosh' versions = so people can load whatever they want & with reliable hardware & flexibility like removable battery, easy transfer of files via USB cable, etc.
Glad to see you are making technical videos again.
I'm on a 2015 Macbook Pro. I've upgraded my SSD, replaced my speakers and battery a couple of times and I'm still good. I am buying these use old Macbooks for my family and friends because they're the most reliable and easy to repair. I will not upgrade until Apple returns replaceable SSDs, no matter how many cores or GPU Apple puts inside.
2015 MBP Pro is more than enough.
In the old days, things like this were caused by lack of skill on the assemblers’ side or design mistake. Do you get the feeling that, now, things like this are caused by intentional building in faults into our electronics out of greed and I’ll intent bordering on malice? I do.
Still the same if you think apple is purposefully making errors?
Yes, exactly. I needed to disassemble the whole computer to change out the keyboard of a relatively modern Asus laptop, on the old laptop I have laying around changing the keyboard is just a matter of removing 2 screws, putting in a new one and screwing them back on again. As companies get greedier and greedier their products get shittier and shittier...
Fluid protection would go a long way toward preventing these kinds of problems.
Apple has decades of experience in doing this on purpose. "Planned obsolescence" is the keyword for this. What do you think why Apple's devices usually don't have removable batteries?
Studied Electronics design at university and was taught about the "bathtub curve", which is failure rate of a device on the Y axis plotted against time on the X.. It looks like a bathtub where early failures on the left of the graph are high and don't pass QA, the graph levels off for a while then devices start failing and the failure rate rises again... The interesting thing is the right hand side of the curve and the time before the failure rate increases.. this can be tuned. With inventive component choices etc. the life of the device can be severely reduced. TV backlights are tuned to last about 2 years by adding phosphor to the blue LED's to make them glow white and leaving them exposed to the air. This causes the picture to turn blue slowly over about 2 years which is subtle and most people don't notice the degradation.. until someone mentions it then it cant be unseen. The engineering is sound, its just not good humaneering.
SSDs are consumable. It's like gluing the roll of paper into a printer
what a way to kill a ssd , how iswhat ur saying remotely helpful? its not.
@@adamtajhassam9188 SSD has limited write cycles.
Or like making it so you can't just pour fresh ink into a printer... oh wait....
@@silitekmodder5681yeh go defend apple.
Dell also did this previously. People were pissed when the SSD failed. I think they have changed most models now and no longer solder the SSD to the motherboard.
Alienware m18 I want to buy, can upgrade the RAM and m.2 SSDs (2 2280s and 1 2230) yourself and save at least $400-500 if you use 2 4TB 2280s and 2TB 2230 as well as 64GB DDR5 5600MT/s RAM over DELL's 2 4TB 2280s and 512GB 2230 and 64GB DDR5 4800MT/s.
The XPS 13 2022 still did. Not the plus version though. Wish I knew that before I bought that and not the other.
Thanks!
Finally.... these are the videos we joined this channel for! Please continue with the repair videos, not the rant videos. (i don't mind the occasional rant, but we want to see more repairs)
Apple makes me want to support Framework more and more every day.
That lab guy is too cheap for apple, glue on the SAS drive and it work in the video.....
So fuck this mad guy hard ! Just to stupid !
@spartian1176never because ecosystem!!!! Must have all the devices linked together!!! Stinky poopoo Android and Windows!!! Eww!! /s
Except that Framework and Fairphone are just "scams".
Framework laptops are just "modular", but i dont see much of a difference in replacing a computing unit, only manufacturered by Framework or changing a MacBook Pros logic-board, pretty much the same, except that one cared about easy repair and at the other device its a hassle (but possible!)
Same goes for smartphones and Fairphone nonsense, in fact Fairphone doesnt do anything different than others, except selling the components to customers for DIY repairs unlike Apple...
fairphone sucks. why buy a slow upgradeable phone when you can just buy a faster one at a cheaper price than the upgrade with at least a water resistance rating?
@@miyui9269 because you have a conscience and dont want to cause mountains of unnecessary ewaste?
because one might have an interest in everyone involved in making your gear being compensated fairly for your work?
like... sure you can make these way cheaper... if you dont bother with fire safety in your factory... and forced labour... and child labour... and workplace safety in the mines your raw materials come from...
if you are fine with a mountain of human suffering replacing a little bit of the price you pay for a phone... then sure its a bad deal
I'll never get tired of hearing Apple always taking the worst choice for it's customers.
Abusive relationship.
The customers they target are too lazy/brainwashed/stupid/under-educated to care.
They really are terrible. They want their machines to go in a landfill after five years so you buy another one
It just shows how stupid people are when Apple are still one of the biggest companies.
I'm very thankful 2 (((Ro$$mann))) 4 doing that bit on Linus Tech tips about all the $abotage in the iMacs, & the other '#BuiltForFailure' vids on his channel saved me lots of time I would have potentially WA$TED learning about Mac & stuff = pointless. Stick 2 Windows PCs on 7 or XP. Everything after that is unusable krap 2.
The fact that they even soldiered in a ssd even if its a good SSD is already a bad thing, even if I bought the best sdd in the world I wouldnt want or have it soldiered in place
What's next, wanting to be able to upgrade the RAM sticks with larger ones? /s
@@gblargg huh?
@@gblarggwith RAM there's at least a reason to go for soldered RAM, the same can't be said for SSDs.
Exactly why I call Apple MacBook Pros "tablets with permanently attached keyboards and missing touchscreen" because that's what they are. 🙂
@@gblarggwhoa there buddy, next you'll be suggesting the end user has rights..
You can't replace the battery, RAM and even storage on a Macbook while my old Lenovo laptop does allow all of that. Changing the battery only requires flipping 2 switches. No disassembly required. I recently replaced my old corrupted HDD with an SSD and it's a massive difference. Luckily the data was recoverable with DMDE.
I have a Lenovo p-50 and noticed it reads/writes usb 3 external ssd faster than Mac mini m1.
The jacket vs underwear distinction for two different level of "used" for clothes is frickin' brilliant.
Of course, as with all analogies, it isn't perfect, but it is a great example of how "used" should be treated does not mean the same thing every time.
That was a good thing about the surface pro. I had one years ago that got destroyed in an accident, but I was able to pull the ssd out and keep my data. Newer ones now have it easily accessible to upgrade/swap ssd. Repairing anything else on them is... not so easy though.
The sad thing about this is, that there is a high likelyhood that you can not even take the NAND chips from a donor board even if you would want to. I can tell you from experience, that in a big'ish company you have multiple sources for your components like that. So you buy a percentage from Micron, Hynix and Samsung. And chances are, that the chips are not compatible with each other because they likely require either a different configuration of the controller because of different timings (Yes there are standards but i've created multiple driver profiles for different NAND chips in the past because company X does Y different and that causes problems) or have a different Layout of the Pages and OOB area and where that is located. Also, there is a standard how to handle factory badblocks but that is, more often then not also vendor specific. I think this is a huge pain in the ass from the consumer POV and the reason why they are soldering on the NAND / SSD is GREED. It robs you of the ability of upgrading storage after the fact. Want to have more storage? Fork over more cash. Oh its broken after warranty? Fork over more cash! OH THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR STORAGE?? FORK OVER MORE CASH. thats what it is. Its cheaper and they have more ways of bleeding you dry. If they had done that shit 20 years ago, they would have went out of business. Nowadays all these Hipsters buy Macbooks to be cool and "in" and they dont even know what kind of garbage hardware they're buying. Rant over ;)
soldering the storage components onto the motherboard makes it extremely difficult for consumers to upgrade or replace their storage after purchase. They mention that in larger companies, different sources of components are used, and there can be incompatibilities between different chips from various manufacturers, making swapping NAND chips infeasible even if someone wanted to attempt it.
The commenter believes that the practice of soldering storage components is driven by greed, as it limits consumers' options and forces them to buy higher-capacity models or pay for expensive repairs or replacements when issues arise. They criticize this approach as a way for companies to extract more money from customers.
The comment also expresses dissatisfaction with the trend of some people buying Macbooks without fully understanding the hardware limitations or the implications of soldered components.
Apple’s brilliance was changing the entire culture of what people expected from their devices. It’s actually a beautiful thing of propaganda, to convince people to pay more money for something that is less fixable, and convince them that it’s perfectly okay, and even advantageous to just buy another one for an equivalent or slightly increased price, when the planned obsolescence kicks in. Oh, but they very much care about the environment and waste.
Their devices are social status tokens for computer illiterate people. Among their customers the only reason not to buy an Apple is being too poor. And by the time your device prematurely dies, you are supposed to crave the latest model anyways and welcome an excuse to finally get it.
After all we live in a world where many people believe you can damage a computer by pressing too many keys at once and some consider a prestigous piece of electronics more vital than their own organs.
Yeah, evil brilliance.
Shinny. Pretty. It just works. Is what I used to here. The problem is how many of these people go Right back and buy another Apple computer after these kinds of failures
When people buy 'Apple' products, they R not buying computers, but 'Fa$hion Acce$$ories' 2 showcase how much they H8 white people & want 2 burn the world 2 the ground, dead as ash. They even used 2 have a rainbow phag flag in their 'bitten apple of gay Eden sin' logo. It's basically 'homosexual jewelry', not 'technology'. N E thing U want 2 do on a Mac U can do on a PC E Z 4 about 1/10 the price or less.
To be fair, the devices are so above the competition at the moment that it’s hard to care too much. I’ve never had issues with macs except needing to replace the Battery after the 4 year mark. They always last me around 6-7 years before I want an upgrade.
I know they’re not always perfectly engineering like the keyboard debacle, or they’ve gotten less and less upgradable over time, and I fully support right to repair, but there’s a reason a lot of people in technical disciplines, arts and students chose macs as their primary computers
I wish we could instantly transfer knowledge from one person to the next. The amount of electronics info in your head is amazing
Mr. Rossmann, I appreciate your honesty. The main reason I subscribed to your channel. Best of luck buddy!
As cool as the M series chips are I just can’t get past the fact that you can’t replace or upgrade anything.
you should literally watch LTT benchmarking M2 vs M1 vs a 13900k + RTX 4090, their silicon is inferior and other than the form factor, a beefy PC for the same price or even cheaper wipes the floor with Apple. You get standardized and fully modular hardware in case you need to replace something...
Apple is literally a laughing stock by now if it wasn't for the cult of followers that literally keep them alive and well.
Same here
@@MultiTacs they work great until you have an issue then you’re stuck paying big bucks for a $30 ssd. SSD’s are a consumable and not meant to run forever.
@@OShackHennessy Exactly, like tires on a car, but trying to convice an apple cultist is a futile exercise.
@@robertkennedy8503 that sure seems to be the case. Oh hey my computer works right now but if I ever need more storage or RAM I’ll just drop another 3 grand. Oh and I’ll pray my ssd never goes bad. I guess the other option is to pay for a perpetual warranty so you can waste another $400/year to replace that $30 ssd.
I have never owned a soldered main memory or SSD pc and intend to keep it that way. If there is some future breakthrough that improves reliability by ~100x, maybe then I would consider. For phones I can tolerate the soldered components but that doesn't mean I like it. I've had a couple phones die from memory issues that I would have still used otherwise.
Not sure about soldered main memory. I mean sure if we accept it you bet they are making sure it brakes the moment warranty is up! Even now there is so many attack vectors they can take without being obvious like that. Far more impressed that not more stuff is designed to fail within say 4-5 years. With a warranty time of 3. Like it is silly for a desktop or server/workstation to use solder down memory. Have returned faulty out of the factory sticks so many times. But rarely do they brake after surviving passed warranty. What actually is more important is to make sure laws are put in place to extend warranty and make sure we do not find ourselves without a warranty of being screwed over. Aka solder down storage. Or planned to fail/obsolesce. That is the hole reason Apple is doing this. To make sure the used makred dies. We know this already.
User storage? It should not even be allowed to sell a device with solder down storage. Like if it is a smart device let alone a freaking laptop? It should not have any storage solder down. Not even BIOS chips etc. It might be a problem on smartphones but really at the very least they should give you a SD card slot or just some kind of removable storage. You do not need your photos or personal stuff in the cloud or on super fast solder down storage. No. And cloud storage should not be a requirement for backups. That is not a excuse for soldering private data down.
Never buying a computer with solder down storage. Out of the question. Or where the OS is off limits to the user. Bad enough with the stuff going on in the hardware itself. Flash a BIOS and something go wrong? Time to toss the motherboard! Grate.
It is going to take allot before SATA III standard is going to be acceptable to remove from my machines. Like to imagine paying a premium just to buy a machine with a soldered down M.2 SSD is... I already consider M.2 storage devices to be soldered down storage. And only good for non personal files. It is like smartphones internal storage. It is there for performance and that is it. It is part of the main memory. Solder anything storage down and it is a faulty machine for me. No excuses in doing it. NONE. Performance in storage do not win over private user files being accessible. Not to mention how if it is not replaceable it is as said a wear item that dies before the rest of the machine. At least the worst item that can fail on you. So being able to replace it before it fails is a mandatory thing needed. Or it is a NO BUY.
@@TheDiner50 Storage, no matter the medium, is best done in redundancy. NVME storage is great but is not going to last forever. All storage though is consumable. Soldered main memory and secondary storage causes a device to just become completely unusable. Adding to matters, soldering secondary storage does not add to performance in any way. DDR5 memory currently is the only example of main memory where soldering offers performance and that is due to lack of a connection standard update(which is being worked on).
@@saccaed Yeah, but there are a lot of components that are required. I don't see high RAM failure rates anymore. However, soldered SSD's have a lot of problems, if just for data rescue / destruction. To be honest, I don't see much of a problem with TBW as most people will never even get close.
@@saccaed I doubt it is "lack of a connection standard" that limits the performance, it is more of a physical limitation. You can have all the bandwidth in the world, but the latency will be the hard limit to how much useful data you can work with in a timeframe, especially for lots of small data transfers. This can only be solved by having the RAM chips physically closer to the processor as longer traces will introduce more latency.
But yes, for storage, there is no excuse to have it soldered (besides having the thinnest machine which is not that relevant for most people anyway).
@@LAndrewsChannel Your right about latency however pertaining to DDR5 and soldered memory it is a byproduct of an old standard lacking in performance for an intended application. Dell has their own swappable DDR5 modules that could replace the outdated SO DIMM standard for laptops. Desktop DDR5 memory modules are mostly unaffected as there are not the same size constraints as in something like a laptop.
Hey Louis, I want to thank you for convincing me to no longer purchase Macbook as a default. Hopefully I can support company like framework in the future so that the future won't suck as much.
Are there ways to limit write cycles from Internal NAND and offload them to external drives like web browsers cache ?
I know in Linux you can edit your ftsab file to handle that stuff in tmpfs on your actual memory, but at the tradeoff of loosing all your cache whenever you reboot. But if you're using Windows, I don't know what to tell you
First video of yours I've seen. I like your personality, down to earth/real. Instantly subbed.
Before watching this, I was going to get one of these Macbooks and was recommending them to friends and family... Now definitely avoiding laptops with soldered SSDs/RAM.
The FlexBoard app looks crazy good. Wish I still worked with electronics
On Mac Studio, NAND is on detachable modules and it can be replaced. By Apple proprietary components and by their authorised technicians, to be sure, but it's serviceable. On their other computers, you would need to desolder the NAND chips and replace them, and activation is a problem.
Imagine IBM or Intel selling servers with soldered in ram and ssd/hdd drives...
I love your videos in the shop! If you have the opportunity to do more repair videos, or other stuff showing off the inner bits and bobs of computers, please make more!
That's precisely how he did his first 1000+ videos.
I'm still on a mid 2014 MacBook Pro and have replaced the battery, had Louis' co fix the water damage (logic-board level) a few years ago and recently swapped in a 2 TB SSD (from original 256 GB which I now have in an enclosure for extra storage) - retina display is still beautiful and knowing I can do most repairs myself is definitely nice. Runs perfectly fine for what I need.
Apple has the best and brightest tech and engineering personnel available to them at all times - and in the past they've done outstanding things in the tech ecosystem. Their marketing teams didn't have to try so hard because their products did it for them.
Knowing that makes watching them fight tooth and nail now against including some of the most obvious, bare-minimum, already-existing tech like replaceable storage... it makes me sick.
But what really hurts the most is knowing they still "lead the industry" and other companies are just waiting for them to get away with this; so they can do it as well.
It's all part of the design criteria. Make it as difficult as possible to repair so customer has no choice but to buy another one.
In the market for a new laptop, one of the criteria is replaceable ssd. Memory is a different matter. So long as it comes with at least 32GB I may overlook soldered ram. Still, willing to pay a premium to have replaceable/expandability options.
???? This is absolutely nothing new for Apple. Unless you're talking like 40yrs ago.
Proof that they have the best engineers? You would lick steve jobs boots.
The marketing team didnt need it to do a lot? 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅
Waiting for then to get away with this? The other companies have already been doing it too for years
I don't mind soldered components but the thing that annoys me is that these things are locked, software/key locked so that it can never be repaired. Like wtf, I own this device and I can do whatever I want.
This is why people need to wisen up and speak with their wallets.
*Buy the better product.*
If people keep buying these self-destructive pieces of e-waste, its just enabling the apple greedcorp to make more of them instead of pulling their heads out of their cornholes to actually make better products.
I love my M1 Pro for video and photo editing but I am heavily concerned about the longevity of the SSD. Maybe I will shift to external storage for my large transfers so I can prolong the inevitable .
Cloud storage is rather cheap. I dont know about apple but its 2tb 9€ on google per month. On windows everything I chooser is being backuped automatically.
Easy fix. PC😊. I switched 8 years ago haven’t regretted it one day and can do all my photo and video work just as good and I can easily repair it if needed.
@@PhotoJohn80 I guess desktop? Laptops are harder to fix. Just build your own pc and all is good!
I've seen this comment and there was one reply and I knew, I could have put hard cash down and bet that the person would say "buy a PC". LOL
@@SamiJuntunen1building a pc is annoying and tedious, a prebuilt from the right place is honestly worth the hours for someone with minimal experience
Never in my life have I ever thought to myself, "you know what, me, I really want/need [insert any Apple product here]"
Nice to see repairing back! It's somewhat relaxing to have you working on another monitor. Too bad my wife doesn't enjoy your repairing videos during our bedtime.
To honor this company i am installing their proprietary OS on my pc
They’re slowly killing that off too sadly with the same stupid T2 trash
I'm doing the opposite, I always use Windows and Windows only on my MBP and iMac since 2010. macOS is just a big pile of garbage.
@@Jigamanx2 Well it boots, but so many things are weird. I have never used macos before and this is on my old intel nuc. The keyboard layout is broken ctrl, win, alt are just very strange, win is ctrl which brings me beck to the annoying thinkpad keyboard that I've had on an X220 I think. It had a fn key in place of ctrl and it was annoying but you could change it in the BIOS. If the whole world is doing one thing and you do differently it's not inovation, it's a design fail. But aside from that the system is useless. I cannot use the terminal for anything. On windows there is at least some way to do something on powershell. As to should you waste your life to learn that horrifying syntax is another story but macos here just has vim that I like and it manages paths better since it's unix which is nice. Still what can i do on it? Not quite sure, maybe write C or python code but aside from that it's kinda useless. Going back to the real computer lol
@@macdaniel6029 what’s wrong with Mac OS?
@@Jigamanx2it's macOS
The SSD life is lower on macs as well because macos heavily uses it as spare ram
Probably also because RAM is not expandable and rather expensive. 8 GB of non-expandable RAM on a $1300 laptop? Really? A 16 GB model seems to start at $2000. Again, non-expandable.
In 5 years from now everything on the MacBooks will be outdated. There will be faster and more capacity memory sticks on the market that wouldn't even be able to be added to any older laptops. Why would you sacrifice continuity and reliability on a product for the "possibility" to upgrade some parts of a laptop that are outdated? That's like upgrading a rusty 1970 Ford with an Apple Car play and a touch screen infotainment unit, sure it'll make part of the entire thing better but it won't change how outdated it is.
@@vigour6786 old ram is easy to come by, and it's usually quite reliable these days... Why should technology be 100% disposable when we should be trying to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many people use their computer just to look things up, check their email and do a bit of work on. .. that really isn't that demanding on the technology tbh
@@vigour6786Oh yes. "Reliability".
@@vigour6786ram upgrades are much more common than you think and hardware doesn’t age that fast
This is something that should be outlawed, otherwise I don't think Apple will give up on this.
we don't need to outlaw every specific abuse of our right to ownership. if we simply had access to schematics *and software* for repairing the firmware, this wouldn't be possible. somebody would have released a procedure for repairing the firmware within hours of the issue being discovered and Apple couldn't stop you from replacing or even upgrading the storage in *your* device.
@@tissuepaper9962 Unfortunately for companies like Apple that think they can control everything, legislation is the only thing that they will understands, just like a rabid animal will understand only violence.
Besides, storage devices *SHOULD* be replaceable (by the user, like it was in pre 2015 Macbooks and other machines) in a computer since it is a wear part. They are basically welding the wheels (with tyres) to the car. They could have designed a creative way to use M.2 slots, but simply chose not to. Just like the lightning port on their iPhone (which prompted a legislative measure from EU because they refused for so long to switch).
Curious @rossmanngroup - I'm frightened after watching one of your videos about NAND on A2141 shorting to ground and throwing 13 volts to the soldered on SSD. Working in tech for a small school district and we have 4 A2141. The superintendent has one of them and our CFO the other... A side for the bad design what do you thing makes this situation go sideways and short? cheap components or it's a design sooooooo bad, it's the gift that keeps on giving (in not such a good way).. Thanks for all the great work you do! Great stuff!
Do recent MacBook Pros have these issues? 2021 or 2022 with Apple Silicon.
I’m pretty sure they did that for “security reasons”.
the mac pro and studio have them on cards
also for security reasons corps want to be able to destroy the storage device.
Don’t worry, they looked at the data
Yep, security of their bottom line alright.
@@JoebDragon it’s easier to destroy it if you can use take it out tho, also you can destroy the storage device without destroying the whole computer
their profits security...
I've been working with old CRT TV repairs and upgrades, and I LOVE how easy they are to work with, if you can find the service manual. I mean, good luck finding a replacement tube nowadays if the tube is broken, but everything else is super easy to work on. (That said, you have to discharge the tube properly before working on it, or you could fatally shock yourself).
I'm never buying a phone or a laptop that isn't designed to be as repairable as these TVs.
I still have a Toshiba 32 inch TV the last of the CRT's .
I dont know if you go over this but SSDs generally have a fixed number of writes each cell can take before it requires too much voltage to write more bits.
And it just so happens that on my 256GB M1 Mac Mini Apple OS had written nearly 2PB within a year, i use this thing mostly as an HTPC and nothing should be using the local storage, either the external or network storage.
Apple OS11 seems to be designed to wear out these SSDs weather you use them or not.
To test I once went a month without logging into the machine, and while this was after apple 'fixed' the problem, it still said it had written ~1.9TB since last boot after i logged in and checked the CLI, this isnt a 3rd party tool, but a built in apple command that tells you how much data has been written to the disk since it had been last powered on.
@@denvera1g1What is CLI? Can you explain further please?
@@carstencroessmann on mac its called terminal, i like CLI because its shorter to type, it stands for command line interface
@@carstencroessmann one of the commands you can use on mac is
iostat -Id disk0
change the number to whichever drive you'd like ot check, there is another command that giives you the write since last restart
@@denvera1g1 Thanks for the reply, I just came back to apple after 15 years. That said I'm not into the themes right now, hopefully mine last longer because I already bought additional 2TB external m.2 nvme. And got enough of 32GB RAM to prevent RAM swap. Back to the iostat, is it already on the mac or an additional app? Thanks again
Yeah, as a video editor, I use a scratch disk specifically so I can sacrifice my write cycles and have a practically pristine main drive as much as is reasonable(assuming it is in fact reading and writing to the same external drives). Aside from the laptops, are the mini and studio soldered in too?
5:00, about the flourescent vs LED display, to be fair I have a 15 year old flourescent tube LCD TV with daily use that is still kicking with a nice bright display, where many LED TVs start having LEDs failing even within warranty. LEDs are really unpredictable as they just they are working fine and suddenly not at all.
Louis, you are 2 weeks late with this video 😂. I was thinking about buying an M2 Macbook Air because i recently landed a good engineering job and finally had the means to buy more expensive device. I never had Apple products, so i started looking for what is good and what is bad for the device.
Saw that it overheats and found i can attach some thermal pads to transfer the heat to the metal frame of the laptop. I even designed a small metal plate that goes inside the laptop to add more cooling capacity with SolidWorks.
Then i saw that the midnight blue scratches like hell because Apple didn't put any protective layer of coating around the ports. I found a way to solve that too, with different clear coating materials.
Then i found the SSD was soldered to the motherboard, which made me extremely mad. A soldered RAM is annoying, but i can live with that. Ram has a long life, and i don't expect it to fail if at all. Bite SSD's are more like when than if. So i said to myself ''Fine, i have soldering experience i am going to solder new ones when this fails and then i saw all the property crap they put and you are not even able to buy new Nan chips.
This was the last nail for me buying the device. Excuse me, but i am paying quite the money for this laptop. This device felt soo flawed that i had to be an engineer and try to solve so many issues to try justify buying it, and even then, it didn't work out.
How can Apple engineer this product so bad that it feels like you are paying this premium price just for the experience to start engineering solutions to thei problems.
I dont see how anyone can buy such e-waste. Thank you for reading.
People that are clueless about all the issues you mention buy it.
I feel for you man, the repair isn't the worst part of the job, it's the customer's reaction when you break the news to them that their data is most likely screwed... Me just assuming that your life gets much worse every time they blame you for Apple's problem.
muhahaha, the lab guy did parity check on his glued ATA drive
CHEAP = BETTER
so fuck this weirdo guy hard, who needs stupid people ??????
Was not expecting that good old motherboard repair, but I love it
This video was great! I really like seeing the expert do what I would be way too nervous to do to my own computers.
NICE TO SEE YOU BACK DUDE THE MAN>
Over the past 10 or so years (it feels like 15 tbh) I have seen you go from the biggest Apple fanboy on the internet who actually knew what he was talking about and was still fun to watch, to probably Apple's #1 enemy and I am aaaaallllll for it. I think they used to make okay hardware back in the day, and they were an important step in the world we see today, even if I was a windows kid and me and my nerd friends would spend hours talking crap about mac users when I was in high school. Apple has lost anything that they once had that made them good, and it's telling when they have messed up so bad, that there's a repair you simply can't do for a common failure - Apple is the reason why you can't buy a brand new, never before soldered SSD, and Apple, as a company, with their mistreatment of customers and repair techs, is the largest argument for right to repair that is only overshadowed by John Deere's BS, which, honestly? Jailbreaking a tractor might be easier than getting around some of the DRM Apple uses.
cute pfp
Apple has a dedicated planned obsolescence team for sure...
Reason I don’t buy Apple products.
@@josephj6521 same here, and the fact the software is very limited too.
This is the reason why I bought a Zenbook instead of a Macbook. It also had more ram, for the same price as well, but the main reason was a 1tb non soldered SSD.
Is the problem that the NAND SSD fails and pulls power to ground or the 1920-vintage power converter shorts, driving power to 12 V shorting the NAND? (Is it the NAND or the ancient buck converter?). The 2023 Ćuk-buck2 does not have this failure node. It is also smaller and cheaper.
I wonder if a donor ssd/nand cipp would allow the user to boot from a external drive without any ware to the "new" one so a laptop like the ones you describe could be resurrected and the built in ssd avoided to prevent this to fail again? After all while working the laptop sound very capable, would it prevent this failure if a external ssd is used as a precaution prior to failure or does just turning it on ware out the ssd?
I voted for the 30 minute repair videos... I guess I better watch this whole thing :D
I dream of the day that big companies will turn to actual technicians like Louis for advice on improving their designs, engineers make lots of mistakes because they usually don’t have any technical skills.
I have spent my life repairing industrial production machines and I often had to improve or repairs engineering defects and or mistakes...
The analogy I often use: the battery in your car dies, but is permanently engineered into the frame of the vehicle, sorry, you need to buy a new car.
shit no a grinder can get that out lol.
@@bradhaines3142 then you’ve become the Louis Rossmann of those vehicles, where only you have the capabilities to do the work, the average person won’t be able to. That makes this even worse, ANYONE should have access to be able to do that sort of work.
Sounds a lot like Tesla, innit?
@@asakayosapro no, they can be replaced, they just cost more than the car is worth at that point
I run a small MSP and am SO glad I found you recently. Great podcast.
missed your rants on actual computer construction man.. welcome back!
I heard in Apple Headquarters the toilet paper is soldered onto the cubicle doors and they have to replace the whole door everytime it runs out.
Only if Apple employees have to pay Apple for the new door
@@xthomas7621 that would be illegal. Employers are responsible for bringing the tools necessary for work.
@@erkinalp 😂
Only 50 wipe cycles per stall
I can count on one hand the number of times I bought a computer new over the last 40 years. Usually, nothing more that a screw driver and some patience can't fix. In the end I would just bring home what others trashed and would have ended up as e-waste.
Apple wants to have neat stuff to bring up at announcement events like WWDC that will turn heads, it’d be REAL neat to announce that they are making their computers harder to break or easier to be fixed or be upgraded. I think the real reason you’d want the 10 gigabit Ethernet on a Mac is so you can connect faster to a NAS cause they put so little storage in the things, and as Louis says in this very video, it’s not even reliable storage. Well, reliable but if it ever breaks, you’re screwed 😅
Happened with my MacBook 12" early 2015 as well. Sold it for parts and using a ThinkPad Now.
10:03 "This is the artistic nerds section." 😁
That was great but you almost made my drink come out my nose.
16:14 that's the same for employees too. I learnt that from your non-compete clause video.
Laptop manufacturers solder ram, ssd's, and now THE WIFI CARD?!?!
wifi soldered has been a thing for years, same for ram (any with LP ram is always soldered) ssd is a bit newer
Let's consider a computer which has relative small amount of RAM, 8GB. Soldered-in and non-expandable, obviously. Then let's make it use its soldered-in SSD for swapping.
yes, they are made to break. They were the original pioneers when people en mass came to understand that we make things to break on purpose so that you have to keep buying them. I believe, it was ALSO involving apples hard drives.
Is the A1278 a good machine ? i have had it since 2015 i was hoping to keep it or upgrade it and if the new Macs are unreliable in this way since i tend to keep my machines for a long time what upgrades can i give it to extend its life.
Lastly which Windows Laptop do you recommend for both Power & Business Users.
Thank you for enlightening us , i am a longtime mac fan & i have only ever used the 2012 13 Inch Macbook pro and it was so good i couldn't imagine things could get this bad.
I love the juxtaposition between the “hey guys hope you’re having a lovely day“ intro and the clear contained rage and discussed towards these companies and their business practices.
If there is one thing that I greatly dislike about Apple (and this is coming from an Apple user) these days is how all their computers have soldered-in-SSDs, wish they had left consumers with the option to be able to upgrade their SSDs if and when they die.
But then how will Apple upsell you into buying the maxed-spec version of their products wich have the most storage?
@@cielazul713 Which is ironic, since the maxed-spec version with the higher storage will have the same issue. I wish they could at least, with the new ARM-based models, allow for using an external SSD over USB-C and to boot from it - whether it be macOS or some form of Linux.
Back when we used to manufacture things in the US, I worked for one of the last circuit board manufacturers.
Everything was manufactured to break after so many hours of use _except_ stuff used in medical electronics.
And that was _our_ standard. Doubt the Chinese use a more stringent one.
what exactly did you make?
Did it involve el cheapo electrolytic ripoff capacitors?
@@asakayosapro Nope. Circuit boards for all manner of consumer electronics. HP printers, sun motherboards, sony VCR's, etc.
It's everything. All of it is "el cheapo." Most of it is brand name - it's the name you pay for. Again, I'm sure the manufacturing standards are worse now. This was 25 years ago.
“Because happier components work better.” The Bob Ross of board repair over here 😂
damn, you are one of those people I can't imagine not having watched your work, Thank you Louis!
This one was solid. I really enjoy the detailed explaination of what you're seeing.
I've always hated this in modern phones. Especially when with the same care, I've opened enough of my phones after they stopped working to realize that's the main issue (besides battery charge retention). I bet more people are victim of something like a soldered SD card failing than is actually realized. I can't wait until Book of Eli era comes and all of our phones become usable because of an old Louis Rossmann who wants to trade his services for KFC wipes. 🙃
I can't imagine someone thinking soldering an SD card was ever a good idea, I killed 2 of those in under a year using them as boot drives. There good for bulk temporary photo storage, they don't give a warning before dying. They just die....
@@chainingsolidthese things before they die, they stop writing.
@@kornaros96 Ya that's what happened, I can access all the files but can't write to them anymore, so for my use cases there dead...