Putting the BIOS on the SSD is like making a car engine dependant on the tyres it came with being in working order. Once those tyres go you need to replace the engine. They will eventually go as they wear down and break.
@@rjung_chSame here. Sad thing is that this will continue until a significant portion of Apple's customer base A) realizes they're getting f***** in the a**, and B) decides they're getting tired of being f***** in the a** and go buy something else. By that time, most other companies will adopt their design concepts so that it doesn't make much difference who you buy from. It's already happened with cellphones.
$600 for 1TB of storage is downright criminal, it's insane that people still buy this garbage with the prices and all the flaws. Yet it seems like Apple customers could be served literal shit on a plate and they'd ask for more.
fr i ordered a m.2 on sale for 150$ i was extremely happy to see ssd prices are affordable. for anyone other then apple that is. 600$ for 1tb is awful, stealing from their customers and above all else, making a flawed product that will fail. fuck apple.
Its All Because Of Apple's Marketing Strategy People Who Buy Into Apple Products Are Hyped About It They Think Apple Is Better - Im All Microsoft Windows And Google android Than Apple
I genuinely don't understand the fascination of Apple at this point. What is with these fanboys supporting such garbage? I get they were edgy, sleek, cool, and rather new 12+ years ago. But now, it's like: why? They have proven themselves beyond any doubt what a shady shitshow they are. Apple has got to go.
@CubbieSeWolf The sad part is this behaviour from Apple is nothing hidden but no one talk about it and there are enough ppl dumb enough to buy a product for too much just because of the prestige this righteous pricks at apple hold. I'm very excited to see what apple does here in the EU to fuck with the usb-c mandate.
@@rossmanngroupeven good ssds seem to be bad this year and i had 2 video cards that over heated and the capcictore jumped off the board and there in pcs were the customers are not gamers
Destructive engineering is a good term for it. Imagine becoming an engineer, but your employer doesn't pay you to make products do new functions, solve interesting problems or improve existing solutions. Instead, you're paid to make a product harder to repair if it breaks, lock features away when your employer wants to screw over his customer, or shorten the lifespan. You thought you were going to work on a successor to the smartphone itself, but instead, you deliberately make existing products WORSE.
@@Kizarat...but monopolies and the interconnection of government and corporate interests to keep corpses in power at the expense of the living are not. Make no mistake: happening here goes far beyond simple capitalism; it's more like persistent top-down corruption. If it was a problem of Capitalism itself, some regulation would fix it (which is how societies have dealt with market problems for millenia), but regulations don't work if the organization enforcing them is itself corrupt. Rather, they become tools in favor of corporations to crush competitors and integrate more closely into the primary governing body. This is happening because of Capitalism; this is happening because the bloated corpses of corporate world and the state are grotesquely melding together without restraint. Our leaders have grown old and have lost purpose yet continue to wield power that they cannot handle, and this is just one of the many consequences.
@@Kizaratit is innovative when there are more than 2 competitors in the industry. Look at the CPU market itself. Apple vs Intel vs AMD. Shit has become really good in the CPU market in the past 5 years.
Yes. You cannot boot off of any other storage because the POST process requires T2 chip to work which requires bridgeOS which is stored on the internal storage. Back in the old day, we used to call that an SPI ROM chip or a BIOS chip, and you could easily solder a new one on when the old one died, if the old one died. This did not die very often because you are not writing to a BIOS chip the same way you are writing to the internal solid-state drive on a pro grade computer marketed to video producers.
It’s still repairable even if significantly more difficult than it needs to be. Either learn to do it yourself or start looking for someone to repair it.
@@Luke00722 Yes it's is repairable, but only using used parts that are ridiculously expensive. And then it takes a ridiculous amount of work and knowledge to make it work, and that is if it survives the operation.
Oh yea, and did I say used parts? That means that even if you do the operation you end up with memory that has already had some write operations, how many you don't know. It could well be about to kick the bucket any time.
Couple of things to add: 1. Apple has multiple manufacturer's that provide them ssd chips and you cannot mix and match them easily. Only certain ones can be put with other ones. The LTT forum post covers this. 2. Apple clearly did this to save money. Because then you don't need an spi chip to boot. It all comes down to money. Apple looked at the costs for warranty repair and decided the initial savings of not having to have an spi chip to boot saved them money in the long run.
That would be a valid argument for apple but its not like spi chips are expensive they cost peanuts compared to their friggin profit margins they make on each one of these things
"Cost savings" Not only they ask for ludicrous prices in return for absolutely fat profit margins (remember, Apple is a TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY for a reason) but also, the cost savings by cheapening out on components, they'll NEVER pass it to the consumers. Even with the fact that current SSD NANDs are now more affordable per gigabyte, Apple still charges a premium for each gigabyte of storage. They will NEVER back down on their egregious pricing.
In fact, they even frame themselves as a luxury brand (and not even calling themselves as a tech company) anymore. The only two ways for Apple to stop this greedy practice is #1, stop buying Apple products or #2, call for government intervention or legislation which will force Apple and other companies to comply (take note of the EU laws for removable batteries as example.)
I almost shelled out $1500 for a new MacBook in February this year. Watching this video, I am happy I bought a laptop instead where I do can upgrade the SSD (and I did so a month ago, from 512 GB to 2 TB for around $150), and I can boot from the bios if the SSD bricks. Thanks, Louis, for educating us!
Its good to see you talk about this issue again Louis, and thank you for tagging our video! We are working on a video to replace the NANDs on these 16-inches using donor NANDs from other MacBooks (I know it sucks a lot because the unknown TBW). But maybe we can just put 120GB just to keep it running and alive not filling the landfills.. It's really sad when we dont even have any choice right now.
Apple could have prevented NAND failure blowing the power supply by putting a fusible link in the power line. But that would have hit their bottom line. So they just let it destroy the whole machine, so boosting sales.
Simple solution for all this crap would be a law that prohibits manufacturer to sell products that cannot be repaired by third party repairer. It could be an EU legislation or/and US federal law. This would also reduce e-waste and natural resource exploitation.
Yes, except that the lobbying efforts would neuter those laws before they went into effect, lawsuits to reduce the enforcement of those laws, and after all that major engineering efforts to BARELY comply while still finding new ways to screw the customers.
This reminds me in a way of how consoles like the Wii would put the ""bios"" inside the NAND, so if that ever died or got corrupted you're not booting the console ever again. This should not ever be the case with computers.
Actually the way Flash/ NAND memory is used in the consumer electronics hardware space favors the manufacturer BOM and reduces device lifespan. One example Casio's old graphic calculators had the OS in a Mask Rom, later in 2000 in a flash chip. Algebra -FX 2.0 but at least the data was backed up to an SRAM with a backup battery, so you are not wearing out the Flash. On new versions ex CG-50 the OS and the bios is on the NAND and every operation you do on the calculator writes on this NAND, so it will eventually brick the calculator. Same with PS5, Switch etc. The days of hardware preservation and MaskRoms or even EPROMS are gone.
The NAND on the wii is at least standard, so you could in theory flash a blank chip and fix the system (wii-u NAND is even easier and can literally be wired to an SD card breakout), the actual "bios" actually happens on the hardware level, the NAND only handles the OS, channels, and save files. Should they have used an EEPROM for the OS and only used an external SD card for the rest? Yes. Does it matter as much when it's possible to repair with a soldering iron and a flash programmer? No.
On the other hand, my Wii system was bought back in '08 and it still plays smash bros like a motherhubbard. When it breaks it breaks, but thats at least a decade away.
Actually there are multiple levels of "bios". For you to actually boot from NAND you must have already ran the code to initialize all peripherals, etc. Having the bios and os and everything on 1 chip in case of embedded systems actually reduces the cost dramatically and exlcuding few open source cases there wouldn't be any use for you to actually be able to boot own OS. You still need image of the OS. What's the problem if it includes a bit of bios too. Note that in case of Wii, the NAND was common component, with common layout. Problem in case of Apple is that there already are standards, which work and were used previously. If the NAND then has custom OS inside I'd argue it's actually anti-invention as it can very easily slowdown the memory itself. And also creating own chips just so they can't be bought is just plain bad, next level of epoxy over chips...
Was checkin macbook pro 16" $3500 + 8tb ssd +$2200 I bought 4tb ssd for $170. 8tb nvme is $340. A whole 4070 laptop with 32gb ram and 1tb is $1700. So with the 8tb soldered ssd price upgrade price for mac, you can buy 4070 gaming laptop with 8tb nvme ssd and get extra 1 tb ssd which you can put on external case and become usb drive.
Apple Fanboys will tell you that nobody is upgrading his/her Laptop - (almost) never... Or just buy the config you need - so there is no need to upgrade later… Or just buy the max. config….and other silly things. I don’t think it makes much sense to argue with them at all. BTW: While their where whole business models based on the fact that they could make a cut selling MacBooks/iMacs upgrades or upgraded MacBook/iMacs for less than Apple and still make a decent margin on these: I upgraded almost any computer I owned at some point. Best example my Sony Vaio that came with 256GB SSD 8GB - which was the max. config sold at that time - and now runs 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD + 2 TB HDD(installed in the DVD-ROM-Drive Bay). Even my 2012 MBP 15" is upgraded from a HDD so SSD and from 8GB to 16 GB RAM - but I really try to avoid to buy any new Mac.
I remember when my 2006 Mac Pro was no longer able to upgrade operating systems because Apple stopped supporting 32 bit computers. I was confused because i thought they had 64 bit architecture. Apple made the decision to limit those Mac Pros to 32 bit mode in the firmware. Could Apple have offered a firmware upgrade? Yes! Did they? No! Did people hack their own firmware upgrade? Yes! Did i install it? No! I was too afraid of bricking my machine. Now I am back to the land of PCs never to return to using a Mac.
Apple is a TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. They'll never pass those manufacturing savings to their customers. You have to take those sweet profits out of their cold, dead hands first. They will never back down on this business practice.
It's not deleting parts and definitely not cheaper because of the T2 chip, it costs like a 100 times more than an SPI flash. And that flash is still used, it contains the iBoot bootloader for the T2, it's just 1 MB instead of 8. A normal solution is just making the flash 16 MB to fit both iBoot and the UEFI firmware, or adding an 8 MB flash for the firmware, but it's more profitable for Apple to store it on the NAND.
This same crap happened to my father in the 70-90's...got harder and harder to get little parts like resistors and diodes for tv, vcr/camera repair. He just gave it up.
ICs I would believe but resistors and diodes? I guess it depends on what country you're in. In Australia there are plenty of retail shops like Jaycar and Altronics that sell that stuff. I guess in the USA and UK it's mostly mail order only (DigiKey, Mouser, Farnell etc). Still, there is a huge range of parts available. Just not Apple specific parts like the ones Louis complains about (other OEMs no doubt too).
I imagine it's more of a case that the problem became physically replacing said resistor. Nowadays they can be very tiny, so itd be a hassle/pain to solder or read the values, if even marked
Or they simply fill it up, which is especially likely given that the machine is already premium priced and most people probably won't pay extra for additional storage up front.
Except on PCs, assuming it's not soldered-on eMMC, if the SSD fails or you outgrow its capacity, you can either replace the failed drive or add a second drive, even NVMe drives on desktop boards that only have one m.2 slot via a PCIe riser card as long as the board's new enough to support NVMe, and SATA SSDs for any PC, desktop or laptop, made in the last 10-20 years, and even IDE-era hardware with a SATA to IDE adapter. And it's really telling when vintage Macs have better community support, than modern Macs have for OEM support, like on a 68k-era Mac, viable modern hard drive replacements exist via the BlueSCSI among other SCSI hard drive replacement solutions, and the Floppy Emu takes care of any floppy disk woes, eg. iike on a Mac 128/512/Plus that only takes 800kB disks, and that officially can't boot off a hard drive, Floppy Emu would be a godsend for those earliest Macs in particular as 800kB disks are particularly hard to find or write for those where the Floppy Emu can just boot a disk image of the latest Mac OS version those older models could support.
I have only one apple product I like, and it's an old iPad nano I found in the street, still works fine after ~6 years of usage, with the only damage being some dings in the casing and a little bit of warping on the outer screen
@@nezhaprime6195 Rest in peace lol those Nanos have some crazy batteries, the warping is the first symptom. If I were you i'd toss that thing in a cement box.
Looks like Dosdude1 just did a succesfull swap of NAND upgrading a M1 Mac Mini from 256gb to 2tb, the trick was using blank NANDs instead of salvaged ones, and then he was able to restore using DFU (this was shown on his and Luke Miani's channel today) while data recover would still probably be impossible on the old NAND, sounds like this could be used to repair
Remember the butterfly keyboard fiasco and the "batterygate"? Well Apple will just pay fines no matter how many class action lawsuits you slap on them. Paying them is peanuts for Apple. Apple is not only a trillion dollar company, but also a huge legal and PR machine. They'll never change unless you make Apple near bankruptcy that will make them realize.
Glad I'm into custom pcs. I had my ssd go into read only mode with 1% life. Literally threw the entire drive data onto my 6tb. Drove to Best buy, bought an SSD, installed it with new windows and was playing games with the homies in an hour.
I swear there are pictures of Louis hanging on the walls of Apple HQ and bonuses are paid each time your design decision screws over Louis and gets featured in a video.
Its no longer planned obsolescence, its forced/ insured obsolescence. It feels like They are no longer happy with things failing and being hard to repair they want to insure things will die and stay dead.
Compaq (prior to being bought by HP) did this back in the 90's where they store their BIOS on a separate partition of the HDD instead of in a chip. This introduced a ton of headaches, especially if you didn't have a backed-up copy of said BIOS. This maybe lasted a couple of years before the issues started cropping up. Not just hard-drive deaths, but malware could also make your PC completely unsalvageable unless you could get a "ghosted" image of the BIOS partition from another same model Compaq machine. Questions started popping up about security implications as well. Keeping the BIOS on such easily corruptible storage instead of a dedicated chip made it extremely vulnerable to attack.
In computer science class we did some repair on one of those Compaq computers. We started it up to make sure everything was good, called the teacher over to show them we were done with their assignment. While the teacher was there another kid pointed to the bios chip and asked "what's this?" then they accidentally bumped it. The computer instantly died. Dunno if they ever got it running again.
I recall that they had the BIOS in ROM, but the setup interface you use to configure the BIOS was on a separate partition of the HDD. It was a hidden DOS partition that it boots when you want to configure and it runs a graphical DOS interface to present the settings.
In apples case they will just pay the fine or make the necessary revision for the following year so that the injunction "haha I can dream" can be avoided by returning to sensible design. These large companies are beyond past the point of having any proper oversight. The only solution is heavy handed "fair, sensible" regulations to force their hand to NOT do evil.
I sure do love singleboard computers, what a great concept! That way it makes everything way worse off when something fails on an expensive item item like this.
I'm seriously considering going back to Windows for my next laptop purchase simply because of Apple's nasty self-destruct hardware features. My homemade gaming PC runs Windows 10 as good as any Mac I've ever used and it uses standard off the shelf parts. The days of Windows randomly rebooting and crashing to the BSOD seem to be ancient history.
Yes, a hardware failure can cause any system to crash, but the term BSOD came into being because earlier versions of Windows were so unstable that the BSOD was essentially a "feature" of Windows. @@japaneseost2137
Surely the important message about repairability needs to be in the minds of purchasers thinking about their next machine - maybe a score based on costs to fix typical failures? Also other manufacturers need to see this as a weak point for Apple rather than something to copy ... maybe an award and publicity for manufacturers doing the right thing??
Lost a 2019 16" macbook pro this way. It died from water damage, just that the water damage was about 2 drops of water that randomly made their way inside somewhere around the left hinge and in a couple of weeks/months degraded something that ultimately shorted the ssd... from a drop or two of water....
Thanks Louis you saved me couple of grand I was planning to buy one when I was in Apple store I decided to watch reviews of course your video pop up. I quickly walked out of the store still on the look out for replacing my 9 year old dell XPS 15.
It's only Apple fans that keeps Apple in business. So basically Luis is saying that Apple designed a proprietary component with the propensity to fail, and never offered a fix for it even though Apple knew of the problem. I've heard of planned obsolescence, but Apple apparently is taking it to a new level of deceit, powered by agreed. Once Luis peeled back the onion to expose that Apple might've actually designed certain components to fail. In other words components have a limited operating life by design.
Replacing NAND is one thing, you would also have to replace the software loaded ONTO the NAND. And how easily do you think it would be to get said software?
"Hey everybody, I hope you're having a lovely " is becoming a phrase I associate with bad news. I'm glad you're here though Louis, calling out bad practices and showing the truth behind a lot of the smoke and mirrors that these companies try to get away with.
I wonder how apple would respond if regulators with actual power and integrity gave them an ultimatum to do either a payment model where replacements must be free of charge for as long as payments are scheduled, or make their computers repairable by third parties, with repairability being assessed by the third parties.
It sounds like Apple figured out what was causing the shorts on the older boards, and then instead of deciding to fix it, they decided to encourage it.
Then you notice Apple is using by default SSD as RAM space if you run out RAM. Enjoy the speeded up process of SSD wearing out if you open too many tabs in browser or your Apple Genuine mouse bug happens where mouse cursor starts stealing out gigabites of ram for it.
@@spaghettiupseti9990 This discussion is about macos system not windows. Macos uses virtual memory sorry. Linux has swap partition(s). Or be free continue talk but i dont understand what hell your point is now or you missed my point.
Hynix chips are becoming a problem for old Nintendo consoles (specifically the Wii U). The NAND corrupts after not being powered on for a while, bricking the operating system (which has no "restore from USB" functionality like Xbox or PlayStation does). That can happen to your MacBook, if Hynix didn't fix that design flaw.
@@thepwrtank18 Phew! Thank you, my Wii is safely stored away in its original retail box for years now and I was worried as it holds sentimental value to me. I would be sad if I had unknowingly condemned it to permanent failure.
@@cielazul713 All NAND will gradually lose its memory over time. It takes time (years), but it will happen. If it uses NAND, it will need to be turned on and allowed to refresh itself.
Say hi to these guys for excellently done content: th-cam.com/video/yR7m4aUxHcM/w-d-xo.html Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:18 - Part 1 - Apple begins soldering on the SSD w/ A1706 & A1707 model in 2016 00:30 - If SSD dies, you can still turn machine on & boot from a flash drive, USB-C external drive, etc 01:03 - Part 2 - Apple adds the T2 chip in 2018 01:45 - T2 chip runs bridgeOS which is stored on NAND 02:01 - T2 chip necessary for computer to turn on. If NAND corrupts/dies, machine CANNOT BE TURNED ON AT ALL! 02:39 - This NAND is propriatery custom designs that cannot be purchased on its own 03:45 - Donor Macbook boards with NANDs cost $300+ and have used NAND that may have 50 TB of write cycles 04:24 - Only place to buy these NANDs new is a 1 TB SSD kit on apple.com for $600... 05:17 - Part 3 - New NANDs die more often in a way that destroys power to the entire machine 06:09 - This was NOT a problem with the older, standard NANDs 06:48 - Apple drives the industry forward with common sense innovation - I appreciate that 08:32 - Too often, these innovations come at the cost of common sense design, durability, repairability, and reliability 09:38 - These new custom NANDs fail WAY TOO OFTEN 09:58 - Thesis 12:16 - This isn't fun anymore 17:25 - Repeating myself, because my name is Louis Rossmann 17:55 - Pre-written rebuttal to the engineer's argument
iBoff RCC's video is great! Lots of graphics and diagrams and warnings of things that will cause problems. I don't use or repair Macs but it's interesting to see all the details of the NAND chips and limitations.
You can't have this many short to ground problems and other massive problems with the device you are producing with every single version you produce without it being introduced malicious malfunctions.
@MonkeyJedi99 the arrangement with the different devices constantly having the same exact problem over and over again means that they are actually doing it intentionally. I have seen year after year of new devices with the exact same shorting problem with Apple. I'm not claiming that there aren't other manufacturers that have the same or worse problems only that if they are making the same mistakes over and over again there is a point where you can't deny the fact that it is intended. It might not be directly malicious but something along the lines of their machines that produce the devices requires you to trace everything out for the wire/cable paths and they are simply too lazy to make a change that would increase the durability and life of the product or it could be a case of them simply making only the bare minimum number of changes to each product before it ever gets to the manufacturing machines. Both of these are possible options for where it originally came from but keeping the problems is an intended choice to reduce the life span of the product.
About 8 months ago, I bought a 512 GB Mac mini 2018. According to the S.M.A.R.T status, it had 95% of lifetime left. If it's accurate, I got pretty lucky. However, after just one OS reinstall and Time Machine restore, it went down to 94%. Now I'm just very cautious about saving bigger files on the internal drive, to avoid too many write cycles. It's insane that users who pay thousands for a brand-new computer has to worry about this.
I almost bought M2 15" Air or M2 Max Pro. Thanks Luis for saving money. I will stick as long as possible with my 2015 15" MBP. If things won't change, bye bye Apple. This also applies to cars. I want to OWN things, owning is much cheaper than leasing.
even worse the Apple SSDs are software locked and the software tool to unlock and re-assign the new installed apple replacement SSD is only available via Apple repair as a repair order only!
7:31 This is what I told many of my friends who didn't know any better. Heck they didn't even knew that mac used to have intel CPU xD. HDD were and still the worst botttleneck in general performance of any PC if your OS is installed on it.
Apple isn't selling SSDs. They are selling NAND modules. There are no controllers on those boards, only storage chips. It's a custom part for which they can charge whatever they want, thus the cost.
I hope the eu follows the battery regulation up with some generic expandable storage regulation. Regulation is the only way to help us consumers. Barrier to entry is just too high in these fields (laptops, mobile phones, gpus)
Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD is around $100, and it's on the high tier of Internal SSD, what fcking sht does Apple even include on their objectively worse (proprietary) SSD that needs $500 mark up? It just doesn't make any sense, with $600 I can probably buy Steam Deck with 512GB storage. If it's a joke, it doesn't even funny, it's insulting.
Honestly, with the M.2 form factor there's no reason to solder SSDs onto the board any more. You don't want a 2.5" brick taking up space and making the laptop thicker, I get it, but you can get SSDs barely any thicker than a PCB now.
If only people would start and listen to what you say and do eventually we could stop supporting this so called "tech giants" by not buying there shit . Appreciate and respect what you do Mr. Louis!
Hi @Louis...I got to a point to sell Apple product (MacBook Pro 14" A2442)... It is a used device, I used it also for 2-3 months...It looks perfectly fine, working fine but informations revealed are scary. Knowing that it could just die randomly, unreparable... Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us! EDIT: my first and last MacBook
Soldered SSDs are such a stupid design decision by Apple and their competitors that have started to do the same with their laptops. I really would like to get one of the Apple Silicon MacBook Airs but it is incredibly concerning that when the SSD dies the laptop becomes a paperweight.
Try and go for a lower-end ASUS, if possible(assuming you don't care for/need a high-powered laptop, though if you do, also ASUS). Been a reliable brand for me. NEVER buy crapple.
For ultra portable devices (like tablets or 2in1s) it is not a bad choice, really. If you know that you will never upgrade, soldered RAM and SSD (or even eMMC/ U2 etc) can result in a device that is more resistant to shocks. Of course that design should not be the only one you can get - and I am pointing not only at Apple, but also at Lenovo and other manufacturers that are not giving you modular options. Of course one day we may end up with TCM CPU modules having all storage and RAM in single package. While this also could be beneficial for some applications (you essentially get computer you could solder into any design without hassle of high-speed routing) when one part of such TCM SoM fails - it is dead as whole.
@@brylozketrzyn I dread the day they cram everything in one package and force you tu upsell hard on storage. I hope the eu follows the battery regulation up with some expandable storage regulation. Regulation is the only way to help us consumers. Barrier to entry is just too high in these fields (laptops, mobile phones, gpus)
@@raldone01 I am afraid, that all in one packages would be just too convenient (as electronics engineer I loved them too). You would still get some modular laptops for enormous prices and with lower specs and then affordable powerful ones but with limited or none repairability. Just look at CPUs - most of them already come with GPU and north bridge integrated. Next iteration was embedded TPM and platform management. Rise of high density SSDs may attract chipmakers to put them on die (or as chiplet on a single interposer). I know the benefits of separate ICs, but I am afraid we will see soon designs having just two chips - SoM and PMIC - on small PCB. And all the regulations will be seen as attempt to withhold innovation. That being said I do prefer having everything reasonably discrete, but at the end of a day you buy what you can buy.
Self-Destructing Nand is something companies have been doing for a long time few people know about it I think my HTC G2 android phone had it really shady buisness practice it's drug dealer tactics
It’s unfortunate because I really enjoy apples software and I like how their hardware is when it works. Stuff like this though makes me want to get a Framework for my next laptop
I can't tell if Apple engineers are legitimately incompetent or are just following orders to be completely evil. Column B may be taking advantage of column A though.
Knowingly following orders AND purposely designing it for early/frequent failure. Should any engineer's guilt ever flare up, Apple management simply slaps them back in line with a fat wad of cash.
In a few short years they managed seemingly impossible tasks like making their own CPU (arm based) that beats the Intel equivalent in power/performance. Also they have better performance than Qualcomm and Samsung equivalent which had dedicated CPU teams for years. Other impossible fit they managed is to have a competitive GPU. I thought it was crazy at the time when they decided to stop using PowerVR (Imagination tec) in their phones. Even the AMD Radeon Group which are veterans in GPU's cooperated with Samsung and still could not beat the apple mobile GPU. I am not an apple fanboy by the way. Just to achieve those tasks you need good engineers. Even Microsoft which is a huge company is using other IP (AMD) and they make the XBOX for them. Apple does it internally. @@Teluric2
Wow, that is actually malicious/draconic. That alone makes every MacBook a ticking time-bomb of you losing data, irreversibly so and guaranteed. .. typed on a MacBook .. 💣
Always have backup all important data to cloud drive and other drives. or buy a 4tb ssd $170ish, put it on mobile casing. And set your mac to backup to time machine to that drive everyday.
@@ghost-user559 Last time I checked its not industry standard to brick the machine if the storage fails, to make you understand, imagine your iPhone kills itself once the battery died.
@@owlmostdead9492 Huh. Guess you haven’t been paying attention to car manufacturers lately? And most tech companies have proprietary software and or hardware locks which prevents repair without getting an “authorized service provider”. This goes from cell phones cars to evs to smart appliances. And yes essentially an iPhone is identical and is dead if the ssd were to fail? There is no SD card? You lose the os if you your lose storage. And any device in which storage fails, except an Hdd where you might be able to use data recovery, you will still lose everything at any point if there is a failure, and it will “brick your machine” until you reinstall the Os. This is just as terrible but with extra steps. And in any case the solution is regularly backing up your device. And a warranty. I’m just saying since flash storage became normal and useless cloud integration and circuitry was put into every appliance on earth, everything from a coffee maker to an oven to a refrigerator or television is absolutely impossible to repair.
I wish I would have seen your video before ever getting a MacBook a month ago. Now I have to see about having an external SSD to back everything up, at least I’ll have that as a backup. Also remember you from years ago when you were doing the Kinko’s circuit for IT classes. Don’t know if you remember it was in the South Center plaza south of Seattle. That and we had that shallow earthquake that registered at 2.7 that shook the building like an hollow glass and metal box. That I think you will remember because you said you’d never forget that. Lol 😂😊
@@Splarkszter in Linux , even the harddisk , devices, processes , terminal (tty) are files(or file descriptor) and you can read and write(sometime) on these files
@@sunnymishra1057 Because Linux is a Unix clone. However, you do have ioctl to do the other things. So, yes, you have the standard creat, read, write, etc., but for anything that is not exactly a sequential file, you use ioctl. Does it mean everything is a file? Well, the devices have the device "files", but they are not really files. You will see the major and minor device numbers. Still, BSD sockets, for instance, file descriptor based, are more popular than SysV networking equivalent. For some reason, SysV networking thing, I forgot what it is called, just did not catch on. It actually felt more elegant when I was using it. Like under five times. Even Microsoft ported the BSD sockets to Windows initially. Except they put in all the annotations, as usual, if you wanted it to work using Visual Studio. Not sure how it works any more.
The M1 silicon had me seriously considering buying a new Apple computer. The new SSD's make that completely out of the question. What genius came up with the idea of not only soldering in a wear component but to also place the bios on it? Even if the Nands didn't randomely short to ground, a soldered in wear component makes this a non-starter.
Imagen a car that you have to either throw away or replace the complete chassis, when you wear down the brake pads. And the egine not turning on until you did that.
Yes! I remember vividly that Sata cable thing... had to replace them with one from the previous models I had as donors. Kinda like they did with that Display LVDS cable thing... Those NANDS have micros inside.... GEEE! That make me wonder! :)) 😅
I really hope that Linux Apple simp engineer has another BS social media take because of this vid, but I bet he'd rather not expose his obvious bias yet again lol
Every apple macbook user who approves of soldered parts but that would make me poor I like the fact that you get less and can't repair it and replace parts
The discussion on whether the inability to continue using the computer upon SSD failure is pure coincidence due to tight integration, or intentional malice, would be really interesting.. It's all speculation of course, and it can very well be that the omission of a SPI flash chip for the bios is purely for cost savings
Someone should legit take them to court over this as planned obsolescence. You can literally source the rated reads & writes of those chips with the argument of a "professional" daily workload average on them. If it causes the device to fail potentially in less than 5 years reasonably unfix-able I argue a class action suit could win. Granted I'm not a layer but my father was and I listen to him talk constantly.
They may have also concocted the T2 chip to fight the Hackintosh market. Really I think Linux would be a good alternative that is not locked down the way that Apple likes it to be.
I love Louis but at some point he needs to realize that Apple doesn’t consider him to be their target audience. They don’t care if his job is fun. This is coming from an ex-Apple customer that moved away because of the anti-customer decisions they constantly make.
Thanks for bringing this to light. Maybe Apple will change it’s ways if enough people complain loudly enough, just as they did with adding more ports again, and with the butterfly keyboard issue. I’d gladly sacrifice some read/write speed for an SSD I can replace/upgrade when needed. If this ever happens to me, I’ll be looking into Hackintosh laptop from then on.
Agreed. People said that Hackintosh were dead when the M1 Macs came out, but I'm seriously considering doing another OpenCore hack when my Mac Mini dies...
My macbook pro failed this way. One day while using it it froze and shut down. Left speaker area, where the NANDs are, started heating up like crazy. And it stayed hot for 3 hours, till the battery died. Entire motherboard had to be replaced
Crazy.. I used to love Macs.. but they’ve just made things worse, and worse, and worse.. and that’s just from a user standpoint.. if I was actually trying to run a business fixing the damn things…😫
Thanks for this episode, I have been looking to buy a new apple macbook air, to put my 2013 air out to retirement land. Vaguely aware about some security chips that Apple put into place, this clears it up in a concise way. I am going to use my 2013 air with only 200 battery cycles, update it to either Ubuntu or Open Core as a travel laptop, and use a cheap beelink min PC as a desktop.
Putting the BIOS on the SSD is like making a car engine dependant on the tyres it came with being in working order. Once those tyres go you need to replace the engine. They will eventually go as they wear down and break.
And you can only buy used replacement tires lmao
Dont give car manufactures any ideas please
I'll never own an Apple product, how dare they be such a pissy company.
@@akosv96Plus, those which you need aren't normal round ones but oval. Think different.
@@rjung_chSame here. Sad thing is that this will continue until a significant portion of Apple's customer base A) realizes they're getting f***** in the a**, and B) decides they're getting tired of being f***** in the a** and go buy something else. By that time, most other companies will adopt their design concepts so that it doesn't make much difference who you buy from. It's already happened with cellphones.
$600 for 1TB of storage is downright criminal, it's insane that people still buy this garbage with the prices and all the flaws. Yet it seems like Apple customers could be served literal shit on a plate and they'd ask for more.
fr i ordered a m.2 on sale for 150$ i was extremely happy to see ssd prices are affordable.
for anyone other then apple that is.
600$ for 1tb is awful, stealing from their customers and above all else, making a flawed product that will fail.
fuck apple.
Its All Because Of Apple's Marketing Strategy People Who Buy Into Apple Products Are Hyped About It They Think Apple Is Better - Im All Microsoft Windows And Google android Than Apple
Right? Apple Sheeple are so gullible.
Its what happens when you join a cult.
I genuinely don't understand the fascination of Apple at this point. What is with these fanboys supporting such garbage?
I get they were edgy, sleek, cool, and rather new 12+ years ago. But now, it's like: why? They have proven themselves beyond any doubt what a shady shitshow they are. Apple has got to go.
You have to give credit where it's due though. I applaud Apple for designing their boards to fail so spectacularly and taking the whole machine down.
I have to agree I've never seen a manufacturer take killing their own devices to a point like this.
Yes but they made it so you can't say it's planned obsolescence, it's not like there's a timer that kills the device right after warranty.
@@Zebra_PawIt can be easily argued they did make a timer when they did this, but whos got the money to enforce it?
@@gremblorthesackgoblin7953I do not think they did, but they are the biggest assh*les on the planet rn for sure
@@Zebra_Paw just make a update that keeps writting to the SSD to speed up the process
I feel so much more safer that people like Louis exist to point out the hidden wrong doing that big name manufactures are doing.
16:18 You aren't safe. I'm coming for you in a parking lot.
@@rossmanngroup surreal, truly groundbreaking audience interaction 10/10
"I am inside your walls."
-Louis Rossman 2023, probably
@CubbieSeWolf
The sad part is this behaviour from Apple is nothing hidden but no one talk about it and there are enough ppl dumb enough to buy a product for too much just because of the prestige this righteous pricks at apple hold.
I'm very excited to see what apple does here in the EU to fuck with the usb-c mandate.
@@rossmanngroupeven good ssds seem to be bad this year and i had 2 video cards that over heated and the capcictore jumped off the board and there in pcs were the customers are not gamers
Destructive engineering is a good term for it.
Imagine becoming an engineer, but your employer doesn't pay you to make products do new functions, solve interesting problems or improve existing solutions. Instead, you're paid to make a product harder to repair if it breaks, lock features away when your employer wants to screw over his customer, or shorten the lifespan. You thought you were going to work on a successor to the smartphone itself, but instead, you deliberately make existing products WORSE.
DRM and cost engineers 🤔
Ahhh, capitalism is so innovative!!!!
@@Kizarat...but monopolies and the interconnection of government and corporate interests to keep corpses in power at the expense of the living are not. Make no mistake: happening here goes far beyond simple capitalism; it's more like persistent top-down corruption. If it was a problem of Capitalism itself, some regulation would fix it (which is how societies have dealt with market problems for millenia), but regulations don't work if the organization enforcing them is itself corrupt. Rather, they become tools in favor of corporations to crush competitors and integrate more closely into the primary governing body.
This is happening because of Capitalism; this is happening because the bloated corpses of corporate world and the state are grotesquely melding together without restraint. Our leaders have grown old and have lost purpose yet continue to wield power that they cannot handle, and this is just one of the many consequences.
@@Kizaratit is innovative when there are more than 2 competitors in the industry. Look at the CPU market itself. Apple vs Intel vs AMD. Shit has become really good in the CPU market in the past 5 years.
@@Kizarat Tell me you haven't lived under socialism/communism without telling me that you haven't
It’s deliberate. Apple doesn’t want you to fix your computer. Apple wants your money. Don’t buy Apple. How do you like them apples.
well get a death note if thats the case
yes, i know, but the laptop is good
one remark companies not only apple
@HyperDevv, no, they are overpriced crap.
@@oroville12345 90% of the time yeah
So, the laptop's bricked when your internal storage dies?
Yes. You cannot boot off of any other storage because the POST process requires T2 chip to work which requires bridgeOS which is stored on the internal storage.
Back in the old day, we used to call that an SPI ROM chip or a BIOS chip, and you could easily solder a new one on when the old one died, if the old one died. This did not die very often because you are not writing to a BIOS chip the same way you are writing to the internal solid-state drive on a pro grade computer marketed to video producers.
yOu ShOuLd HaVe BaCkEd Up To iClOuD
@@qbertrtrtg 49.99 per month please
So not only does it kill the computer it also loses the customers data as well?
Yes
So I'm using a flawed laptop, and after the NAND wears out, which is inevitable, I will be left with an expensive block of aluminum.
Sadly that would seem to be the case. Thanks apple☺️🗿
It’s still repairable even if significantly more difficult than it needs to be. Either learn to do it yourself or start looking for someone to repair it.
@@Luke00722 Yes it's is repairable, but only using used parts that are ridiculously expensive. And then it takes a ridiculous amount of work and knowledge to make it work, and that is if it survives the operation.
Oh yea, and did I say used parts? That means that even if you do the operation you end up with memory that has already had some write operations, how many you don't know. It could well be about to kick the bucket any time.
Then they will want you to "give" it back to them, so they can take it apart, and reuse the parts to sell to another person, the cycle continues...
Couple of things to add:
1. Apple has multiple manufacturer's that provide them ssd chips and you cannot mix and match them easily. Only certain ones can be put with other ones. The LTT forum post covers this.
2. Apple clearly did this to save money. Because then you don't need an spi chip to boot. It all comes down to money. Apple looked at the costs for warranty repair and decided the initial savings of not having to have an spi chip to boot saved them money in the long run.
That would be a valid argument for apple but its not like spi chips are expensive they cost peanuts compared to their friggin profit margins they make on each one of these things
"Cost savings"
Not only they ask for ludicrous prices in return for absolutely fat profit margins (remember, Apple is a TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY for a reason) but also, the cost savings by cheapening out on components, they'll NEVER pass it to the consumers.
Even with the fact that current SSD NANDs are now more affordable per gigabyte, Apple still charges a premium for each gigabyte of storage. They will NEVER back down on their egregious pricing.
In fact, they even frame themselves as a luxury brand (and not even calling themselves as a tech company) anymore. The only two ways for Apple to stop this greedy practice is #1, stop buying Apple products or #2, call for government intervention or legislation which will force Apple and other companies to comply (take note of the EU laws for removable batteries as example.)
@@Jan-xf8sk Sadly the EU is probably the best hope for now, our (US) government loves to ass-kiss corporations to a fault.
*manufacturers
"saved them money in the long run" And fucks the environment too, in the long run.
I almost shelled out $1500 for a new MacBook in February this year. Watching this video, I am happy I bought a laptop instead where I do can upgrade the SSD (and I did so a month ago, from 512 GB to 2 TB for around $150), and I can boot from the bios if the SSD bricks. Thanks, Louis, for educating us!
Ngl Macbooks are only good for the processors
welcome to The PC master race
Its good to see you talk about this issue again Louis, and thank you for tagging our video!
We are working on a video to replace the NANDs on these 16-inches using donor NANDs from other MacBooks (I know it sucks a lot because the unknown TBW). But maybe we can just put 120GB just to keep it running and alive not filling the landfills..
It's really sad when we dont even have any choice right now.
Much respect to you. You guys are doing some next level stuff.
Apple could have prevented NAND failure blowing the power supply by putting a fusible link in the power line. But that would have hit their bottom line. So they just let it destroy the whole machine, so boosting sales.
Any properly designed power supply should be capable of shutting off in fractions of a second in the event of a short. Don't need a fuse
Simple solution for all this crap would be a law that prohibits manufacturer to sell products that cannot be repaired by third party repairer. It could be an EU legislation or/and US federal law. This would also reduce e-waste and natural resource exploitation.
EU *regulation or US statute/regulation
Yes, except that the lobbying efforts would neuter those laws before they went into effect, lawsuits to reduce the enforcement of those laws, and after all that major engineering efforts to BARELY comply while still finding new ways to screw the customers.
Take out the "US" part and we might have some hope. Our government is straight up gay for corporations so they'll never put any real regulations out.
@@doctahjonezThe phrase "gay for" when meaning fixated on or enamored with needs to die.
In the EU this is new requirement next to interchange batteries next but in my opinion this law is not strong going enough.
This reminds me in a way of how consoles like the Wii would put the ""bios"" inside the NAND, so if that ever died or got corrupted you're not booting the console ever again. This should not ever be the case with computers.
Actually the way Flash/ NAND memory is used in the consumer electronics hardware space favors the manufacturer BOM and reduces device lifespan. One example Casio's old graphic calculators had the OS in a Mask Rom, later in 2000 in a flash chip. Algebra -FX 2.0 but at least the data was backed up to an SRAM with a backup battery, so you are not wearing out the Flash. On new versions ex CG-50 the OS and the bios is on the NAND and every operation you do on the calculator writes on this NAND, so it will eventually brick the calculator. Same with PS5, Switch etc. The days of hardware preservation and MaskRoms or even EPROMS are gone.
@@dfloper This is awful, so practically Apple it is just the leader in these failures being notable sooner?
The NAND on the wii is at least standard, so you could in theory flash a blank chip and fix the system (wii-u NAND is even easier and can literally be wired to an SD card breakout), the actual "bios" actually happens on the hardware level, the NAND only handles the OS, channels, and save files.
Should they have used an EEPROM for the OS and only used an external SD card for the rest? Yes.
Does it matter as much when it's possible to repair with a soldering iron and a flash programmer? No.
On the other hand, my Wii system was bought back in '08 and it still plays smash bros like a motherhubbard.
When it breaks it breaks, but thats at least a decade away.
Actually there are multiple levels of "bios". For you to actually boot from NAND you must have already ran the code to initialize all peripherals, etc.
Having the bios and os and everything on 1 chip in case of embedded systems actually reduces the cost dramatically and exlcuding few open source cases there wouldn't be any use for you to actually be able to boot own OS. You still need image of the OS. What's the problem if it includes a bit of bios too.
Note that in case of Wii, the NAND was common component, with common layout.
Problem in case of Apple is that there already are standards, which work and were used previously. If the NAND then has custom OS inside I'd argue it's actually anti-invention as it can very easily slowdown the memory itself. And also creating own chips just so they can't be bought is just plain bad, next level of epoxy over chips...
Other manufacturers: Lets put two bios chips so if one fails second one works and restores the first
Apple: lets put 0 bios chips lol
God forbid, we’re able to replace the SSD and memory, without needing to go to Apple for permission!
I just bought a 2TB ssd to upgrade the storage on my gaming laptop. Stuff like this is why I could never buy a Macbook.
Was checkin macbook pro 16" $3500 + 8tb ssd +$2200
I bought 4tb ssd for $170. 8tb nvme is $340. A whole 4070 laptop with 32gb ram and 1tb is $1700.
So with the 8tb soldered ssd price upgrade price for mac, you can buy 4070 gaming laptop with 8tb nvme ssd and get extra 1 tb ssd which you can put on external case and become usb drive.
I just upgraded mine to 1 TB.
@@rtbear674 I only paid $100 for 2TB, the markup Apple has for its storage upgrades should be illegal.
Apple Fanboys will tell you that nobody is upgrading his/her Laptop - (almost) never...
Or just buy the config you need - so there is no need to upgrade later…
Or just buy the max. config….and other silly things.
I don’t think it makes much sense to argue with them at all.
BTW: While their where whole business models based on the fact that they could make a cut selling MacBooks/iMacs upgrades or upgraded MacBook/iMacs for less than Apple and still make a decent margin on these:
I upgraded almost any computer I owned at some point. Best example my Sony Vaio that came with 256GB SSD 8GB - which was the max. config sold at that time - and now runs 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD + 2 TB HDD(installed in the DVD-ROM-Drive Bay).
Even my 2012 MBP 15" is upgraded from a HDD so SSD and from 8GB to 16 GB RAM - but I really try to avoid to buy any new Mac.
I remember when my 2006 Mac Pro was no longer able to upgrade operating systems because Apple stopped supporting 32 bit computers. I was confused because i thought they had 64 bit architecture. Apple made the decision to limit those Mac Pros to 32 bit mode in the firmware. Could Apple have offered a firmware upgrade? Yes! Did they? No! Did people hack their own firmware upgrade? Yes! Did i install it? No! I was too afraid of bricking my machine. Now I am back to the land of PCs never to return to using a Mac.
Using the NAND for boot is cheaper by deleting parts. Does Apple charge less? No.
It's cheaper for them
Apple is a TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. They'll never pass those manufacturing savings to their customers. You have to take those sweet profits out of their cold, dead hands first.
They will never back down on this business practice.
It's not deleting parts and definitely not cheaper because of the T2 chip, it costs like a 100 times more than an SPI flash. And that flash is still used, it contains the iBoot bootloader for the T2, it's just 1 MB instead of 8. A normal solution is just making the flash 16 MB to fit both iBoot and the UEFI firmware, or adding an 8 MB flash for the firmware, but it's more profitable for Apple to store it on the NAND.
This same crap happened to my father in the 70-90's...got harder and harder to get little parts like resistors and diodes for tv, vcr/camera repair. He just gave it up.
ICs I would believe but resistors and diodes? I guess it depends on what country you're in. In Australia there are plenty of retail shops like Jaycar and Altronics that sell that stuff. I guess in the USA and UK it's mostly mail order only (DigiKey, Mouser, Farnell etc). Still, there is a huge range of parts available. Just not Apple specific parts like the ones Louis complains about (other OEMs no doubt too).
I imagine it's more of a case that the problem became physically replacing said resistor. Nowadays they can be very tiny, so itd be a hassle/pain to solder or read the values, if even marked
The best way to force a customer to buy a new laptop, 100% guarantee the SSD will fail, it's only a matter of time
sweet sweet recurring revenue..
Or they simply fill it up, which is especially likely given that the machine is already premium priced and most people probably won't pay extra for additional storage up front.
Except on PCs, assuming it's not soldered-on eMMC, if the SSD fails or you outgrow its capacity, you can either replace the failed drive or add a second drive, even NVMe drives on desktop boards that only have one m.2 slot via a PCIe riser card as long as the board's new enough to support NVMe, and SATA SSDs for any PC, desktop or laptop, made in the last 10-20 years, and even IDE-era hardware with a SATA to IDE adapter.
And it's really telling when vintage Macs have better community support, than modern Macs have for OEM support, like on a 68k-era Mac, viable modern hard drive replacements exist via the BlueSCSI among other SCSI hard drive replacement solutions, and the Floppy Emu takes care of any floppy disk woes, eg. iike on a Mac 128/512/Plus that only takes 800kB disks, and that officially can't boot off a hard drive, Floppy Emu would be a godsend for those earliest Macs in particular as 800kB disks are particularly hard to find or write for those where the Floppy Emu can just boot a disk image of the latest Mac OS version those older models could support.
It has been engineered. The less ram the mac has the sooner will wear the ssd.
I'm proud to say I have never purchased or owned an Apple product and I never will!
Yay . Down crApple
I have only one apple product I like, and it's an old iPad nano I found in the street, still works fine after ~6 years of usage, with the only damage being some dings in the casing and a little bit of warping on the outer screen
@@nezhaprime6195 Rest in peace lol those Nanos have some crazy batteries, the warping is the first symptom. If I were you i'd toss that thing in a cement box.
@doctahjonez6946 nah the warping isnt new, it's been there since I first found it. it's less physical warping and more some dirt or something
@@nezhaprime6195 Thats good, glad to know I won't be seeing you on the news lol.
Its like putting your car brakes on your tires, if you pop a tire you also lose the ability to stop.
Literally just finished the other video! Also love call to actions in educational videos like these!
Looks like Dosdude1 just did a succesfull swap of NAND upgrading a M1 Mac Mini from 256gb to 2tb, the trick was using blank NANDs instead of salvaged ones, and then he was able to restore using DFU (this was shown on his and Luke Miani's channel today) while data recover would still probably be impossible on the old NAND, sounds like this could be used to repair
Yes! I was looking for someone pointing that out. Not sure if most people here care tho...
I feel a class action lawsuit coming in a few years. What Apple is doing is just ridicules.
Remember the butterfly keyboard fiasco and the "batterygate"? Well Apple will just pay fines no matter how many class action lawsuits you slap on them. Paying them is peanuts for Apple.
Apple is not only a trillion dollar company, but also a huge legal and PR machine. They'll never change unless you make Apple near bankruptcy that will make them realize.
The only problem with that is that a class action lawsuit for is able is a rounding error in their balance sheet
no, that would require fanboys to stop being retarded.
I’ve got a MacBook. But it always felt like Apple were greedy bastards. Even when Jobs was around.
Glad I'm into custom pcs. I had my ssd go into read only mode with 1% life. Literally threw the entire drive data onto my 6tb. Drove to Best buy, bought an SSD, installed it with new windows and was playing games with the homies in an hour.
Thats why custom PCs are the best, apple normies dont know what they are missing lmao
Ok, after Luis has stated his points ten times, over and over again, I will stick to my Win10 desk tops, where I can replace every part.
Linux my dude. Own the whole system.
I swear there are pictures of Louis hanging on the walls of Apple HQ and bonuses are paid each time your design decision screws over Louis and gets featured in a video.
Apple is proving the concept of "just because you can does not mean that you should."
Planned obscenity I mean obsolescence
Thanks to the new SSD architecture, the data in the Macbook is so secured that even the owner cannot access it.
Its no longer planned obsolescence, its forced/ insured obsolescence. It feels like They are no longer happy with things failing and being hard to repair they want to insure things will die and stay dead.
Connects are one of the most expensive parts in a system. Apple is being cheap while also charging their cultists a fortune.
Compaq (prior to being bought by HP) did this back in the 90's where they store their BIOS on a separate partition of the HDD instead of in a chip.
This introduced a ton of headaches, especially if you didn't have a backed-up copy of said BIOS. This maybe lasted a couple of years before the issues started cropping up. Not just hard-drive deaths, but malware could also make your PC completely unsalvageable unless you could get a "ghosted" image of the BIOS partition from another same model Compaq machine.
Questions started popping up about security implications as well. Keeping the BIOS on such easily corruptible storage instead of a dedicated chip made it extremely vulnerable to attack.
In computer science class we did some repair on one of those Compaq computers. We started it up to make sure everything was good, called the teacher over to show them we were done with their assignment.
While the teacher was there another kid pointed to the bios chip and asked "what's this?" then they accidentally bumped it. The computer instantly died. Dunno if they ever got it running again.
@@Fulano5321 Hope that kid failed his computer science class, cause he totally deserves to for that lmao
I recall that they had the BIOS in ROM, but the setup interface you use to configure the BIOS was on a separate partition of the HDD. It was a hidden DOS partition that it boots when you want to configure and it runs a graphical DOS interface to present the settings.
In apples case they will just pay the fine or make the necessary revision for the following year so that the injunction "haha I can dream" can be avoided by returning to sensible design. These large companies are beyond past the point of having any proper oversight. The only solution is heavy handed "fair, sensible" regulations to force their hand to NOT do evil.
I sure do love singleboard computers, what a great concept! That way it makes everything way worse off when something fails on an expensive item item like this.
I'm seriously considering going back to Windows for my next laptop purchase simply because of Apple's nasty self-destruct hardware features. My homemade gaming PC runs Windows 10 as good as any Mac I've ever used and it uses standard off the shelf parts. The days of Windows randomly rebooting and crashing to the BSOD seem to be ancient history.
Blue Screen often results from hard drive failures, not from Windows.
Yes, a hardware failure can cause any system to crash, but the term BSOD came into being because earlier versions of Windows were so unstable that the BSOD was essentially a "feature" of Windows. @@japaneseost2137
@@japaneseost2137mainly from hardware failures
@@-Blue-_but dumb sheeps dont know that.
Surely the important message about repairability needs to be in the minds of purchasers thinking about their next machine - maybe a score based on costs to fix typical failures? Also other manufacturers need to see this as a weak point for Apple rather than something to copy ... maybe an award and publicity for manufacturers doing the right thing??
Lost a 2019 16" macbook pro this way. It died from water damage, just that the water damage was about 2 drops of water that randomly made their way inside somewhere around the left hinge and in a couple of weeks/months degraded something that ultimately shorted the ssd... from a drop or two of water....
8:23 bonus black cat appears on screen! There should be a 24 hour IRL cat channel for the "Rossmann's Cats".
Tim Pool streams his chickens.
Thanks Louis you saved me couple of grand I was planning to buy one when I was in Apple store I decided to watch reviews of course your video pop up. I quickly walked out of the store still on the look out for replacing my 9 year old dell XPS 15.
framework laptops
@@emeraldsnorlax8719 they changed arm and leg to deliver to my country
Framework! But if you want a 16" one you need to make that Dell last another year.
Asus zen 2 duo for productivity and rogs for gaming
Framework
It's only Apple fans that keeps Apple in business.
So basically Luis is saying that Apple designed a proprietary component with the propensity to fail, and never offered a fix for it even though Apple knew of the problem. I've heard of planned obsolescence, but Apple apparently is taking it to a new level of deceit, powered by agreed. Once Luis peeled back the onion to expose that Apple might've actually designed certain components to fail. In other words components have a limited operating life by design.
Replacing NAND is one thing, you would also have to replace the software loaded ONTO the NAND.
And how easily do you think it would be to get said software?
That's actually easy apple makes that available very easily
@@rossmanngroup Well, i feel dumb
"Hey everybody, I hope you're having a lovely " is becoming a phrase I associate with bad news. I'm glad you're here though Louis, calling out bad practices and showing the truth behind a lot of the smoke and mirrors that these companies try to get away with.
"Hey everybody, hope you are having a lovely day, because I am going to ruin it for you in less than five minutes."
I wonder how apple would respond if regulators with actual power and integrity gave them an ultimatum to do either a payment model where replacements must be free of charge for as long as payments are scheduled, or make their computers repairable by third parties, with repairability being assessed by the third parties.
The EU will, like we started with the universal/usb-c charger
@@viguiry The EU is remotely securing U.S. freedoms more than the U.S. government right now lmao
It sounds like Apple figured out what was causing the shorts on the older boards, and then instead of deciding to fix it, they decided to encourage it.
They purposely admired it because that means HERE COMES THE MONEY!!!!!! For the ceo so apple can stay a billion/trillion dollar company
This is for security purpose. Our ssd will never break. -Apple
They lie so much, that I put less trust into them, than into Russian government. And Russian government is not something you should to trust at all.
Then you notice Apple is using by default SSD as RAM space if you run out RAM.
Enjoy the speeded up process of SSD wearing out if you open too many tabs in browser or your Apple Genuine mouse bug happens where mouse cursor starts stealing out gigabites of ram for it.
@@XantheFIN do you not know what a page file is?
@@spaghettiupseti9990 This discussion is about macos system not windows. Macos uses virtual memory sorry. Linux has swap partition(s).
Or be free continue talk but i dont understand what hell your point is now or you missed my point.
@@XantheFIN my point is that windows uses the exact same thing
Hynix chips are becoming a problem for old Nintendo consoles (specifically the Wii U). The NAND corrupts after not being powered on for a while, bricking the operating system (which has no "restore from USB" functionality like Xbox or PlayStation does).
That can happen to your MacBook, if Hynix didn't fix that design flaw.
Whoa, is the original Wii (pre-homebrew) also affected?
@@cielazul713 I believe that Samsung made all the Wii NAND chips, and Wii U chips after a certain date.
@@thepwrtank18 Phew! Thank you, my Wii is safely stored away in its original retail box for years now and I was worried as it holds sentimental value to me. I would be sad if I had unknowingly condemned it to permanent failure.
@@cielazul713 All NAND will gradually lose its memory over time. It takes time (years), but it will happen. If it uses NAND, it will need to be turned on and allowed to refresh itself.
I very much dont feel like you have to be happy to make a great video, I watch all your rant videos and find them very entertaining!
Say hi to these guys for excellently done content: th-cam.com/video/yR7m4aUxHcM/w-d-xo.html
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:18 - Part 1 - Apple begins soldering on the SSD w/ A1706 & A1707 model in 2016
00:30 - If SSD dies, you can still turn machine on & boot from a flash drive, USB-C external drive, etc
01:03 - Part 2 - Apple adds the T2 chip in 2018
01:45 - T2 chip runs bridgeOS which is stored on NAND
02:01 - T2 chip necessary for computer to turn on. If NAND corrupts/dies, machine CANNOT BE TURNED ON AT ALL!
02:39 - This NAND is propriatery custom designs that cannot be purchased on its own
03:45 - Donor Macbook boards with NANDs cost $300+ and have used NAND that may have 50 TB of write cycles
04:24 - Only place to buy these NANDs new is a 1 TB SSD kit on apple.com for $600...
05:17 - Part 3 - New NANDs die more often in a way that destroys power to the entire machine
06:09 - This was NOT a problem with the older, standard NANDs
06:48 - Apple drives the industry forward with common sense innovation - I appreciate that
08:32 - Too often, these innovations come at the cost of common sense design, durability, repairability, and reliability
09:38 - These new custom NANDs fail WAY TOO OFTEN
09:58 - Thesis
12:16 - This isn't fun anymore
17:25 - Repeating myself, because my name is Louis Rossmann
17:55 - Pre-written rebuttal to the engineer's argument
This is not Wednesday morning
@@dcogs8856 I was literally about to reply with this lol. You beat me to it by 13 minutes
iBoff RCC's video is great! Lots of graphics and diagrams and warnings of things that will cause problems. I don't use or repair Macs but it's interesting to see all the details of the NAND chips and limitations.
@8:24 - two cats teleport in
You vibe the same as the "everything is fine" dog
You can't have this many short to ground problems and other massive problems with the device you are producing with every single version you produce without it being introduced malicious malfunctions.
Or a complete failure to test destructively BEFORE taking the thing to market.
Well, they could have done the testing and just ignored/buried it.
@MonkeyJedi99 the arrangement with the different devices constantly having the same exact problem over and over again means that they are actually doing it intentionally. I have seen year after year of new devices with the exact same shorting problem with Apple. I'm not claiming that there aren't other manufacturers that have the same or worse problems only that if they are making the same mistakes over and over again there is a point where you can't deny the fact that it is intended. It might not be directly malicious but something along the lines of their machines that produce the devices requires you to trace everything out for the wire/cable paths and they are simply too lazy to make a change that would increase the durability and life of the product or it could be a case of them simply making only the bare minimum number of changes to each product before it ever gets to the manufacturing machines. Both of these are possible options for where it originally came from but keeping the problems is an intended choice to reduce the life span of the product.
About 8 months ago, I bought a 512 GB Mac mini 2018. According to the S.M.A.R.T status, it had 95% of lifetime left. If it's accurate, I got pretty lucky. However, after just one OS reinstall and Time Machine restore, it went down to 94%. Now I'm just very cautious about saving bigger files on the internal drive, to avoid too many write cycles.
It's insane that users who pay thousands for a brand-new computer has to worry about this.
I almost bought M2 15" Air or M2 Max Pro. Thanks Luis for saving money. I will stick as long as possible with my 2015 15" MBP. If things won't change, bye bye Apple. This also applies to cars. I want to OWN things, owning is much cheaper than leasing.
even worse the Apple SSDs are software locked and the software tool to unlock and re-assign the new installed apple replacement SSD is only available via Apple repair as a repair order only!
7:31 This is what I told many of my friends who didn't know any better. Heck they didn't even knew that mac used to have intel CPU xD. HDD were and still the worst botttleneck in general performance of any PC if your OS is installed on it.
I've seen m.2 1TB SSD for under 30 bucks on sale a few times in the past week, 600 for 1tb is a joke
Apple isn't selling SSDs. They are selling NAND modules. There are no controllers on those boards, only storage chips. It's a custom part for which they can charge whatever they want, thus the cost.
I hope the eu follows the battery regulation up with some generic expandable storage regulation. Regulation is the only way to help us consumers.
Barrier to entry is just too high in these fields (laptops, mobile phones, gpus)
Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD is around $100, and it's on the high tier of Internal SSD, what fcking sht does Apple even include on their objectively worse (proprietary) SSD that needs $500 mark up?
It just doesn't make any sense, with $600 I can probably buy Steam Deck with 512GB storage. If it's a joke, it doesn't even funny, it's insulting.
@@DeanRikrikIchsanHakiki the samung 970 1TB m.2 was $30 in microcenter on sale
Think different seems to be the translation from dont think, gimme lots of ur money🤮. Upgrades and accessoires were always insane compared to PCs.
Thank you for removing all doubt about Apple. When they introduced the whitepaper on T2 it was clear that their Notebooks would be unrepairable.
Honestly, with the M.2 form factor there's no reason to solder SSDs onto the board any more. You don't want a 2.5" brick taking up space and making the laptop thicker, I get it, but you can get SSDs barely any thicker than a PCB now.
Yeah it makes 0 sense, until you realize they actually WANT your laptop to break after a year or two, they know EXACTLY how long those laptops last...
If only people would start and listen to what you say and do eventually we could stop supporting this so called "tech giants" by not buying there shit . Appreciate and respect what you do Mr. Louis!
Hi @Louis...I got to a point to sell Apple product (MacBook Pro 14" A2442)...
It is a used device, I used it also for 2-3 months...It looks perfectly fine, working fine but informations revealed are scary.
Knowing that it could just die randomly, unreparable...
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!
EDIT: my first and last MacBook
Seems like I was the only one concerned about this when it was introduced some 5 years ago, glad to see you finally covering it !
More like Solid Snake Drives
Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's solid snek drive!
Soldered SSDs are such a stupid design decision by Apple and their competitors that have started to do the same with their laptops.
I really would like to get one of the Apple Silicon MacBook Airs but it is incredibly concerning that when the SSD dies the laptop becomes a paperweight.
Try and go for a lower-end ASUS, if possible(assuming you don't care for/need a high-powered laptop, though if you do, also ASUS). Been a reliable brand for me. NEVER buy crapple.
It's not stupid. They know that their customers are dumb and that's why they can get away with it.
For ultra portable devices (like tablets or 2in1s) it is not a bad choice, really. If you know that you will never upgrade, soldered RAM and SSD (or even eMMC/ U2 etc) can result in a device that is more resistant to shocks. Of course that design should not be the only one you can get - and I am pointing not only at Apple, but also at Lenovo and other manufacturers that are not giving you modular options. Of course one day we may end up with TCM CPU modules having all storage and RAM in single package. While this also could be beneficial for some applications (you essentially get computer you could solder into any design without hassle of high-speed routing) when one part of such TCM SoM fails - it is dead as whole.
@@brylozketrzyn I dread the day they cram everything in one package and force you tu upsell hard on storage.
I hope the eu follows the battery regulation up with some expandable storage regulation. Regulation is the only way to help us consumers.
Barrier to entry is just too high in these fields (laptops, mobile phones, gpus)
@@raldone01 I am afraid, that all in one packages would be just too convenient (as electronics engineer I loved them too). You would still get some modular laptops for enormous prices and with lower specs and then affordable powerful ones but with limited or none repairability. Just look at CPUs - most of them already come with GPU and north bridge integrated. Next iteration was embedded TPM and platform management. Rise of high density SSDs may attract chipmakers to put them on die (or as chiplet on a single interposer). I know the benefits of separate ICs, but I am afraid we will see soon designs having just two chips - SoM and PMIC - on small PCB. And all the regulations will be seen as attempt to withhold innovation. That being said I do prefer having everything reasonably discrete, but at the end of a day you buy what you can buy.
At this point, just start a class action lawsuit and contact all your customers who had this specific issue to join the lawsuits
Self-Destructing Nand is something companies have been doing for a long time few people know about it I think my HTC G2 android phone had it really shady buisness practice it's drug dealer tactics
The LG G3/4 had it's share of eMMC crapping out issues and the G2 having the digitizer crapping out.
I didn't even see the cat until you pointed him outm shame about what is going on in the tech repair industry. I totally support your cause, man.
It’s unfortunate because I really enjoy apples software and I like how their hardware is when it works. Stuff like this though makes me want to get a Framework for my next laptop
"You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, not our eggs, the customers' eggs" - Apple, probably
Problem is apple runs a truck over their customers "eggs" again and again and they still ask them for more ;) That's what i don't get ...
I can't tell if Apple engineers are legitimately incompetent or are just following orders to be completely evil.
Column B may be taking advantage of column A though.
They have the best engineers. Following orders 100%.
Knowingly following orders AND purposely designing it for early/frequent failure. Should any engineer's guilt ever flare up, Apple management simply slaps them back in line with a fat wad of cash.
@@dfloperhow do you know they re the best?
In a few short years they managed seemingly impossible tasks like making their own CPU (arm based) that beats the Intel equivalent in power/performance. Also they have better performance than Qualcomm and Samsung equivalent which had dedicated CPU teams for years.
Other impossible fit they managed is to have a competitive GPU. I thought it was crazy at the time when they decided to stop using PowerVR (Imagination tec) in their phones. Even the AMD Radeon Group which are veterans in GPU's cooperated with Samsung and still could not beat the apple mobile GPU. I am not an apple fanboy by the way. Just to achieve those tasks you need good engineers. Even Microsoft which is a huge company is using other IP (AMD) and they make the XBOX for them. Apple does it internally. @@Teluric2
A teleporting cat.. Glad mine can't do that.
Wow, that is actually malicious/draconic. That alone makes every MacBook a ticking time-bomb of you losing data, irreversibly so and guaranteed. .. typed on a MacBook .. 💣
Yeah better have apple care 😂
Always have backup all important data to cloud drive and other drives. or buy a 4tb ssd $170ish, put it on mobile casing. And set your mac to backup to time machine to that drive everyday.
You just described every single modern piece of technology
@@ghost-user559 Last time I checked its not industry standard to brick the machine if the storage fails, to make you understand, imagine your iPhone kills itself once the battery died.
@@owlmostdead9492 Huh. Guess you haven’t been paying attention to car manufacturers lately? And most tech companies have proprietary software and or hardware locks which prevents repair without getting an “authorized service provider”. This goes from cell phones cars to evs to smart appliances. And yes essentially an iPhone is identical and is dead if the ssd were to fail? There is no SD card? You lose the os if you your lose storage.
And any device in which storage fails, except an Hdd where you might be able to use data recovery, you will still lose everything at any point if there is a failure, and it will “brick your machine” until you reinstall the Os. This is just as terrible but with extra steps. And in any case the solution is regularly backing up your device. And a warranty.
I’m just saying since flash storage became normal and useless cloud integration and circuitry was put into every appliance on earth, everything from a coffee maker to an oven to a refrigerator or television is absolutely impossible to repair.
"Solder everything" - modern electronic device manufacturers
They'll soon start stripping isolation from cables just to solder them to cases
When your dead SSD is a "status symbol"...lol.
Status symbol with macs only do exist for teenagers
I wish I would have seen your video before ever getting a MacBook a month ago. Now I have to see about having an external SSD to back everything up, at least I’ll have that as a backup.
Also remember you from years ago when you were doing the Kinko’s circuit for IT classes. Don’t know if you remember it was in the South Center plaza south of Seattle. That and we had that shallow earthquake that registered at 2.7 that shook the building like an hollow glass and metal box. That I think you will remember because you said you’d never forget that. Lol 😂😊
Linux philosophy: everything is a file
Apple philosophy: everything is iOS
(didn't know about bridgeOS)
everething is always a file of some sort, what do you mean?
@@Splarkszter in Linux , even the harddisk , devices, processes , terminal (tty) are files(or file descriptor) and you can read and write(sometime) on these files
@@sunnymishra1057 Because Linux is a Unix clone. However, you do have ioctl to do the other things. So, yes, you have the standard creat, read, write, etc., but for anything that is not exactly a sequential file, you use ioctl. Does it mean everything is a file? Well, the devices have the device "files", but they are not really files. You will see the major and minor device numbers.
Still, BSD sockets, for instance, file descriptor based, are more popular than SysV networking equivalent. For some reason, SysV networking thing, I forgot what it is called, just did not catch on. It actually felt more elegant when I was using it. Like under five times. Even Microsoft ported the BSD sockets to Windows initially. Except they put in all the annotations, as usual, if you wanted it to work using Visual Studio. Not sure how it works any more.
@@sunnymishra1057 oh, i didn't know that, interesting. thanks for the info.
The M1 silicon had me seriously considering buying a new Apple computer. The new SSD's make that completely out of the question. What genius came up with the idea of not only soldering in a wear component but to also place the bios on it? Even if the Nands didn't randomely short to ground, a soldered in wear component makes this a non-starter.
I just got 2TB samsung 980pro for $120, SSD price are crashing hard but since SSD are soldered on Macbook Apple can still charge $600 for 2TB SSD.
Don't forget to update the firmware on that one!
@@peterpain6625 fortunately mine come with the latest firmware that is not bugged.
Hey, if Apple users are only willing to buy from Apple that is the price they pay.
@@giglioflex It's a bit like crack i suppose. Just that the first hit is already ridiculously expensive ;)
If there was a class action lawsuit, would there be discovery of internal emails, to determine if this was intentionally designed to fail?
Imagen a car that you have to either throw away or replace the complete chassis, when you wear down the brake pads. And the egine not turning on until you did that.
Yes! I remember vividly that Sata cable thing... had to replace them with one from the previous models I had as donors. Kinda like they did with that Display LVDS cable thing... Those NANDS have micros inside.... GEEE! That make me wonder! :)) 😅
On second thoughts, maybe those are all internal sabotage... anyone, bueller?
*17:48* Of course there is engineering reason for why they did it.
It engineers them more money!
I really hope that Linux Apple simp engineer has another BS social media take because of this vid, but I bet he'd rather not expose his obvious bias yet again lol
Don't give up Louis. We are here for you.
for 600$ u can just buy a lenovo laptop and be happier
Every apple macbook user who approves of soldered parts but that would make me poor I like the fact that you get less and can't repair it and replace parts
The discussion on whether the inability to continue using the computer upon SSD failure is pure coincidence due to tight integration, or intentional malice, would be really interesting.. It's all speculation of course, and it can very well be that the omission of a SPI flash chip for the bios is purely for cost savings
With each day I find new hatred for Apple.
Someone should legit take them to court over this as planned obsolescence. You can literally source the rated reads & writes of those chips with the argument of a "professional" daily workload average on them. If it causes the device to fail potentially in less than 5 years reasonably unfix-able I argue a class action suit could win. Granted I'm not a layer but my father was and I listen to him talk constantly.
They may have also concocted the T2 chip to fight the Hackintosh market. Really I think Linux would be a good alternative that is not locked down the way that Apple likes it to be.
You seem to forget that it is not a bug, but a feature. Design feature. Wear part unavailable anywhere? That is deliberate design feature.
Why Wednesday?
Is this the case on the mac studio or only macbooks?
I love Louis but at some point he needs to realize that Apple doesn’t consider him to be their target audience. They don’t care if his job is fun.
This is coming from an ex-Apple customer that moved away because of the anti-customer decisions they constantly make.
Since when apple let you know what they re thinking? Are you tim cook besty?
Thanks for bringing this to light. Maybe Apple will change it’s ways if enough people complain loudly enough, just as they did with adding more ports again, and with the butterfly keyboard issue. I’d gladly sacrifice some read/write speed for an SSD I can replace/upgrade when needed. If this ever happens to me, I’ll be looking into Hackintosh laptop from then on.
Agreed. People said that Hackintosh were dead when the M1 Macs came out, but I'm seriously considering doing another OpenCore hack when my Mac Mini dies...
The biggest problem (IMO) isn’t that the BIOS is stored on the NAND, but that the controller on that NAND seems to regularly fail so spectacularly.
My macbook pro failed this way. One day while using it it froze and shut down. Left speaker area, where the NANDs are, started heating up like crazy. And it stayed hot for 3 hours, till the battery died. Entire motherboard had to be replaced
Crazy.. I used to love Macs.. but they’ve just made things worse, and worse, and worse.. and that’s just from a user standpoint.. if I was actually trying to run a business fixing the damn things…😫
8:23 “Prepare for trouble!
And make it double!”
Thanks for this episode, I have been looking to buy a new apple macbook air, to put my 2013 air out to retirement land. Vaguely aware about some security chips that Apple put into place, this clears it up in a concise way. I am going to use my 2013 air with only 200 battery cycles, update it to either Ubuntu or Open Core as a travel laptop, and use a cheap beelink min PC as a desktop.
I thought your original vid made this all perfectly clear, Louis.
I know that framework exists, but are there parts out there that you can use to build your own laptop like how you can build your own desktop pc?