Ever because the 2016 MacBook Professional fashions with Contact Bar, Apple has been soldering the SSD storage to the logic boards, stopping customers from simply with the ability to simply improve or swap the drives of their units.
Nonetheless, a restore YouTuber often known as iBoff, who describes himself as a “Mac Logic Board Fanatic”, has seemingly created an answer – one which doesn’t take up a lot extra house.
Historical past of Mac upgradability
Mac repairability has been steadily lowering, even previous to the Mac’s transition to Apple Silicon. As said earlier, the 2016 MacBook Professional fashions with Contact Bar had soldered SSDs, though hope wasn’t misplaced fairly but. Not many individuals know this, however the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Professional fashions with perform keys nonetheless had upgradable SSDs, because the fashions lacked a T1 chip.
Nonetheless, as soon as the bottom MacBook Professional gained help for Contact ID and the Contact Bar in 2019, Apple eliminated the upgradable SSDs.
With the 2018 Mac mini, Apple additionally reintroduced the flexibility for customers to improve their RAM modules, which wasn’t doable on the prior 2014 fashions. Nonetheless, as soon as we obtained the M1 Mac mini in 2020, we misplaced that hope once more, as no future Macs featured upgradable RAM.
The 2023 Mac Studio additionally seemingly had modular SSDs, with customers with the ability to simply entry the drive bays. Nonetheless, in follow, it isn’t really easy to improve them.
iBoff’s new modules
Though the YouTuber sadly didn’t present the method of designing, growing, and putting in the precise SSD slot, he does present the method of eradicating the SSD modules and swapping it with a better capability drive.
He states that no microsoldering is required after getting the SSD slot put in. He additionally exhibits the flexibility to improve a base mannequin M1 13″ MacBook Professional with 256GB of storage, all the best way as much as 2TB!
As soon as he swaps out the drives, he restores the pc utilizing Apple Configurator, and that’s all! The improve doesn’t take up a lot extra house, and you’ll shut the MacBook Professional with none points. iBoff additionally exhibits that the SSD velocity stays unaffected, delivering the identical efficiency as Apple’s soldered drives.
One other good good thing about this course of is repairability. If the in-built SSD modules die, the MacBook is unable to cost, as iBoff demonstrates in his video – which means that even when you had been utilizing your MacBook with an exterior SSD, the laptop computer could be unable besides.
Wrap up
Clearly, customers can’t merely set up the SSD slot on their very own, and there would must be a theoretical service for many customers to make the most of this. Nonetheless, as soon as somebody installs the slot, upgrading and swapping the SSD is absolutely user-friendly.
On the very least, the video demonstrates that Apple might present expandable SSDs in the event that they wished to, and I’m positive Apple might make a reasonably penny promoting their very own proprietary SSDs.
You possibly can watch iBoff’s full video right here:
What do you consider this improve course of? Tell us within the feedback.
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