Intel Macs - ticking time bomb?

[Pier]

Again, under normal circumstances, SSDs will outlive the device they are installed on. If you're not swapping heavily every day or doing something that writes a lot of data constantly I would't worry about it.

Coming back to this SSD thing.

I downloaded DriveDx and checked the stats of my SSD.



It says I've written about 10TB during the year I've been using this machine every single day.

My SSD is 1TB so aprox I got like 600TBW.... so about 60 years left of life. I will probably die before the SSD does!

 

[HCMarkus]

that must be a laptop thing? My desktop isn't doing that.

I'm typing on a 8GB Air... Cached Files fill up almost every shred of available RAM at the moment, but I think that, with loads of RAM, a point can be reached at which there is enough RAM available so all is not used.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

Not me. I avoid extended warranties like the plague, AC is literally the only thing I've paid for in the past because I've had 3 macs fail on me, all of which either needed a new logic board or total replacement, (and all of which were MBP's). With replacement costing me over 6k to replace my current machine's specs I prefer to take the bet and pay for AC, as it's worked out in my favor enough times... Both choices are perfectly logical IMO...

*Three* Macs requiring a logic board or total replacement?!

Really?! Out of warranty?!

Well, you're the exception who proves the rule. Your experience is one in a million. That's ridiculous.

I've bought about 25 Macs, and the only one that needed a repair was in warranty (a PowerMac with leaky liquid cooling).

Thinking about it, we did buy a PowerBook in the '90s that wasn't very good. It was thick and black plastic, I forget the model. But it didn't fail, it just wasn't very good.

 

[Pier]

*Three* Macs requiring a logic board or total replacement?!

Really?! Out of warranty?!

Well, you're the exception who proves the rule. Your experience is one in a million. That's ridiculous.

You've been extremely lucky. I've had a similar experience as Justin. I bought my first Mac in 2007 and since then 4 have failed.

During the Intel era, Apple's reliablity with laptops was all over the place. I know someone who's still using the first retina MBP released in 2012 and is in perfect condition.

Of course now with Apple Silicon their manufacturing process is completely different. Reliability and QA are super strong just like with iPads and iPhones. I've said before that the Apple Silicon laptops are almost like iPad Pros with a keyboard.

 

[jcrosby]

You've been extremely lucky. I've had a similar experience as Justin. I bought my first Mac in 2007 and since then 4 have failed.

During the Intel era, Apple's reliablity with laptops was all over the place. I know someone who's still using the first retina MBP released in 2012 and is in perfect condition.

Of course now with Apple Silicon their manufacturing process is completely different. Reliability and QA are super strong just like with iPads and iPhones. I've said before that the Apple Silicon laptops are almost like iPad Pros with a keyboard.

Yup, these were all intel macs. Two of them were the same year with GPU failures on the board (2011, well known as a year prone to failing - the models that famously caused Apple to part ways with Nvidia); another one was a 2012 and that failed. They replaced the board the 1st time on the 2011, on the 2nd one they replaced the machine... The 2012 randomly failed about 5 years in... (In addition to that the 2012 was prone to battery swelling...)

And actually come to think of it, I had an early core 2 duo MBP that had some kind of GPU failure, as the screen eventually just started spitting out random garbage... That repair was super pricy at the time, bringing me to the conclusion that I'd prefer to hedge my bets on AC... Personally I haven't regretted it.

Macbooks had a bunch of bad iterations with intel, with i9 they were heading into another complete shitshow. I'm 100% convinced that my i9 would have shit the bed if I didn't replace it with an M1 Max, as it would routinely hit around 100 degrees when I had a full project running. (Not to mention that the fans were ridiculously loud). I personally suspect we'll start seeing a lot of reports of failing i9 MB's in the next few years... (1 thread already here sadly).

I love MB's, but they're also the byproduct of Apple's obsession with "thin and light". They finally came to their senses when they beefed the form factor back up with M1 max and beyond...

 

[newbreednet]

I'm typing on a 8GB Air... Cached Files fill up almost every shred of available RAM at the moment, but I think that, with loads of RAM, a point can be reached at which there is enough RAM available so all is not used.

macOS won't release RAM that has already been used in case it's needed again.

There's a whole paging scheme in place to dynamically address the needs of your apps and processes.

In systems where there is a plethora of RAM then this could mean that not all the RAM is being used, but on 8/16GB systems it's likely to always be trending towards being "full". But it's all by design.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

You've been extremely lucky. I've had a similar experience as Justin. I bought my first Mac in 2007 and since then 4 have failed.

Four have failed out of warranty, requiring repairs that make AppleCare worth it? I think it's more that you guys are unlucky!

But I also haven't had many laptops, because I keep them for years. You don't need power for general computer stuff - email, web, text, word processing - while traveling or in waiting rooms. (My 11" MacBook Air is now ten years old.)

That may change next time I buy one, because they're now as powerful as desktop machines. But I'm still not buying AppleCare.

 

[kitekrazy]

With the Apple Car abandoned, an Apple Refrigerator with a docking station for an iPad must be in development.
Hopefully, it will come with removable shelves.

That will most likely cost extra.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

I love MB's, but they're also the byproduct of Apple's obsession with "thin and light". They finally came to their senses when they beefed the form factor back up with M1 max and beyond...

I dunno, traveling with a #5 laptop on my back was never a lot of fun. To me, MacBook Airs are a big advance - but because of the weight, not how thin they are.

But size does matter. Too bad they gave up on the 11" one.

 

[kitekrazy]

Coming back to this SSD thing.

I downloaded DriveDx and checked the stats of my SSD.



It says I've written about 10TB during the year I've been using this machine every single day.

My SSD is 1TB so aprox I got like 600TBW.... so about 60 years left of life. I will probably die before the SSD does!

Sometimes they just die. It happens for no logical reason. I don't know how many drives I had where all of the diagnostics say good but they may still die.

 

[Pier]

2011, well known as a year prone to failing - the models that famously caused Apple to part ways with Nvidia

I suffered from both Nvidiagate in 2009 and Radeongate in 2014 (less than three years after purchase). So did thousands and thousands of users.

The Mac went through some dark years when Apple was distracted with the iPhone while Jony Ive was making bad product decisions. Thank god those years are over now!

Sometimes they just die. It happens for no logical reason. I don't know how many drives I had where all of the diagnostics say good but they may still die.

Yeah but it was much more common with HDDs. Personally I've never seen an SSD fail and I've been buying SSDs for over a decade now.

 

[benwiggy]

that must be a laptop thing? My desktop isn't doing that.

There's no OS difference between laptop and desktop Macs. Here's my Mini:



It's been up for several days. If my memory usage goes up, the cached files go down, and vice versa. That's entirely standard behaviour.

After quitting a few apps, the cache immediately starts to fill. Some of that will be the apps that I just quit. Obviously, I'll need to do something with my Mac to get the cache up to a much higher level, and it will take some time.



A few more minutes, and my cache is up to 7.5Gb.

MacOS will try to use as much RAM as it can; but if it really can't find anything to do, then you'll have some empty RAM, like derelict housing.

 

[HCMarkus]

They don’t use RAID. They are made up of multiple NAND chips with a controller, but so are NVME SSDs.

Hard to get details, but here's some info I found on the subject:

An overview from ARS: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ble-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out/

From https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-mac-studio-storage.2370048

In fact the SOC, the M1, has some dedicated communication lines with each of the NANDs.

In the case of the M1 "standard" (found in the iMac / Mac mini / MacBook Air and Pro 13"), there are two PCIe dedicated channels to communicate with the 2 NANDs.

In the case of the M1 Pro / Max / Ultra (found in the MacBook Pro 14" and 16" and in the Studio), there are 8x dedicated PCIe channels to communicate with either 4 NANDs (512GB and 1TB configs) and 8 NANDS (2TB 4TB and 8 TB configs)

This MacRumors thread was started by a gent who is trying to develop a Mac Studio storage expansion kit... doesn't look like he has made it to the finish line, at least as yet.

 

[Justin L. Franks]

I dunno, traveling with a #5 laptop on my back was never a lot of fun. To me, MacBook Airs are a big advance - but because of the weight, not how thin they are.

But size does matter. Too bad they gave up on the 11" one.

I've been hoping for a while now that Apple will make another Macbook with the old 12-inch form factor. It's actually smaller than the old 11-inch MBA.

With the thinner bezels now possible, a 13-inch screen can fit in a chassis the size of the old 12-incher.

(12-inch Macbook on top, 11-inch MBA on bottom, more photos at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/12-inch-vs-11-inch-side-by-side-comparison.1870475/)

 

[HCMarkus]

Had an 11" Air and loved it around the house, but it can't compare to the 13" M1 Air, which is super light and compact yet still powerful enough to run my live MainStage rig very competently.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

Had an 11" Air and loved it around the house, but it can't compare to the 13" M1 Air, which is super light and compact yet still powerful enough to run my live MainStage rig very competently.

I hope my 2014 11" MacBook Air lasts forever, but unfortunately nothing does. So when I have to replace it, it'll be with a laptop that can double as a back-up for my Mac Studio.

Or maybe it'll replace the desktop machine. The slogan used to be "a desktop machine will always be more powerful," and I always found that unlikely. Obviously I was a true visionary, because since Apple Silicon they're pretty much equivalent.

Different application, in other words.

I've been hoping for a while now that Apple will make another Macbook with the old 12-inch form factor. It's actually smaller than the old 11-inch MBA.

Based on the comments from people who find the screen too small to see whenever these small machines come up in discussions, the reason they abandoned them is probably just that.

Also, people seem to think that bigger is always better. Usually they're right, but not always!

 

[newbreednet]

I've been hoping for a while now that Apple will make another Macbook with the old 12-inch form factor.

I loved that 12-inch Macbook so much, it always felt like it was from the future (the first Mac to have USB-C!) yet the CPU tech at the time just wasn't really there to support it.

Maybe it really was from the future, and Apple will bring it back with a faster, cooler Apple Silicon version.

I would love that.

 

[Pier]

The slogan used to be "a desktop machine will always be more powerful," and I always found that unlikely. Obviously I was a true visionary, because since Apple Silicon they're pretty much equivalent.

Still no M2 Ultra for laptops... Also if you take a high end desktop PC you'll get better performance than any Apple Silicon chip.

I do 100% agree that today you can use laptops for workloads that were previously only available for desktops.

And you don't even need a super high end MBP. Even a base M1 chip will get you the same performance as desktop chips from a couple of years ago.

 

[HCMarkus]

Even a base M1 chip will get you the same performance as desktop chips from a couple of years ago.

Pretty darn remarkable.
Also, no more leg burns from the laptop.

 

[Pier]

Pretty darn remarkable.

My mind was blown when U-He was releasing the first M1 Diva demos (with the Mini devkit) running the same aprox tracks I was running in my Ryzen 3700X.

I'm old enough to remember when Diva was released and my i7 struggled to run a couple of tracks with it...