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Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

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Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#161
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does the iPhone XS Max. When has that ever stopped them? :)

This isn’t true for the Mac Mini, and it isn’t true for iPhone either. Apple’s margins are rarely over 40% on their consumer hardware.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apples-iphon...

... You were saying?

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#162

The new mac mini makes a constant electrical noise when I move the mouse. It is audible and irritating >2 meters away from the mac. I have tried hubs, different ports and nothing else connected. It is ok with a wireless mouse, lower polling rate. The fan is quiet, not irritating. I might have sensitive hearing. Many modern gadgets are a pain in the ear. This type of noise digs deep and ruins the mood. I am sending it…

This is abnormal.. I would try to get a replacement from Apple

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has that changed in the current generation? On the XBox 360, you could physically stick any standard IDE drive in the drive bay, but the console wouldn't mount it unless it had a hidden file verifying that it was purchased from Microsoft, which charged well over market value.

IIRC they were also using a clever (sneaky) application of copyright law to enforce this. They used a few special sectors on the disk to store an image to which they hold the copyright. The Xbox checks to make sure the image is there in the right spot before it will use the drive. So you can't pass off another drive as valid without violating their copyright.

That was tried with early video game consoles, and did not succeed legally.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter counter point, my 128gb 2013 mbp I use for development has 90gb of “system” cruft somehow and I regularly have to shuffle files around, and have been thinking I need to re-image it since I can’t dig deeper into what the “system” bucket is made up of easily.

I have the exact same issue. I have 256gb in my MBP, but 162gb are used by system files. I can't seem to figure out what is being used and how to clear it out.

I’ve been very happy with Daisy Disk over the years.

https://daisydiskapp.com/

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#165
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more because of the PCIe interface, and access control and encryption through the T2 chip. The PCIe interfaces SSDs that Apple's been using allow really fast speeds of upto 3Gbps, which is almost double those offered by other interfaces like M2 or even more faster than SATA. What's disappointing is the base storage. 128GB in 2019 is so ridiculous. I would't otherwise mind a soldered SSD when I can just u…

PCIe SSDs are still a common point-of-failure, aren't they? I feel like they should be replaceable.

Not any more so than other major components. Last SSD failure I saw personally was back in the Sandforce days - probably 5+ years ago.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#166
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on guys, they are just ripping us off. There is no sane reason for removing m2 connector. SSDs can run pcie over m2 and there is no way they run something custom there. Its bullshit marketing that enables them to sell you overpriced ssd and mem upgrades or make you replace your PC faster.

It's not that they couldn't make m.2 PCIe NAND; it's that nobody else is making m.2 PCIe NAND. The T2's storage controller wouldn't know what to do with any other (NVMe or SATA) m.2 SSD, since then it'd be the T2's storage controller talking to the SSD's storage controller.

That's incredibly false. Literally everyone makes m.2 PCIe NAND.

In fact it's increasingly hard to find M.2 SATA these days with how overwhelmingly common PCI-E 3.0 x4 M.2 is.

And M.2 PCI-E isn't just stupid common, it's also cheap. Really, really cheap. 1TB of crazy fast PCI-E nand is $230: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B0...

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#167
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wish they had gone with m.2. It really feels like T2 is wasted in the Mac mini and just there to check a feature list. It doesn't even make much sense in a machine that is turned off instead of put to sleep.

T2 is Apple’s SSD controller. I suppose Apple does not trust controllers from other manufacturers and has enough data to see that with T2 the storage is sufficiently realible not to warrant an option to replace it even at own service facilities.

I assume they will have an expandable solution for the New Mac Pro which should of been put into the mini. This lack of repairablity is getting old.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#168
post #2

A bit disappointing to see that the storage is not user-upgradable. I guess it matters less on a device like this where you could more easily use external storage, but still. I wish Apple stopped soldering in stuff and just made things a centimeter taller if that was the tradeoff.

The bigger problem isn't that it's not user-upgradable, it's that you can't access your data in the event of a failure of any other component.

Cap blew on the motherboard? Data gone. CPU kicked the bucket? Data gone. Spilled water on it? Data gone.

Not literally gone, of course, just practically. No chance of popping the drive out and trying it elsewhere to recover data. Nope. And since Apple never repairs only replaces, you're not going to have any hope of saving your data with official repair support.

That's absolutely insane for consumer tech where backups are rare.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#169
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done this for 6 years, mini with two drobos connected to it running plex 24x7. No issues without ECC ram. I have since switched to a synology because it's easier to manage and won't have bit rot.

To clarify, I’m more concerned about silent data corruption instead of crashing. Why does Synology not have bit rot? Becuase of ZFS? I thought ECC memory is almost required for ZFS?

FWIW Synology uses BTRFS, not ZFS

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#170
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t true for the Mac Mini, and it isn’t true for iPhone either. Apple’s margins are rarely over 40% on their consumer hardware.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apples-iphon... ... You were saying?

That analysts are full of shit
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