Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. T2 could have been designed to store / recover the rom in an SPI flash too. It's just cheaper to store it on the SSD
Or, in case of failure, just enable loading the fricking EFI bios from an alternative source . It's amazing the kind of nonsense people write because it's an Apple thing - machines have been able to boot diskless for very obvious reasons and requirements ever since the 8 MiB memory chip, but in 2021 we should go without that?
Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
401–410 of 422 posts
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, my x200t, which isn't that much older, is minimally functional for the web and is effectively nonfunctional for YouTube. I keep it around because it works as a kiosk in my recording studio, but that's about it.
mpv with --script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp allows to watch Youtube videos with a fraction of the system load that Youtube demands in a browser.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. My thinkpad x230t is still going strong nearly 10 years later (extreme example). With 16GB of ram and an SSD it's still a decently capable machine. If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_ computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or if you work on large codebases, etc. But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten fas…
I still use a ThinkPad T420 running Linux for some projects. It's a tank, practically everything is replaceable (unlike in my MBP, which has already had one Butterfly Keyboard failure...) and Sandy Bridge CPUs are honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist nonsense. We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are good enough and commoditized t…
Just because you don't personally see any benefit to the advancements being made doesn't mean others don't. They're certainly still performant enough to be useful but even something like h.264 decoding puts a huge strain on my haswell laptop, which is a trivial task to newer ones thanks to advancements in chips. This isn't even an uncommon task. Anyone who watches videos online probably benefits from this, especially when it comes to laptops which are concerned with battery life.
> We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are good enough and commoditized to the point where they should be lasting 10+ years.
Cars do last 10+ years. I'm driving around in a 17 year old vehicle and it works just fine. But I don't think that means we should halt all progress in vehicles. It's still using gasoline and not running on electric motors, after all. At some point down the road perhaps we'll see commoditization of batteries in the auto industry but that's not where we're at today, where the vast majority of vehicles on the road still run on gas.
> Instead, we're moving toward a 4-year maximum with everything sealed up and soldered, so you can throw it on the e-waste pile and replace it to keep "infinite" growth chugging. The iMac is particularly offensive.
If the iMac is offensive to you, then don't buy it. All these environmental arguments on this website always come off as extremely disingenuous when they pair it with their solution being imposing restrictions rather than creating a superior product.
> What Foundation is doing should be the norm, by law.
I can't stand these authoritarian takes. No one is forcing you to partake and there are options available to people that hold certain ideologies. The idea that you must impose that on everyone by law is absurd.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's all fine and good, but once any single component of that block of embodied carbon fails the whole thing is now e-waste. Which means I guess apple is buying up carbon offsets in order to recycle that e-waste back into a new M2 or M3 mac? How much faith do you have in carbon offsets? The aluminum and rare earth elements are recycled - what about the rest of it? A modular design means a failed SSD only sends the…
they release a document which outlines exactly what they do: https://www.apple.com/environment/ But just something else to keep in mind: at mass production scales certain choices that may seem less useful for repair, often greatly enhance reliability. eg soldered on componentry - such things don’t present an issue to the official refurbishment programme however they present a challenge to the incredibly small % of pe…
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you seriously consider a state actor to be a threat, then you likely make many other compromises to your ability to conveniently perform disaster recovery. There is not much overlap between these use-cases: * I need an easy way to recover my family pictures because I didn't make backups and * I have state actors interested in my data If you really have state actor threats, you probably like that M1 Macs are very h…
It feels like you're using "state actor" as a motte and bailey. It usually means targeted espionage affecting very few, with strong motives for why security services are interested in them specifically. Whereas that article is ultimately talking about a dragnet surveillance system, which is technically a state actor but affects literally everyone.
Whether you consider those actions to be a threat would depend on an individual person's or organization's assessment of the impact of those actions.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
mpv with --script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp allows to watch Youtube videos with a fraction of the system load that Youtube demands in a browser.
That's a neat trick, thanks! That said--I want to use a browser, because that's how to get to the thing in the way with the least friction. So while in a pinch that definitely helps, it's not (to me) reasonable for daily use, which constrains the internet usage on that machine a lot.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. My thinkpad x230t is still going strong nearly 10 years later (extreme example). With 16GB of ram and an SSD it's still a decently capable machine. If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_ computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or if you work on large codebases, etc. But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten fas…
This is a tangential question. I adore my Thinkpad x230t but it has a whopping ~1 hour battery life at this point. Do you leave yours permanently plugged in or do you have some sort of modern battery solution for our ancient beast with an amazing keyboard?
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to repair my laptop either but I want to upgrade my laptop a year or two down the line. The modern laptop can go much further with a simple upgrade like RAM or SSD HD. Apple's laptop is really limited in this way. The older generation of Apple's laptop allowed you to upgrade RAM and HD.
Apple is targeting the population that has no need for upgrades. Watching videos, browsing internet, sharing pictures and videos, video calling and basic spreadsheet/word processing needs no upgrades. I use a 2015 MacBook Air and I don’t need an upgrade, and I probably do more on my laptop than 80% of people.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still use a ThinkPad T420 running Linux for some projects. It's a tank, practically everything is replaceable (unlike in my MBP, which has already had one Butterfly Keyboard failure...) and Sandy Bridge CPUs are honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist nonsense. We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are good enough and commoditized t…
> ...and Sandy Bridge CPUs are honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist nonsense. Just because you don't personally see any benefit to the advancements being made doesn't mean others don't. They're certainly still performant enough to be useful but even something like h.264 decoding puts a huge strain on my haswell laptop, which is a trivial task to…
I never had that problem even before haswell. They have hardware decoding built in, thats probably caused by another issue. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration
I agree about not enforcing viewpoints on others. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
I finished the life of a SSD in a single year of regular use; it was great to find it should not happen, but it did.
What drive? What was the end of life behavior you observed? Catastrophic failure, or SMART data showing wearout?