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Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

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Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#111

Post by GhettoComputers »

ghaff wrote: post #106
BoorishBears wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other comment points it out correctly, no one wants it price conscious or not. Between the fact that many of them work without issue for years, and the fact that an new equivalent to your 2011 i3 becomes exponentially cheaper over time, repairing it will never be worth it. A Raspberry PI 4 is a functional computer but costs less than just the CPU of that i3 based machine while trouncing it in performance and powe…

It's true with electronic devices in general. I've tried to pass down (still in support) older tablets, Chromebooks, etc. through a friend who has some nieces and nephews. Basically, to quote my friend, "no one's interested in your old electronic crap." Now I'm sure there are families with less money who might think differently but it's definitely not straightforward in general to hand down old computer-related stuff…

They already have phones. They’re not interested in your slower than their phone computers either.

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#112

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

unethical_ban wrote: post #29
hyperstar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as they make it possible to install free firmware such as coreboot.

We're comparing to Apple. Have fun freebooting that.

It happened before: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc2NTU

Although, true, I suspect their modern stuff will never reach the same point.

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#114

Post by pvarangot »

Vogtinator wrote: post #63
GhettoComputers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever. You can buy common business laptops such as thinkpad and swap the parts easily and cheaply. People aren’t swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care about performance; they’re getting an i5 from 2018. None of these swappable parts are unique aside from th…

It's not just about upgrades, in fact it's not even mainly about upgrades. It's about being able to understand the machine, repairing it when necessary and ultimately being able to rely on it. Otherwise your device might be a candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which can be surprisingly quick.

> a candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which can be surprisingly quick

All my all Macs sold for great value after I was done with them or got a better one, even with an expired guarantee. It took like a week or two to sell them. I'm still stuck with Thinkpads because the used market is shit.

My last Thinkpad I got kinda impulsively as a workstation for Ableton is my deepest regret. It was a year ago, the Intel MacBooks where not cutting it, it's a great machine and was like 2600 and now I want to go back to an M1 MacBook Pro and it's impossible to sell it anywhere, I feel I just threw away money. A four year old MacBook Pro is worth more on the Apple exchange program than my Thinkpad, it's really sad.

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#115

Post by Dylan16807 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76
liminalsunset wrote: post #26

General grumpiness about this particular design decision aside, it appears that since the T2 Macs, the main SSD was being used to store core system firmware. On T2 I think it's BridgeOS that sends the EFI image to the Intel side to boot it, and it does the firmware verification and loading. 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 u…

>whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board Sorry, but how? That's just reads like BS. SSDs have limited lifespans due to the limited write cycles of the NAND chips. So no, what damages NAND does not damage the rest of the board. The more you write and swap to flash, the faster it wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it dies. Granted, I…

How many SSDs have you worn out? I've never managed it.

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#116

Post by aeturnum »

justin_oaks wrote: post #90
bastardoperator wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you want to do repair, I have no interest in repairing anything. In fact I'll happily part with my money to not have to deal with repairing stuff. Same applies to my car.

Do you have a threshold for this? I assume that if your laptop wasn't working and all you had to do was take a single screw out then you'd do it, rather than taking it to a repair shop or buy another. Or if the repair cost was extreme, but it was relatively easy to fix it yourself. Your point of view is valid of course. At the same time I believe many people don't have sufficient money to allow them the luxury of nev…

There's the old joke about a plumber to charges $100 to fix a hot water heater by hitting it once with a hammer. The home owner, incensed by such a bill for a simple action, demands the plumber justify it. The breakdown is: $1 hammer strike, $99 choosing correct location.

Even a decade ago, the rewards for being able to repair computers were pretty substantial. Your computer was likely to have routine failures and you could probably save a lot of money doing piecemeal replacements. I think those things are still true for people who are trying to stay on the bleeding edge of computer hardware or use unusual setups, but for 95%+ of folks it is probably going to be a net loss.

For most people performing most tasks, they are better off taking the "one-screw" computer into the shop because it would take them hours and hours to do the research figuring out if it really is a "one-screw" problem. If you are wrong you could seriously damage your hardware. In addition, because hardware that is sufficient for most purposes and inexpensive is widely available - there is very limited utility in learning those skills otherwise.

If you want to learn about and repair computers as a hobby that's great! I do it and I enjoy it. But it's not a "smart financial decision."

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#117

Post by GhettoComputers »

unethical_ban wrote: post #29
hyperstar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as they make it possible to install free firmware such as coreboot.

We're comparing to Apple. Have fun freebooting that.

Then the M1 trounces this laptop in power and energy usage and there’s no contest.

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#118

Post by aneutron »

I get that the memory bandwidth and performance of the SoC is intimately tied to the CPU, GPU and memory being on the same silicon (grossly vulgarizing the approach).

However, there is no reasonable justification (as far as I can tell) for why the SSD would have to be soldered onto the same SoC, and even less reasonable justification for why the iBoot stuff couldn't be located on an EEPROM or something of the sort, like a secondary BIOS/UEFI.

It just boggles my mind why Apple would go so far to limit storage options and even make a straight up bad architectural decision (SSD gone ? You can't boot the 4k€ machine. What ? You bought it 4 years ago ? Well, tough luck.)

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#119

Post by fsckboy »

mlindner wrote: post #85
Vogtinator wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about upgrades, in fact it's not even mainly about upgrades. It's about being able to understand the machine, repairing it when necessary and ultimately being able to rely on it. Otherwise your device might be a candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which can be surprisingly quick.

This weird OCD obsession with wanting to be able to piece apart a device just like it's a car is just strange. The device is a complete package. You don't re-solder and reflash busted chips on a motherboard do you? So why do you want to be able to replace the higher level parts rather than the whole device? This isn't like a desktop where all the parts are bought from different manufacturers and assembled by an OEM o…

>This weird OCD obsession with wanting to be able to piece apart a device

suggesting that people who embrace "right to repair" have a psychopathology is the only psychological blindspot I see here.

wanting to enlarge your memory or your drive storage is completely normal in the present day as these devices increase in size dramatically well within the lifetime of a notebook computer

Re: Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

#120

Post by GhettoComputers »

funnyflamigo wrote: post #44
GhettoComputers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever. You can buy common business laptops such as thinkpad and swap the parts easily and cheaply. People aren’t swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care about performance; they’re getting an i5 from 2018. None of these swappable parts are unique aside from th…

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…

You agree with all my points and the fact we both have thinkpads, what do you disagree with?

The thinkpads esp batteries from 2013 suck them most. DRM, and expensive, 2012 has no DRM and 2014 and up has way cheaper aftermarket.

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