Why tf can’t they sell mac with upgradable parts?? They are “so” into renewable and recycling stuff and saving planet and stuff. Then they should start selling shits with upgradable parts. Even cpu’s if possible. Now apple fan boys argue with that. And don’t bullshit me with soc should be near cpu for faster optimisation they can redesign the mobo.
There are legitimate advantages of the RAM being soldered right next to the SoC. However, if anyone could figure out how to create a proprietary RAM module, that slots in right next to the SoC (or even just an SoC module including RAM) that can be swapped out and that doesn‘t have any meaningful performance impact, it would be Apple. Just that it never could be Apple…
The problem is the electrical resistance of the socket. Most of the performance on apple silicon is achieved through extremely high bandwidth, low latency memory. Unfortunately that necessitates a socketless design at the moment, and you can see that happening on the snapdragon X too.
Yea, not just snapdragon and apple. Even intel and amd processors usually get paired with higher bandwidth soldered ram on many mobile offerings.
And on GPUs soldered VRAM has been a thing for a loooong time, with HBM memory being the prime example for what RAM close to the chip can do. AMD‘s Vega cards were highly sought after during the mining craze, even though they weren’t that fast in general computing, simply because their memory bandwidth was so beyond any other consumer cards…
Because that gives the user as much or more control over the device as Apple themselves have. One of the fairly consistent things about Apple over the years has been a desire to maintain tight control for themselves over the products they make.
They certainly used to. My wife’s 2012 MacBook Pro has upgraded RAM and SSD parts I’ve put in over the years and still runs fine, though it isn’t used much anymore and OS upgrades stopped a while ago.
Their current environmental marketing is pure greenwashing bullshit and their stances on upgradability and repairability are terrible.
It’s basically just greenwashing. They pretend to be into renewables and recycling only when it doesn’t disincentivize people from buying the newest product. Ex: iPhone trade in for recycling - Yes, they do recover some raw material but you can only do it if you’re buying a new iPhone with that credit, and its probably also an attempt to keep cheap used iPhones off of the market.
From an engineering standpoint they made a set of design choices with the m series chips that sacrifice easy upgradability for the benefits of ram soldered in very close to the chips that are gonna use it that smartphones, tablets and most laptops have. Before someone jumps in and says it’s possible to have replaceable ram in that same space, yes, that’s true but you’d have to pull the heatsink off every time you wanna swap it out, and for what? Almost all users never upgrade their ram and choose instead to get anew computer (this has been true forever, btw).
From a sustainability perspective, if no one is upgrading anyway and getting the ram socket off the board saves a few grams of plastic, that’s a net win. Plastic recycling is fake and made up, metal and electronic recycling are real for better or worse. Is it better to keep the 5% of devices that will ever be repaired or upgraded running or reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream on the other 95%? Idk. But I know that apple has a recycling program for devices.
I’m telling you as someone who worked for a long time doing business and individual support that people don’t upgrade their computers. Even when it was the “best” choice, you tell someone $30 worth of memory and a $50 ssd will make their computer better than new and they’ll choose to buy a new one almost every time. Businesses have a refresh cycle and don’t upgrade outside of that.
The overwhelming majority of computers, and I’m talking phones, laptops, towers, mini pcs, all of it. The vast overwhelming majority of computers will never be upgraded or have any hardware replaced at all even as a repair.
Including phones in this ought to tilt it towards getting things fixed too because of all the broken screens but most people just get a new phone when they break the screen or lose battery life.
E: if you want to look for yourself, and I understand why you might, find someone near you doing electronic salvage and peek at the machines they’re stripping out. Not a one will ever have anything other than what it shipped with.
Well, in that case you are correct. Haven’t seen anyone upgrade them unless we are talking about something like pinephone. But I was talking about PCs and even laptops(only RAM in their case).
I am too. I used to think that people upgraded computers because I and the people around me did, but seeing what a local ewaste scrapper deals with I ended up changing my mind. All those computers are in their bone-stock configuration.
Once he got a pallet of gaming pcs, prebuilt originally, but I thought at least these will have upgraded ram and cpus and for sure gpus and ssds. Nope. They were as they shipped. Two of four slots empty, still booted perfectly up on spinning media.
When companies say they’re not seeing demand for upgradability I believe them.
Wow. That’s depressing. In which country you seen it? I heard stories of germans throwing away i5-2400-based perfectly working PCs, but this is something new.
because I and the people around me did,
Same. When I was in school from 15 of kids I talked on semi-regular basis I know about 6 people who upgraded their desktop PCs, 2 who updgraded laptop and 1 who upgraded monoblock. I use school as example because to not have sampling bias towards upgrading.
Why tf can’t they sell mac with upgradable parts?? They are “so” into renewable and recycling stuff and saving planet and stuff. Then they should start selling shits with upgradable parts. Even cpu’s if possible. Now apple fan boys argue with that. And don’t bullshit me with soc should be near cpu for faster optimisation they can redesign the mobo.
There are legitimate advantages of the RAM being soldered right next to the SoC. However, if anyone could figure out how to create a proprietary RAM module, that slots in right next to the SoC (or even just an SoC module including RAM) that can be swapped out and that doesn‘t have any meaningful performance impact, it would be Apple. Just that it never could be Apple…
The problem is the electrical resistance of the socket. Most of the performance on apple silicon is achieved through extremely high bandwidth, low latency memory. Unfortunately that necessitates a socketless design at the moment, and you can see that happening on the snapdragon X too.
Yea, not just snapdragon and apple. Even intel and amd processors usually get paired with higher bandwidth soldered ram on many mobile offerings.
And on GPUs soldered VRAM has been a thing for a loooong time, with HBM memory being the prime example for what RAM close to the chip can do. AMD‘s Vega cards were highly sought after during the mining craze, even though they weren’t that fast in general computing, simply because their memory bandwidth was so beyond any other consumer cards…
Because that gives the user as much or more control over the device as Apple themselves have. One of the fairly consistent things about Apple over the years has been a desire to maintain tight control for themselves over the products they make.
There is what they say they are in favor of, and there is what they really are in favor of.
They are in favor of apple getting all the monies, the end
They certainly used to. My wife’s 2012 MacBook Pro has upgraded RAM and SSD parts I’ve put in over the years and still runs fine, though it isn’t used much anymore and OS upgrades stopped a while ago.
Their current environmental marketing is pure greenwashing bullshit and their stances on upgradability and repairability are terrible.
It’s basically just greenwashing. They pretend to be into renewables and recycling only when it doesn’t disincentivize people from buying the newest product. Ex: iPhone trade in for recycling - Yes, they do recover some raw material but you can only do it if you’re buying a new iPhone with that credit, and its probably also an attempt to keep cheap used iPhones off of the market.
Because then they can’t gaslight people into thinking their 8GB is magical.
From an engineering standpoint they made a set of design choices with the m series chips that sacrifice easy upgradability for the benefits of ram soldered in very close to the chips that are gonna use it that smartphones, tablets and most laptops have. Before someone jumps in and says it’s possible to have replaceable ram in that same space, yes, that’s true but you’d have to pull the heatsink off every time you wanna swap it out, and for what? Almost all users never upgrade their ram and choose instead to get anew computer (this has been true forever, btw).
From a sustainability perspective, if no one is upgrading anyway and getting the ram socket off the board saves a few grams of plastic, that’s a net win. Plastic recycling is fake and made up, metal and electronic recycling are real for better or worse. Is it better to keep the 5% of devices that will ever be repaired or upgraded running or reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream on the other 95%? Idk. But I know that apple has a recycling program for devices.
I don’t know about anyone personally who buys new computer when old can be upgraded.
That’s great.
I’m telling you as someone who worked for a long time doing business and individual support that people don’t upgrade their computers. Even when it was the “best” choice, you tell someone $30 worth of memory and a $50 ssd will make their computer better than new and they’ll choose to buy a new one almost every time. Businesses have a refresh cycle and don’t upgrade outside of that.
The overwhelming majority of computers, and I’m talking phones, laptops, towers, mini pcs, all of it. The vast overwhelming majority of computers will never be upgraded or have any hardware replaced at all even as a repair.
Including phones in this ought to tilt it towards getting things fixed too because of all the broken screens but most people just get a new phone when they break the screen or lose battery life.
E: if you want to look for yourself, and I understand why you might, find someone near you doing electronic salvage and peek at the machines they’re stripping out. Not a one will ever have anything other than what it shipped with.
Well, in that case you are correct. Haven’t seen anyone upgrade them unless we are talking about something like pinephone. But I was talking about PCs and even laptops(only RAM in their case).
I am too. I used to think that people upgraded computers because I and the people around me did, but seeing what a local ewaste scrapper deals with I ended up changing my mind. All those computers are in their bone-stock configuration.
Once he got a pallet of gaming pcs, prebuilt originally, but I thought at least these will have upgraded ram and cpus and for sure gpus and ssds. Nope. They were as they shipped. Two of four slots empty, still booted perfectly up on spinning media.
When companies say they’re not seeing demand for upgradability I believe them.
Wow. That’s depressing. In which country you seen it? I heard stories of germans throwing away i5-2400-based perfectly working PCs, but this is something new.
Same. When I was in school from 15 of kids I talked on semi-regular basis I know about 6 people who upgraded their desktop PCs, 2 who updgraded laptop and 1 who upgraded monoblock. I use school as example because to not have sampling bias towards upgrading.
America. Especially for people and organizations that rely on warranties or support agreements it just doesn’t happen.