New Anti-Consumer MacBook Pros - Teardown And Repair Assessment - Apple Silicon M1/M2
New Anti-Consumer MacBook Pros - Teardown And Repair Assessment - Apple Silicon M1/M2
No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple's anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can't even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don't even own it.
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I'm going to put this out there as just an idea, don't buy apple products.
They're shit they've always been shit and they've never been financially worth buying.
I just got an M2 MBP. In my personal experience it is very much not "shit".
Expensive and a PITA to fix? Quite possibly.
+1 apple products are very much not shit. Otherwise people wouldnt buy and use them as prolifically as they do.
I started using Macbooks because the user experience on windows laptops sucks in comparison.
What kind of user experience issues are you facing on windows?
Let's start with sleep mode not actually sleeping about 50% of the time and turning my backpack into an oven and killing the battery whenever it does?
I wish Mac laptops were crap but they function so much better than windows laptops in so many little ways I find myself having a hard time justifying fighting windows laptops anymore.
Modern standby fucking sucks, luckily my laptop is from before that existed (and it runs linux but that's besides the point)
Amen to this. I have to deal with it on my Zephyrus M16 which has shit battery life to begin with.
IDK, I've had exactly the same problem with my work MBP. I was late to something and the computer locked up, so as soon as I got some level of control I put it to sleep and it seemed to sleep. An hour later and the fan was going crazy and it was super hot.
It doesn't happen a lot, but macOS isn't immune to stupid issues like that. I've had far more hard crashes with macOS than I have with Linux.
@legion02 @CorruptBuddha, don't blame laptops, blame Windows. The difference between PC/laptops and Mac is compatibility, to use any OS you want, Mac is only compatible with Mac, apart from costing twice as much as a PC/Laptop with equivalent system performance and features.
Does it matter who's at fault? The end result is the same, a dangerously hot laptop. Even though I'm a huge Linux advocate it's not an option for work reasons.
@legion02; ????, not even using Windows my laptop (a cheap one that cost me €350) heats up above 50º when I play a 3D FPS game or when I render to an Image. If it gets too hot it can depend on too many things, that your Sys Specs are too low, that the ventilation does not work well because it is dirty, that the thermal paste needs to be renewed, there are too many applications that are loaded at boot that take up too much RAM.....
In any case, it is not normal and requires you to check it.You're entirely missing the point. It overheats because I put it in a bag when it's supposed to be asleep. But it's not actually sleep because microsoft and the laptop manufacturers designed modern sleep in a way that makes that non-deterministic. So now my laptop is awake inside the bag it normally sleeps in, killing the battery and making the laptop uncomfortably hot.
Watch the ltt video (yeah bad timing referencing ltt) "Microsoft is forcing me to buy macbooks" and you'll understand the problem I'm describing.
@legion02, I dont use sleep, I shut down the system, more if I put it in a bag to carry it to an other site. It's logical that the system still in Standby also need ventilation.
With modern systems with an SSD a Cold start is only a few seconds slower than to start from Sleep mode, because of this the last mode isnt really necessary, apart a cold start from power off avoid a lot of crap in memory and reset the counter of using time to zero, save battery and is healthier for the system.It's great that those considerations work for how you use a laptop, but that's not how me or my colleagues or family members expect them to work.
Sleep should work the way it's advertised and does work on Macs. The only significant voltage drain should be the memory modules that need it to maintain state. It used to work this way on windows and Linux for that matter.
No, it doesn't make sense that a system in sandby would need ventilation. The power draw is very low (not enough to need cooling).
The issue isn't that it's heating up in standby, the issue is that the system wakes from sleep for no reason within the bag.
This did happen to a lesser extent with the older, slower sleep method (S3 sleep), but recent Intel chips and UEFI firmwares have disabled this.
wildly gestures at everything
Always speaking of bad experience using Windows, but never explaining it.
They replied and explained it. Try again mate.
Yeah, a different person after I made my comment speaking from anecdotal experience.
Yeah, a different person after I made my comment speaking from anecdotal experience.
Yeah my bad
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Agreed. I work in computer simulations and their great. CPU is crazy fast, stays cool and silent. Battery life is solid.
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If I bought a framework laptop I would not physically be able to stop fiddling with it. I think I may end up spending more money in the long run. It's too configurable for its own good.
I wonder if they'll ever consider adding an e ink screen option, with a separate normal screen. There have been a few concept laptops like that, but I don't think the demand is enough to actually make that profitable, but if it was just a configuration option of an otherwise more normal laptop, then I could see it being viable.
That's sweet. Do you have one?
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I've got a framework 13. It's not better than a Macbook except in terms of user-serviceability.
- It's hot and loud (hopefully the AMD upgrade will fix this)
- Battery life is atrocious (hoping AMD and battery upgrade will fix this)
- Trackpad isn't as good (piano hinge, and the coating has more friction.)
- fewer ports(!) (limited to 4 expansion cards)
- sleep is broken (modern standby, ugh. S3 exists on the 11th gen model but it's no better than s2idle. I'll have to see if the AMD one is any better)
- Keyboard has bigger keys than I'd like, and while the key feel is pretty nice, it's also heaver than any macbook I've used. Also, the layout is standard laptop garbage. The only reason the layout works on a macbook is because of macos's shortcuts. On a PC I want a full PC keyboard like we had on 2011 ThinkPads.
That said, I do really like the laptop. I just find myself reaching for my macbook especially due to the issue with battery life.
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They are a lifestyle brand and play on that to keep people trapped. People who buy Apple like the aesthetic of appearing wealthy. It's classism through consumerism, even if the consumers don't realise it.
Apple's terrible privacy policy (yes, despite the word privacy appearing in the ads), atrocious right to repair stance, and aggressive software lock-in tactics should put any person who cares about those things off.
There was a purpose to buying Apple when they were the only player in the specific niche. Audio engineering is a great example of this. In the 90's, Apple were really the only valid choice in a highly specialist field. Microsoft caught up in the 2000s, with Linux not too far behind in the 2010's.
So nowadays, the limitations are effectively self-imposed. You can spend whatever money you want on a setup that will do whatever you need and the OS is a personal preference.
I don't like Apple very much but it would be stupid to not admit that their new M1 and M2 SOCs aren't great. Their battery efficiency far surpasses any from Intel or AMD and the performance is great.
I think MacOS looks stupid though, I mean, it looks like fucking Gnome.
I assume most people that buy Macs and iphones do it for their software and hardware, not because they want to appear wealthy. Like you said OS is a personal preference and some prefer MacOS and iOS.
...lock-in tactics should put any person who cares about those things off.
Unfortunately most people don't care.
…lock-in tactics should put any person who cares about those things off.Unfortunately most people don’t care.
And once you are locked-in, the barrier to get yourself out of it is often so high that it dissuades most people from even trying to get out. I moved from macOS to Linux last year, and even though I was only using a small portion of the Apple ecosystem (iCloud was the only thing I believe), it still took a lot of time as they are designed to make it difficult/time consuming to migrate. Not to mention the macOS/iOS only applications you might've ended up using, as cross-platform functionality was not top-of-mind when choosing. In my case, the notes app Bear was such an example.
The EU needs to fuck their shit up.
Mandate that laptops must have user replaceable storage and RAM (and tablets to have user replaceable storage). My old Dell laptop has windows in the bottom to get to both of those.
The loss of 3.5mm headphone jacks is nothing compared to the loss of that. They're common failure points and easy upgrade paths.
Nobody is stopping you from buying a laptop with user replaceable storage and RAM. Why do you need the EU to get involved? That's ridiculous.
Companies are slowly moving in that direction, except doing it worse in most cases (i.e. cheaply)
Upgradable RAM isn't as fast as non-upgradable RAM and that this is especially true for the way Apple Silicon is designed. So no we shouldn't be mandating something that reduces computer performance for the sake of an upgrade most people would never care to perform.
We should however force them to produce laptops with a certain minimum RAM and to reduce their ridiculous upgrade pricing.
Edit: also I don't own a single Apple product. I aren't a fan boy at all and I know they do a whole bunch of anti-consumer bs. I also know that modular RAM for Apple Silicon would be a terrible idea for that specific design. Modular SSDs on the other hand would be very doable.
A quick look at the claims suggest 100GB/s is the RAM speed for the M2 Macbooks.
A single DDR5 RAM stick is about 50GB/s. So that's two of those in a dual channel config (effectively quad channel since each DDR5 stick is now a dual channel on it's own).
There's a good argument for introducing a new smaller DDR5 module so size isn't an issue, but I'm not sold on speed being the main problem. RAM is fast even when it's slow, and having more of it is almost always better than having it faster. No amount of RAM speed will ever compensate for swapping to storage when you run out.
At the very least mandate that the manufacturer replace the RAM at a reasonable cost at a later date, if you need more for future apps or if it goes wrong. We go on and on about fighting eWaste, yet entire laptops go in the bin when they don't have enough RAM.
Go look at the RAM speed of the M2 Pro and M2 Max. They are essentially quad and eight channels respectively to get the speed they achieve. Good look doing that with SODIMM modules.
Actually good RAM speed is absolutely essential for GPU performance. Saying how more RAM speed isn't important for a use case like the Apple Silicon Macs is ignorant AF.
You're getting heavily downvoted by people who obviously don't understand how RAM works. Or how computers work?
Guys, Apple is shitty, we all know this, but onboard RAM is the least of their anti-consumer practices.
The problem with socketed RAM is the length of the traces going back to the CPU. That 100% reduces performance (and battery life) by a significant amount. Especially when using that socketed RAM as iGPU VRAM.
Dell's CAMM standard reduces the latency compared to SODIMM, for socketed RAM, but what we really need is for someone like Apple to invest R&D into really tiny RAM sockets that are super close to the CPU, instead of researching ways to lock users out.
Doesn't even sound that complex. Little LGA style socket, tiny heatsink clip to hold it in place.
There's even laptops that have soldered RAM and a SODIMM slot. Could you limit the GPU to using the soldered RAM? Still won't help you if it develops a fault though.
The RAM is built onto the substrate. Every contact you add increases signal degredation. Plus actually trying to fit eight sockets on a SoC package would be a complete nightmare.
Dividing RAM like that into two pools would violate the permise of the whole unified memory system. You're really asking for the wrong thing here. Why not convinve them to do something like a modular SSD that's far more achievable? Also memory that doesn't come at sky high prices with an actual sensible mimimum (8GB on MacBooks in 2023, really?).
For other laptops there is actually a solution to this problem called a CAMM. It would even work for the M2 Macbooks possibly (not the M2 Pro or Max) if apple are willing to sacrifice size or battery life of the laptop. The reason this wouldn't work for the M2 Pro and Max is you would need two or four of these things. It would be diffcult enough to fit just one in a Macbook that have tiny, tiny logic boards to begin with.
Thanks a bunch. The level of ignorance here to Apple's design choices is palpable. Some of the stuff they do is very anti-consumer. Soldered RAM isn't one of them - at least on Apple Silicon. Having modular GPU RAM hasn't been a thing for over a decade for good reasons.
I doubt the difference in performance is that significant. If it was 50% faster then sure. But odds are it's something like 3% speed difference. Same for the storage, I doubt that apple's proprietary interface is that much faster than a regular high quality nvme, definitely not enough to justify the multiple that they're charging for it compared to an off-the-shelf nvme.
Erm yeah it's more than 50% faster in bandwidth for M2 Max, because it has more memory channels than two SODIMMs would allow for. It's specifically at least twice as fast. People upvoting this are showing their ignorance here about Apple hardware.
The storage isn't particularly fast so that part I believe.
Upgradable RAM isn't as fast as non-upgradable RAM
Really? Why though? Is soldered-in RAM attached differently to the CPU?
Way differently.
Soldered RAM is much much closer to the CPU, and so the time it takes for signals to propagate back and forth is significantly reduced..
It's probably the increased capacitance (think of of it as a puddle that needs filling before the water can move beyond it) of a mechanical connnection system vs direct soldering that makes most of the difference.
I was going to call you out on the distance thing but I made the maths and indeed at 100GHz light only travels about 3mm between waves and electric signal propagation on a line is roughly lightspeed (if you disregard capacitance) so even though this memory bus is likely not working at 100GHz to get 100GB/s (it's actually using paralellism for increase bits per cycle) it is none the less already within clock speed ranges were distances of centimeters do mater.
That said keep in mind that rountrip propagation only really maters at the very biginning of the download of a memory block as that when the address goes down and the data starts coming back and the roundtrip propagation affects the delay between them.
But yeah, I can see how you would start worrying with centimeter and even millimiter distances when trying to extract a bit more performance from data exchanges at these clock speeds.
This is an argument that just gets repeted. My question is this, is a macbook faster than a gaming pc? Because that has replaceble ram, cpu, gpu, ssd, etc. If yes, then please seek help.
The PC GPU does have it's own soldered RAM. But then the performance of a good GPU goes way past that of a MacBook, which while good for integrated graphics, is still only on par with a GTX 1660, a four year old budget GPU.
Well fucking said dude. You know dGPUs used go have upgradable RAM? They removed it because it dosen't work for that application. Apples iGPUs struggle to compete even being soldered partly because the competition is using GDDR and they aren't. Not soldering would make them even further behind.
I guess in a way they are stuck to a form factor, as slim as possible. And they got stuck so they had to do something. But then why would they make everything locked to the system by hardware id. It just seems that they used the speed argument to justify anti consumer pactices.
But then why would they make everything locked to the system by hardware id. It just seems that they used the speed argument to justify anti consumer pactices.
Yeah they locked it because they are anti-consumer. Soldered RAM has actual benefits, that's why they aren't the only company doing it. Two very different issues. It's like them soldering in SSDs is anti-consumer because there is little benefit there and only a few companies are copying them.
Speed is not "just an excuse" either. This design is dependant on having RAM that fast, it's faster than any other laptop that I have seen for a good reason. It also improves battery and reduces size.
The M1 design is very similar to the SoC in your phone. The RAM is literally soldered on top of the CPU.
Erm yeah. Have you never seen an M1 chip? It's on the same substrate.
Say that to Muricans and 90% of iPhone ownership.
iPhones tend to be more affordable in the US than in other places in the world. An iPhone SE is only $400, and used iPhones aren't that expensive.
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I'd say $400 (minus whatever subsidies from your carrier) is the minimum I'd spend on a new smartphone. Could also get an iPhone 12 or something for a bit more.
Point is, iPhones are more affordable than people claim they are, especially in the US. Can't speak for other places where they might be marked up or have high import tax.
As much as I do like the looks and compelling as the M1/M2 chips might be, I cannot help but agree.
you don't have a choice if you need Xcode for iOS/MacOS development
You, correct, if you need to develop for iOS or something Apple related you'll need the appropriate hardware and software.
Which brings us back to my original point don't buy Apple products.
mac mini's are pretty cheap for that purpose. And besides, just because you personally don't use a platform doesn't stop you from making money from people who do.
Except they're not. They're excellent products and since Apple silicon are actually half decent value in some cases.
Except that they are. There is absolutely no value to anything they make. It's all over priced proprietary crap.
Apple products right now are almost entirely home use there's almost no commercial industry anymore.
Developers graphic design artists music producers most technology firms most offices like doctors and lawyers whatever don't use Apple products. They're almost exclusively windows.
Literally the only thing keeping them in business right now is the iPhone. They don't sell enough of any other product.
honestly one of the reasons I use a macbook is because I interned for a tech company that handed out macbooks as standard-issue laptops.
What world are you living on? Most of silicon valley use Mac. Most the professions you listed DO use Mac. Since Apple silicon, performance for price ratio beats most Windows options for most people.
What world am I living on. Wow. No.
Most of silicon valley does not run on apple.
The delusion that your mind is under that makes you believe that performance to price is better with Apple you need a seat professional help.
You mean my neighbor won't be able to think that I'm badass, rich, fancy and living my American Dream? 😱 You want to ruin my social status? How dare you 💔