Having the logic board fail and nothing else is not a common failure mode.
You have obviously never owned an Apple laptop — or, for that matter, any laptop containing a standalone GPU soldered onto the logic board. Now that we don't have spinning rust for storage, logic boards are likely the most common non-power-related failure mode by a large margin.
No professional in his or her right might should seriously consider a laptop in which a logic board failure results in the loss of access to storage. Even if you just lose the storage since the last backup, that could be a considerable loss, and this assumes that Time Machine is actually backing things up correctly and that no files on your backup drive have exhibited bit rot. In the worst case, you might lose considerably more, like your entire photo library or some other "why the hell did Apple mark this as a bundle" folder.
No, if true, this qualifies as a showstopper-level flaw, sufficient to get upper management fired. I can't imagine that even the "thin über alles" folks at Apple would be THAT stupid. It seems far more likely that somebody changed a connector, and that they don't have the right tools at the various Apple stores yet, which while qualifying as seriously incompetent, is probably a failure of the Apple Store and/or AppleCare management chain, rather than engineering.
Until it doesn't. It seems common for it to pop up and say that a backup is corrupted, and prompts you to erase the stored backup and start fresh.
I know someone who has been using Time Machine for 9 YEARS now without incident. Used it once for "whole disk" recovery when replacing an HDD, and once for Data/App migration when ugrading to a new Mac. Both times worked flawlessly and effortlessly.
If you're prepared to pay the much higher cost of having someone attack the problem with a desoldering station, there are probably places that can do it even when Apple says they can't (due to the lack of the debugging port), but they will charge a hell of a lot more for that than a corner shop swapping drives on a PC and especially more than the above mentioned teen that's good with computers.
But if the failed logic board was under warranty, you may have to choose between paying through the nose for data recovery AND paying through the nose again for a new board since de-soldering definitely voids the warranty. Apple does state that an HD with a data recovery company's seal on it will still be replaced under warranty, but they say nothing about de-soldered logic boards.
For the older Macbooks with the data recovery connector, I have never seen any documentation and certainly haven't seen the device that connects to it available anywhere, so the third party shops don't have them. You're still stuck with either a very expensive de-soldering job (and connecting the ssd on a bench) or going to Apple. That's a pretty strong lock-in.
Frequent backups should always be done, but there's always those cases where it couldn't be done for a day or two on the road and you really want something back that wasn't in the last backup.
Sorry. The SSD is encrypted by the on-board T2 chip.
I can recover data from any non failed hard drive that uses a SATA or IDE connector. So like 99% of the consumer hard drives made in the past 20 years.
You cannot do that with these Macs. That makes them in this respect at least functionally inferior. You cant really claim they saved all that much money by removing the standard connector, or even their proprietary one. And looking at the price tag, even if they saved money, it didn't get passed on to the consumer.
The reasoning was that the T2 chip that does transparent data encryption without CPU intervention has made it impractical to offer this port. This chip did not exist in the 2016 and 2017 models, hence the port.
Time Machine works. Anyone who doesn't use it deserves exactly what they get.
That was kinda the point... Places like this f*ck people by soldering the drive on the board AND THEN removing the diagport/interface option from the same area so now you're stuck with board failure and loss of data. Soldering the data storage like that and then removing all options of pulling the data is horrid design.
Yeah, especially since Apple makes automatic, HOURLY, backups so hard... [/s]
Yeah, actually, there are thousands and thousands of places nationwide in the USA that you can bring computers for data recovery if the main board fails. Have been for decades and decades.. Unlike "Genius" bars, these places will work on all manner and make of computer as well.
You pay for it one way or another. AppleCare, store warranty, out of pocket.
I've been recovering data from failed tech for way longer than this Apple craze.
Considering that this "Apple Craze" has been going on for more than 40 years, I kind of doubt it.
Or just turn off write caching for USB devices. In fact, it's off by default in Microsoft Windows. There are two options for USB devices, Quick Removal (default) and Better Performance (write caching). More information.
That explains why it doesn't seem to matter with Windows; but at least earlier (up to at least 10.7) versions of OS X/macOS, you took a great risk just yanking removable storage (USB Sticks and USB HDDs) without "Ejecting" first.
They MAY have fixed that behavior in later versions; but, having personally corrupted a USB HDD that way, I still feel better safe than sorry...
What we have here is a malware program that got certified by Apple... but this appears to only be in India's version of the app store. Cleanup should be quick, and it's less than 20 reported cases of trouble so far.
Linux enables me to spend a great deal more on a laptop or a workstation actually. I see this anemic little SSD and chuckle. So what if it's "fast". I would rather have more storage.
I can get 2.5TB of SSD storage on a Linux laptop.
My old bruiser has 2.5TB of conventional storage. My "outdated" bruiser probably still has a better GPU than this Apple toy.
That Apple "toy" can be configured with up to a 6 core CPU as well as 4 TB of the FASTEST laptop SSD around
The las Apple Computer you bought had one of the following CPUs:
1 MHz 6502
2 MHz 65816
20 MHz 68020
25 MHz 68030
Think there's been any performance advances between that and a 2.9 GHz, 6 core Intel CPU? Think your comment has even a scintilla of relevance to this discussion?
Well, yeah, because every decent manufacturer buys the same panels from Samsung that Apple is using. I don't know why anyone ever thought Apple's displays were some special magic that nobody else had access to... it's not like they make them in-house.
Give me a break!
At the volumes that Apple buys, and the higher prices they are willing to pay, the panels that Apple buys are NOT the "same panels" that the OEMs that are trying to meet a $500 retail price point are getting.
Apple is specing higher quality, better QCed panels than the Acers of the world. That's the difference, and you simply can't prove otherwise. But I defy you to open a MacBook Pro display and any other and find the same Samsung or LG part number.
I don't understand why people continue to pay such prices for mainstream technology.
$2500 spread over 5 years, is less than 1% of a developer's salary. If a Mac makes you more productive, then buying it is a no-brainer.
The build cost is irrelevant.
Americans, in particular, typically confuse Price and Value. They continually do stuff like count Ports, GBs, etc,to determine "value", even if strapped together with chewing gum and bailing wire, and a hodgepodge of sweatshop-produced Drivers into a "Product" that will be in a landfill in 2 or 3 years.
Remember to separate price (objective) from value (subjective). If you don't value the lightness, the price increase is just a negative.
And, for a fair comparison and as by your statement ("make sure that all data matches"), the macbook should also match the alternative. I would expect a $3500 device to have a USB-A port, and would value that more than -300 g.
That said, I sometimes explain (and demonstrate) to my coworkers that their $1400 equivalent Lenovo T-series laptop is not, in fact, equivalent (2 cores instead of 4, lower CPU speed, SATA SSD, intel GPU) to my MBP (no touchbar). (It is easy to demonstrate; build times are consistently ~30% lower on my laptop than theirs, no hocus-pocus.) Equally specced out, the price difference turns out marginal, as you indicate. And then my smug glee turns into a frown as they go to IT and get 32 MB installed while I am stuck with 16.
Just think how your smile will return when you submit that requisition for a 6 core, 32 GB MBP next time around...
Compared to Dell, HP, Samsubg, ASUS, Acer, Lenovo and ALL the rest, Apple has much more in-house designed custom silicon and other components.
But of course, none of that counts, right?
For example, How do you think it came to be that these Mac laptops have the fastest SSDs? Not by purchasing some off-the-shelf SSD controller or even worse, SSD drive module!
The cost of manufacture is a pretty small portion of the total cost of these systems. Sure, the marginal cost of a single CPU is fairly low, but the R&D investment is massive and the fab itself is several billion dollars that needs to be recouped somehow.
Exactly.
Looking at BOM costs only as the arbiter of what retail price of a high tech product should be is ignorant, dangerous and naive.
W1's AAC is still lossy compression and non-zero latency, therefore not suitable for audio production and less than ideal for FPS gaming. Add to that the fact that it's not available in any form of studio monitor headphone and, well... yeah. And it never will be, because it's not suitable for the application in the first place.
And yes, there is a fair bit of pro recording gear centered around the iPhone, so this is an actual market segment I am talking about, here.
AptX is lossy, too, and I have read the chipset datasheets, and the minimum delay is 50 ms. That's quite audible! For example, A Rockabilly slap back echo is only around 64ms.
I wouldn't call ANY wireless audio protocol low-enough latency for audio production/recording.
While I know there is some recording sw and hw centered around iOS devices, I'm not sure I would call any of it "Pro", sorry.
I have gotten some fantastic impromptu recordings with the DAW iOS app; but I wouldn't record on it if I had something else at hand.
Oh, I forgot to ass zero-latency to the requirements. In recording (and FPS gaming), that matters. A lot.
From what I have read, and FWIW, people give high marks to Apple's BT stack using AAC and the W1 chip; on all counts: Fidelity, range/lack-of-dropouts, and Latency.
Slashdot Mirror
it's a bit disappointing to see a /. summary focus on the downside without explaining the "why?" behind it.
That's the Apple Hating Slashtards for ya.
I'm not jealous of Apple users -- I have no interest in owning their crippled products.
Then why are you here posting?
You have obviously never owned an Apple laptop — or, for that matter, any laptop containing a standalone GPU soldered onto the logic board. Now that we don't have spinning rust for storage, logic boards are likely the most common non-power-related failure mode by a large margin.
No professional in his or her right might should seriously consider a laptop in which a logic board failure results in the loss of access to storage. Even if you just lose the storage since the last backup, that could be a considerable loss, and this assumes that Time Machine is actually backing things up correctly and that no files on your backup drive have exhibited bit rot. In the worst case, you might lose considerably more, like your entire photo library or some other "why the hell did Apple mark this as a bundle" folder.
No, if true, this qualifies as a showstopper-level flaw, sufficient to get upper management fired. I can't imagine that even the "thin über alles" folks at Apple would be THAT stupid. It seems far more likely that somebody changed a connector, and that they don't have the right tools at the various Apple stores yet, which while qualifying as seriously incompetent, is probably a failure of the Apple Store and/or AppleCare management chain, rather than engineering.
Time Machine works. Use it.
Until it doesn't. It seems common for it to pop up and say that a backup is corrupted, and prompts you to erase the stored backup and start fresh.
I know someone who has been using Time Machine for 9 YEARS now without incident. Used it once for "whole disk" recovery when replacing an HDD, and once for Data/App migration when ugrading to a new Mac. Both times worked flawlessly and effortlessly.
The only positive here is that Time Machine "just works."
But that's a pretty fucking IMPORTANT "positive".
In fact, it completely obviates the need for any hinky dataport that lets someone do a data-suck on your stolen laptop.
BTW, since the 2018 MacBook Pro has an Apple T2 chip, the contents of the SSD are ALWAYS encrypted, with no CPU intervention.
If you're prepared to pay the much higher cost of having someone attack the problem with a desoldering station, there are probably places that can do it even when Apple says they can't (due to the lack of the debugging port), but they will charge a hell of a lot more for that than a corner shop swapping drives on a PC and especially more than the above mentioned teen that's good with computers.
But if the failed logic board was under warranty, you may have to choose between paying through the nose for data recovery AND paying through the nose again for a new board since de-soldering definitely voids the warranty. Apple does state that an HD with a data recovery company's seal on it will still be replaced under warranty, but they say nothing about de-soldered logic boards.
For the older Macbooks with the data recovery connector, I have never seen any documentation and certainly haven't seen the device that connects to it available anywhere, so the third party shops don't have them. You're still stuck with either a very expensive de-soldering job (and connecting the ssd on a bench) or going to Apple. That's a pretty strong lock-in.
Frequent backups should always be done, but there's always those cases where it couldn't be done for a day or two on the road and you really want something back that wasn't in the last backup.
Sorry. The SSD is encrypted by the on-board T2 chip.
Use Time Machine. It works.
And there are no third-party shops that do Apple data recovery?
Most, if not all, of the major ones do. But this is different.
I can recover data from any non failed hard drive that uses a SATA or IDE connector. So like 99% of the consumer hard drives made in the past 20 years.
You cannot do that with these Macs. That makes them in this respect at least functionally inferior. You cant really claim they saved all that much money by removing the standard connector, or even their proprietary one. And looking at the price tag, even if they saved money, it didn't get passed on to the consumer.
The reasoning was that the T2 chip that does transparent data encryption without CPU intervention has made it impractical to offer this port. This chip did not exist in the 2016 and 2017 models, hence the port.
Time Machine works. Anyone who doesn't use it deserves exactly what they get.
That was kinda the point... Places like this f*ck people by soldering the drive on the board AND THEN removing the diagport/interface option from the same area so now you're stuck with board failure and loss of data. Soldering the data storage like that and then removing all options of pulling the data is horrid design.
Yeah, especially since Apple makes automatic, HOURLY, backups so hard... [/s]
Yeah, actually, there are thousands and thousands of places nationwide in the USA that you can bring computers for data recovery if the main board fails. Have been for decades and decades.. Unlike "Genius" bars, these places will work on all manner and make of computer as well.
You pay for it one way or another. AppleCare, store warranty, out of pocket.
I've been recovering data from failed tech for way longer than this Apple craze.
Considering that this "Apple Craze" has been going on for more than 40 years, I kind of doubt it.
Or just turn off write caching for USB devices. In fact, it's off by default in Microsoft Windows. There are two options for USB devices, Quick Removal (default) and Better Performance (write caching). More information.
That explains why it doesn't seem to matter with Windows; but at least earlier (up to at least 10.7) versions of OS X/macOS, you took a great risk just yanking removable storage (USB Sticks and USB HDDs) without "Ejecting" first.
They MAY have fixed that behavior in later versions; but, having personally corrupted a USB HDD that way, I still feel better safe than sorry...
What we have here is a malware program that got certified by Apple... but this appears to only be in India's version of the app store. Cleanup should be quick, and it's less than 20 reported cases of trouble so far.
Less than 20 cases... IN THREE YEARS!
As Trojans go, this one is wildly UNsuccessful...
No it isn't. What is ignorant is paying a 5000% markup on a product that is mass produced. Now THAT is stupid.
Ok, let's use those numbers.
If the BOM cost of a MacBook Pro is in fact $300, then the MSRP for that product at 5000% markup would be:
$15,000
Isn't debunking Hater Hyperbole fun?
Linux enables me to spend a great deal more on a laptop or a workstation actually. I see this anemic little SSD and chuckle. So what if it's "fast". I would rather have more storage.
I can get 2.5TB of SSD storage on a Linux laptop.
My old bruiser has 2.5TB of conventional storage. My "outdated" bruiser probably still has a better GPU than this Apple toy.
That Apple "toy" can be configured with up to a 6 core CPU as well as 4 TB of the FASTEST laptop SSD around
Now what?
I gave up buying Apple stuff in 1988
So, let me get this straight:
The las Apple Computer you bought had one of the following CPUs:
1 MHz 6502
2 MHz 65816
20 MHz 68020
25 MHz 68030
Think there's been any performance advances between that and a 2.9 GHz, 6 core Intel CPU? Think your comment has even a scintilla of relevance to this discussion?
Didn't think so.
Well, yeah, because every decent manufacturer buys the same panels from Samsung that Apple is using. I don't know why anyone ever thought Apple's displays were some special magic that nobody else had access to... it's not like they make them in-house.
Give me a break!
At the volumes that Apple buys, and the higher prices they are willing to pay, the panels that Apple buys are NOT the "same panels" that the OEMs that are trying to meet a $500 retail price point are getting.
Apple is specing higher quality, better QCed panels than the Acers of the world. That's the difference, and you simply can't prove otherwise. But I defy you to open a MacBook Pro display and any other and find the same Samsung or LG part number.
The current generation of Macbooks will have nearly zero resale value once their Applecare coverage ends.
That's highly unlikely, if history is any judge.
I don't understand why people continue to pay such prices for mainstream technology.
$2500 spread over 5 years, is less than 1% of a developer's salary. If a Mac makes you more productive, then buying it is a no-brainer.
The build cost is irrelevant.
Americans, in particular, typically confuse Price and Value. They continually do stuff like count Ports, GBs, etc,to determine "value", even if strapped together with chewing gum and bailing wire, and a hodgepodge of sweatshop-produced Drivers into a "Product" that will be in a landfill in 2 or 3 years.
Ffs. I used to sell Apple gear.
People talk like that but at least custom drivers don't break constantly in Windows. Protools used to constantly break in osx.
And in osx, what backwards compatibility?
And with that attitude, I'm sure you were a very effective Apple salesperson, too (rolls eyes)...
Remember to separate price (objective) from value (subjective). If you don't value the lightness, the price increase is just a negative.
And, for a fair comparison and as by your statement ("make sure that all data matches"), the macbook should also match the alternative. I would expect a $3500 device to have a USB-A port, and would value that more than -300 g.
That said, I sometimes explain (and demonstrate) to my coworkers that their $1400 equivalent Lenovo T-series laptop is not, in fact, equivalent (2 cores instead of 4, lower CPU speed, SATA SSD, intel GPU) to my MBP (no touchbar). (It is easy to demonstrate; build times are consistently ~30% lower on my laptop than theirs, no hocus-pocus.) Equally specced out, the price difference turns out marginal, as you indicate. And then my smug glee turns into a frown as they go to IT and get 32 MB installed while I am stuck with 16.
Just think how your smile will return when you submit that requisition for a 6 core, 32 GB MBP next time around...
I did this yesterday. A maxed out 2018 MacBook Pro cost $7000.
I built an Oryx system 76 laptop with maxed out (and better) specs for $5000.
That's $2000 cheaper.
Of course, you won't favor us with those specs; so...
Or 90 percent of the rest of the machine
Compared to Dell, HP, Samsubg, ASUS, Acer, Lenovo and ALL the rest, Apple has much more in-house designed custom silicon and other components.
But of course, none of that counts, right?
For example, How do you think it came to be that these Mac laptops have the fastest SSDs? Not by purchasing some off-the-shelf SSD controller or even worse, SSD drive module!
The cost of manufacture is a pretty small portion of the total cost of these systems. Sure, the marginal cost of a single CPU is fairly low, but the R&D investment is massive and the fab itself is several billion dollars that needs to be recouped somehow.
Exactly.
Looking at BOM costs only as the arbiter of what retail price of a high tech product should be is ignorant, dangerous and naive.
W1's AAC is still lossy compression and non-zero latency, therefore not suitable for audio production and less than ideal for FPS gaming. Add to that the fact that it's not available in any form of studio monitor headphone and, well... yeah. And it never will be, because it's not suitable for the application in the first place.
And yes, there is a fair bit of pro recording gear centered around the iPhone, so this is an actual market segment I am talking about, here.
AptX is lossy, too, and I have read the chipset datasheets, and the minimum delay is 50 ms. That's quite audible! For example, A Rockabilly slap back echo is only around 64ms.
I wouldn't call ANY wireless audio protocol low-enough latency for audio production/recording.
While I know there is some recording sw and hw centered around iOS devices, I'm not sure I would call any of it "Pro", sorry.
I have gotten some fantastic impromptu recordings with the DAW iOS app; but I wouldn't record on it if I had something else at hand.
Oh, I forgot to ass zero-latency to the requirements. In recording (and FPS gaming), that matters. A lot.
From what I have read, and FWIW, people give high marks to Apple's BT stack using AAC and the W1 chip; on all counts: Fidelity, range/lack-of-dropouts, and Latency.