YouTuber shows off hardware hack to replace soldered MacBook storage

I just ran across this bit of news

So it’s not just Mac Pros and Studios that can get SSD upgrades. The “iBoff” repair channel just demonstrated a proof-of-concept system for doing this on Apple Silicon laptops.

Remove the old flash chips and then solder down a board that installs an M.2 socket in its place. You can then install a custom shape M.2 flash module (needed to fit in the crowded Mac case) for 512 GB, 1TB or 2TB of storage.

It won’t be cheap, and you need to run Configurator from another Mac to pair it with the Mac after installation, but it proves that it can be done. And performance is the same as Apple’s soldered-down storage.

Which also proves that it’s only a business reason, not a technical one, why Apple is soldering down storage.

Not necessarily. Using other methods to attach storage may have a reliability issue. I doubt the replacement has been stress-tested, even if it works initially.

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It proves that Apple could’ve put an M.2 socket on the board without hurting system performance.

As for stress testing, laptop makers have been using M.2 storage devices for a very long time. The tech is well proven, even if this specific proof-of-concept hack isn’t up to commercial levels of reliability.

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