this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Do they still solder the SSD?
Of course
Well that's not very "green" coming from a company who stopped supplying customers with chargers "because of the environment." When a hard drive craps out the only solution is to replace the entire board rather than a single part with an industry standard connector?
They disassemble those replacements and use them to create warranty parts. Apple is one of the few companies that actually does reduce and reuse first. Any parts that fail testing get recycled.
They desolder components and reuse them or they scrap old laptops and scavenge the good bits like the screen and keyboard? Assuming someone brings in a laptop with a bad hard drive, what components later get disassembled?
All of them. They have machines that strip down the components:
https://www.elitedaily.com/p/heres-how-apple-recycles-old-iphones-into-new-models-by-using-actual-robots-29961761
This article is about the iPhone robots but they also have machines that do this with Macs too. Every Apple device is made with recycled content but the majority of their components are reused in remanufactured warranty devices (remanufactured rather than refurbished because refurbished reuses existing whole components, remanufacturing breaks down components, tests them, and reuses them to create entirely new components from working parts).
Could just solder a new ssd no?
Of course not, the "Bios" is stored on the SSD, so if you replace it your computer won't even boot.
Oh, and if your SSD dies it won't boot too.
Oof.
Removing individual soldered NAND chips directly connected to the motherboard, attaching new NAND chips, and somehow getting a working computer out the other end is so far beyond the abilities of most users that it's not even funny.
It's way beyond the skillset of even most computer repair specialists too.
In fact, in terms of "getting it working again" is concerned, anyone outside of an Apple assembly plant is unlikely to be much use.
People have done it on M1's at least. You'll need a well equipped rework station to do it though, especially since the NAND is essentially glued to the motherboard in addition to solder.
Technically they don’t even have an SSD anymore. They just have a bunch of NAND chips.
The drive controller is in the CPU. Which is great for performance… especially when you’re reading data that is already cached by the drive controller you’re limited by RAM speed instead of PCIe - but it’s a bit of a headache when it comes to upgrades.
The band chips are on a daughter board on their larger desktops. And soldered on laptops and the tiny Mac Mini.
Yes. There is no internal upgradable parts. I believe you can only replace the battery cells, the fans, and the mainboard (motherboard with soldered CPU/RAM(VRAM)/SSD, and all connected modules like the USB chipsets, audio chipset, etc.).
Replacing the motherboard triggers the screen drm and the screen gets all fucked up and won't go to sleep.
Everything is soldered these days, RAM included, hence the issues and complaints. I find it extra comical that they tried to cheapen on the solder as well, but when that resulted in issues with GPU splitting away from PCB, they glued shoe rubber on top the chip so case pushes it to make contact and called it a "solution". Haha. Imagine the amount of savings they made on such a wast amount of solder per PCB. It might even approach range in pennies.
It's not even soldered, they've gone further than that. They literally print the memory and storage onto the system on a chip, as part of the fabrication process. No amount of soldering skill will be able to remove and replace that memory/storage, because it's on the chip itself.