f8lee Loc: New Mexico

I imagine most folks here don't get the geeky daily letters I do - this article pertaining to how it seems there may be issues with the new M1 macs (that is, Macs that use Apple's M1 CPUs rather than the Intel CPU) and their SSDs.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-m1-mac-write-issue/?ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&bhid=29060706624745943666557645817651&mid=13283888&cid=2209972494

As an aside, one of the author's bullet points may be something worth realizing:

"NAND flash is an analog medium, unlike the magnetic bits in hard drives, or the optical pits in DVD media. Flash stores electrons in tiny physical quantum wells. Electrons, those bad boys, are always trying to sneak out, which is why SSDs aren't forever, unlike, say, M Discs."

radiojohn

My biggest laugh was found last year at a thrift store. It was a special "100 Year CD" that used gold-something to keep intact.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Given that definition, digital camera sensors are analog devices, and in fact, any device that stores an electrical charge which includes volatile memory.

I’d also take issue with the general statement that write times to SSDs are in the millisecond range. Is that access time or actual write speed? Are they random or sequential writes, and what is the size of the write? It’s obvious that if this general statement were true, that an NVME SSD would never be able to achieve the writes speeds that routinely benchmark in the 2500 MB/sec. range, and SSD write access times typically measure in the 25-100 microsecond range.

neillaubenthal

I’m waiting on some confirmation or info from Apple. There’s no real reason for the reported extra wear on the SSDs...so it’s either an OS bug that will get fixed or a misreport by the reporting tools is my guess...and I would bet on the latter as being more likely. Still...it is a potential concern but the anti-Apple folk in the tech press seem to be making too big of a deal out of it so far.

tonyjag Loc: Bolton, Ma.

Any updates or news on this subject? I am getting closer to replacing my 15" 2014 macbook pro with a 16" m1max.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Funny - it's been a year already!

Well, as it turned out, I did buy an M1 MacBook Pro 13" with 16GB of RAM last year - here are a few notes:

First, there is apparently a glitch in the OS that prevents me from using two external monitors - older MacBook owners might know the term "clamshelling" where they could hook two large monitors to the MacBook, close the lid and by using an external keyboard they would have lots of screen acreage to work with. Well when I tried that all it would do is mirror the two external monitors - and when I inquired on the Apple forum as well as OWC (where they have more than a little expertise) I was informed it's an OS issue. To date - Apple does not seem to have fixed that. And I cannot speak to whether the 14 or 16" models will have the same issue.

Second, with regard to the single external monitor (I use a 32" BenQ), another real PITA is that when I wake it up from sleep mode the display arrangements as well as resolutions sometimes change randomly. That is, I set up the arrangement so the 32" screen is "above" the laptop screen; when waking from sleep mode sometimes it's fine, but about half the time the big screen is to the left or right of the laptop screen (??!!??), and in addition the resolutions change.
In fact, since I have to use an external dock to hook the HDMI cable to the MacBook (thanks, Apple, for making that another PITA) as often as not when I wake the system up the external monitor does not light up at all (even though it appears in the display arrangement window of System Preferences) - I have to physically unplug the HDMI from the dock and plug it back in, sometimes more than once, to get the 32" screen to appear again. Grrr!

And third, with regard to SSDs - I've had no issues as such, but be aware that when I tried Carbon Copy Cloner to back up the laptop it would keep failing when I used spinning drives. The folks at CCC explained that I need to use an external SSD - apparently the speed at which the internal SSD exchanges data is enough faster than spinning disk drives that it creates issues when doing a system backup. Mind you, I have no issues backing up the 2TB external SSD I use to store my photos to an external portable HDD, but for backing up the main computer drive it would seem an SSD is necessary (I had the same issue when I attempted to use SuperDuper! for that matter).

Had the 14" model, with built in HDMI as well as other connectors, been available when I bought this I definitely would have purchased that - but it was not an option last May. But insofar as the internal SSD being problematic - so far, not an issue.

I hope that helps.

tonyjag Loc: Bolton, Ma.

Thanks! I have the same problem now with one monitor connected...sometimes it does not wake from sleep and I have to power cycle it.