These two things can be true: Apple’s new Mac Pro is repairable, and Apple still exerts too much restrictive control over the device.
At a glance, Apple delivered the kind of device we’re always asking for, one we hardly expected from them: it’s extremely easy to open, comes with official parts replacement manuals, and even lets you swap RAM and other components without tools. After years of disheartening, uncertain journeys inside the iPad, MacBook Pro, and other Apple devices, it was thrilling to see numbered steps and guiding symbols etched into the Pro. Apple is showing you, the device owner, where to go and what to do to remove some of the Pro’s components. We expected many aspects of a desktop computer aimed at professionals to be more modular than Apple’s other devices, but outright enthusiastic guidance? Color us truly surprised.
But just because Apple lets you do things doesn’t mean they trust you. Trying to replace the primary solid-state drive on the Mac Pro (or the entire logic board) triggers a freak-out, where the device won’t boot again until an authorized Apple technician runs a diagnostic tool to pair the SSD with the T2 security chip. You might be able to get aftermarket storage set up and running as your primary drive, with some tinkering and great Time Machine backups. But, generally, an SSD failure means turning to Apple, and likely haul your big Mac Pro to a Store, to get it working again. Apple’s SSDs are different, and in many ways better than off-the-shelf SSDs; we get why they made them. But a T2-based security system that only Apple can sign off on sacrifices practicality for security; both are important for a “pro” machine, especially one for which you paid many thousands of dollars.
Increased security is nothing to scoff at. Apple seems to be genuinely trying to innovate here and that’s cool. But also, history shows that Apple makes zero effort to authenticate legit repairs performed by anyone but Apple. Pairing a new home button or SSD should be trivial for someone that already has the password and physical access to the machine. Instead Apple keeps the pairing tools to themselves, turning an otherwise repairable device into a brick that only Apple can un-brick, for a conveniently astronomical fee. Apple claims to be making these decisions purely in the interest of security, but it’s hard to ignore how these same decisions always end up padding Apple’s bottom line.
Another token of Apple’s limited trust for professionals is its service guides. While we love seeing these part-specific manuals, they’re not the same as a complete service manual. Apple recently, quietly released full service manuals for the 2019 iMac 4k and 5k. These are excellent, full repair manuals that get you all the way through the devices, and list every size replacement screw you might need. Compare this with the Mac Pro, where we see that replacing a CPU is as easy as with any standard tower PC, provided you have the right screwdrivers. But Apple doesn’t trust you, or your favorite repair tech, to spread your own thermal paste or handle a CPU, evidently. They don’t even really trust you to install wheels on your Mac Pro; they suggest contacting the company or an authorized tech for that.
Apple’s been in the news lately for staying fast to their privacy principles. They offer iPhone and iPad owners strong tools to protect their privacy, but puts the keys and controls in owners’ hands. We think that Apple’s computers, especially those in the Mac Pro’s price range, should offer the same bargain. Trust Apple to make a smart device and offer guaranteed repairs, but reserve the right to tinker and modify without their help, whether yourself or through repair shops.
17 Комментариев
Ummmm…. Why does the big photo at the top of the article show an iMac Pro motherboard?
shamino - Ответить
I think it's an attempted swap of the ssds because the iMac pro uses the same type
Jacob Markow -
The new Mac Pro looks like a brilliant machine. Expensive, but brilliantly build.
Not my cup of tea in terms of aesthetics.
Reminds me a lot of the Mac Pro 5,1
The only things missing are a user replaceable SSD and Nvidia video cards.
And yes, trust the users to do great things with it. Don't build walls, open doors.
Will we see a Threadripper version?
Ciprian - Ответить
100% in agreement with this sentiment . I’m a huge Apple fan and was even a Genius for 3yrs. Mac Pro is a great product, but being great doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
Zeal - Ответить
Having never owned a Mac with the T2 chip, I don’t have personal experience, however it is my understanding that you can disable the boot security of using a non-paired/non-apple boot drive using recovery mode, best done prior to replacing the drive. This would of course remove that layer of security, but should work just the same as a Mac prior to the T2 chip.
jeffjeffmurray - Ответить
You can turn off the security to allow you to boot from an external drive. By booting up in the recovery partition, and changing the level of security. But you change it to upgrade your current hard drive with a larger third party. Most new macs have the ssd soldered right to the motherboard. Apple is forcefully taking too much control. Now with even Catalina. By locking you out the root level of the hard drive default OS folders. I’ve been a long time Mac fan. Way back from when I worked for a reseller right out of coop. When they allowed you to buy Apple are on any Apple product, even if it was out of Warrenty regardless of its age. Not up to 5 years now. They are loosing me as a customer! We need to get Steve Wozniak in control of Apple. So they will care about there customers again. Instead of can we swindle even more money out of Custer after the initial purchase!! Tim Cook has ruined Apple with greed
Carlo - Ответить
I know it is best to boot and run off the internal ssd, but i have computers that run off thunderbolt based SSD drives, and I notice NO speed reduction in using my mac booting of a 10-year, 2TB, Samsung SSD drive shoved in a ruggedize Lacie case, and booted from just like you can select any boot drive to use. Yes, it requires an external drive to the thing, but it works great! Anyways, work-arounds. I lived with our imac5k of external ssd’s while apple kept releasing seaming trivial updates from el capitan to mojave, and now catalina. Each new release actually makes it harder for a user to achieve root. oh, i forgot, root is not supported by apple. also, Temp Sensor Pro isn’t supported by apple, so don’t provide that data, or they dissown you. Just saying.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
most systems have a default boot state, that would be the BIOS or soldered smaller SSD. I don’t think it is out of line that you override the internal boot drive with your external replacement over thunderbolt. just remember to do a trimforce enable on your SSD, to let the drivers more easily load level your external SSD. Forget about that chip and fingerprint crap. if the mac is in a lab, disable it. if it is in a home, disable it.
I M H O
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
one last thing, knowing that by overriding the soldered boot ssd with your own thunderbolt accessible external ssd that has trimforce enabe set. Why should you ever buy an internal drive larger than 256GB? Just put the OS on the interal SSD, create the users you want. then go into each user, and change their login location to yet another drive, and NOT the internal SSD. This new drive, mine being in a RAID5 enclosure, ensures the integrity of you data that is off the internal SSD. The User data space is protected with a failure of up to one drive. And finally, you can backup you root volume, and clone the same for system backups, and so user specific backups for where you end up putting the user data. User data works just great on a RAID5. Just saying… think backups as your are modularizing how your system boots. first it could use the internal ssd, or be overridden by a TB bus SSD. You users can be on the system drive, or elsewhere. Take advantage of the Advanced options in Users & Groups.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
Just in my humble opinion. And it works great. when you upgrade your system, the user data space is separate. upgrade the OS in that internal SSD by just partitioning up that 256GB drive. Keep user applications in a separate Applications folder off the boot drive, which is something I should do, but don’t currently do, compoletely - i use macports and brew, but that is beyond the scope of this. The visibility of the user’s applications or applications’ folder may not be desirable at the system level. We used to keep such things in places like /usr/local/bin, or /opt, or even in ~loginid/Appications, just make sure the applications are in your search path or are docked. I’m done here. just some ideas that go beyond the hardware modularity of the system. The system can be divided up in terms of software modularity as well.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
I had mentioned to move the user’s off the internal SSD. Just go in as root, and ‘rsync -av’ or whatever “Carbon Copy Clone” or whatever, the User’s login folders to their new location when I mentioned move the users off the internal boot drive. You do have to copy the user’s login location to where you are going to replace their login area. It turns out my login area is now, ‘/Volumes/r3/Users/userid’s’, I cloned the user’s login location to a new location. I’m certain I logged in at least once before moving/copying the login folders to elsewhere. It is required, after much trial and error, that the users are in a rooted older, /Users. And this only started working at High Sierra release of macos x. So, I have never read how to set this up. It was just how we organized our user’s login locations at boeing to maintain proper project charging.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
So, I would argue that Apple has made it harder at the hardware level to do things, but being a hardware/software solution, apple has increased its functionality to allow modularity at the user login level, thus separating the OS space from the User’s space. Have fun. Test it out, first. It’s easy to recreate. Once it is in place, use real data. When switching os’s, having the user’s off the system drive only works back to about High Sierra.
These, are of course, undocumented suggests that do work. Hopefully, apple will maintain this kind of functionality in the future.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
this is obvious to me, but may not be obvious to some. The userid and groupid for where you move the login folders to must be owned the same way the folders were owned by the owner of that folder in the original /Users folder. You have to clone the user’s login folder maintaining all the same permissions at the new location. Hope that added not helps some.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
if anybody actually does what I suggest, and perhaps uses NFS or some auto-mountable filesystem, it would also be helpful to automount the /User/userid folder when a request is made by the system to login as userid. That way, there are weak external login points, like mount points, in fact, they are exactly like mount points, that get loaded when a user logs in. It seams that would be the complete shebang. Next project I do, or I’ll accept anybody else’ work. Thanks.
Billy McCloskey - Ответить
see w ikipedia on shebang it is a line that is #! or #!/path/to/sheel/intereprter or #!/bin/env name of executable suuming it is in path
Meow Purr -
The argument about authenticating T2 / TouchID chips by 3rd party resellers is literally no different than the backdoor to encryption argument. If they allowed such a device to be owned by 3rd parties, it would take days(at most) for that to be hacked and exploited. Now I can make this modified TouchID that does allow special fingers to unlock the device, and the whole system is now bypassed.
Perhaps their pricing is too high, I can’t generally argue with that. But it isn’t greed that is guiding them to keep the authentication in house. It is literally the only way to ensure the integrity of the security solution.
djfriar - Ответить
What I find is, if you bought a Mac Pro.. For 5 or 6 thousand dollars, chances are you would probably be capable of repairing/maintaining it!
Ben Capehart - Ответить