Apple Silicon Macs - Upgradable?

Just around the corner are likely Apple’s first (at least for consumers) in house Apple Silicon powered Macs. Over the past few years, with the exception of Mac Pro, Apple’s computers have been becoming less and less upgradable. And we probably a should expect that to continue, with Apple Silicon. But that might not be a bad thing, or at least, as bad as you’d expect.

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Before we get too far into this, some ground rules. There is a like and a dislike button under this video. These are not for “should Apple do this” they are for whether you like my video. So, I don’t wanna get all the hate for Apple making stuff you have to spec out when you buy it. Of course, if you hate my face, then there’s a special button for you.

When Apple was first founded, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak certainly had different ideas about what a computer would be like. Woz was a famous tinkerer and loved getting his hands dirty while Jobs wanted things to just work and would talk in terms of ability over specifications.

Going back to the beginning of the second Steve Jobs era at Apple, the computers were fairly serviceable and upgradable. You could certainly replace hard drives, batteries, ram in almost all of their products with relative ease. The PowerMac series for example actually attached the motherboard (or in Apple speak the Logic Board) to the side of the computer which folded down when opened to make it easier to work on. The PowerMac G5 had a beautiful handle that dropped one side away for easy access, and the G4 Cube was famous for its pop out handle to access everything inside.

The iPod Generation

But starting with the iPod, Jobs was working to make everything smaller, and there is an infamous story of engineers bringing him a prototype and saying there was no way to make it smaller. He dropped it into a fish tank and as bubbles emerged from it and made their way to the surface he pointed out that those bubbles were coming from the spaces inside where it could be condensed further. Mean, but very effective demo.

Over the years they have got more and more tightly integrated, from soldered ram and cpus to glued in batteries and glued on displays. All in the pursuit of thin and light. There are exceptions, the Mac Pro has upgradable everything, and the iMac 27” has a handy hatch where you can pop in new RAM Sticks. The Mac mini can have some parts upgraded, but it’s not an easy process. In the past, when you bought a computer, it was a collection of components, assembled from multiple manufacturers that were interchangeable. Those days may be over for the vast majority of Apple computers.

But Apple’s SOCs in iPads and iPhones are a very different story. When was the last time you popped open your phone to up the ram or storage? Never, because its all a single unit, and that may be the way we should be looking at Apple Silicon. But that is probably not a bad thing.

Who buys Macs anyway?

While the majority of people watching this video will know how much ram their computer has inside it, but the majority of people who actually buy a laptop don’t know the specs off by heart. Most users want a computer that does what they need it to and looks pretty good. With Apple though, unlike almost any other computer manufacturer, their computers as well as phones, watches and tablets are also seen as something of a status symbol. You can still feel cool pulling a 2012 MacBook Air out of your bag, compared to others pulling out last year’s HP 4790D P170 Q precision series or whatever its called.

So what will upgradability look like in Apple Silicon? In the traditional sense, it will almost certainly be gone.

Notebooks - zero. Processor, ram, graphics, all most likely in the single SOC. Even Storage

iMac - Potential for expandable ram but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Mac mini - expand it with more Mac minis, as in 2018.

Mac Pro - maybe card based upgrades that replace the heart of the machine.

Headless Mac mini to upgrade older Macs that include displays

Full Mainboards available as an upgrade?