Although the three M1 Macs released in late 2020 have been widely praised for a large number of advances, one criticism has been leveled that the hardware cannot be upgraded or repairable after purchase, with the main components soldered to the board. In an interesting development, an engineer in China apparently discovered how to successfully upgrade the SSD and RAM on M1 Macs – but this is obviously a very risky and difficult step.
If users did not want to pay more RAM or more storage space before, it was possible with a variety of models to upgrade these components later. Over the years it became less of an option and for the M1 Macs it was considered impossible with the RAM and SSD soldered directly to the M1 chip.
Just like we saw with the hardware upgrades from the iPhone and iPad to the market, someone allegedly cracked how to replace memory and storage with M1 Macs to recognize the upgrades correctly.
The discovery, attributed to engineer Yang Changshun of Guangzhou, China, was shared on Chinese social media and posted by chongdiantou.com with images (via MacRumors).
The photos show how the RAM and SSD modules were removed, with screenshots showing the upgraded storage in macOS. However, it is important to keep in mind that this process is very risky and of course Apple’s warranty will be invalid.
There is also the question of how durable / reliable the upgrades will be after the original soldered hardware is forcibly removed and new components are installed. And even if successful, there is a possibility that Apple may prevent the unofficial hardware from working with a future MacOS software update.
While not something that is likely to become a mainstream option for upgrades, it is nevertheless an impressive technical achievement. It will be interesting to see if companies like iFixit and more will look further into the possibilities and concerns.
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