[dlevine]

This is super impressive! It's a cool POC, although it is already clear that it would be feasible for Apple to put M.2 slots in Macbooks if they wanted to.

I wonder how much it would cost to have someone replace the BGA NAND chips in my Macbook. Apple charges $6-800 for a 2TB upgrade for a Macbook (depending on whether it's a 250 or 500GB drive originally). Someone would have to be able to do it for like $2-300 for it to be a feasible upgrade, especially considering that my warranty would be void. I assume there are people overseas who could do it cheaply. I assume it would be fairly quick for someone who knows what they are doing.

[jdboyd]

There are already people doing M1 (and newer) flash upgrades by de-soldering the old flash chips and putting in new ones. I don't know the price, but potentially this kit could take out some of the steps and special hardware (involving USB flash adapters and a separate PC) required to do the job (by have the removable part already configured), and while it won't reduce the difficulty in removing the old chips without damaging the motherboard, potentially it could be easier to solder in place than the new flash chips (although I'd call that a big maybe). I'll be waiting until I see someone else using the kit before getting to excited though.

What I'm immediately looking forward to is someone making after market flash modules for the M4 mini, which uses a proprietary card format similar (but not compatible) with the Mac Studio (which does have after market cards available now).

[teaearlgraycold]

Consider that by the time you’ve ran out of storage you may have also ran out of your warranty.

[sroussey]

M.2 slots? M.2 SSDs have drive controllers on them, but in the Apple Silicon world, those controllers are integrated in the SoC.

They should absolutely not reuse the slot type for incompatible products.

They should make one though, their storage offerings are lame.