While the three M1 Macs launched in late 2020 were widely praised for a number of advances, one criticism was that the hardware cannot be upgraded or repaired after purchase with the main components soldered to the board. In an interesting development, an engineer in China figured out how to successfully update SSD and RAM on M1 Macs – but of course, it is a very risky and difficult change.
With older Macs, if users did not want to pay for more RAM or more storage upfront, it was possible, with a variety of models, to update these components later. Over the years, this became less of an option and for M1 Macs, it was thought to be impossible with RAM and SSD soldered directly to the M1 chip.
However, just as we saw in the hardware updates for the replacement iPhone and iPad, someone supposedly figured out how to replace memory and storage with M1 Macs by correctly recognizing the updates.
The discovery, attributed to engineer Yang Changshun from Guangzhou, China, was shared on Chinese social media and detailed by chongdiantou.com with images (via MacRumors).
The photos show the removed RAM and SSD modules with screenshots showing the updated storage on macOS. However, it is important to keep in mind that this process is very risky and, of course, will void Apple’s warranty.
There is also the question of how durable / reliable the updates would be after the forced removal of the original welded hardware and the installation of new components. And even if this is successful, there is a possibility that Apple will prevent unofficial hardware from working with a future update of the macOS software.
While this is not something that is likely to become a common option for updates, it is still an impressive technical feat. It will be interesting to see if companies like iFixit and others will further explore the possibilities and concerns.
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