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Comment by m104 | Hacker News Reader

You really think that Apple would let their SSD-buying customers twist in the wind? The people paying a premium, or buying an MacBook Air? You're saying that Apple hasn't had or won't have a way to make OS X love the SSD?

Apple, the company that will probably be the first major computer manufacturer to eliminate the spinning disks, the company that is doing whatever it can to snatch up flash memory production capacity. That same company is going to let the performance suffer on, like, all of their devices? Really?

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Are you trying to make some point?

If you have an answer, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it, because as far as I know, that little thing is needed for SSDs to work properly over long term, since overwriting pages in a flash disk is significantly more costly than writing data to fresh pages.

If you don't have an answer, well, your comment seems to be fairly content-free.

His point was that you think Apple hasn't carefully considered if all their SSDs are going to degrade over the next year or two?

Given the following data points:

a) TRIM is generally needed to be supported by the OS in order to make SSDs work well over time (and is supported by Windows and Linux kernels, among others)

b) Mac OS X up to Snow Leopard doesn't support TRIM

I would tend to believe SSDs used by Mac OS X will degrade in performance over time. Clearly its possible that either (a) or (b) are wrong. In which case, it would be cool to hear which part I've gotten wrong (probably the first part).

Telling me that 'Apple surely would have taken this into consideration as they love their customers and charge a premium for their products' doesn't really address it.

Re b): Mac OS X 10.6 (and I think even later revisions of 10.5) support TRIM at the block device driver level [1]. As far as I know, it's the HFS+ file system code that doesn't support it, and neither do the SSDs in the current MacBook Air. I don't know about the ones in the iMac and MacBook Pro, but I vaguely remember that they also don't support it.

[1] via the discard() method on IOStorage objects: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin...

My point is that your conclusion was solely based on what you "know" and not what's really going on. You've illustrated my point very clearly. You "know" three things:

a) SSDs "need" TRIM support and driver support or the storage performance will greatly suffer b) Apple doesn't support TRIM, at least not officially c) Apple hasn't stated they will have TRIM support in the future

and from those three things, you're just sure that Apple's customers will pay some terrible price.

But you need to ask a few questions to back up what you "know":

1) Where are all of the "my MBA/MBP slows to crawl when the SSD is full" complaints? 2) Why would Apple bet the future of their OS X and iOS line of products on storage performance that painfully degrades with usage? 3) When, ever, has Apple displayed a stunning lack of foresight with their technology shifts that left millions of customers to twist in the wind?

When you add these to the mix, something doesn't add up. That should cause you to pause for a moment and say, hmm, perhaps I don't "know" everything. My reply was supposed to get you to say, "ah, I hadn't considered that." I was adding to the discussion by (trying to) provoke a bit of insightful reasoning beyond the typical "I'm sure I know what I'm talking about even though I haven't tested it."

Ignore me, though. It's just a debate with our opinions and perspectives. Look at the data, instead.

ugh's comment deserves to be upvoted because it links to benchmarked testing of Apple's SSD-bearing devices. The conclusion is clear: Apple's SSD performance isn't affected by a) and thus your line of reasoning is garbage. They were stunned and you should be too. I can confirm these benchmarks, if you don't trust them, by filling up the SSD on my own MBA. No performance penalties that I can see.

So, at least one of the three things that you "know" from a), b), and c) is wrong. Since you seemed to be teetering on the side of Schadenfreude with your original comment, I'm going to guess that you generally avoid Apple products and had genuinely wished that you were right or will be proven right. Ask yourself some questions from a different perspective next time or, better yet, look up some hard data. That way you will either learn that you are wrong earlier or will have some evidence to back up your opinion.

ugh's comment deserves to be upvoted because it links to benchmarked testing of Apple's SSD-bearing devices.

Yes, and I upvoted him for that. He provided an actual answer instead of just knee-jerk condescension and deriding me for even asking the question.

Since you seemed to be teetering on the side of Schadenfreude with your original comment, I'm going to guess that you generally avoid Apple products and had genuinely wished that you were right or will be proven right.

Yes, I suspected that this was your opinion based on the tone of your post and really, you have no basis whatsoever for reaching this conclusion.

Not that it should even matter but I have a 13" MacBook, a Mac-Mini at home and an iPhone 3GS. So maybe you should remember this the next time you start to make assumptions on a person commenting without knowing anything whatsoever about them :)

or, better yet, look up some hard data

Yes, some people knowledgeable on the topic commented and showed that my original hypothesis was wrong, and that's fine. I was looking for a reason 'why' disks would work, and I got it.

Your comment provided no such value to the conversation.

Apple wouldn't let customers "twist in the wind", it would sell them a solution.

An SSD is a wear item, and consequently a revenue stream. Imagine a replacement plan similar to the current battery replacement policy. Right now, you pay a fixed price, and they'll crack the case and swap out the battery.

Doing it for an SSD after some fixed amount of time would follow quite nicely, and give them the upsell opportunity. "Hey, while we're replacing the SSD, if you pay an extra $99, we'll swap in a bigger drive."

Apple is in the consumer electronics business, and part of their genius is in figuring out how to raise the annualized spend of their customers. The SSD is just another way to do that.

No, this isn't Apple's business and if you think this is how they operate then you haven't been paying attention. An SSD degradation issue would destroy the trust they (Apple) have built into their brand in a way that the supposed "scandal" of Antennagate never could.

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