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> I don't think these even boot once the SSDs die.

All Macs that I know of let you configure the boot drive. I had an older Mac Mini with a spinning HDD. I added an external SSD, set that up as the boot drive, and never touched the slow drive again. I'd be extremely surprised if you couldn't do the same with this.

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M-series Macs require a functioning internal drive in order to boot off external storage: https://tidbits.com/2021/05/27/an-m1-mac-cant-boot-from-an-e...

Well, I guess I'm extremely surprised, then. I don't care for that one bit.

I can't find an official source, but from what I've heard the newer Macs need to boot from the internal SSD. https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/s/CZOHuFQcy4

Correct, the stage 2 bootloader and system firmware must be on the SSD. The OS can then boot from an external volume.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/boot-process-secac7...

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