I find it very disappointing that hardware (especially laptop hardware) has been moving towards proprietary connectors solely for the purpose of extracting more money from consumers. Several years ago, I bought a new DVD burner for my IDE-based Toshiba Satellite, but it turns out that the laptop's IDE connector wasn't quite compatible with non-Toshiba drives and it ended up being a waste of $60 and several hours of my time. I also accidentally fried the laptop's board while trying to get it working. I haven't bought a Toshiba since.
[1]: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2012+...
Another point is that Apple’s SSD connector is different because they are already selling SSD configurations up to 768GB, while the current maximum for standard mSATA is only 256GB.
It seems like his issue is more with the price and compatibility of SSDs than anything with Fusion Drive. I'm not too familiar with the specifics of the situation, but it pre-dates Fusion. Starting on the MacBook Air a few years ago, they started using a proprietary connector with a smaller form factor for SSDs. This has since expanded to their other laptops and iMacs. At the time the SSD drives were significantly smaller than what I saw on the market, but that doesn't completely explain the proprietary connector. This is probably the biggest reason I'd consider other laptops when it's time for me to upgrade...so maybe it's good he's making noise about this.
As for the complaints about pricing, again I haven't followed details of SSDs too closely, but I know SSDs vary in price widely based on performance/quality--and the $80 SSD he links to has very mixed reviews. An inflated price is in line with Apple's spinning disk and RAM upgrades, so it's not surprising they'd overcharge. He also fudges some numbers by repeatedly saying Fusion Drive costs $450 ($200 because you have to upgrade from the base model and $250 for the SSD) but doesn't mention at all that the upgraded model doubles the spinning drive (500GB to 1TB) and gets you a i7 instead of an i5 processor (I was looking at the Mac mini).
At least for laptops, I think his suggestion of using an external SSD drive "will experience nearly every advantage that Fusion Drive has to offer – at a fraction of the cost" is absurd since the first thing you'd put on the SSD would be your OS--which I wouldn't want on an external drive.
For the iMac Mini, that is possible, and with such a connector, one can install a SSD as second drive in it (took me a few hours the first time round, but if I had to do it again, I think it would be an hour or so)
Of course that connector is hideously expensive (I guess iFixit would give it a BOM of $0.10 or so. I paid around $15,00, excluding shipping), but that is another issue.
Pardon me but it's the first time ever I heard about tiered storage (not caching hybrids which is handled by the drives themselves) being available outside of datacenters. Doesn't explain the +250$ price.
Besides, the whole tone of the article is full of useless hatred. The point could have been made without such aggressiveness.
What's more, the proposed solution is ludicrous:
- buy an external SSD
- install OSX on it
- wipe the internal disk
- manually manage files/applications/whatnot to be stored on the SSD or the disk.
I can't even begin to describe how such a scheme is brittle and contrived.
Can we stop pretending everyone out there is technically inclined? To us technical folks who know how to actually build the CoreStorage tiered array, 250$ may look like a steep price, but to the huge amount of real people out there, the convenience is well worth 250$, and for those it's not worth, well they'd stay with a spinner anyway.