Last year, Apple made an important change to 80 percent of their Mac line-up, including the new iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Air, and Mac Pro, that changed the type of flash storage of each of those systems to incorporate a PCI Express (or PCIe)-based storage system. It’s a much faster technology than the Serial ATA based storage Apple was using before, but there’s a rub: it also uses a non-standard connector, making upgrading any of these Mac’s flash storage impossible up until now.
At CES this year, however, it looks like Other World Computing (OWC) has made important strides to cracking the problem. They showed off flash storage prototypes that should enable users to upgrade their newer Mac’s SSDs.
According to iMore, while most of the PC industry is turning to an edge connector standard for flash drives called M.2, Apple has chosen a different path, making the connectors necessary to upgrade your own SSD unavailable.
It looks like OWC got their hands on the right parts, though, because they are aiming to release new upgradeable storage modules for newer Macs sometime this year, at a yet-to-be-determined price. It’ll doubtlessly cost, and the surgery required won’t be for the faint of heart, but at least your Mac won’t be stuck down an upgrading dead end.
Source: iMore
