The Apple M1 SSD SwapGate is a Massive Overreaction

CODEX

I am not here to defend Apple. God knows, they have not given me anything I have not paid for (other than Apple TV+), I haven’t a single Apple share, nor is my dwarf cactus a distant relative of Steve Jobs. I am just a tech enthusiast like many others, but perhaps with a bit more balanced view on the tech world than customary these days — hence my statement that all this “SSDs are dying because of M1” is an overreaction, and tech news outlets publishing sensationalist articles with zero evidence is dumb, dangerous and goes against the very essence of what journalism is meant to be about.

Over the last three months I have paid very close attention to what some would call #SwapGate. It started with some YouTubers trying to justify the choice between 8GB and 16GB RAM, or 256GB and 512GB SSD. I would not see their intentions as malicious, but rather poorly educated, which begs the question — why?!? Why is YouTube split into two camps — one that claims there is no SSD swap issue, and another that claims there is. Same for Twitter. One guy posts a screenshot, and a day later tends if not hundreds of news outlets share that one screenshot, creating the impression that we’re dealing with a widespread issue. Needless to say, I am not going to share that same screenshot!

Naturally, owning an M1 since its launch, the concerns raised seemed legit, and I still believe they are. But having a legitimate concern does not equate to having an actual problem. Hypochondriacs have legitimate concerns all the time, but rarely do those turn out to be actual illnesses. I think we can also all agree that being concerned about the possibility of a nuclear war is very different than being in one — and let’s hope, we’ll never have to prove that. Same goes for the M1 and its alleged “problem” and associated concerns.

SSDs have a limited life-span. This is a fact. But this is also a fact for HDDs, and believe it or not, the average life-span of a spinning-disk drive is shorter than an SSD’s — by a lot! I am not going to regurgitate what others have already explained in intricate detail, just going to highlight that the average life-span of a spinning HDD is 5–7 years. That largely depends on…

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