MBP MAX Disappointment

[Med D]

I've had my M1 Max Macbook Pro for about three months now and I have to say I am pretty disappointed by it. There are two major issues that Apple appears to be disinterested in addressing. These both are present on my machine and apparently many others as well. First, the SD card slot does not work with camera-formatted cards. So that means that none of my SD cards can be read by the mbp. My $9 external reader still works fine, so that is my workaround, but after all the hoopla about the return of the SD card slot, it's amazing that it does not work. On a more significant note, my mbp is not able to use any of the external SSDs that I have. They are all SanDisk Extreme, the model that Costco has been selling for the last couple of years. They are super-fast on my old mbp but on the M1 they are unusable. Disk Utility locks up when trying to read or even erase one of these drives. Again, many users are complaining about this but Apple has not even acknowledged there is a problem.

 

[Jon Dishler]

This is very interesting, I have a MBP MAX and it reads SD cards fine from my series 8 Sound Devices which were formatted on the SD machine. It also reads Sandisk external 2 TB USB-C device (orange hole) that is a couple of years old with files recorded with my older Apple computer. And I really like the machine, fast with great battery life. Maybe it is your cards or you need to reformat something?

 

[Med D]

Maybe but I have a ton of SD cards, they all work fine on my old mbp which has a built-in reader, and they all work fine on my USB reader. Ditto for the SSDs. I should mention, the SSDs do work on the M1 but they operate at a massively lower speed. It's possible these are both hardware, but if so it is a common failure as many are experiencing both.

 

[Zack Birlew]

This is most likely due to the custom nature of the new M1 Macs, I anticipate issues with the M1 Mac Pros down the road as well. I remember buying a brand new Asus laptop for film school with a Core i7 processor and, then brand new, USB 3 ports and finding that hardly anything worked on the USB 3 ports and didn't until USB3 devices matured to support the various competing chipsets out there. In this case, I can only hope Apple makes a firmware update or something to fix things for the early adopters.

 

[andrewhake]

Don't assume something is common just because you searched it and found other posts. Report it to Apple.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Maybe but I have a ton of SD cards, they all work fine on my old mbp which has a built-in reader, and they all work fine on my USB reader. Ditto for the SSDs. I should mention, the SSDs do work on the M1 but they operate at a massively lower speed. It's possible these are both hardware, but if so it is a common failure as many are experiencing both.

Try your cables - try better ones. We've encountered this a lot. If your older MBP only had USB 3.1 ports, and your new M1 has USB4 slots, then if you use your old cable the SSDs will grind to a halt. At least test this out. We have a lot Macs at our office, and we have to constantly test our cabling to make sure all the SSDs are humming a long.

 

[Med D]

I'll try a new cable, but the drive cables are only about 3" long and they have USB-C connectors on both ends -- no adapters. In fact I was using an adapter on my old mbp, which worked fine.

I did report to Apple and was bumped up one level on the service line. I paid for AppleCare and assumed that these two issues would warrant a replacement unit as both failures were present from the factory. Instead Apple wants me to send the computer in. Because the SD slot is part of the motherboard, the entire MB would be replaced. I'm sorry but I'm not going to have manual work done to a 2-month old, $3k machine. It should be right from the factory or be replaced. BTW Apple wanted me to install a new copy of the OS on a (new) clean partition, then allow one of their techs to remotely run some diagnostics -- all this before they would look at my machine.

I'm not going to say this has soured me on Apple becuase they are still by far the best option. I won't ever buy AppleCare again though, and I will test every feature of a new computer in the first 24 hours. I'm also downgrading my status from fanboi to user.

 

[Christopher S Johnson]

Thanks for bringing those up. For sure two big issues for a useable workflow. But what's the point of having Apple Care if you're not willing to send it in to have it worked on? Sure it should work, but how do you expect them to fix it without sending it in?

Also there are many different types of USB-C cables, some way faster than others.

 

[Med D]

It's brand new -- Apple with or without AppleCare should replace it. It was defective from the factory, in fact it appears to be a design issue for the SD card slot. I don't think I should have to accept a re-worked machine for something that is 100% Apple's fault. Apple actually admitted they would probably have replaced it except that these are all in heavy back-order.

Also, my drives are operating at a kbps level so any of those cables would be fine.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I have been also encountering external SSD issues. I had to reformat them on my older MacBook and then they would read on my new MacBook.

 

[Med D]

I have been also encountering external SSD issues. I had to reformat them on my older MacBook and then they would read on my new MacBook.

I will try that and probably will end up doing that with the SD cards as well. How does that work though? I have a bunch of full SSDs. Am I really supposed to copy each one to another SSD on another Mac, then reformat the first SSD and copy the data back. It's one thing to format a drive that is new but these are data back-ups.

Not a very good endorsement of Apple engineering.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Has anyone with external storage running slow been able to resolve the issue with different cabling?
Has anyone hooked up a fast SSD to an M1 and been able to get near rated speeds?

Cheers - #19