Apple seems to be preventing users from upgrading their Mac Studios by themselves without taking an upsell from it.
Youtuber Luke Miani discovered the issue when he posted a video of himself tearing down a MacStudio and testing to see the future upgradability of Apple's desktop computer.
Miani found out that even though Apple's Mac Studio has a removable solid-state drive (SSD) and an extra slot, it is non-upgradable not because of hardware limitations but due to Apple locking the ability to do so via software.
Mac Studio False Upgradability Details
In his video, Miani took two Mac Studios and opened them up. He then took and wiped the SSD of one of them and inserted it in the other's open SSD slot, which would allow people to upgrade the Mac Studio's storage supposedly.
Miani was able to remove the SSDs from the first Mac Studio due to them not being soldered onto the device, as Max Tech discovered during his teardown video of a Mac Studio.
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Once that was done, he attempted to boot the Mac Studio that now has two SSDs in it, but the computer's status light blinked SOS in morse code and wouldn't boot up.
Miani then took both SSDs and stuck them in the other Mac Studio that had no SSDs before at point. However, that one didn't boot up either, only doing the same thing that the other Mac Studios did when it had both SSDs.
This test indicates that Apple locked the Mac Studio's upgradability in the computer's software as it recognized BOTH SSDs, but its software prevents itself from booting.
Apple Mac Studio False Upgradability Implications
A report from MacRumors mentioned that Miani's test also suggests that Apple may have consciously decided to lock the Mac Studio's upgradability to prevent users from upgrading its storage themselves.
Max Tech's teardown video showed that getting to the Mac Studio's SSD was a complicated process that involved removing the rubber ring on the bottom of the computer, unscrewing the panel, and pulling out the unshielded power supply, per The Verge.
However, even if a Mac Studio user was willing to tear their computer down to reach the SSDs, Apple may have made them easily replaceable and not soldered onto the computer to help repairs done by Apple's authorized technicians, who will likely have the software tools to allow the Mac Studio to boot from different internal storage.
Additionally, since the lock is only done through software and not hardware, it could mean that Apple could eventually allow people to upgrade their Mac Studios by themselves in the future through an update.
In the meantime, users who wish to upgrade their Mac Studio's storage may have to avail an SSD upsell from Apple stores to do so. This fact is in line with Apple's official line in its Mac Studio product page that the Mac Studio's storage is not user-accessible and that users should consider configuring to a higher storage capacity if they think they may need more storage.
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