Apple has a well-earned reputation for being restrictive on hardware upgrades, for anyone who is a little handy with components and would like to upgrade the Mac Pro or Mac book they own, is going to be limited to a few options. Recently, Apple has restricted this even more with soldered on RAM or sealed iMac’s that are very risky to open up. For some time now, Apple has used a proprietary M.2 style connector format using a 12 + 16 Pin arrangement on their M.2 drives, either made by Toshiba or Samsung (SSUAX or SSUBX).

This means if you want to upgrade your storage, you’ll be limited in the options you have. Now with the release of the long-awaited modular Mac Pro, the return of the cheese grater appeared to have promised a return to enthusiast and pro-level end-user maintenance. This appears to be the case on the most part, but the storage is tied to the infamous T2 chip, meaning you cannot buy a 256Gb storage option and upgrade. This is to aid encryption but ultimately impacts your wallet as you either spend more on the base configuration or pay for PCIe options after the fact.