A steady hand on the SSD

Like any new technology, we have much to learn about the working life of SSDs in M1 Macs. Alarming reports of rapid wear must be tempered against use. Take any low-end Intel Mac with limited memory and work it hard with high use of virtual memory, and its SSD wears out faster. Unlike rotating hard disks, which can keep spinning for a decade or more if you’re lucky, the more your Mac writes to an SSD, the shorter its life.

It’s only when we’ve gained experience with a broad range of Apple silicon and usage that we’ll have a better idea of whether their SSD’s working life is going to be any different from Intel models. Neither is there anything peculiar to Big Sur which should cause premature ageing. The SSD in my own iMac Pro is still as fresh as daisy, and it hardly ever uses virtual memory.