My previous Mac Mini had 2 HDD slots and upgradable ram, so it IS possible, for Apple even. Apple has gotten from a 1 step backwards, 2 forwards to a 1 step forwards 2 backwards company. The devices where they removed optical drives were groundbreaking. Nowadays their devices are compromise ridden.

Given previous versions of this enclosure (with I believe the same exterior dimensions) managed to fit the computer plus two 2.5” old school hard disks, Apple clearly could engineer the interior of this device to fit a much, much smaller m2 SSD. This is a question of engineering choices, not physical space limitations.

In this case the engineering choice was probably driven at least in part by the desire to take advantage of the T2’s line rate encryption features, which so far has never been supported on removable/upgradeable storage mediums (at least as far as I am aware - the T2 drive encryption is a separate feature from FileVault, which is supported on removable media). Even on the iMac Pro which technically has removable flash storage, to my knowledge no one has yet managed to produce a T2 compatible after market third party upgrade.

Thankfully thunderbolt 3 removes much of the advantage internal storage media traditionally enjoys, at least in performance terms, so there are reasonable upgrade paths.

They had mobile processors.

Its very unlikely the TDP differences would prevent a design with an m2 SSD if Apple wanted it. TDP is 65 watts vs the 45 in the models with two relatively enormous 2.5 inch drives. This might vary depending on spec, but nowhere near enough to prevent an m2. We are talking about modern CPUs fabricated on more efficient processes vs those from 2012.

This is a choice, not a hard engineering limitation. An m2 SSD is tiny even compared to a single 2.5” drive.

There's plenty of room for an M.2 module, especially on the backside of the board which is how they're traditionally mounted on desktop ITX boards.

https://i.imgur.com/dW0ynV7.png

They can also be mounted at an angle just like those SO-DIMM slots.

The M.2 standard even supports 12mm, 16mm, and 30mm width modules in addition to the 22mm that seems to have become the norm. Apple could still be a dick by using a 12mm or 16mm card while still supporting the standard.

> They can also be mounted at an angle just like those SO-DIMM slots.

Stand-off M.2 sockets are a standard part, because a number of mainboards put components under the M.2 slot.

It doesn't take up that much space. Here's a Raspberry Pi sized board with an M.2 slot: https://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/RK33...

I think there'd easily be room, given that the soldered-on NAND chips could be removed from the board.

edit: If you're wondering how that works, here's a hint: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/mas...