Apple said that the kernel interface used by smartctl is emitting invalid data, which invalidates all conclusions drawn from it, such as “there is/isn’t a problem with SSD wear”.
> "While we're looking into the reports, know that the SMART data being reported to the third-party utility is incorrect, as it pertains to wear on our SSDs" said an AppleInsider source within Apple corporate not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. The source refused to elaborate any further on the matter when pressed for specifics.
We'll likely never hear anything else about this again from Apple officially or unofficially, so I don't expect anyone who believes there's an SSD wear issue to stop believing that there is. Either the combination of "smartmontools is emulating SMART access, but doesn't actually have it" and "a source at Apple said that smartmontools is incorrect" is enough to make this a non-issue, or it's not — and since most people who think that there is a wear issue don't realize the part about smartmontools faking that it has access to SMART data in this scenario (hint: nope!), I don't expect to find common ground.
So as far as I'm concerned, this is all irrelevant until someone's SSD wears out, and no one's reported that, so everyone is all tempest-in-a-teapot over some numbers that an open source tool is handcrafting from a macOS kernel API based on assumptions about Apple's proprietary hardware that are probably wrong. Wake me up when someone's SSD wears out.
That Apple comment is bullshit. We've confirmed that the TBW numbers from smartctl match the actual quantity of data written. You can also see the excess I/O in Apple's own Activity Monitor. The lifetime usage numbers smartctl reports are in line with what a high-end SSD would report, and there is no way for smartctl to "make up" the data. It's real data coming from the NVMe controller. There's no possible way to fake anything like that. That person is not authorized to speak for the company and is probably making stuff up.
Apple are aware of it, the bug is fixed in 11.4, and once the corresponding XNU source code drops I'll be happy to diff it and show you exactly what they changed in the swapper to fix it and debunk your "debunking".
