Intel released an update for my fancy SSD that resolves issues related to long term fragmentation of the drive that causes it to slow down considerably the more it’s used and filled up. Unfortunately the firmware update, which is released as a bootable ISO, won’t detect the drive if it’s on a system using an NVIDIA chipset such as my unibody MacBook. As such I had to physically remove the drive and slap it into a spare Dell PC and do the update on that which went just fine. After the update I reinstalled the drive in my MacBook and booted it up. Surprisingly the speed increase was actually quite noticeable. Definitely recommended for anyone having an Intel X18-M or X25-M drive. Kudos to Intel for releasing this!