I can get by with 256GB. I only have current projects I'm working on in my documents folder and everything else (files but also including photos lib, high res audio) on a big, fast encrypted external SSD, usually left connected to my TB3 dock. Both back up to NAS. Decided to finally upgrade to M1 and migration is clean, fast and easy that way too.
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2021 and still only 256 GB in Apple Laptops
- Thread starter majormike
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I purchase Lenovo laptops for work. ALL of them default to a starting hard drive size of 256. This is standard and more than enough for the business world (and a shocking number of ordinary people).
For my personal needs I’d never go below 512GB (though I upgraded my 2015 MBP to 1TB for the fun of it).
You’ll find “deals” in big box stores on machines that come with 1TB, but guess what, they’re all horribly slow spinners and the size is there purely to be a spec regardless of how it ruins the experience of an otherwise usable machine.
For my personal needs I’d never go below 512GB (though I upgraded my 2015 MBP to 1TB for the fun of it).
You’ll find “deals” in big box stores on machines that come with 1TB, but guess what, they’re all horribly slow spinners and the size is there purely to be a spec regardless of how it ruins the experience of an otherwise usable machine.
So your edge use case somehow means that most users need 512GB or more storage? Then why are most notebooks sold (Windows AND Mac) still shipping with 128GB or 256GB? For most students (who will only be writing papers, putting together Powerpoint presentations, etc.) 512GB would likely be overkill for their needs. A portable SSD would meet your external storage needs without a major impact on battery life. The market as a whole does not need 512GB storage as a baseline, because there are many people who just use their machines for email, web browsing, and basic tasks that will never fill a 256GB drive, let alone even sniff 80% utilization of a 512GB drive.
Excluding gaming notebooks, your numbers don't add up.
From Best Buy's website:
128GB notebooks: 54 models
256GB notebooks: 226 models
512GB notebooks: 73 models
That means that out of 353 models, 226 have 256GB storage (more than half of the available models), and 280 models have 256GB or less in storage. How exactly would that make 512GB models "most of them"?
If a new Ryzen 5000 laptop will meet your needs at a cost you are willing to pay, then you should absolutely get one. Seriously.
Maybe this will be a feature of the higher end Macs? After all, all we have for now are the M1 SoC Macs, and those are meant to be entry level machines.
Now if someone can do more than entry level work with an M1 (and it sounds like many people can indeed do this), then great for them.
For the rest, subsequent Apple Silicon Macs are an option, or possibly an Intel/AMD computer is a better choice.
And even worse, your 16TB NAS device itself is not portable!!!!
How can you live with this state of affairs?
Huh, I'm getting by just fine with a 32GB 9.7" iPad and some iCloud storage...
Apple is an expensive brand; we all know that, and we all know that it's a personal choice if you feel that the stuff is worth it or not.
And Apple has a wide enough range of customisable things to tweak the configurations; with a fairly generous bonus-drop in price if the buyer is willing to really compromise with what they get.
Personally, if I remember correctly, have had at least half a TB SSDs since about 10 or so years ago; with 1TB being my normal nowadays.
I pay for the experience that I want, and I think that this premium brand is worth it as far as my productivity etc.
And your complaint is… basically… that Apple won't sell you their top-of-the-line stuff for the same price as their bottom-of-the-line configurations.
Did I get that right?
Feel free to disagree here; but basically your rant was all about how you want the best from Apple, but is upset about how this premium brand is out of range for what you can afford?
I think that 256GB is great.
On a forum like this, you're always going to have 'power user packrats' who absolutely need to have every video, photo, music track, ebook and games etc. that they own on their computer.
And that's OK - however, power users should expect to pay 'power prices'.
I'd argue that most typical buyers of the entry level Airs are going to do light productivity, store some photos and videos etc.
Combine this with iCloud and 256 GB is fine.
(and yes - I'm pretty sure that Apple really want you to spend x amount each month/year on an iCloud/Apple One sub rather than pay for physical storage upgrade).
On a forum like this, you're always going to have 'power user packrats' who absolutely need to have every video, photo, music track, ebook and games etc. that they own on their computer.
And that's OK - however, power users should expect to pay 'power prices'.
I'd argue that most typical buyers of the entry level Airs are going to do light productivity, store some photos and videos etc.
Combine this with iCloud and 256 GB is fine.
(and yes - I'm pretty sure that Apple really want you to spend x amount each month/year on an iCloud/Apple One sub rather than pay for physical storage upgrade).
Base model used to be 128GB SSD or a tortoise Fusion Drive. Be thankful for 256GB SSD in all base models now.
So an entry level laptop might not be enough for you? The M-Series rollout isn’t done yet.
Also, 256 is plenty for entry level. Sounds like you have a perception that the m1 laptops are not the entry-level.
Here, problem solved:
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Which steam games are you playing that all of them take up 30 gb oO? Just Fortnite takes up 80 GB of storage... Pro User in which field?
Cities: Skylines (11.5 GB), Euro Truck Simulator 2 (4.96 GB), Torchlight II (1.79 GB), Factorio (1.75 GB), Simple Rockets 2 (573 MB), Civilization V (7.5 GB) and a couple of indies. (I have a PS4 and a Switch for games.)
The fact that Fortnite is larger than Witcher 3, Metro Exodus or GTA V doesn't really surprise me. Never thought much of the game and its authors.
Software development. Some of us need beefy CPUs to compile code on or lots of RAM for running VMs, but most of the data we work with is just code -- text, essentially. The Dev directory where my work lives (three Ruby on Rails projects) is 1.21 GB, and that's with hundreds of megabytes of dependencies.
I use my MBP primarily for coding/development, so I have some of the Adobe apps installed (for graphic work) plus Atom, Brackets, BBEdit, Emacs, NetBeans, OpenJDK, JetBrains Toolbox, both the iWork and O365 suites, FCP, XCode (with dependencies), plus both World of Warcraft and Warcraft III remastered (for when I need a break from staring at code), and I still have around 70GB free on a 512GB SSD. I also have a Samsung T5 (1TB) portable SSD I take with me - it weighs next to nothing, takes up no space in my bag, and is almost as fast as the internal SSD.
To be fair, it is legitimate gripe that Apple does not have changeable M2 SSDs like other models, and also has a significant upcharge for more storage.
The 2019 Mac that had a base of 128GB was outrageous. And I'm glad it's finally gone.
But keep it within reason. Doubling the storage on a base Mac is a $200 upgrade, compared to $100 for Dell. (Although you can get do pricewatch and find some discounts on upgraded Macs, too.) But the prices start to also average out the more you start with upgrades.
What I genuinely would like Apple to do would be to incorporate room to insert, say, an NVME or current SDCard type drive to add secondary storage. They have room to engineer this. I understand this would add complexity to the design.
I think an external USB-C Western Digital 5tb drive might also be the best of all worlds for now.
The 2019 Mac that had a base of 128GB was outrageous. And I'm glad it's finally gone.
But keep it within reason. Doubling the storage on a base Mac is a $200 upgrade, compared to $100 for Dell. (Although you can get do pricewatch and find some discounts on upgraded Macs, too.) But the prices start to also average out the more you start with upgrades.
What I genuinely would like Apple to do would be to incorporate room to insert, say, an NVME or current SDCard type drive to add secondary storage. They have room to engineer this. I understand this would add complexity to the design.
I think an external USB-C Western Digital 5tb drive might also be the best of all worlds for now.
My point is that you do compromise with 256 right now, being on the verge of what is the minimum, becoming a real problem in the near future just like 128 used to be.
Before they didn't have enough space to put in an M.2 slot, is what they argued at some point, transitioning over to needing firmly installed drives to M2 encryption which is now on the Silicon itself, which would enable them now to actually put in a swappable drive slot with enough free space and chip based encryption, but that's not the point in their mind.
I totally get what you’re saying. I’m just saying that there are people out there that barely use the storage on their computers - or phones.
Case in point - I have a 64GB XR and I’m using 31GB - it’s the highest it’s ever been, it’s usually around 25GB.
My 256 GB MBP is at 200 GB - but only because I have a huge mmo on it.
I’m just saying that I bet there’s a lot of people out there that don’t install much more than the supplied apps and who have a 20-30GB iPhoto library.
One workaround is to spend very little on a bottom-tier laptop (even the cheapest MacBook Air) for light work and then a desktop of whatever type you want with remoting software on it for everything else. Depending on what you are doing this can work very well; depends on your specific workflow needs, available connection speeds, etc.
Still stinks compared to having a laptops with sufficient storage, but that's not realistic for a lot of people.
I do, very much wish Apple still included upgradable storage in their laptops. It's a bit crazy that they don't, and smells just a bit of desperate sweaty-handed cash-grabbing.
Still stinks compared to having a laptops with sufficient storage, but that's not realistic for a lot of people.
I do, very much wish Apple still included upgradable storage in their laptops. It's a bit crazy that they don't, and smells just a bit of desperate sweaty-handed cash-grabbing.
But let's say you want that one game installed that takes up 80gb (most major titles take up that much, between 60 and 80 on average) then you've already saturated your free space. You always need a little bit of headroom on anything, let it be ram, storage or cpu power. Creative apps need headroom, office apps obviously far less but Apple is predominantly a brand used by Creatives as a brand sign.