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256GB ssd is bull
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But 256GB can you fill that with applications that your working with daily?
That’s the big Q.
I can’t I’m a developer and infrastructure worker
It is a tricky one, and there are valid arguments all over the place.
Apple probably feels that 256gb base is adequate because a lot of consumers work online, with cloud storage and other networking offloading storage. Documents - relative to consumer applications - are small, and the number of 'large' apps required is slim. Music can be streamed, and photographs can be downloaded at full-res on the fly.
But then there is the prosumer market and that's where things get hazy. Logic Pro? 75gb for the full library (not discounting other plugins). Adobe CC... Lightroom catalogues... etc etc. Creative content needs a lot of storage, and Apple knows this probably isn't the primary audience for the M1 Macs - even if they demonstrate its wide-ranging capabilities. In other cases, they likely didn't want to change up components purely to keep costs down.
And that's a good segway to the other matter... profit. I think the price Apple's asking for upgrades is horrible. One might argue that the storage is now divided into just two dies (which costs more), but there is no way they can justify £180 for going from 2 x 128gb to 2x 256gb dies. Apple knows users will cave in.
Apple probably feels that 256gb base is adequate because a lot of consumers work online, with cloud storage and other networking offloading storage. Documents - relative to consumer applications - are small, and the number of 'large' apps required is slim. Music can be streamed, and photographs can be downloaded at full-res on the fly.
But then there is the prosumer market and that's where things get hazy. Logic Pro? 75gb for the full library (not discounting other plugins). Adobe CC... Lightroom catalogues... etc etc. Creative content needs a lot of storage, and Apple knows this probably isn't the primary audience for the M1 Macs - even if they demonstrate its wide-ranging capabilities. In other cases, they likely didn't want to change up components purely to keep costs down.
And that's a good segway to the other matter... profit. I think the price Apple's asking for upgrades is horrible. One might argue that the storage is now divided into just two dies (which costs more), but there is no way they can justify £180 for going from 2 x 128gb to 2x 256gb dies. Apple knows users will cave in.
i havnt heard of many people using that many applications to fill 256gb. Most apps are a couple gb at most.
if you are a typical "office" worker, you're going to have a really hard time to fill up 256GB.
My documents (letters, scanned docs of all kinds, tax returns etc etc) over 20+ years take a measly 10GB ...
My multimedia (photos, videos, music, movies ...) take up ~ 2.5 TB, and, actually live on external drives ...
So it heavily depends on your usage whether or 256GB will work for you or not
You guys got me regretting buying the 256GB M1 MB Air… ? I invested the money I did have to upgrade the RAM to 16GB.
No need for regret. You can supplement storage with cloud or external drives. In contrast, you cannot add RAM later. So better have 16GB now.
I haven’t really started.
Although, looking at my Windows Desktop, I’ve only used 130GB of my 1TB SSD in five years, and there’s A LOT of crap on there that needs cleaning up. So I might be ok. I have an external HD too if need be.
Are there any particular external drives that folks would recommend for a MacBook? I don’t want to run into compatibility issues.
I have a variety of drives: external Intel, Crucial and Samsung SSDs and mainly Sandisk flash drives and have had no problems with any of them.
My approach to storage is that I have 5 TB of SSD on my Windows desktop which also serves as a NAS. I get 500 GB on MacBook Pros and just access the storage on the Windows desktop. Mobile devices run fine with 64 GB to 128 GB of storage because most large storage is on the NAS. You could do the same thing with the cloud. This was I don't have to plug anything into the MacBook Pros.
For those getting M1X MacBook Pros, you could just get a 512 GB SD card if you need storage that isn't particularly fast. The 512 GB cards are pretty cheap. There might even by 1 TB cards out there now.
I don't think there should be compatibility issues as long as you stick to well known brands. USB is a standard. Just avoid external enclosures (where you can convert an internal drive into external), as some of those might use dodgy chipsets. Stick with the well known brands like WD, Seagate, Sandisk, Samsung, etc and you'll be fine.
Next thing to consider is the file system. Most drives will have NTFS out of the box because majority of buyers are Windows users. You just have to re-format it to APFS (is it's an SSD) or HFS (if it's a regular spinning drive) using Disk Utility.
I've not had problems with particular hardware, but I have had horrible problems with the software that comes with drives. E.g., several years ago I purchased a Seagate drive specifically marketed for the Mac, and my Mac started crashing repeatedly. We eventually tracked it down to the backup software that came with the drive. Once I removed the software from my Mac, and wiped the drive and reformatted it from scratch, I was fine.
So my advice with any 3rd-party drive would be to wipe and reformat it using Disk Utility, and not use any of their software. If you want backup software (e.g., to create a bootable cloned backup), get Carbon Copy Cloner.
That extra 8GB of RAM will come in handy at some point regardless of if you really need it or not so it's really not wasted and over the life of the computer, it's not that much more of an added cost. Storage space is much easier to run out of, but it's also much easier to address especially since the M1 Air has TB 4 ports.
You don't have to spent a mint on expensive storage devices to get good enough storage either. I was running a 1TB library of RAW photos off of a Sandisk USB 3.1 SSD. Wasn't as fast as onboard storage, but the loss of speed wasn't noticeable. Unless you're going to be editing video, you have nothing to be remorseful about. It is what it is and that 8GB will come in handy at least some of the time.
Why is that people always think whatever amount they need is what the base model should be? There are tiers for a reason.
because 256gb was like the iPhone 16gb. In 2020 neither should exist. no matter, that computer sits in a box in the closet now. I did a true upgrade from my 2017 Macbook Pro last month.
I honestly believe this would be way less of an issue if Apple didn't solder everything down and then charge ridiculous prices for SSD/RAM upgrade tiers.
I wouldn't care a lick about tiers if they'd simply do slotted NVMe (and RAM ideally, but at least storage)
FWIW, Apple delivers a crazy amount of performance in the entry level M1 Macbook Air (8/256) at $899 educational.
It's dead silent and delivers the performance of the previous $2k-3k machine. Most casual users get by fine on that, especially with iCloud. 16/512 would increase the machine price for something they would never notice.
If you need 16GB though, the improvement is very noticable. Is $200 really that much to pay over the useable life for that value? Same with internal 512GB/1TB.
An external 1TB SSD is $85. Is it worth $400 for the convenience of internal? I hate it, but yeah.
Would I rather have the larger battery, extra performance, and smaller shape in the space upgradable memory would have taken up? I hate it, but yeah.
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That kind of reasoning works when the difference between the base model and the high-end model is not too big. It may be worth paying $600 to upgrade from 8 GB / 256 GB to 16 GB / 1 TB, but it's rarely worth paying another $3000 for a 64 GB / 8 TB model. Even if you need that 64 GB / 8 TB, it's probably more cost-effective to get around that requirement somehow than to pay the artificially inflated price for a little convenience.
With memory and especially with storage, 2x more capacity does not mean "2x more" but "a little bit more" in terms of capabilities. 8 GB / 256 GB is enough for normal desktop use, but if that's not enough for you, the chances are 16 GB / 1 TB is not enough either. If you can pay market prices, 128 GB / 8 TB is still pretty reasonable. With BTO prices, you only get 32 GB / 2 TB on the same budget.
Very true!
I would contend however, the previous gens had been lagging on progress (Intel’s fault, not Apple)
We have an 8/512 MBA M1 in the house and it’s a joy!
SD cards are typically painfully slow btw. I've tried using it for my Steam games store and it was unbearable.
A casual home user would never notice the difference. For the users who really need 64GB/8TB for their application, another $3k is nothing.
Companies paying their employees 100-200k+, the cost of extra memory/storage is noise vs the savings in labor time and activities these machines make possible. Apple price tiers are based on value to the customer,
not on manufacturing cost.
There are other user groups in addition to casual home users and high-end professionals with money to spare. A home user might want a slightly more capable computer for their hobby, and a somewhat ambitious student might find uses for one as well. $3k is a good price for such slightly more capable 64 GB / 8 TB configuration – if the price includes the computer as well.
The prices are based on an attempt to maximize profit, not on value to the customer. Apple has the same list prices for almost everyone, and it's generally unwilling to adjust the price when the value to the customer is somewhere between the market price and the list price.