256GB ssd is bull

[pshufd]

Most computer sales these days are upgrades. The majority have a computing past and migrate to their new systems. Both my private Mac and my private PC have more than a TB stored on them. (And I have a NAS!)
Even my daughters produce more data with videos they shoot using iOS devices - they are currently saved by iCloud (but the kids hate it when they need to download the videos, because it’s so slow compared to on device storage). 256GB isn’t enough even for those without much history, like my pre-teen daughters.
God forbid they want to play a game, Baldurs Gate 3 for example that Apple uses in a lot of promotional material, requires 150GB.
If you don’t have any data history, don’t use mobile devices to shoot anything, don’t play games, don’t … 256GB might be enough. Although you might kill it fast because if you run an 8GB system, as you might have to page excessively to the small area you have free even by simply browsing the web.

In practise, and from this thread, it seems those that use small on-device storage do so because they solve the problem elsewhere - on other computers, cloud or web storage, external drives, NASes. Not because 256GB is enough. But external storage carries it’s own set of problems. It would have been so much better if we could simply plug in an m.2 drive in our Macs. Or, failing that, if Apple didn’t charge extortionate prices for upgraded NAND capacity (and RAM), forcing users to external storage solutions.

Apples policies on storage reminds me of Robin Williams’ genie in Aladdin - "Limitless Cosmic Power!…in an itty bitty living space".

We now have appliances.

If I want more space or more cooling, I need to buy another refrigerator.

There is a robust secondary market for a lot of Apple products but it's still work buying and selling on the used market. Ideally, you have someone that wants a 512 that you have to sell and a 1 TB that you want to buy or you have a 512 to sell that someone with a 256 wants to buy. Or someone is selling because they are upgrading to a new model.

It's fairly obvious that a lot of Apple customers have a lot of disposable income. I used to know a couple that upgraded their iPhones every year and they just bought the most expensive models. My former manager used to fly to the US in the fall every year to upgrade her iPhone as they were a lot harder to get where she lived.

I think that the vast majority of people don't care to open up their computers and work on them as well. I will open up computers to work on them but I have my car serviced at the dealer and just let them take care of maintenance. It costs more than doing it myself but it's something that I'm fine with paying someone else to do it.

I was expecting to go with 1 TB local storage (my MacBook Pros have 512 GB) but the home NAS changed my decision on storage. I just stayed with 512 GB on my new Mini. I could hang an external too. Not as elegant but I can get a Crucial 2 TB SSD for $200 and an enclosure for $20. I have spare external SSDs at 120, 240, 500 and 500 and use them from time to time but I find that I usually move large files around using a NAS. Cost per GB, flexibility and performance are strong arguments to be part of the solution.

I could replace the 512 GB NVMe SSDs in my 2014 and 2015 MacBook Pros with 2 TB. There is a long sticky thread in the MacBook Pro forum on how to do this.

The goal of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value and Apple is doing a good job at that goal.

 

[NewUsername]

128GB was not enough, especially when the Big Sur upgrade requires 35GB of available storage space. 256GB is fine though.

Going for 512GB or 1TB is fine as well. It’s much more expensive than external storage, but it is also more convenient. Anyway, this kind of upgrades is exactly how Apple earns money, so I don’t think we’ll see 512GB becoming standard in the next 3-5 years on anything cheaper than the 14" MacBook Pro or the 27" iMac (which should already have 512GB to be honest).

 

[pshufd]

128GB was not enough, especially when the Big Sur upgrade requires 35GB of available storage space. 256GB is fine though.

Going for 512GB or 1TB is fine as well. It’s much more expensive than external storage, but it is also more convenient. Anyway, this kind of upgrades is exactly how Apple earns money, so I don’t think we’ll see 512GB becoming standard in the next 3-5 years on anything cheaper than the 14" MacBook Pro or the 27" iMac (which should already have 512GB to be honest).

The iMac is a slightly different use case as you can add an external drive and the system is generally stationary. I think that it's a bit funnier with RAM. A $2,300 system that comes with 8 GB of RAM seems a bit odd these days but they do it that way to make money. People that don't want to do the upgrade themselves will just pay for Apple's expensive RAM. Those willing to use.a screwdriver will do it themselves.

Only the base iMac 27 starts at 256 GB. At least the two upgraded models come with 512 GB.

 

[andrewstirling]

Of course a screwdriver is no longer an option for Apple silicon as the memory is built onto the chip. Anytime with an iMac after the transition is complete will need to pay Apple prices for increased memory

 

[pshufd]

Of course a screwdriver is no longer an option for Apple silicon as the memory is built onto the chip. Anytime with an iMac after the transition is complete will need to pay Apple prices for increased memory

It remains to be seen as to whether or not Apple Silicon will always have all of its RAM on the SoC. Apple could do two-tiered RAM on a bigger iMac or a Mac Pro. They could potentially do NVMe slots as well. Nothing is really written in stone at this time.

 

[4743913]

So again the argument appears to be the 512gb MacBook Pro is too expensive. Maybe that should be a better topic heading for this thread?

regardless of the cost of the 512gb nearly everyone is in agreement that 256gb sucks. topic is still on point.

 

[pshufd]

regardless of the cost of the 512gb nearly everyone is in agreement that 256gb sucks. topic is still on point.

Everyone here. But we're not representative.

Apple Reportedly Storing Over 8 Million Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

Apple has dramatically increased the amount of iCloud user data it stores on Google Cloud, according to The Information. The report claims Apple...

www.macrumors.com

Apple stores 800 million TB on Google's cloud. They also have their own cloud and use AWS. It's clear that a lot of Apple users are using a ton of cloud storage. And it may be enough for a lot of people.

 

[Zazoh]

In practise, and from this thread, it seems those that use small on-device storage do so because they solve the problem elsewhere - on other computers, cloud or web storage, external drives, NASes. Not because 256GB is enough.

This is a great point. There are pros and cons of each.

 

[pshufd]

This is a great point. There are pros and cons of each.

Apple is actively selling iCloud services too. I have the sneaking suspicion that they make more on iCloud storage than on SSD storage. As an investor, I'd always prefer a recurring payments model to a one-time sale.

 

[andrewstirling]

Everyone here. But we're not representative.

Apple Reportedly Storing Over 8 Million Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

Apple has dramatically increased the amount of iCloud user data it stores on Google Cloud, according to The Information. The report claims Apple...

www.macrumors.com

Apple stores 800 million TB on Google's cloud. They also have their own cloud and use AWS. It's clear that a lot of Apple users are using a ton of cloud storage. And it may be enough for a lot of people.

Not even everyone here. There are plenty of people on this thread that think 256gb is fine. It certainly suited my use when I bought my previous MacBook.

 

[theluggage]

Not even everyone here. There are plenty of people on this thread that think 256gb is fine. It certainly suited my use when I bought my previous MacBook.

256GB is fine for light users.

The problem is, it is 2021 and there should be no need to pretend that a 512GB SSD is some sort of extravagant luxury that only demanding users can justify - and Apple's $200 charge for the 256 to 512 upgrade is totally ridiculous.

Look at something like a Dell XPS 13 - and the £1200 model (with 4k screen and i7 - part of Dell's "premium" range which might bear comparison with the MBP, not a cheap'n'cheeerful latitude), comes with 512GB, as do all the models over £850. Bringing the £849 256GB model up to 512GB costs £50. Their 8 to 16GB RAM upgrade looks like it's half the price of Apple's £200 as well. NB, we're talking about NVME SSD and LPDDR4x (soldered-in) RAM in both cases.

...and that's without looking beyond Dell and the likes to smaller PC makers who might actually be interested in bundling a half-decent PC with your extended warranty and finance package.

This is nothing to do with bill-of-materials costs - it is down to strategic pricing that allows Apple to advertise "low" (for Apple) starting prices and then stack another 400 quidbucks on top in order to get a decent spec. Yes, it's as old as business, but Apple are one of the worst offenders and should be called out for it.

 

[pshufd]

Dell's prices for RAM and SSD line up quite nicely with Apple's. These are sale prices. $1,000 MBA gets you 8/256. At Dell, that costs $1,100. The next level up at $1,500 MSRP gets you 16/512. The MacBook Air is $1,449 for 16/512. So it looks like Apple is matching industry pricing.

If we look at Lenovo:

 

[pshufd]

Razor's laptops cost more than Apple's for the same RAM and Storage:

 

[Falhófnir]

Razor's laptops cost more than Apple's for the same RAM and Storage:

View attachment 1802352

Arguably the RB is more comparable to the MacBook Pro (fan for sustained workloads) so more like pricing is roughly in-line again.

 

[turbineseaplane]

See guys?

Apple is great and right on par with everyone else

There are no problems here and all their decisions are awesome

 

[pshufd]

Arguably the RB is more comparable to the MacBook Pro (fan for sustained workloads) so more like pricing is roughly in-line again.

Razor charges $200 more for the same configurations. Razor also only gives you HD screens - the high-resolution screen is an extra $300. The Razor Books have Geekbench 5 scores of 1,398 / 4,572 while the MacBook Air has scores of 1,702 / 7,390. I'd think that the MacBook Air could hold its own in performance against the Razor Book.

 

[pshufd]

The other guys are giving you HD screens instead of Retina or QHD screens and the QHD upgrade is pretty expensive. I saw a comparison of component costs of the MacBook Air compared to other Intel-based laptops in the same class and it's difficult to build a premium Intel laptop at Apple's price point. Apple is no doubt saving decent money building their own SoCs.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Guys, this is getting way off the topic here from the OP

This is not the place for the umpteenth "Mac vs PC buying comparison"

 

[pshufd]

Arguably the RB is more comparable to the MacBook Pro (fan for sustained workloads) so more like pricing is roughly in-line again.

Sustained performance test:

 

[Falhófnir]

Sustained performance test:

View attachment 1802360

Irrelevant. If you're planning on, say, video editing it's going to be between Premiere on a Windows computer, or Final Cut on a Mac. The choice in OS is likely to be dictated more by what your software preference is. Within that it's the MBA competing against the MBP and the Razer against the Dell, HP, Lenovo etc. The obvious choice for the Mac is to get a MacBook Pro for editing for best performance, ergo it's the MBP that's the equivalent choice for Mac users to a Razer Book or the like for Windows users.

 

[pshufd]

Irrelevant. If you're planning on, say, video editing it's going to be between Premiere on a Windows computer, or Final Cut on a Mac. The choice in OS is likely to be dictated more by what your software preference is. Within that it's the MBA competing against the MBP and the Razer against the Dell, HP, Lenovo etc. The obvious choice for the Mac is to get a MacBook Pro for editing for best performance, ergo it's the MBP that's the equivalent choice for Mac users to a Razer Book or the like for Windows users.

Even with the MacBook Pro, prices are comparable. The MBP is $100 or less more than the competition but includes a better screen that you'd have to spend $200 to $300 for on those models.

 

[ian87w]

I just want to iterate those who are in countries where BTO is available, be glad that you can even custom configure to the amount of RAM and storage to your liking. In my country, we don't even have access to BTO options.

Eg. for the M1 Macbook Air, aside from the colors, we only have two configurations available for consumers. The 7-core/8/256, and the 8-core/8/512. That's it. ? Want more RAM or storage? Too bad...

 

[pshufd]

I used to work with a lot of people that would buy Apple products for their relatives when they were planning a trip.

 

[turbineseaplane]

What does any of this have to do with the OP's desire for higher base storage on Apple Silicon Macs?

 

[Natzoo]

There are no problems here and all their decisions are awesome

Is this a joke? I joined this thread late.