Most Bizarre CTO I’ve Ever Seen in Refurb Store

[Makisupa Policeman]

Check out this listing in the Apple Refurbished Store right now:

Refurbished 14-inch MacBook Pro Apple M1 Pro Chip with 10‑Core CPU and 14‑Core GPU - Space Gray

M1 Pro takes the exceptional performance of the M1 architecture to a whole new level for pro users. Even the most ambitious projects are easily handled with up to 10 CPU cores, up to 16 GPU cores, a 16‑core Neural Engine, and dedicated encode and decode media engines that support H.264, HEVC...

www.apple.com

Someone apparently ordered and returned a M1 Pro with base 16GB RAM and max 8TB storage?

Who’s going to buy this? Who bought it in the first place? 😭

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

Imagine paying over $3300 for a regular M1 Pro MacBook Pro (not even Max) with only 16GB of ram?! 🤣
Someone must have a lot of pirated music and TV shows to store! 🤣

Sorry… having way too much of a chuckle over this. I’ll see myself out.

 

[picpicmac]

Who’s going to buy this? Who bought it in the first place?

Someone who was going on an extensive trip and did not want to haul external SSDs?

If you were going on a 30 day trip, and planned on shooting videos nearly every day, then you'd want terabytes of storage.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

Someone who was going on an extensive trip and did not want to haul external SSDs?

If you were going on a 30 day trip, and planned on shooting videos nearly every day, then you'd want terabytes of storage.

Ah, don’t burst my bubble!

All joking aside that is a pretty reasonable explanation, but I’m still surprised such a person would opt for 16GB of RAM if they’re that serious about videography.

 

[danwells]

That's what surprises me... I opted for an 8 TB Mac myself, despite the horrendous cost, because it makes working with my huge photo files on the road, or just in a coffee shop, so much easier. My present Intel MBP has 4 TB, and I'm bursting at the seams. On the other hand, mine is coming with a full-on M3 Max and 64 GB of RAM. I hope that 64 instead of 128 wasn't dumb, but I've never come close to the RAM limit on my Intel (I get up around 45 Gb all the time, but never past 50 - 52, and the Apple Silicon machines are supposed to be more efficient with RAM (even with the GPU sharing). I use HUGE still photo files (100 MP camera), but don't do serious video...

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

That's what surprises me... I opted for an 8 TB Mac myself, despite the horrendous cost, because it makes working with my huge photo files on the road, or just in a coffee shop, so much easier. My present Intel MBP has 4 TB, and I'm bursting at the seams. On the other hand, mine is coming with a full-on M3 Max and 64 GB of RAM. I hope that 64 instead of 128 wasn't dumb, but I've never come close to the RAM limit on my Intel (I get up around 45 Gb all the time, but never past 50 - 52, and the Apple Silicon machines are supposed to be more efficient with RAM (even with the GPU sharing). I use HUGE still photo files (100 MP camera), but don't do serious video...

Yes, although it’s integrated ram ASi is definitely much more efficient afaik. I think 64GB for your use case will be plenty for now and even down the road.

I certainly get those who favor a bit more storage over more RAM. I have a 16/1 when 32/512 would probably be more sensible for future proofing. But if I could afford an 8TB SSD it would be pretty awesome since I wouldn’t have to store my lossless music collection or videos on external drives anymore.

But 16/8 seems a tad lopsided, eh? I mean, they decided they could afford the like $1600 or whatever for the maximum SSD upgrade but just couldn’t eek out a couple hundred more for at least 32 gigs ram? Haha

 

[danwells]

And the Pro processor too - it seems like you'd order a pretty big configuration with the 8 TB drive, if for no other reason than future-proofing so you wouldn't have to buy ANOTHER one with those storage prices any time soon!

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

And the Pro processor too - it seems like you'd order a pretty big configuration with the 8 TB drive, if for no other reason than future-proofing so you wouldn't have to buy ANOTHER one with those storage prices any time soon!

That’s what gets me too. Their CTO was the mid-level Pro, not even the 10C/16C configuration!

 

[Mike Boreham]

That’s what gets me too. Their CTO was the mid-level Pro, not even the 10C/16C configuration!

RAM and number of core needs are determined by the type of tasks being done, not the amount of stored data. If the usage is light duty tasks there is no need for more, even if 8TB of storage.

It’s like a lorry, priority is heavy carrying capacity, not speed. If you have to carry a 10 ton load a Porsche is not much use to you. The analogy breaks down because for comparatively little extra he could have had a lorry with Porsche performance. Maybe this it was returned when the buyer realised this.

 

[MacCheetah3]

This is a little more sensible:

Refurbished Mac mini Apple M2 Pro Chip with 12‑Core CPU and 19‑Core GPU, 10GB Ethernet

M2 and M2 Pro scale up our breakthrough system on a chip (SoC) architecture, which combines the CPU, GPU, unified memory, and Neural Engine on a single power‑efficient chip. M2 brings a faster, next‑generation CPU and GPU to Mac mini, along with much higher memory bandwidth. M2 Pro delivers even...

www.apple.com

With that said… On a portable, having plenty of onboard storage makes sense. I’d rarely rely on an external (beyond backup). For a desktop, I think, it’s okay to do some offloading. And for an example, you could save at least $600 USD going 4TB internal and 4TB external.

The speed difference is very respectable and capable:



* As a reminder, larger capacity NAND configurations are typically faster. Also, as you can see, my internal drive is quite full — I’ll be doing at least 1TB internal next Mac.

 

[salamanderjuice]

I don't think it's that crazy. There's lots of stuff that requires oodles of storage and not a lot of compute to run, e.g., photos, videos, music. If you need more than 2TB in a laptop Apple forces you to get Pro+ CPU for whatever reason. So that was probably the cheapest Apple laptop that could hold that much. What is crazy is why Apple charges so dang much for storage and requires you to jump from the Air to the Pro Pros to get it.

The original purchaser probably returned it when they realized they could get like 16TB in some random Lenovo for the same price and hoard twice as much crap.

 

[icanhazmac]

Who’s going to buy this? Who bought it in the first place?

Sounds to me like someone "bought" it with the intention to return it after a gig job. Or perhaps, as you mentioned, they quickly found out that they should have had more RAM or CPU/GPU and with no way out they traded it, probably took an absolute beating on the trade.

PS - #rageside

 

[splitpea]

Or maybe they thought they’d ordered different specs but had clicked the wrong thing and didn’t discover the error in time to cancel the order, so they had to return it instead?

 

[danwells]

That's very possible - checked the 8 TB storage upgrade, but forgot to make the rest of the upgrade selections...

 

[Closingracer]

Check out this listing in the Apple Refurbished Store right now:

Refurbished 14-inch MacBook Pro Apple M1 Pro Chip with 10‑Core CPU and 14‑Core GPU - Space Gray

M1 Pro takes the exceptional performance of the M1 architecture to a whole new level for pro users. Even the most ambitious projects are easily handled with up to 10 CPU cores, up to 16 GPU cores, a 16‑core Neural Engine, and dedicated encode and decode media engines that support H.264, HEVC...

www.apple.com

Someone apparently ordered and returned a M1 Pro with base 16GB RAM and max 8TB storage?

Who’s going to buy this? Who bought it in the first place? 😭

I mean after 16GB of RAM I would value more SSD storage than RAM but even then I would rather upgrade more memory and just buy a external SSD with Apple prices for storage no thanks.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

PS - #rageside

Always nice to see a fellow phan!

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

I don't think it's that crazy. There's lots of stuff that requires oodles of storage and not a lot of compute to run, e.g., photos, videos, music. If you need more than 2TB in a laptop Apple forces you to get Pro+ CPU for whatever reason. So that was probably the cheapest Apple laptop that could hold that much. What is crazy is why Apple charges so dang much for storage and requires you to jump from the Air to the Pro Pros to get it.

The original purchaser probably returned it when they realized they could get like 16TB in some random Lenovo for the same price and hoard twice as much crap.

Very true. Again if I could afford it, I’d prefer something in the minimum 2-4TB range to eliminate the need for external storage devices, but Apple’s SSD upgrades are just outrageous.

 

[dmccloud]

Very true. Again if I could afford it, I’d prefer something in the minimum 2-4TB range to eliminate the need for external storage devices, but Apple’s SSD upgrades are just outrageous.

I got a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD on sale and a TB4 SSD enclosure for under $200 total, which was less than the equivalent upgrade would have been direct from Apple. While it isn't quite as fast as an internal drive, it's close enough that I don't notice the speed difference in normal day to day use.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

I got a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD on sale and a TB4 SSD enclosure for under $200 total, which was less than the equivalent upgrade would have been direct from Apple. While it isn't quite as fast as an internal drive, it's close enough that I don't notice the speed difference in normal day to day use.

Yeah I do use external SSDs and they’re plenty fast, but it would be cool having everything on the internal drive for portability’s sake, like my full music and movie libraries, for example. I realize there’s Plex and stuff like that, but I also like the idea of it all being local and on demand even without internet access. It isn’t necessity just convenience.

 

[Jack Neill]

I would love having 8TB onboard, not 3500$ love tho.. I just grabbed a 12c M3/18/1TB and it's my newest AS. Coming from a M1/16/1TB Air its so awesome having the extra ports and SD card slot. I can't wait for higher capacity SD cards. I bought a Baseqi and put a 1TB and moved my 580Gb of Music and 150Gb of photos and 50Gb of comics to it. The SD card reads are plenty for those files and it feels like I got a 2TB Mac with so much free space on the internal flash freed up. If I had 8TB I could move all my storage to 1 machine and still have about 2TB free. That would be cool.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

I would love having 8TB onboard, not 3500$ love tho.. I just grabbed a 12c M3/18/1TB and it's my newest AS. Coming from a M1/16/1TB Air its so awesome having the extra ports and SD card slot. I can't wait for higher capacity SD cards. I bought a Baseqi and put a 1TB and moved my 580Gb of Music and 150Gb of photos and 50Gb of comics to it. The SD card reads are plenty for those files and it feels like I got a 2TB Mac with so much free space on the internal flash freed up. If I had 8TB I could move all my storage to 1 machine and still have about 2TB free. That would be cool.

Nice, this is also my plan for down the road when I can afford the biggest micro SD I can get. I need to wait a bit since my wallet took a nice hit on the M3 upgrade.

How is the BaseQi working out? I’ve heard a few random complaints that it doesn’t sit quite flush in the SDXC slot or that it’s difficult to get in and out. But I really like the color matching style of those.

 

[Jack Neill]

Nice, this is also my plan for down the road when I can afford the biggest micro SD I can get. I need to wait a bit since my wallet took a nice hit on the M3 upgrade.

How is the BaseQi working out? I’ve heard a few random complaints that it doesn’t sit quite flush in the SDXC slot or that it’s difficult to get in and out. But I really like the color matching style of those.

I really like it, it sits completely flush, it is def difficult to take out but I have no need to take it out ever. I got a space black and they only make space grey so its not a color match but its hardly noticeable since it sits flush. It was def worth the 25$ to me.

 

[Manzanito]

Sounds to me like someone "bought" it with the intention to return it after a gig job. Or perhaps, as you mentioned, they quickly found out that they should have had more RAM or CPU/GPU and with no way out they traded it, probably took an absolute beating on the trade.

PS - #rageside

I very much hope that’s the case and apple has to eat it. The ssd upgrade pricing apple applies is borderline criminal.