Today I received the 14 inch mbp M3 pro chip, 18 gb memory. The SSD in the product description says 512 gb. Email receipt from Best Buy also says 512 gb. My computer says 494.38 GB total SSD space. Does anyone have this computer and is your SSD 512 gb? Thanks.
Real answer: MacOS uses some space for a recovery partition (so you can boot in recovery mode re-install the OS) and an APFS data store - neither of which show up in the Finder.
You can get a fuller picture from the Terminal:
Code:
% diskutil list /dev/disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 1.0 TB disk0
1: Apple_APFS_ISC 524.3 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 994.7 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_APFS_Recovery 5.4 GB disk0s3
...everything you see in Finder is "Container disk 3" - most of the missing space is accounted for by the 5.4GB "Recovery" partition.
@Mitthrawnuruodo 's comment about GiB vs. GB is technically correct (and a real can of worms - manufacturers often mix up GiB and GB), but not the issue here - Macs report storage space correctly in GB, not GiB (RAM is another matter...).