Why is the highest *retail* M3 Max Macbook Pro SSD capacity 1TB?

[watchmainspring]

I would love to know how Apple concluded it made sense, for retail (non-custom) Macbook Pros, to pair a 16-core CPU and 48Gb of ram with a 1TB hard drive. I am sure they had analytics models to support this, but anecdotally it does not make sense; 1TB is a joke.

It's like selling a schoolbus that houses the driver and one student.

 

[Queen6]

Apple likely do have analytics. Simple compels the customer to pay out ever more for greater storage. Safe to say those opting for this config are very likely to require more internal storage...

Q-6

 

[TechnoMonk]

It’s most likely the most popular Capacity for that configuration. It’s not just Apple, I have seen same for other retailers. My M1 Max 64GB had 1 TB at Microcenter. Same with 32 GB, and storage of 1 TB. I never go beyond 1 TB, though I max out on RAM/CPU/GPU. Most common configuration in my circle of professionals is 1TB, with external drives. Apple upgrades for 2TB is ridiculous.

 

[watchmainspring]

It’s most likely the most popular Capacity for that configuration. It’s not just Apple, I have seen same for other retailers. My M1 Max 64GB had 1 TB at Microcenter. Same with 32 GB, and storage of 1 TB. I never go beyond 1 TB, though I max out on RAM/CPU/GPU. Most common configuration in my circle of professionals is 1TB, with external drives. Apple upgrades for 2TB is ridiculous.

Yeah that makes sense. It probably is the most popular.

I use my mac for video editing and I imagine with 16-cores and 1TB I cannot be too alone in this opinion, though.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

With iCloud and other cloud solutions, it's very easy for a lot of people to live with 1TB just fine. I've gone for 4TB in my new MBP because the 2TB in my current machine is just not enough. But almost 1TB of my drive is used up by my Photos library, which I could easily chose to optimise and store in iCloud, which is what most people would do (I chose not to because I want a 'full' library on my main computer so that it also backs up to my Time Machine backup). Take my Photos library out and I'm at 1TB. But then I have 340GB of Documents, way more than most, which could also be stored in the cloud.

As a comparison, my wife's 14" M1 MacBook Pro has a 1TB hard drive. She uses it pretty much all day every day for both work and personal stuff. She stores all her photos locally like I do and yet she still has 300GB free.

If you're not doing video editing work or playing modern AAA games then you don't really need that much space. As you're a video editor though, you're living in literally a different world from most people. Put it this way; a single 20 minute 4k ProRes video is likely takes up more hard drive space than most users entire lifetime's worth of photos.

 

[matrix07]

iphonedo ordered M3 Max with 8TB of SSD.

 

[macduke]

I can't imagine buying a system that high end with only 1TB. I ordered mine with 2TB and was already thinking maybe I should've got 4TB, lol, but I already keep my LR catalog on an external 4TB so 2TB seems good for working files, apps, and more AAA games as they come along. I used to use up a lot more of the 2TB on my old Intel Mac but that's because I had Windows installed on it with some Steam games.

 

[hovscorpion12]

Don’t be that person that starts the 1TB Vs 8GB RAM starter pack debate.

Aside from RAM, storage can be expanded externally. There are a handful of powerful SSD enclosures that can reach 3.5Gbs/sec. Not quite the 7.5GBs but we’re getting there.

 

[phrenologist]

My local store had a 14" 16c 64G 2TB system available for pick up on launch day according to the Apple Store app. So that seems to be a non-BTO config.

 

[Beau10]

My local store had a 14" 16c 64G 2TB system available for pick up on launch day according to the Apple Store app. So that seems to be a non-BTO config.

Interestingly enough, if I select this config it pushes things back to Dec 12-19. If I change anything, even say move RAM to 128gb, it returns to Nov 28-30.

I'm inclined to believe it does point to it as a stock item, or rather that they're trying to reserve a partial allocation for store stock.

 

[Fishrrman]

Re the OP's original comment:

In the real world, few users are going to want more than 1tb of SSD.

Apple will "stock" (in stores) the configurations that actually "move" (i.e., sell in a reasonable expectation of time).

But of course Apple realizes that -some- (not really that many) users will need more than 1tb.
That's what the "build-to-order" options are about.

It's simple:
If you want more, you can have more.
Just... order it online.

Bonus question:
How many members know that Apple's "online store" was originally brought into existence when Apple bought "Power Computing" (the Mac clone company) many years ago?

 

[GMShadow]

Something interesting to do if you ever have time is poke around Apple's refurb store.

The most common units in stock usually have stock RAM and extra storage. Even on base models it can be more common to see 8/1TB than 16/512.

 

[masotime]

I use my mac for video editing and I imagine with 16-cores and 1TB I cannot be too alone in this opinion, though.

Wouldn't external NVMe drives suffice? You can get a decent PCI-e Gen 4 NVMe drive + enclosure which would have 3 GigaByte/sec read/write speeds.

I don't do a lot of video editing though, does your use case require > 3GBps speeds? Or you're not comfortable with external drives for video editing?

 

[hovscorpion12]

Wouldn't external NVMe drives suffice? You can get a decent PCI-e Gen 4 NVMe drive + enclosure which would have 3 GigaByte/sec read/write speeds.

I don't do a lot of video editing though, does your use case require > 3GBps speeds? Or you're not comfortable with external drives for video editing?

As someone with over 20TB of external SSDs (Yes I said 20TB. Don’t ask me about my cloud storage 😬), 1TB is suffice. I’d rather max the ram per my needs then storage.

 

[masotime]

a single 20 minute 4k ProRes video is likely takes up more hard drive space than most users entire lifetime's worth of photos.

I had to look this up: http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/ip/spec/prores_data_rates.html

A 4k60 ProRES 422 HQ video takes up 795GB/hr, so your hypothetical 20 min clip would be 265GB. Processing would require a minimum of 1.6GB/s read/write.

A 4TB NVMe external drive+enclosure could store over 5 hours of 4k60 HQ ProRES, and a good enclosure can easily reach almost twice the minimum read/write speeds. Surely that’s all that would be needed?

EDIT: In any case, I've had good success with this combination: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s.2027925/page-50?post=32672767#post-32672767 - the thread itself has several helpful data points to make sure you get a performant combination for your budget.

 

[kevroc]

I would love to know how Apple concluded it made sense, for retail (non-custom) Macbook Pros, to pair a 16-core CPU and 48Gb of ram with a 1TB hard drive. I am sure they had analytics models to support this, but anecdotally it does not make sense; 1TB is a joke.

It's like selling a schoolbus that houses the driver and one student.

It's more like the "short bus" which is where we mac users typically fall.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

I had to look this up: http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/ip/spec/prores_data_rates.html

A 4k60 ProRES 422 HQ video takes up 795GB/hr, so your hypothetical 20 min clip would be 265GB. Processing would require a minimum of 1.6GB/s read/write.

A 4TB NVMe external drive+enclosure could store over 5 hours of 4k60 HQ ProRES, and a good enclosure can easily reach almost twice the minimum read/write speeds. Surely that’s all that would be needed?

EDIT: In any case, I've had good success with this combination: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s.2027925/page-50?post=32672767#post-32672767 - the thread itself has several helpful data points to make sure you get a performant combination for your budget.

Yeah that sounds about right and 265GB is likely bigger than most people's entire lifetime's worth of photos. Take out the videos in my Photos library and it goes down from 904GB to 164GB and that's almost 40,000 photos covering about 25 years since I first got a digital camera.

As soon as you start doing anything to do with large resolution video, your space requirements start to shoot through the roof. But most users, even most 'professional' users don't do that so 1TB of space is more than enough for them and as you say, an external drive is likely going to be a far better solution in terms of economy and, to be honest, in terms of transferring those videos to other machines. For the cost of upgrading from a 1TB to a 2TB drive with Apple, you can get a top spec 4TB NVME drive and a top quality external case.

Of course, do as I say, not as I do, as my incoming machine has a 4TB internal SSD...

 

[JamesMay82]

With iCloud and other cloud solutions, it's very easy for a lot of people to live with 1TB just fine. I've gone for 4TB in my new MBP because the 2TB in my current machine is just not enough. But almost 1TB of my drive is used up by my Photos library, which I could easily chose to optimise and store in iCloud, which is what most people would do (I chose not to because I want a 'full' library on my main computer so that it also backs up to my Time Machine backup). Take my Photos library out and I'm at 1TB. But then I have 340GB of Documents, way more than most, which could also be stored in the cloud.

As a comparison, my wife's 14" M1 MacBook Pro has a 1TB hard drive. She uses it pretty much all day every day for both work and personal stuff. She stores all her photos locally like I do and yet she still has 300GB free.

If you're not doing video editing work or playing modern AAA games then you don't really need that much space. As you're a video editor though, you're living in literally a different world from most people. Put it this way; a single 20 minute 4k ProRes video is likely takes up more hard drive space than most users entire lifetime's worth of photos.

I’d argue against as using the cloud is incredibly risky because its not a back up so we should all have enough storage to download our photos/important files and then an external to back them up.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

I’d argue against as using the cloud is incredibly risky because its not a back up so we should all have enough storage to download our photos/important files and then an external to back them up.

Saving photos in the cloud seems to work find for hundreds of millions of users. I tried to find an example of people losing their photos from Photos Cloud storage and couldn't find any examples. I'm not saying you shouldn't ideally have another backup but saying it's 'incredibly risky' is more than a bit of an exaggeration.

 

[masotime]

I’d argue against as using the cloud is incredibly risky because its not a back up so we should all have enough storage to download our photos/important files and then an external to back them up.

Cloud service providers (especially those as big as Apple) are incentivized to have almost 100% data uptime (as in, data not being lost) for their servers because of potential lawsuit exposure. They almost certainly have more redundancies to retain the integrity of data at their data centers than any regular consumer could afford.

I'm not sure if it's data integrity that's the risk being discussed here though. Did you mean like in case they randomly decide to shut down the service and don't have an easy way to download the data, or some other scenario?

 

[JamesMay82]

@Spanky Deluxe @masotime

My sister somehow lost/forgot her log in to her Apple ID and she lost about 3 years worth of photos which were her kids photos etc. I know that’s an extreme scenario but that’s the one i refer to. The same scenario could happen to people who had their phone stolen as well.

My other issue from my understanding is that apple markets its iCloud service as a sync service and not a back up? So its no obligation to be responsible for our data?

At present i use iCloud for documents, desktop and photos and i currently keep my docs (50GB) saved on local drive and then i keep my photo library stored in the cloud but downloaded locally on an external drive. My plan is my next mac will be 2TB so i can keep everything downloaded on one machine and then one external drive to back that up.

I think Most young people (early 20’s) must have many GB of video and photo due to all their selfies and recording of daily life

 

[Schnitzel1979]

i am thinking of getting 2 Tb for my next mac; planning to use logic pro and games like baldurs gate 3; i would like to be on the save side , the 512 Gb ssd at my old pc got full very fast

 

[masotime]

@Spanky Deluxe @masotime

My sister somehow lost/forgot her log in to her Apple ID and she lost about 3 years worth of photos which were her kids photos etc. I know that’s an extreme scenario but that’s the one i refer to. The same scenario could happen to people who had their phone stolen as well.

I agree, this is a valid point - the Apple ID is a single point of failure for iCloud. Another thing is that I believe it's possible for someone to use your iPhone PIN to change your iCloud password, which is bad from a security standpoint.

My other issue from my understanding is that apple markets its iCloud service as a sync service and not a back up? So it's no obligation to be responsible for our data?

At present i use iCloud for documents, desktop and photos and i currently keep my docs (50GB) saved on local drive and then i keep my photo library stored in the cloud but downloaded locally on an external drive. My plan is my next mac will be 2TB so i can keep everything downloaded on one machine and then one external drive to back that up.

I think Most young people (early 20’s) must have many GB of video and photo due to all their selfies and recording of daily life

Yeah it's more of a sync service, but I suspect even if they're not obliged, it's a really bad look for the company since iCloud is a paid service for a lot of people.

Still, I agree that it's a good idea to keep a personal backup. I don't think I'd want to buy a more expensive configuration just for integrated storage though - for me I'm happy with having multiple external backups plus a cloud backup. I was researching this recently... this article seems pretty good - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Reddit also has a nice post on this - https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/backups/

The "Borg" option is interesting to me...

 

[saturnotaku]

Wouldn't external NVMe drives suffice? You can get a decent PCI-e Gen 4 NVMe drive + enclosure which would have 3 GigaByte/sec read/write speeds.

I don't do a lot of video editing though, does your use case require > 3GBps speeds? Or you're not comfortable with external drives for video editing?

Most folks I know who make their living doing creative work, be it audio/video, and stills (digital art, direct mail/email advertising, etc) do all their work on a remote server. It's likely cheaper for a corporation to buy one server with a large amount of centralized storage than many MacBooks with 4+ TB SSDs.

 

[masotime]

Most folks I know who make their living doing creative work, be it audio/video, and stills (digital art, direct mail/email advertising, etc) do all their work on a remote server. It's likely cheaper for a corporation to buy one server with a large amount of centralized storage than many MacBooks with 4+ TB SSDs.

I agree - that's why I think 1TB is actually fine. Usually if you are serious about large amounts of storage there are lots of external solutions. 4TB, 8TB is more of a luxury option IMO, as in having an outsized budget to spend...