That certainly sounds enticing but it might be more challenging than we think to simply “double or quadruple GPU performance”
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256GB ssd is bull
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That certainly sounds enticing but it might be more challenging than we think to simply “double or quadruple GPU performance”
I bought the 8/256 Mini but after a week I saw that I hadn't estimated things very well. I was coming from Mojave and was startled at how big Big Sur is. Adding my apps including Adobe CC and my personal files, and I had only 80GB left.
I'd been expecting to get by with 8GB RAM because of the reported fast swapping to disk, but with only 80GB free I was worried about rapid aging of the drive.
So I sent the Mini back and got a 16/512 instead. And at this moment I have Word, Safari, Mail, and Amazon Music open, and Activity Monitor shows I'm using 11GB of memory. When I had the 8GB Mini, I had the same apps open plus Premiere and Photoshop and Firefox and Chrome but never experienced any lags.
These m1 Macs seem to be using memory far more adroitly than in the past.
My first SSD Mac was a Late 2015 iMac. I'd swapped in SSDs to my previous Macs, but that wasn't possible for the iMac. All the best deals were for Fusion models and the price for the 256GB SSD seemed outrageous, but when I researched it I found that the internal Mac SSD was far more fast and robust than the low-end external SSDs I'd been buying.
Worth the price, in other words.
I'd been expecting to get by with 8GB RAM because of the reported fast swapping to disk, but with only 80GB free I was worried about rapid aging of the drive.
So I sent the Mini back and got a 16/512 instead. And at this moment I have Word, Safari, Mail, and Amazon Music open, and Activity Monitor shows I'm using 11GB of memory. When I had the 8GB Mini, I had the same apps open plus Premiere and Photoshop and Firefox and Chrome but never experienced any lags.
These m1 Macs seem to be using memory far more adroitly than in the past.
My first SSD Mac was a Late 2015 iMac. I'd swapped in SSDs to my previous Macs, but that wasn't possible for the iMac. All the best deals were for Fusion models and the price for the 256GB SSD seemed outrageous, but when I researched it I found that the internal Mac SSD was far more fast and robust than the low-end external SSDs I'd been buying.
Worth the price, in other words.
$1200 is what they charge if you upgrade from 256 to 512, so if base was 512 it is very unlikely they’d charge $1200. I could see $1100 (since Apple doesnt pay $200 extra for the bigger storage)
The $2.5k Mac doesn’t have 256GB of storage, so I don’t see what you’re trying to say.
But yes, people pay $1000 to have a machine to browse the internet and do other basic tasks and for them 256GB is plenty.
I got a new 16/512 Mini this week and the system is about 90% set up. I still have to move a few things from my MacBook Pros but SSD use is at 55 GB. My music library is about 16 GB and that isn't on this system yet. My photo library is a lot larger (not really sure how large it is) and I'm unsure which system I will put it on. This is one of those times where I wish the Mini had an SD card slot. I'm pretty sure that adding music and photos would fit in 256 GB but it would be a tight fit.
Our video library is on the home NAS. My photo library is currently on a Samsung T3 (I had to move it off my oldest MacBook Pro as someone needed to borrow the laptop). I have several spare SSDs in varying sizes that I could attach to the Mini permanently. This is one place where I wish that the Mini had an additional one or two USB-C ports. I'd guess that the M1X Mini will have four USB-C ports, hopefully two USB-A ports as well.
Our video library is on the home NAS. My photo library is currently on a Samsung T3 (I had to move it off my oldest MacBook Pro as someone needed to borrow the laptop). I have several spare SSDs in varying sizes that I could attach to the Mini permanently. This is one place where I wish that the Mini had an additional one or two USB-C ports. I'd guess that the M1X Mini will have four USB-C ports, hopefully two USB-A ports as well.
So your saying that computer users come in 3 classes:
- PC-Gamers (not sure why they would buy a Mac) that just need to have all the top games at hand all the times
- video editors that need to have all their files on the boot drive but don't go over 2TB
- people checking out twitter and YT
Nothing in between!!
It used to be that if you want a trading rig, you'd get pitched a gaming rig because that was the closest you'd find in pre-built systems. Trading rigs want high-resolution multi-monitor support so one or more graphics cards that can support multiple high-resolution monitors but the heavy compute found in modern "gaming" CPUs isn't required. These days there are companies that cater to this niche.
That's the nice thing about building your own system - you can add the capabilities that you need and skip the stuff that you don't need. And be able to add in more capabilities later on if your needs change.
Sure and "right now" (as in the last 5 years) I do have passive cooled 4core mITX board on my desk that can run up to 3 4k screens.
Or if you wanted a computer for video editing in the 80s/early 90s you ended up with a system that was deemed a toy everywhere else just because it was pretty much the only one that could be synced from a video source.
So yeah tech changes and with it the way stuff can done which again changes the tech needed.
More and more games will be played via streaming to the point where your computer can be replaced by some 40$ rPI connected to a screen.
Raw video gets so big that no matter how big your internal SSD is it will never be enough to store all your data on it (which is a stupid idea anyways) and now all that matters (apart from processing power) is how and how fast you can hook up that external storage.
Even at $1100, it is still an issue. The Air is marketed as an under $1000 entry-level computer. And $999 ($899 for education) is a lot cheaper than $1100 in buyer's minds. It also removes the Air from various comparisons of under $1,000 laptops.
All of my Apple devices are base storage. All my data is somewhere online where it can be shared. 20 + years as a programmer, 15 of those on a Mac. I stream, I create, I share. I typically have 2/3 drive space free. I live in a big city with perpetual access to Internet.
But, for those who save and produce Gb videos, and don’t have good connectivity, there are other options.
But, for those who save and produce Gb videos, and don’t have good connectivity, there are other options.
If you did a migration instead of a clean install, download OmniDiskSweeper and use it to inspect your /Library directories (both system and for your user accounts). Use it to inspect any directory that seems suspiciously large. You may find caches of files that you really don't need. A lot of programs will store very large backups that aren't necessary and you can purge those backups. When I was setting my wife up for a new 256GB MBA last year, I was able to purge something like 100GB of obsolete data out of her Photos app!
My Intel 2020 Air doesn’t have the extra snapshot or the 6GB recovery container. My M1 does so I’m assuming it’s a M1 thing.
Wouldn’t have an issue with that. I wouldn’t buy it of course. I’d still get the 512gb like I did when the M1 went on sale. Why should I care if Apple sell a macbook with a minuscule SSD in it. So long as they sell the storage option I need. I would however have an issue with anyone who bought a 64gb MacBook and then had a go at Apple because it didn’t suit them
Because their price anchoring strategy begins at the entry point and the machines are not upgradeable at all after purchase.
I wouldn't care a lick if they offered socketed NVMe inside.
But as it is, we are forced to buy totally overrpriced upgrades only from Apple, right at the time of purchase (hard to know how your plans might change a year + into ownership). The "appliances" they sell now require completely changing machines to change any specs at all.
iPhone 64 four times more 256Reading some of the posts, I think we could find people here to defend 64GB as the base
iphone 256 for times more 1 Tb
Apple makes things appropriate for different kinds of users.
Those that store local and those that store off device.
I never do migrations. I am nuke and pave. I trawl it with DaisyDisk every few weeks.. I have about 95gb available because my Steam games, Crossover games, Photos library (cloud), and Logic Pro files are on an external samsung T7
I am comfortable with 128gb on my 12 pro max.
I am comfortable with 256gb on my iPad pro.
I am NOT comfortable with 256gb on my macbook. 😀
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".
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".
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I'm totally the opposite. My current machine has an unbroken lineage going all the way back to my first G4 tower running OSX. Hell, there's probably still some tiny artifacts left over from my OS9 Macs.
I've found that if you know how the system works and know how to sweep for clutter that builds up, you can still have a pretty efficient system. It just breaks down to whether you want to spend more time setting up your Mac or more time maintaining it. I'm too paranoid of leaving something important behind so I'm biased toward the latter.
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?