Apple vs Window Storage??

Well, you see... Flash storage on a Mac is magical and 1 GB of Apple Flash storage = roughly 4.7 GB on a Windows computer... wait, no... that's not right...

Nope, you aren't missing anything
1 GB = 1 GB whether it is a traditional HD or Flash storage

 

Get whatever computer has a large enough drive to hold all the stuff you want.

As MacDawg said, 1GB = 1GB regardless of what computer you buy. However, Apple has largely switched over to using flash storage on their laptops, while many PC's still use older spinning disk hard drives. The Flash storage is going to be much faster for access, but it is also a lot more expensive for comparable amounts of storage.

The Air and Pro may have different recommendations, depending on what you will be doing with the machines. If you are willing to share what you plan to do with the machines, maybe we can help steer you in the right direction.

 

Do you have to have all of your movies with you at all times? Would it be too troublesome to attach an external hard drive every time you wanted to watch a movie?

I ask because I watch a lot of videos on my Air. I only have 128GB, but I don't store any videos on the Air long-term. When I go on trips for work, I'll usually load up a couple of DVD rips and then delete them after I watch them. Similarly with music, I only keep a subset of my library on the computer. ITunes Match and external storage keep the rest.

External drives are cheap and can greatly expand your storage as well as functioning as a time machine backup (<- Also very important).

 

Movies, Photos and music are some of the biggest space hogs on the computer. If you can condition yourself to only keep subsets of your libraries on your machine, you can drastically reduce your requirements. However, also remember that it's sometimes easy for an external hard drive to walk away, so if you have anything important (like term papers), make sure you have multiple copies.

If you have a good backup strategy in place (including cloud storage), it usually isn't a problem. I mean, at minimum, look at some cloud storage for your stuff. Apple iCloud Drive is coming, along with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. They all have some good things about them, so maybe take a look.

 

Or you could upgrade the retina SSD and make it custom, 256, 512 or 1TB

 

The old addage of "you will always fill whatever storage space you have", or something like that, is true whether its a PC or Mac. My advice would be to get a 256Gbyte MacBook. It will give you room to expand and will do away with the constant need to keep an eye on your storage.

Ive just upgraded my white unibody to a Samsung EVO 840 SSD 250Gbyte. I have Mavericks, a subset of Music & Films, all of my professional & personnal docs and a fair few Pdf's and still have 198Gbyte of storage left.

 

I have a 128GB drive with 83GB free. I could remove some infrequently used applications and probably get another 3-4 GB freed up. I could easily get by with a 64GB drive.

 

Have you considered a used MBP? I'm sure you could find one out there from a year or two ago with a 256 GB SSD for $1200. If you really need a lot more space, don't rule out a MBP with a traditional HDD either.