Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro With M2 Chip Has Significantly Slower SSD Speeds

[unrigestered]

it's indeed alright.
thing is... Apple charges premium prices, but simply cheaps out and delivers half the performance, that even budget PCs offer

they also do this with their HDMI and USB ports on their most expensive MacBook Pros (and probably Mac Studios too) by not using the latest versions, hampering resolutions and USB speeds compared to most PC manufacturers, unless you opt for expensive and rare Thunderbolt solutions.
external SSD transfer rates over USB for example are capped at 1GB/s IIRC, while the very same drives can be much faster on most non-Apple systems from the last couple of years.

 

[Abazigal]

I think people are making a mountain out of a mole hill on this. I still have a "professional" system that not only has SATA SSD, but SATA 2 speeds (2010 Mac Pro). You cannot argue that its not a professional system regardless of the very "slow" ~220 MB/s speeds on my SSDs.

This being said, I think they should just remove the 13" Macbook Pro. Regardless how people feel about the "Pro" in the name, its just not a good product in general.

I concur that "mountain out of a molehill" sums up this entire thread perfectly.

When every minor issue is being played up as some sort of new "gate" that demands the firing of Tim Cook, I hope the critics realise that all they are doing is numbing and desensitising the readers to the real issues that Apple may have if and when they do surface.

But at the end of the day, it's their credibility to lose, not mine.

 

[Zdigital2015]

That's the whole point - this thing shouldn't exist. Period.

I find it hilarious the tech posers in these forums who love to tell me how much diversity and choice there is in the Windows world and then proceed to tell me that Apple has too many models and that the 13” MBP shouldn’t even exist. I pray you aren’t a product manager at some other hapless company, because they are monumentally screwed if you are.

The fact that Apple offers the 13” MBP as an alternative to the MBA is welcome to quite a few of us. I chose it for the 500-nits, the fan and the TouchBar. I love the Touch Bar and I wish that Apple had kept it on the 14” and 16” MBPs. The fact that they had to remove it becomes some crusty, retrograde inveterate cranks couldn’t figure out how to make it work to their advantage gives me pause to take the advice of most individuals opening their yaps/pie holes around here.

The regressives got what they wanted with the 14”/16” MBPs (no TB, HDMI and SD card, MagSafe), so let sleeping dogs lie and we’ll take our 13” TB MBPs instead of having to slip back into the 1960s Fn keys and the constant whining about lost USB-A ports from supposed techies who post their prattling commentary bemoaning the theft of a port from frickin’ 1998.

 

[MajorFubar]

I concur that "mountain out of a molehill" sums up this entire thread perfectly.

When every minor issue is being played up as some sort of new "gate" that demands the firing of Tim Cook, I hope the critics realise that all they are doing is numbing and desensitising the readers to the real issues that Apple may have if and when they do surface.

But at the end of the day, it's their credibility to lose, not mine.

It's not really a minor issue though is it. If you buy the base-spec 256GB 13" MBP, it's more than likely going to feel slower than its M1 equivalent, despite the fact Apple claimed the M2 version is 'up to 1.4x faster'. It's easy to argue most people won't notice, especially if they're coming straight from an Intel Mac to this, but that's not the point.

But none of the high-profile journalists will dare confront Apple about this head to head for fear of not being given next season's new tech for free. Just the same way they didn't ask Apple how come A-series iPad Pros can't have Stage Manager when the 64GB iPad Air has it even though it doesn't support swap.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Careful that starts a war with the hardcore Touchbar fans. Ask me how I know [delicately massages bruises and scars].

 

[MajorFubar]

I find it hilarious the tech posers in these forums who love to tell me how much diversity and choice there is in the Windows world and then proceed to tell me that Apple has too many models and that the 13” MBP shouldn’t even exist. I pray you aren’t a product manager at some other hapless company, because they are monumentally screwed if you are.

The fact that Apple offers the 13” MBP as an alternative to the MBA is welcome to quite a few of us. I chose it for the 500-nits, the fan and the TouchBar. I love the Touch Bar and I wish that Apple had kept it on the 14” and 16” MBPs. The fact that they had to remove it becomes some crusty, retrograde inveterate cranks couldn’t figure out how to make it work to their advantage gives me pause to take the advice of most individuals opening their yaps/pie holes around here.

The regressives got what they wanted with the 14”/16” MBPs (no TB, HDMI and SD card, MagSafe), so let sleeping dogs lie and we’ll take our 13” TB MBPs instead of having to slip back into the 1960s Fn keys and the constant whining about lost USB-A ports from supposed techies who post their
prattling commentary bemoaning the theft of a port from frickin’ 1998.

@GalileoSeven brace yourselves the Touchbar Mafia is here.

 

[0423MAC]

The M2 13” MacBook Pro exists because Apple still has plenty of the parts available to justify another release with that form factor.

I can’t imagine they are producing many parts for those 13” models anymore. Same with the aging iPhone SE design. Those will be updated/phased out quicker than usual.

 

[0423MAC]

I find it hilarious the tech posers in these forums who love to tell me how much diversity and choice there is in the Windows world and then proceed to tell me that Apple has too many models and that the 13” MBP shouldn’t even exist. I pray you aren’t a product manager at some other hapless company, because they are monumentally screwed if you are.

The fact that Apple offers the 13” MBP as an alternative to the MBA is welcome to quite a few of us. I chose it for the 500-nits, the fan and the TouchBar. I love the Touch Bar and I wish that Apple had kept it on the 14” and 16” MBPs. The fact that they had to remove it becomes some crusty, retrograde inveterate cranks couldn’t figure out how to make it work to their advantage gives me pause to take the advice of most individuals opening their yaps/pie holes around here.

The regressives got what they wanted with the 14”/16” MBPs (no TB, HDMI and SD card, MagSafe), so let sleeping dogs lie and we’ll take our 13” TB MBPs instead of having to slip back into the 1960s Fn keys and the constant whining about lost USB-A ports from supposed techies who post their prattling commentary bemoaning the theft of a port from frickin’ 1998.

What do you like about the Touch Bar? Are you going to max out the M2 Touch Bar Pro?

 

[Zdigital2015]

What do you like about the Touch Bar? Are you going to max out the M2 Touch Bar Pro?

The Touch Bar is whatever I want to make it with Better Touch Tool. When I'm typing I get predictive text, I can scrub through videos easily, launch Shortcuts, et al. It beats Fn keys any day of the week.

I'm perfectly fine with my M1 MacBook Pro, even at 8GB/512GB. If I decide I really need 16GB or 24GB, I'll upgrade with a refurb M1 or M2 MacBook Pro. I buy about 50/50 new versus Refurb or closeout which are hard to come by right now. I'm not entirely convinced the M2 is the upgrade Apple made it out to be in the WWDC keynote. Apple doesn't dictate my upgrade schedule whether its a Mac, an iPad, an iPhone or a Watch...my wallet is all out of FOMO.

 

[dannys1]

You are right it is not true because Tim is on a LOT more than that!
In 2020-2021 he got:
Salary: $3 million
Bonus: $10.7 million
Perks: $1million
Stock options: $250 million.

Total: $264.7 million.

You may try to claim that we can not include his stock options because it is not actual salary but we can because it is INCLUDED in his PAY award!

Game set and match to me!

I think you need to read what stock options really are - they're not even guaranteed yet.

 

[masterhiggins]

They just need to release an update to throttle the speed of the M1. Problem solved.

 

[nottorp]

But these base M2 models have only 8GB RAM, so swapping will be alot of fun with these slow SSD speeds.

Now M2 is faster than M1, so maybe the M2 speeds can offset the slower swapping.

How? Swapping is i/o bound not cpu bound.

 

[troller]

Does anybody know if the same **** will also affect the MBA M2?...

 

[garethjs]

I really want to see if the m2 airs are going to use the same SSD modules as the pros. If they are faster, then it would be the biggest insult to these “pros”

 

[maxoakland]

Saving additional costs on the most popular model, after increasing the overall price? Good job Timmy. I’m sure you’ll spin it to show how environmentally wise this decision was.

It really bugs me that they keep doing this stuff. Apple used to be a company you could trust for the most part. They had a culture of trying to make great products. Now they have a culture of trying to make as much money as possible by cutting corners they think they can get away with

2022 is the year I finally realized it had changed

 

[bassexpander]

Some day they will figure out this kind of thing costs them more money than it gains. My Iphone 11 jumped in price on the used market when it was announced most new Iphone 14’s will likely keep the A15 chip. Used values on macbooks will stay high, and there will be no need for most to upgrade.

BTW, Samsung did essentially the same thing with its midrange phones this year. Transfer speeds and modem up/down speeds took a severe hit in models like the a53 vs the a52s. CPU’s also. They brag of “great sales” on the a53, but consumers are angry, and they will know better next time around. Samsung has a massive pile of midrange phones they cannot sell. Phone stores are dumping them off new-in-the-box for half price/no contract on used sites here in Seoul. You can get a Quantum 3 for under $250 brand new. People don’t want it. A pretty 120hz screen makes it just a gold-painted turd.

 

[TallManNY]

Some day they will figure out this kind of thing costs them more money than it gains. My Iphone 11 jumped in price on the used market when it was announced most new Iphone 14’s will likely keep the A15 chip. Used values on macbooks will stay high, and there will be no need for most to upgrade.

BTW, Samsung did essentially the same thing with its midrange phones this year. Transfer speeds and modem up/down speeds took a severe hit in models like the a53 vs the a52s. CPU’s also. They brag of “great sales” on the a53, but consumers are angry, and they will know better next time around. Samsung has a massive pile of midrange phones they cannot sell. Phone stores are dumping them off new-in-the-box for half price/no contract on used sites here in Seoul. You can get a Quantum 3 for under $250 brand new. People don’t want it. A pretty 120hz screen makes it just a gold-painted turd.

I'm going to guess that Apple did this switch to avoid buying any 128GB SSDs entirely through their products. As always, their products are released with a multi-year plan to produce and sell them. All Macs will start with be one 256gb SSD installed with an expectation that a lot of Macs will be ordered with 512GB. That will be two 256GB SSDs. So Apple will simplify its supply chain around massive orders of 256GBs and the 128GBs will be reduced to zero.

I'd guess that less than 10% of Mac users ever work with a document file that is larger 300MB or have much more than a half dozen programs running all of which they leave open nearly 100% of the time. So in normal use (outside of virtual memory) the SSD moves only a limited amount of data over the course of any hour. Normal users won't notice. Folks who use their Macs hard enough to notice and who are buying a new MacBook Pro in 2022, they got 512GB (or larger) version anyway.

 

[ImAlwaysRight]

My M1 MacBook Air with 16GB/512GB clocks in at 2785 write and 2910 read using BlackMagic. Mine beats ALL of these MacBook Pros. Things I did with my 2017 MBP i5 3.1 that made my fans become audible and the MacBook very hot, this M1 doesn't even feel warm. It is an amazing laptop that will probably last me a decade or more. Excellent investment as I paid $849 refurbished in May '22, sold my 2017 MBP for $600.

 

[dgdosen]

Beating a dead horse...

Does anyone have knowledge of Samsung NAND pricing over the last couple of years? for 128GB and 256GB chips?

Part of me wonders how Apple's costs - which they fiercely hide/protect - changed when moving from 2x128 to 1x256 NAND - OR how Apple's costs would have changed by moving the base storage from (2x128) 256GB to (2x256) 512GB.

Some pressure triggered Apple to move from 128GB to 256GB in base storage. I wonder what impetus will make them change from 256 to 512.

 

[HardBall]

it's indeed alright.
thing is... Apple charges premium prices, but simply cheaps out and delivers half the performance, that even budget PCs offer

they also do this with their HDMI and USB ports on their most expensive MacBook Pros (and probably Mac Studios too) by not using the latest versions, hampering resolutions and USB speeds compared to most PC manufacturers, unless you opt for expensive and rare Thunderbolt solutions.
external SSD transfer rates over USB for example are capped at 1GB/s IIRC, while the very same drives can be much faster on most non-Apple systems from the last couple of years.

Why complain about something that basically never happens in real life.

Assuming that people buying these are actually "Pros", I don't see how anyone in that position could possibly use a laptop with 256GB storage anyway. Most "Pros" would run out within the first week. This base model is there purely for show, and to hit a price point, then the sales people can ask the customer to pile on the upgrades.

Complaining that the 256GB model not performing well is just a purely theoretical exercise. I have not used anything less than 4TB as my main machine for quite some time now, and no one I know uses anything less than 1TB for their daily driver. The 256GB is basically just a display model there to get people to buy something that's actually useful.

 

[buckwheet]

Indeed. Let’s face it though, Apple slaps ‘Pro’ on to many things now regardless of performance and capability. Nowdays, ’Pro’ often means squat.

Well, I do think they're trying to break free of that problem and get things back on track. To me, the 13" M2 Pro is most likely a token gesture to those who still make use of the Touch Bar (I know, shocking, but they are out there). That's the only reason I can see for its existence. If you have a workflow that makes use of it you might still want to upgrade. I'd be very surprised if we see another revision to this model though.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

I think people are making a mountain out of a mole hill on this. I still have a "professional" system that not only has SATA SSD, but SATA 2 speeds (2010 Mac Pro). You cannot argue that its not a professional system regardless of the very "slow" ~220 MB/s speeds on my SSDs.

This being said, I think they should just remove the 13" Macbook Pro. Regardless how people feel about the "Pro" in the name, its just not a good product in general.

Are you really qualified to have an opinion about bleeding edge performance on a brand-new model when you're still rocking a 12 year old Mac Pro with (no offense) rock-bottom performance? Obviously, performance/speed is not your forte.

 

[levander]

Pretty amazing how some people without any need for hard drive speed assume they can extrapolate and pretend that because they don’t need it, nobody should want it.

 

[GooseInTheCaboose]

I have to agree. This is bad. If this were the M2 MacBook Air, I'd not be so disappointed. But if the "Pro" moniker means anything, it should mean performance.

The stats are very close to the m1MBA, perhaps they just put MBA components in the m2 mbp, with the exception of touchbar and fan, and old squared off screen.

If true tho this could indicate that the m2 MBA receiives no speed bump in ssd, which is a mild bummer..

 

[stylinexpat]

It really bugs me that they keep doing this stuff. Apple used to be a company you could trust for the most part. They had a culture of trying to make great products. Now they have a culture of trying to make as much money as possible by cutting corners they think they can get away with

2022 is the year I finally realized it had changed

They did the same with the iPhone's camera. The are still about 6 years behind Huawei's zoom capabilities on their smartphone cameras. 6-7 years later they will brag about 5X zoom capabilities when others have been over 10X for many years