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Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro With M2 Chip Has Significantly Slower SSD Speeds
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This machine only exists to upsell the 14" model and make the new Air seems like a much better deal, they know it wont sell well and probably saved the dual 128gb chips for the new Air. Apple has been using this strategy for a while now. 256gb is unusable for anyone doing Pro work anyway, while I love my M1 Air, the 256gb storage has been a struggle.
Those who wouldn’t care about getting the performance they pay for would just be buying the MacBook Air M1 base model. It takes a very conscious decision to purchase a machine with a faster processor and cooling fan.
You’d be surpised. The MacBook Air is Apple their best selling Mac and it will also get this M2 chip. So this M2 chip will sell really well.
Mac mini 2012 vs 2014 embarrassment comes to mind.
The set of folks working with files on their internal storage that are large enough where this read/write speed is going to be noticeable, but who didn't decide to get at least the 512gb model, is going to be very small.
With this issue alone, I would never touch this model. I'll stick with my M1 Pro 14" MBP.
NVMe and PCIe SSDs are not new at all, they've been around for a decade. I have 5-6 year old PCs that read 3500MBps and write 2500MBps. The newer NVMe gen4 speeds are 5GBps read... so it's absolutely inexcusable for a 2022 MacBook "Pro" to come in with this outdated speed and deprecated technology. I would assume it had to do with saving money and they figured most wouldn't notice.
NVMe and PCIe SSDs are not new at all, they've been around for a decade. I have 5-6 year old PCs that read 3500MBps and write 2500MBps. The newer NVMe gen4 speeds are 5GBps read... so it's absolutely inexcusable for a 2022 MacBook "Pro" to come in with this outdated speed and deprecated technology. I would assume it had to do with saving money and they figured most wouldn't notice.
Spot on analysis. This is a big nothing burger.
Isn't it the the same price as before? And it IS more powerful. The fact that the (still very fast) SSD is slower than before won't matter to most users, and won't be noticeable in anything but benchmarks, or very intense workloads that most people buying this machine won't be doing.
It's still overall a faster machine than the older generation M1 13" MBP.
I'm not sure that I understand this point. This is a faster laptop than the M1 Air. By paying the extra money, you do get a machine that performs faster. Agreed - some specific benchmarks may be underwhelming, but this is still a very capable machine for the money. And the fan gets you sustained performance over any Air. (I'd still get the Air over this though).
Tell that to all the SE and base iPad customers.
Especially the SE's, iPhone 6 launched in 2014..
Perhaps you should contact Apple about their new union… 😂
While it's not good that speeds have gone down on the entry-level MBP, the specific case first mentioned in the article:
"Slower SSD speeds can impact common tasks such as transferring files to an external drive…"
...is actually very unlikely to be impacted by this change, because very very few external drives are anywhere near that speed. The vast majority of SSDs are slower than 1000MB/s at the best of times, though copies to top-end Thunderbolt-based externals could be affected.
"Slower SSD speeds can impact common tasks such as transferring files to an external drive…"
...is actually very unlikely to be impacted by this change, because very very few external drives are anywhere near that speed. The vast majority of SSDs are slower than 1000MB/s at the best of times, though copies to top-end Thunderbolt-based externals could be affected.
It's supply not a deliberate act by Apple. I see a lot of SSD spaces empty at stores, online, ect. My BestBuy has not had a 256, 512, or a 1T for months. 2T or higher is sometimes in stock, Wally World, has only 1T's. A local computer store can not get anything without weeks of waiting below 1T.
That is also what I am suspecting. Apple is doing this due to the current production issues they are having. So they came with a compromised solution.
We are beyond lucky Apple didn’t raise prices further.
Apple’s slowest SSD tech is still faster than what most competitors offer, isn’t it?
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So is the new air also going to only have 1 NAND? Would be a drastic drop in speeds compared to the M1 air if thats the case.
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.
Sorry, you can complain all you want with actual release/production versions of macOS, and I encourage it, but not with a beta. The code is in no way optimized and/or ready for primetime. If Ventura still takes a **** when the .0 release it out, please yell it from the rooftops, otherwise that a negatory, Ghost Rider.
Maybe you are being too harsh on Apple in a world of rampant inflation, global shortages and logistics delays?
I mean Apple can charge $3000 for the base model so it can preserve “excellence,” but how much will you be moaning then?
Also what kind of true Pro are you if you are settling for just the 256gb model?
Apple made the best decision it could at the time and it will not impxt
99.9999% of buyers of the base model.
That’s my estimation in any case, individual use cases will vary and obviously it does suck to have slower tech in a newer model, no question, but there are lots of reasons why Apple presumably made this choice and global prices and availability are obviously huge factors.
So would Apple have added a few Benjamins to the price been more acceptable to you?