Can't get my head around this...

[teethemagicbee]

Hello! Now I've been trying my best not to make this thread and I feel an idiot for doing so, but after a while(prior to me signing up) of searching and no results, I sadly have to.

Now this isn't aimed just at mbp's, but you'll know what I mean.

Was their an apple conference where they explained the reasoning to the tiny/fast hard drives? For a company that earns a big chunk of its revenue from iTunes, you'd think they would want loads of storage. Is this what they want so people spend loads on choosing the biggest hard drive or do they want you to buy a nas/time capsule? If you have a massive library and you can't store everything on your device, you'd have to pick and choose what you want to watch, then(in my case) spend hours just downloading 1 movie.

So what am I missing? This can't be the way it is?

Cheers for any help.

 

[T5BRICK]

SSDs are the future of storage. Currently they can't match capacities of HDDs, but given some time they will.

Right now that sucks for folks who require a lot of storage, but you can always fall back on an external HDD. I plan on setting up a NAS to hold all of my media that doesn't NEED to live on my laptop.

 

[Trvlngnrs]

Was their an apple conference where they explained the reasoning to the tiny/fast hard drives? For a company that earns a big chunk of its revenue from iTunes, you'd think they would want loads of storage. Is this what they want so people spend loads on choosing the biggest hard drive or do they want you to buy a nas/time capsule? If you have a massive library and you can't store everything on your device, you'd have to pick and choose what you want to watch, then(in my case) spend hours just downloading 1 movie.

I agree. I would rather have a slightly thicker laptop that has the capability of having an SSD and a spinning hard drive. One for speed, one for storage.

Or I'd like a reasonable upcharge for larger SSD's... maybe even a price break since you are upgrading an Apple device that Apple is already making a profit on.

 

[Meister]

The storage in the new macbooks is pcie ssd. Its up to ten times faster than hdds.

Pcie ssds are still much more expensive, sadly.

Most customers dont use more than 256gb. Large media collections are kept on externals or desktops.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Are you crazy???

Why would you not want PCIe SSD??

It makes a computer so much more pleasant to use and faster in almost every single way, I wouldn't buy any computer without flash storage.

We expect apple to make the best and this is the best storage available.

If you insist on staying in last the decade then you can still buy a fat MBP with a DVD drive and a spinning disk. (at least for now). Or you can buy a windows computer that performs badly with bad HDs and small caches of slow flash memory.

As for external storage, thunderbolt and USB 3 are blisteringly fast and 10GB takes only a few seconds to transfer. USB sticks are getting bigger and cheaper (128gb for £60) so you can carry huge amounts of media on your keyring. SD cards are also larger and cheaper meaning expansion is easy.

It is the only sensible option to use SSD for high class laptops and this is way they will all go.

 

[maflynn]

So what am I missing? This can't be the way it is?

You're missing the fact that the industry transitioned (for the most part) to SSDs and away from hard drives. The cost per gigabyte for SSDs is still relatively expensive so we're having to live with smaller drives when buying a computer for the same price as before. Its not part of any grand scheme of apple to make us buy something else.

 

[teethemagicbee]

I'm not saying I don't want a PCIe ssd. I 100% agree with you that they are amazing. SSDs are pretty much the greatest thing to happen to computers in the past 10 years. But I'd rather have a large ssd than the PCIe equivalent.

The whole point of getting rid of the DVD drive in the mbps wasn't just because people weren't really using dvds anymore, or even to save space. But because Apple knows that we are moving away from physical media and going to digital. I myself would go 100% digital if I could. Less messing about.

Hypothetical example here. Steam, the online games retailer. Let's say they made laptops with PCIe ssd's. People would go mad if they couldn't fit most of their games onto the laptops. "Ah, but it's ok. We have lightning fast PCIe ssd's so your games run really fast(which yes, would be amazing). If you want to take more games with you then carry 12 pen drives and a bunch of sd card's and play them off that. "

A few tv seasons, a bunch of music and a handful of movies(along with os and programs) and you'll be full.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for lightning fast hard drives. That's what I couldn't understand, a company that make so much money off digital media, why such a small hard drive. Wasn't sure if their was some other device that I missed. But it seems external storage is the way.

I've been building pc's for 15+ years, so i do understand the advantages of these hard drives. But it seems the macs went from the spinning disks to a brief spell of ssd's and now 100% PCIe. Why not stay with ssd till the PCIe equivalent came down in price? 1TB ssd is a wee bit over £300, near enough 1TB PCIe is almost £1000.


But you're right maflynn, the industry transitioned from hard drives to ssd's. so why have apple pretty much skipped it and went to PCIe?

 

[saturnotaku]

But you're right maflynn, the industry transitioned from hard drives to ssd's. so why have apple pretty much skipped it and went to PCIe?

You could order a MacBook Pro with a "standard" 2.5-inch Serial ATA SSD in 2011. The first-generation Retina MacBook Pro had a SATA SSD as well, albeit in a properietary format. Apple hasn't "skipped" anything.

 

[teethemagicbee]

But it seems the macs went from the spinning disks to a brief spell of ssd's and now 100% PCIe.

They didn't totally skip it, but pretty much did. I'd be very surprised if those mbp's will still be available after this refresh.

 

[bradleyjx]

The beginning of this article touches on it; there's a longer article that I can't find at the moment which goes into much greater detail.

The short version is that SATA is an interface designed with spinning drives in mind, thus it's speed limitations were functionally designed to be faster than what pretty much any HDD could saturate for quite some time. When SSDs come into the picture, though, they were able to almost immediately saturate the 3Gbps connection; the immediate response was to upgrade SATA to a 6Gbps connection, but that too was quickly saturated.

When manufacturers looked at going further with SATA, they also saw PCIe, which was already standardized in protocol form, (though not in connector or form-factor form) and could provide bandwidth from day one which would give plenty of breathing room for SSDs to work with. Thus, the migration to PCIe-based flash began to happen.

So, functionally, flash memory hasn't changed between these two standards, it's just that the data is being sent through a much, much faster interface.

 

[David58117]

I'm not saying I don't want a PCIe ssd. I 100% agree with you that they are amazing. SSDs are pretty much the greatest thing to happen to computers in the past 10 years. But I'd rather have a large ssd than the PCIe equivalent.

The whole point of getting rid of the DVD drive in the mbps wasn't just because people weren't really using dvds anymore, or even to save space. But because Apple knows that we are moving away from physical media and going to digital. I myself would go 100% digital if I could. Less messing about.

Hypothetical example here. Steam, the online games retailer. Let's say they made laptops with PCIe ssd's. People would go mad if they couldn't fit most of their games onto the laptops. "Ah, but it's ok. We have lightning fast PCIe ssd's so your games run really fast(which yes, would be amazing). If you want to take more games with you then carry 12 pen drives and a bunch of sd card's and play them off that. "

A few tv seasons, a bunch of music and a handful of movies(along with os and programs) and you'll be full.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for lightning fast hard drives. That's what I couldn't understand, a company that make so much money off digital media, why such a small hard drive. Wasn't sure if their was some other device that I missed. But it seems external storage is the way.

I've been building pc's for 15+ years, so i do understand the advantages of these hard drives. But it seems the macs went from the spinning disks to a brief spell of ssd's and now 100% PCIe. Why not stay with ssd till the PCIe equivalent came down in price? 1TB ssd is a wee bit over £300, near enough 1TB PCIe is almost £1000.


But you're right maflynn, the industry transitioned from hard drives to ssd's. so why have apple pretty much skipped it and went to PCIe?

So - when you go to custom build a MBP on the apple website, you're given the option of 500GB, or 1 TB SSD...

Large Solid State Drives are still very pricey. The prices will come down and the sizes will go up - I mean, didn't apple replace the 64GB mac book air recently?

So all you've got to do is either give it time, or pay the extra to have a large SSD installed now.

In 5 years, this will look very different.

 

[teethemagicbee]

Cheers for that Bradley, i'll give it a read.

haha, Dave c'mon. thats the old mbp. You'd have to be mental to go for the older one. As said, i'd be very surprised if they are still available after the refresh.

 

[bennibeef]

You could kinda argue that Apple wants that you dont have your media saved on your machine. But not really we are some time away for this. (And the fact the storage is small at the moment is really because of the price of ssds) But keep in your mind everything is going to be cloud based if you want or not, this is the way everything is going.

 

[capathy21]

But keep in your mind everything is going to be cloud based if you want or not, this is the way everything is going.

You hit the nail on the head. Yes a lot of it has to do with the prices of storage but the bigger picture IMO, is the continuing move to the cloud. Personally I do not mind it as all of my music and media is already stored in the cloud. Many user do enjoy having their media on their computer and not in the cloud. This is why we still see 16gb versions of phones.

 

[teethemagicbee]

You hit the nail on the head. Yes a lot of it has to do with the prices of storage but the bigger picture IMO, is the continuing move to the cloud. Personally I do not mind it as all of my music and media is already stored in the cloud. Many user do enjoy having their media on their computer and not in the cloud. This is why we still see 16gb versions of phones.

Ah well this whole cloud thing. How does this actually work for you? Your music and media is stored on the cloud. Now can you stream your music/video from the cloud or do you need to download it before you play it? Never properly played about with the cloud.

 

[T5BRICK]

Ah well this whole cloud thing. How does this actually work for you? Your music and media is stored on the cloud. Now can you stream your music/video from the cloud or do you need to download it before you play it? Never properly played about with the cloud.

It really depends on which services you're using. I believe iTunes Match will stream but also download in the background. I uses Google Play for my music and it allows streaming, and I can choose to have it stored locally if I'd like.

 

[capathy21]

Ah well this whole cloud thing. How does this actually work for you? Your music and media is stored on the cloud. Now can you stream your music/video from the cloud or do you need to download it before you play it? Never properly played about with the cloud.

Google Play Music is what I use most. They give you the ability to upload up to 20,000 songs to your cloud library. You can then stream them at anytime, or download some or all of them for offline use. With a computer offline mode isn't really necessary very often like it would be on a smartphone.

I am not a digital pack rat though. I only have a couple of thousand songs that I actually "own." I use Spotify for the majority of my music. I just don't see a point in purchasing music when you can listen to anything you want for 10 bucks a month.

Different users have different preferences. I cannot fathom having a 100+GB itunes library but I know there are many users who have them. I have a 128GB SSD and will never get close to filling it up. For others, that wouldn't even hold their music library.

I guess over the years I have embraced the cloud as it became more popular. All my photos and important documents or certificates etc are all stored on my Google Drive. All of my music is stored on Google Play Music. If my computer never turned on again, I wouldn't lose a single thing that mattered to me.

Some users are comforted in having their important data stored locally and not on the cloud. I am the opposite. Again there is no right or wrong way of doing it, just differences.

 

[teethemagicbee]

So really, that is the game plan for apple. Less storage, less clutter. Media stored online. Guess these days most people are streaming their media one way or another. Well put capathy!

 

[MagicBoy]

I've been building pc's for 15+ years, so i do understand the advantages of these hard drives. But it seems the macs went from the spinning disks to a brief spell of ssd's and now 100% PCIe. Why not stay with ssd till the PCIe equivalent came down in price? 1TB ssd is a wee bit over £300, near enough 1TB PCIe is almost £1000.

I don't believe Apple are paying anywhere near that. The most expensive bit is the NAND memory chips, and they're the same items on both a fast SATA3 or PCIe SSD. The difference is the controller.

Apple have control over the hardware and software integration so they can transition to newer technologies more quickly, where the Wintel PC industry has a typical 1-2 year lag while Microsoft, Intel and the OEMs sort themselves out.

As for price ... Apple are charging £lots for RAM and storage upgrades at source because they can!

I've never bought RAM and HDD upgrades from Apple, but now I'll be forced into it.

 

[jg321]

I use Spotify for the majority of my music. I just don't see a point in purchasing music when you can listen to anything you want for 10 bucks a month.

Different users have different preferences. I cannot fathom having a 100+GB itunes library but I know there are many users who have them. I have a 128GB SSD and will never get close to filling it up. For others, that wouldn't even hold their music library.

I guess over the years I have embraced the cloud as it became more popular. All my photos and important documents or certificates etc are all stored on my Google Drive.

All of my music is stored on Google Play Music. If my computer never turned on again, I wouldn't lose a single thing that mattered to me.

Some users are comforted in having their important data stored locally and not on the cloud. I am the opposite. Again there is no right or wrong way of doing it, just differences.

Well said. Cloud is the main driver here, and with internet connections generally getting quicker, it's becoming more viable.

I used to store gigs and gigs of TV shows/movies that I had watched. Now I just stream them, or delete them once I've watched them. Only a select few I keep.

The problem with gigs and gigs of media is backup. If it's that important it needs to be backed up. If not, then you're going to lose it at some point anyway, so why keep it in the first place.

I can't wait for iCloud photo library for a backup/accessible everywhere photo library. iCloud drive will also be nice too!