How is it an "iPad on a stick"? This is by far the quickest Mac I've ever owned and even "just" being the M1 it absolutely crushes everything I've asked it to do without breaking a sweat.
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"Storing all your documents in the cloud" without enough local storage means you download them over and over again because they keep getting purged. It's a pain. 256 GB is workable, barely, but it doesn't provide a lot of a local cache for those cloud docs. I keep everything in iCloud Drive, but I still like to have a good amount of it cached locally just to keep things quick and not get stuck if I'm out somewhere with dicey internet on my laptop.
Apple is a business not a charity. They don't give out free stuff. How about Ford just upgrading the Mustang to the GT for the same price as the V-6? Maybe my landlord would let me have a two bedroom apartment for the price of a one bedroom because they're a multi million dollar company so they can give me something free...
That's not how businesses stay in business. Tim Cook has lead Apple to being a multi trillion dollar company and it wasn't by giving away free stuff to customers.
Download them over and over? What are you talking about? I don't download them. I open them from the iCloud folder and they act like they are on the local drive. There's no need to do anything special.
If you're talking about a MacBook then having local files might be important but this is an iMac... It stays on a desk
Yeah, until you've got too many of them, at which point they get purged from your local drive and what you're clicking on is really a placeholder for a file that must be retrieved from the server.
If you're only ever opening a few things maybe it doesn't impact you, but if you have a lot of files in iCloud Drive it can definitely slow things down.
I have thousands of files on iCloud drive and I never have to purge anything. Yes it's a thumbnail but the "retrieved from the server" is instant. It's like when you open a webpage that is retrieved from a server. I have files in downloads that are local and they act the same as the ones in my documents on iCloud. There's no difference at all and everything is done by the computer. There's no different way they open. They open just as fast. Are you on DSL or some really slow internet connection? That could cause problems.
If you have more files in iCloud Drive than you do local storage then yes, things would definitely get left off your hard drive per the "Optimize Mac Storage" tickbox in the System Preferences. Maybe you don't, that's fine. But I'm pointing out that it's definitely a compromise.
Very nice, but again, that's not how it works for everyone. You were arguing that most people don't need more than a 256 GB drive, and I'm arguing that cloud access isn't perfect and isn't available in every situation. Some people have data caps. Some people work with larger files than you do. Some people travel or end up on spotty wifi. Sometimes iCloud Drive is slow or stuck (happens a lot, I'm afraid). These are all situations in which having a very small SSD will necessitate the Mac having to fetch files from the internet more frequently, and it can be a huge pain.
I'll have to wholeheartedly agree with this statement. "base price of $999,99" can trick a lot of people. Like in all things in life, base price is just an anchor number, intended for people to buy the middle model, and spend a few hundreds more.
Or.. like the bare base price point of a car, it still has 4 wheels, but that's about it.
SSD prices have come down dramatically. It's cheaper to buy your own and replace it on a regular windows laptop (instead of upgrading it with the manufacturer). RAM? still price-y but not as high as apple wants you to pay for.
But again, you gotta justify the price tag of being "exclusive" ?
and that also begs the question, why innovate in faster SSD's lightning read/write speeds.. if we are going to retrieve our files from the cloud at.. max 1gbps in the absolute best situations?. much more like 10mbps I should say..
Local storage is best. Millenials nowadays with all-you-can-eat internet bandwidth do not know how important local storage was in the early days when you had to depend on a diskette.
The problem with the limited storage (256) is that most people don't really grasp what storage is or which quantity they need ; and one day they will want to try what these computer were advertised for: doing some photo or video editing.
And at that moment, someone will have to tell them they're out of luck. Which will be a very deceiving experience.
And at that moment, someone will have to tell them they're out of luck. Which will be a very deceiving experience.
It always hurts to do, but as time goes on I've always been really glad any time I've "overprovisioned" my specs on RAM or hard drive space.
I got an M1 Air last year, and only got 8GB of RAM. It is actually totally fine and fast for everything... until I start using multiple user accounts. I wear several "hats" so I have a personal account, a separate one for design work, one for writing only. I also have an M1 iMac with 16 GB of RAM I use the same way. The iMac never misses a beat, even if my wife logs into her own user account on there (for as many as four logged in!). The Air chokes once two or three accounts are active. The issue is that I fell prey to the "I only need the basic functionality" thinking and skimped.
Believe it or not some colors are more expensive to manufacture than others due to difficulties in electro-plating/painting/powder coating and finish quality. Some colors are an absolute disaster to work with, and to make matters worse Apple has extremely tight quality control on things like that. They could pass on a savings to resellers for moving a certain color (or two) that's easier to produce.
Where did anyone say anything about charity?
And by your logic many big companies do charity, offering 16/512 upgrades at far lower rates, but, yes, as long as Apple brings in billions in profit, its fine for all involved. Who am I to argue, right.
Comparing few $ components soldered into laptop that Apple asks hundreds for with cars, where meaningful performance upgrades cost thousands? Really?
Getting something for free is sure isn't buying something perhaps you prefer the word "donation" instead of charity? Companies do sales but often that's on older merchandise that they're trying to get rid of or trying to boost business. Right now Apple can sell more hardware than they're capable of manufacturing due to supply shortages. So your answer to that is Apple should make less product by using more resources. I can see Tim Cook at the shareholder meeting "This quarter we only made 30 billion in profit and that's down a little but our customers got a bunch of free upgrades so it's okay"... Yeah no... That's why Tim is in charge and didn't upgrade the base iPhone from 64 GB storage till the iPhone 13. What's an extra 64 GB of storage to a multi trillion dollar company you might think. Decisions like that are the reason that it's a multi trillion dollar company. Tim Cook still saw some customers not needing more than 64 GB so he held off till it was needed.