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M2 13-Inch MacBook Pro With 256GB SSD Appears Slower Than Equivalent M1 in Real-World Speed Tests
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Could be. But the fact that they’re hiding this from the customer is a blow in the face. They should be honest and mention it’s a slower machine. Now, it seems the only difference with a SSD upgrade is size, not speed.
Apple can‘t possibly have hoped that this wouldn’t come out, so the only reasonable conclusion is that they don’t care. If they did then they would have found a way to communicate the performance downgrade on base storage prior to customers placing orders.
According to last week‘s whinge-fest, nobody can use a computer with 256GB of storage anyway so I’m not sure why it matters how fast it is.
Base models are often the most popular choice. But in the case of storage they are often the least chosen.
I still dislike the notch. One of the dumbest design choices IMO.
Sad to see people apologizing for slower storage and trying to downplay it that it won't be noticeable. I have M1 256GB and it's already slow as is since it takes half a business day to clean install MacOS compared to $500 Lenovo laptop with fast storage that takes about 15 minutes to clean install Windows 10 or 11.
Clean install takes forever on MacOS regardless of the SSD speed. Even the M1 Pros with SSD write speed in the 5000's seem to take forever but I can see this system will be even worse w/ this slow ass speed.
I guess it's a good thing that doing a clean install of the system isn't part of my daily workflow then.
Also, I'd gladly put up with a lot just in order to not use Windows, which is the software that would actually slow down my productivity a lot more than which SSD chip(s) are in my machine.
Cutting cost to gain more profit?
The beauty of Tim’s Apple is that it’s very easy figuring out their motivation over anything they did, once you see through their smokescreen. It’s simply for that record breaking quarterly reports.
This is a dual for profit strategy.
Most lay consumers wouldn’t know any better and would get the preconfigured base model. On these segment, Apple managed to save cost.
The geeks segment who figured this out would opt for 512GB of SSD or more regardless if they need it just to get the good performance. For this segment, Apple managed to upsell them to a higher storage tier, aka more profits.
Either way, Apple wins, and Tim is happy.
You can start seeing the tech bloggers that are on Apple friends list defending Apple about this, how it’s not a big deal, etc.
some reason I unsubscribed last year. Never watched them again.
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I’m holding off ordering the M2 Air in case the 256GB model is again slower.
And the 512GB is not worth the price for my use.
Who dropped the ball? Nobody dropped the ball. The cost saving is the only goal. This was released, so it is intentional and within Apple’s level of satisfaction.
It will be fixed in a hardware update. You can’t fix one less NAND chip.
What kind of logic is this? Apple doesn’t disclose that the 256GB version would have much less performance. So from consumer perspective, the only difference between SSD options are their sizes, not performance. The expectation is same performance.
There’s no fix. The “fix” is to buy 512GB or higher models, which is what Apple wanted anyway, more profits. This is intentional as cost saving measure. Apple saved the cost on unknowing consumers buying the base model, and Apple gains upselling profits from those realizing this and ending up buying higher storage models. Tim just had a double jackpot. Expect another record breaking quarter.
The difference from 256 to 512GB is $200. It’s robbery and that’s why many settled for 256 in the first place. Sigh.
Spotlight is on the M2 Air and it’s headline again if 256 Air has a single NAND and is slower than M1 Air.
To me, this seems more like an oversight or cost saving measures than Apple trying to upsell ppl w/ increased read/write speed. Most "unknowing consumers" will never find out or just won't care.
LOL, why should Apple spend more money?
Remember the stage manager fiasco? Apple didn’t enable it on older iPads because it didn’t meet Apple’s level of satisfaction. That means anything that is released is within their level of satisfaction, so that means this slower SSD performance is known AND intentional by Apple, and it meets Apple’s satisfaction.
What should be demanded is for Apple to disclose the performance discrepancy between the different storage tiers. Any normal consumers would expect the storage performance of the same model lineup would be the same, with only size that’s different. Apple should disclose that 256GB models have half the performance of 512GB models or higher, so people buying it has full knowledge about what they’re buying.