256 and 512 should not even be options. Base should start at 1TB.
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New 256GB Mac Mini and 512GB MacBook Pro Have Slower SSD Speeds Than Previous Models
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Just been looking at Dell and HP and neither of them when comes to the website says anything about storage beyond is an nvme m2 ssd amd size.
so seems fairly consistent reporting that give out the size of storage but not its speed.
if I goto samsung or WD for SSD then gives performance as well as size however seems that the pc companies don’t specify the performance of storage.
none of the AS macs even publish ram speed. Just the amount. Intel macs did publish memory type and speed.
guessing as cannot change it then Apple don’t see it as important as not going to be replacing it yoursel.
however if nobody else publishes there storage speed then don’t see why Apple would either.
Everyone seems to be up in arms about this instead of the fact it's soldered to the board.
If you use the machine day in day out the SSD will fail after about 8 years and it'll be bricked. Guaranteed.
I'd buy a Studio as long as this is the case with the Mini.
If you use the machine day in day out the SSD will fail after about 8 years and it'll be bricked. Guaranteed.
I'd buy a Studio as long as this is the case with the Mini.
What about the higher storage options on the Mac Mini M2 Pro? Specifically the 2TB version + 10/16 core. I can’t seems to find any SSD speed results on the 10/16 core 2TB version.
I think because most of us don't have computers for 8 years. Its also not a new issue in the laptop market unfortunately.
I'm slightly disappointed I bought my M1 MBP in November because sites said we were looking at March-June for new models, but I've also realized recently that the rumor mill is just looking for clicks. Two weeks ago there was an article saying M2 Pro/Max was pushed back to 2nd half of 2023...then we get new ones almost immediately.
I'm just ignoring these rumor articles moving forward.
Has there been an end user who has successfully upgraded their storage on Studio? Or are you implying it might be possible eventually with OEM storage from unofficial (i.e. eBay) channels?
Cool. I got the m1 studio with the albeit slower than the M2 processor and its more than enough. I hope it lasts 8-10 years. Cheers.
Probably not. Three factors you are ignoring.
1. Time. Over time larger capacity NAND chips get cheaper. Apple has kept the same $400/TB price for 5+ years.
The NAND subcomponents have gone down in price over the last several years and Apple's prices don't change.
Yes, for a fixed in time NAND generation more capacity costs more but Apple's pricing per GB isn't changing over time.
2. Economies of scale. If buy NAND chips at higher volume the price doesn't stay the same. Buying 1,000 NAND chips of a single type and buyng 4,000,000 NAND chips of a single type on a 'fixed price , extended term contract' do not cost the same amount of money.
Basically same reason why usually see the same Wi-FI/Bluetooth module spread over as many Mac or iPhones as possible. The more Apple buys of high end or semi-custom parts the closer the unit costs get to commodity, lower end parts. Apple just tosses that savings into the Scrooge McDuck money pit.
3. Inventory costs. The inventory cost for a NAND chip you never buy is $0.00. With the 256GB NAND chip Apple can make a slower 256GB drive. a 512GB drive (2) and a 1,024GB (4) drives all by pulling the same parts from a single bine type. ( could make a 768GB drive but probably not worth the production/configuration adjustments). 1,000 more folks one week order more 1TB drives than "normal" ... pull from the same parts bin. More discount buyers show up one week and 256GB drive systems go up 2% .. pull from the same parts bin. The 512GB drive sales go down 5% ... pulling 1TB drives from same parts bin doesn't go down as fast.
Dropping the lowest sized capacity NAND from the line that wasn't useful in making SSDs for any other drive level means Apple's volume contract can cover fewer parts ( i.e., buy more of a narrower selection, there by increasing the volumes).
For the fixed standard configurations that Apple makes in highest configuration volume having common parts bin across almost all of the components make overall inventory controls cheaper to run.
[ And why see a different 'bottom parts bin" mark for the Mini versus the MPB 14"/16" but still the same general game. Different factories pulling from different inventory warehouses could easily have different bottom NAND bins. ]
The pandemic disruptions of the supply chain probably has a small role here also. The fewer large volume parts Apple asks of the NAND supplier, then the fewer product lines the manufacturer has to split focus on.
4. Apple's mark up is high. 25+% range. They are not 'loosing' money at all on SSD. In fact, they are likely carefully crafting just how high their profit margins are by adjusting the gap between their NAND costs ( huge buyer across iPhone , iPad, Mac , AppleTv , etc. ) and how much they charge (i.e., way over open market prices).
If component costs for something else in the Mac went up one easy way to compensate while keeping the costs aligned with their targets is to screw around with the SSD drive composition. Toss speed out the window while keeping margins up.
NAND prices shot up during the pandemic but are predicted to slip substantially this year.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/analysts-predict-ssd-prices-may-halve-by-mid-2023
Cheaper higher capacity chips could actually mean no impact on Apple's margins at all.
So, if it's guaranteed, we should be seeing every single 8-year-old Mac with bricked SSDs.
Is that happening? No. Backblaze reports 1% failure beyond 5 years for SSDs.
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Halve a year ago I was looking forward to the Mac Mini M2 Pro for 3 Displays and silence because I honestly didn't need as much power as my whistling Mac Studio had. (I just wanted it to be faster than my Mac Pro 2xX5690 +RX580)
Now I'm sort of glad to have bought a now quite affordable refurbished MacBook Pro M1 Max ( the difference between 14" and 16" was just 150$ 😲)
Now I'm sort of glad to have bought a now quite affordable refurbished MacBook Pro M1 Max ( the difference between 14" and 16" was just 150$ 😲)
And they slept with your girlfriend, too.
I use my machine for a bit of everything - Office tasks, video editing, audio production, graphics work, coding, virtualization etc....
Never once since I got my first SSD 10 years ago have I felt disk speed was limiting my productivity in any way - ram, sure (mostly if Chrome is accidentally left open for a couple of hours), processor, sure.
Aside from really heavy video editing, virtualization, or major database tasks I can't think of anyone realistically in the low-end Mini Market who would need a faster SSD than is included in the base model unless your life revolves around showing your mates how fast you can copy and paste big files from one folder to another.
99% of the "professional" market do not need high powered machines, with the fastest disks or the most ram. They just need a machine that isn't obviously slowing them down in day to day productivity.
Professionals include:
• Web developers
• Programmers
• Journalists
• SEO's
• CEO's
• Doctors
• Attorneys
• Architects
Most "Professionals" are not video editors or music producers. Any professional in that (reasonably small) market segment is going to be ordering a larger SDD anyhow or using external storage.
However, given the amount of empty space inside a Mini - there really is no excuse to not at least have an expansion slot even if the boot drive is soldered.
Dollar for dollar though the base model Mini M2 is $200 cheaper and far better performing than a similar class Dell 3000 Micro (which also uses single chip NAND flash NVMe and DDR4). Not to mention it looks a whole lot nicer.
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I'd love to suggest you are wrong...but its about right. Apple seem to be exploiting that.
"Slower"
It's like saying your Ferrari can only go 200 mph instead of 220. Apple's flash storage has gotten insanely fast in recent years.
It's like saying your Ferrari can only go 200 mph instead of 220. Apple's flash storage has gotten insanely fast in recent years.
Did we expect anything less?
Making a big deal out of this issue is silly. It's like saying your 600hp car is slow because another has 1,000hp. Both are too much power to fully take advantage of on the street and even at the track, 600hp is still plenty fast.
I had a base M2 MBA (now my wife's) and upgraded to a 1tb with 24gb ram because I decided I wanted more storage space. I can't feel the difference between the two for my use case, which is basic stuff...which is what 95%+ of Macbook Air and Mac Mini buyers will be using theirs for as well. Serious content creators will not be using these machines to begin with and if for some reason they are, they won't be on base specs.
Making a big deal out of this issue is silly. It's like saying your 600hp car is slow because another has 1,000hp. Both are too much power to fully take advantage of on the street and even at the track, 600hp is still plenty fast.
I had a base M2 MBA (now my wife's) and upgraded to a 1tb with 24gb ram because I decided I wanted more storage space. I can't feel the difference between the two for my use case, which is basic stuff...which is what 95%+ of Macbook Air and Mac Mini buyers will be using theirs for as well. Serious content creators will not be using these machines to begin with and if for some reason they are, they won't be on base specs.
So true, but we've been yelling at the brick wall of Apple for decades about similar issues. They should have never offered spinning disks in iMacs after SSDs were commonplace and relatively inexpensive. They should have never sold Macbook Airs after 2015 or so with less than 8GB of RAM in them. All of their portables should have started with 512GB storage as the smallest configuration. (If you want a computer that "just works", you don't gimp it with small drive storage or insufficient RAM to handle random situations people are quite likely to throw at it.)
I think the problem is that this is hitting the MBP, and the MBP configuration that is not affected on the MBA side. If this were a less expensive MBP with a 256 GB "slow" SSD like the MBA, we'd expect it. But why does a 512 GB M2 MBA have a faster SSD than the 512 GB M2 MBP? Thats teh problem.
This guy tries to apologize and justify for Apple using slower SSD drive chips in the M2 Mac Mini and Mac Mini M2 Pro models, but I am not buying his reasoning. The "it's just good enough" or "you won't need the faster SSD speed" arguments are getting old, especially for Pros who buy either the Mac Mini M2 Pro 512GB models or 14" or 16" MacBook Pro 512GB SSD models, which are also affected by the slower SSD speed issue:
This 'slow' SSD still rips my old SSD a new one.
Im not sure what the fuss is about really. Anyone that would notice/miss/care about that kind of performance difference probably isn't going to be using a lower spec Mac anyway.
Im not sure what the fuss is about really. Anyone that would notice/miss/care about that kind of performance difference probably isn't going to be using a lower spec Mac anyway.
Imagine the whine-fest of epic proportions about the base price starting so high.
Planet Earth would instantaneously tilt a few extra degrees causing worldwide tsunamis.
If you need 1TB, simply choose the correct Mini. Easy. You can do that today!
That's pretty much my observations as well. I have a 2018 i5 Mini with 256GB and I upgraded the RAM to 32GB. Yesterday I received my 8/256GB M2 Mini from Apple. I was blown away by how fast this base M2 Mac really is. Boot times are insane on the 8/256GB M2 Mini and it can boot to the desktop in 50% less time. Apps open around 50% faster. I quit doing the benchmark gymnastics and just use the computer. I can tell if it is too slow.
My personal observation is that people are making too big of a deal about whether the base model M2 Mac Mini is gimped. I think this has all become way overblown.