I disagree. When an iPhone starts at 256GB, how does a MacBook? Even 512GB in pro Macs is absurd due to exorbitant upgrade pricing. If they used a standard, we could one save our data and two upgrade ourselves.
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Rant about the new Mac Mini.
- Thread starter neomorpheus
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The idea is that Apple sees these as elements in a system. They don`t assume you`ll have 150gb of media files here, and another set of 150gb media files there and a 3rd and a 4th. They assume that people who owns 2-3-4 Apple units (iPhone, iPad, MB P/Air, Mini/Studio/Pro - TEND to use their devices for whole or parts of the very same set of files, synchronized.
It is not like ALL Mac users have a s**tload of media files be it video, photos lossless music or what not.
For SOME it makes sense to have similar capacity for all units, for some it doesn`t matter. An iPhone might just be a .... phone.
Don`t project your user case - theoretical by the looks of it - on to other users. I have simple capacity needs, for others nothing will ever be enough. They will never get that capacity for the price I pay, and I should never have to pay for the capacity they need.
You either pay for what you`d like to have or need, or you adapt to what you can afford. The sobbing won`t get you anywhere.
I feel spared that you didn't come after my slippery slope (and I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy the word nonsense until yours made me smile), but... yes it's 2024, and the new M4, has 256, therefore, it's not gonna be 512 until at least the next iteration, but hold on, I'll text Tim since he's certainly recovered by now from his China trip, and see if we can change that this year. Let's circle back on this.
Get over yourself, nobody is "attacking" you, they may just have differing opinions. But you have called those "BS". Real adult.
I agree with you about upgradability, not only for the SSD, but for RAM.
In reality, Apple has "minimized" devices to reduce cost (construction, weight, materials quantities, and so on). It has nothing to do with being better for the environment and BS like that, but cost-savings that benefit the shareholders. Even the shipping cartons have been designed for simplicity and lightness, while still providing sufficient strength to protect the device. The M4 Mini is what's inside the tiny case
Correction: more than likely the case and covers are molded, not 3D-printed.
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It’s not a slippery slope fallacy. It’s showing that regardless of what Apple sets the base model app someone is going to want more. That is a fact.
No, adding an additional feature is not an admission of anything. That doesn’t even make sense. It’s adding a capability.
I agree many users need more than 256 GB. This is why they sell upgrades. Some users will never even use half that 256 GB. For that user it’s completely unnecessary to have a larger SSD. You could argue with that it wouldn’t cost that much extra to install an upgrade on the base model, but you have to multiply that cost times however, many units they sell.
Yes, but those aren’t Apple products. Just like any android phone north of $500 is going to have 120 Hz display. What it doesn’t have is iOS. I could probably find a mini PC for $250 that has a 512 GB SSD.
You disagree with what? I quoted you saying the Mac should start at 1 TB. My comment was that even if Apple upgraded to a higher base storage, you would still have people saying it’s not enough.
I agree with you that upgrades on Apple products are not cheap but this is nothing new. I don’t think it’s going to ever change. Apple is not going to make a Windows like PC with macOS on it.
True colors huh? They’ve always been stingy on storage and ram. Look at the 8GB m series laptops that “behave like 12gb windows laptops” or the 8GB iPhones because iCloud and 5gb free iCloud storage when even google gives 15gb. It’s always been like this. We all have to remember Apple is in it for the money and pushback is what gets us what we deserve. Like 16gb of ram or 8GB when Apple stuck with 4 for too long. Some things never change.
I really don't think a bunch of people whining on a forum could have enough influence to change a single thing about what Apple does.
Its funny watching people try to tell the biggest company in the world what they need to do to run their company better.
Yesterday I played with a base 16/256 M4 mini at a store. The free space on the drive was 122GB. I think the Affinity suite was installed. For Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo the requirement is "Up to 2.8GB of available hard drive space; more during installation" for each one. So say it's 130GB free space on the mini's disk. Not enough.
It will obviously be the wrong choice for you then. I somehow believe there is a solution one click away.
A $600 computer on which the non-upgradeable (for practical purposes) system drive is already half-full after installing one common software suite is the wrong choice for anyone. You do not want your system drive to ever get close to full capacity, or things will start to slow down.
Oh, and that "one click solution" - adds 33% to the price of the base model for the sake of about $10 (retail) difference between 256 and 512GB of fast flash. That's twice as much per GB as even Apple's subsequent BTO upgrades to 1TB and beyond. Trying to defend that is just ridiculous.
Just repeating it doesn't stop it being a fallacy. You've got no basis for claiming that people would seriously expect >> 1TB as the base spec. OK, maybe we'd all love 2TB or more base storage included on a $600 Mac, but there's no rational, defensible argument to back that up, whereas there's a reason why 512GB or 1TB would fix the immediate problem.
256GB is inadequate because the OS, temporary storage and Apps will half-fill it before the user has even added their own files - and you need plenty of free space on your system drive for best performance. It's not just some "I want a pony" fantasy. Even 512GB base would avoid that problem for most. 1TB would bring the spec more in line with comparably-priced PC systems (you know, the tech with which 80% of the computing world manage to get their daily work done).
They just upped the base RAM spec from 8GB to 16GB across the range - despite all of the usual suspects rolling out the same arguments we've seen here as to why 8GB was enough for some weird target market that were somehow prepared to pay premium prices for bargain-bucket specs.
They brought back HDMI, Magsafe, SD and physical function keys on the MacBook Pro.
They kept USB-A on desktop Macs for 7 years after they went all-USB-C on the laptops.
Now you can't directly attribute that directly to "a bunch of people whining" on any particular forum, but it's clear that Apple don't totally ignore customer opinions. Would these things - quite major U-turns for Apple - have happened if everybody had just been good little consumers and accepted what the great and wonderful Apple had, in its wisdom, offered them?
And here was the healthiest and simplest approach, as presented in the second post of the thread.To me the Mac mini starts at USD799 since 512GB storage is nearly necessary in today’s standard. (Don’t convince me otherwise, thanks)
If Apple had simply eliminated the $599 price point, many mini fans would still pay $799 to get the new design and powerful guts (and wouldn't be mad about having to fight with themselves about the choice). I've always wondered if Apple would actually sell more devices if they offered fewer choices.
The base mini was an impulse buy for me. At $200 more I may not have gotten one.
Of course I also spent extra on an external SSD, but by that point I already had the mini.
There is only one usable Mini and it costs a minimum of USD 2,800 if someone can stomach living with such a low storage capacity as 2TB. Strangely some people do, even with sub 300GB/s bandwidth and tragic 20 cores GPU.
16gb is way way WAY below what most people need. 64 is a minimum these days.
A budget guy like me had to beneath myself and will suffer deeply by being enforced by nasty Apple to order a sub basic 256/16 which will no doubt brick if I write more than a good ole Tweet and add an emoji.
What humans must endure.
...and nobody would have commented on the sudden $200 bump in the base price of the Mac Mini? Come on!
It's a personal computer - not a house, loaf of bread or a gallon of gasoline. The expectation is that the price stays the same and the spec goes up year on year, just as it has for the last 40 years... and a lot of their "new design" is about saving money for Apple by using less materials and simpler construction methods. Every other spec of the computer - CPU, GPU, I/O - has been keeping up with the industry, so why is the SSD spec stuck in the past?
Thus is the "magic" of the low starting price
It's the "camels nose" pricing strategy
I did get my 2 TB external for less than what Apple is asking for 256 GB, so there’s that 😂
The base Mac mini + external SSD is still pretty good value. If I were to change one spec it wouldn’t be the internal SSD but instead the RAM. I’d increase it to 24 GB or 32 GB. I had 32 GB RAM for years and I’m seeing orange memory pressure a lot on the base mini, I never had to worry about orange memory pressure at all with 32 GB.
16 GB is at least usable, unlike 8 GB.
#1 Problem is that we cannot upgrade the Mac Mini after purchase. This means we have to buy a new computer when initial configuration be insufficient. A company that prides itself on being concerned about the environment should promote using its products for the longest time possible. I am sure someone will say that industrial design for making such a small form factor justifies it. I would prefer an upgradeable computer that will last 10+ years. Because AI is memory hungry, over the long run, the amount of RAM will likely be the life limiting factor.
#2 Internal Storage. It is not just a convenience any more. Presently, when booting from an external drive, Apple Intelligence cannot be enabled. So now we need an internal drive to hold system software, applications, and user home directories. Apple iPhones take photos and movies that are beautiful and very high resolution which consume vast amounts of storage. These quickly gobble up internal storage. But we are smart, so we figure out how to relocate our home directories to the external drive, while booting the internal drive. Great that works. Oh one small caveat is that File Vault doesn't protect the external drive. But wait, we can use an encryped APFS file system for the external drive. Oh darn, because it's encrypted, it won't decrypt until after you enter the password, which even if it is the same as the user's password won't be used to decrypt during login, so that won't work either.
So you have 4 choices.
1) Over-pay for lots of RAM and Internal storage to have a computer that will meet your needs and last.
2) Boot from external drive and forgo Apple Intelligence.
3) Boot from internal drive and keep home directory on external drive and forgo the security of encrypting your data.
4) Devise ways to split where you store your data, so you can boot internally, keep home directory on internal drive, and store the bulk of your data on an external drive.
5) None of the above.
No, it’s not the wrong choice for anyone. I have relatives that never even fill half of the 256 GB. I’ll agree it’s wrong for most people in these forums.
Then just don’t buy it. If people keep buying it and also complaining about it, nothing will change. If you don’t like it, speak with your wallet. Apple isn’t going to be concerned about comments on the forms. They’re concerned about sales.
Did you even read the post I replied to and quoted? I mean. We’re all guilty of replying to a comment without reading it and I’ve done it but go back and read the post I quoted. It was someone saying he feels Apple should have 1 TB the base spec. Human nature is people will expect more because that’s how we achieve more. If you’re happy with what you have, you’ll never get more.
I'll disagree and say it's probably right for most people in these forums. They just want more, it's not they will use more.
You might be right, but I was going under the assumption that people on the forms are likely power users and doing advanced stuff like video editing. I’m saying this while I have a 512 GB MacBook Air and I’m pretty sure there’s not much over 100 GB used on the SSD. I’m very guilty of over buying when I don’t need to.
I always choose option 1 when it comes to Apple. It has kept me a satisfied Apple customer for nearly 15 years.
I think everyone who choose options 2-5 are the disgruntled ones.
That's a wrong expectation to have when it comes to Apple.
I've been an Apple customers for about 15 years and Apple's prices have gone up, down and stayed the same.
I did #1 once.
It was November 2019.
Apple announced the transition to Apple Silicon a year later.
With the benefit of hindsight, I probably should’ve chosen one of the other options.
You never really know what’s lurking around the corner…
So this time I went with the base model.