Storage is the one spec that doesn't seem to budge

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

I was looking at the new Mac Studio and it's impressive. New efficiencies. New ways to get more cores, more pipes, get more flips for less watts. On-time delivery and multiplying and increasing computations-per-second.

The one thing that doesn't seem to change with all the constant upgrades in tech is that if you spend upwards of $2,000 as a starting price for a computer, you're still getting 512 GB of onboard storage. The same I paid a little extra for to get on my wife's M1 Air. Half of what came with my desktop computer a decade ago. And the cost to get more starts to be a car payment, mortgage payment, or boat payment size to as much as double it.

My wife has an M1 Air for making music. It works brilliantly for that. The extra to upgrade to 512 was enough for the basics. But huge sound libraries like professional orchestras take up nearly half-a-terabyte by themselves. The answer might be "well, use an iMac! Or the new Mac Studio!" Except that those costlier options come with, still, lesser storage, and no easy way to swap in more drives.

All the speed and efficiency has raced ahead to meet what average users and creators might need. All except storage. Which, if you're even a modest content creator, can never be enough. The solution of "the cloud" doesn't work for the people living in places without guaranteed high-speed internet. We have a pile of Western Digital external drives. All connected via precarious, faulty, bendable dongles.

My gripe may be with Apple, but not exclusively so. While I'm not disinterested in building a PC, the main reason I would build a PC is because that is just about the only way I could add or remove extra storage on my machine. And that's an annoying reason just to build a PC.

I would like more machines to have a slot in them (like a tiny version of an old floppy drive?!?) which I could insert/eject an M2 drive. They have the room. There is no engineering reason why this couldn't exist. I may have other reasons to get a Framework laptop. But being able to do this may be one of the key reasons.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I think they've basically realized that the one key component that any/all consumers can be easily upsold on is "storage".

Even a normal "mom" who comes into an Apple store or peruses the online store can easily be made to think about.."photos of kids" ... we need more storage! "Projects" -- we need more storage!

So -- naturally Apple soldered it on and overcharge through the nose for "storage" now.

It's really gross in my view.

 

[russell_314]

It's slowly moved up but I don't see a downside to having a cheaper lower storage option. A good example is I have 77 GB used on my iPhone. Should I be forced to buy 256 GB? Making the base model have more storage will mean the base price goes up. Nothing is free

 

[Andrea Filippini]

I was looking at the new Mac Studio and it's impressive. New efficiencies. New ways to get more cores, more pipes, get more flips for less watts. On-time delivery and multiplying and increasing computations-per-second.

The one thing that doesn't seem to change with all the constant upgrades in tech is that if you spend upwards of $2,000 as a starting price for a computer, you're still getting 512 GB of onboard storage. The same I paid a little extra for to get on my wife's M1 Air. Half of what came with my desktop computer a decade ago. And the cost to get more starts to be a car payment, mortgage payment, or boat payment size to as much as double it.

My wife has an M1 Air for making music. It works brilliantly for that. The extra to upgrade to 512 was enough for the basics. But huge sound libraries like professional orchestras take up nearly half-a-terabyte by themselves. The answer might be "well, use an iMac! Or the new Mac Studio!" Except that those costlier options come with, still, lesser storage, and no easy way to swap in more drives.

All the speed and efficiency has raced ahead to meet what average users and creators might need. All except storage. Which, if you're even a modest content creator, can never be enough. The solution of "the cloud" doesn't work for the people living in places without guaranteed high-speed internet. We have a pile of Western Digital external drives. All connected via precarious, faulty, bendable dongles.

My gripe may be with Apple, but not exclusively so. While I'm not disinterested in building a PC, the main reason I would build a PC is because that is just about the only way I could add or remove extra storage on my machine. And that's an annoying reason just to build a PC.

I would like more machines to have a slot in them (like a tiny version of an old floppy drive?!?) which I could insert/eject an M2 drive. They have the room. There is no engineering reason why this couldn't exist. I may have other reasons to get a Framework laptop. But being able to do this may be one of the key reasons.

Completely agree.
I remember that Apple sold machines with obsolete HDD until a couple of years ago just to maximize its ROI, then switch to SSD with ridiculous size.
And, just to clarify, Apple native SSD is not so much amazing, in fact it's less fast than other competitors (my Apple 128 GB SSD PCIe runs less than 700 MB/s on write and less than 300 MB/s on read (yes, less than a SATA III SSD) (even the supplier has remarked me that Apple native SSD had poor performance compared to equivalent models of other third party brands).
So the choice of a soldered onboard storage is completely unacceptable (for several reasons: necessity to install a faster storage, necessity of more space, necessity to replace it when performance slows down due to use or due to burnout, necessity to clean completely the machine to resell it and guarantee the privacy under current laws and regulations etc).
Lifespan of a machine is basically its storage and the ability to replace it.
It's a shame to throw away an entire machine just for a burnout or aging storage.
And, last but not least, if you want to resell it with a burnout storage on 2nd hand market, you can't because it's unusable and it's value now is zero.
So, in simple words, not a good deal.
Hope Apple can change its policy soon.

 

[TechRunner]

That was one of the reasons I bought a Dell XPS 15. Not only can I replace the primary SSD, it has a second, empty slot. The RAM is upgradable too. I really like Apple’s M series processors (love my Mini), but the integration of all key components does have this one glaring downside.

 

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

That was one of the reasons I bought a Dell XPS 15. Not only can I replace the primary SSD, it has a second, empty slot. The RAM is upgradable too. I really like Apple’s M series processors (love my Mini), but the integration of all key components does have this one glaring downside.

That is actually pretty great. I didn't realize the XPS had that second slot. That makes it suddenly a bit more tempting than, say, a Framework laptop. I had a 2017 XPS for a few years as my main work computer. And I liked the thing a lot. The quality of the build was a bit compromised, tbh. But when the keyboard started crapping out, I could simply remove the back plate with a torx driver and take out the old keyboard and put in a new one that cost $65. (The keyboard mechanism is held in by easily a dozen screws or more. Or was.)

The M1 Air is great, and in my opinion this is the greatest leap Apple has made insofar as providing a machine that delivers what they promised. But the higher performance you get out of the Studio makes me start to notice the lack of upgradable storage very keenly. Is it a "professional" computer for professionals doing things that fill up disks? Or not?

I see people doing builds of a Synology raid with 5TB. And I'm not in a hurry to do that. I want the ability to snap in 1, 2, or more TB into a machine as needed.

Hot take: did we give up on the floppy too quickly? Think about it. The floppy mechanism used to be built like a tank. It snapped in that disk pretty hard and you couldn't accidentally dislodge if you tried. (Unlike USB dongles.) The form factor was around for 15 years when it started getting phased out. What if it were still around with PCIe-4 connections and NAND modules? And we had 1, 2, 4, 5, TB floppy disks?

 

[playtech1]

Unfortunately storage and RAM are seen by Apple as tools it uses to segment buyers, rather than reflecting any real-world cost of the upgrade.

Putting in upgradeable RAM and storage would undermine Apple's pricing strategy, so just isn't on the cards (and now with RAM they have a technical argument against it).

I think with Apple you just have to accept that it has a good value entry level price, but to get the specs you really want is going to be expensive.

 

[jz0309]

Apple is not the only one ... I got a new Dell laptop for my wife, wanted 16GB, i5 was NOT an option, 256GB was NOT an option, both would have been fine but I had to pick an i7 AND 512GB ...

 

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

I think with Apple you just have to accept that it has a good value entry level price, but to get the specs you really want is going to be expensive.

The defensible reasons for keeping a sealed device with minimal storage and keeping it not user-upgradable might be security. To prevent any vectors for it being messed with. And the second factor is that it adds to security of fleet management as well.

Apple keeps the sku within a certain cost range, estimating that it meets the use case for a customer for a price. Right, right. For my M1 MacBook Air, that works. It's not out of bounds.

But the Mac Studio? I find that indefensible to not include replaceable storage. At least if I were to intend to buy this as a work machine I'm paying extra for because it can do some serious high-end work. Is it only going to work in a home office if I need to archive work if I have a large, external drive? Or is network connected to a big RAID array in an office? It's not a general-purpose low-end computing device like a Mac mini or a low-end iMac.

I'm pointing at Apple because of the glaring contrast of the high-end machine and its dinky drive storage. They're not alone, as almost all PC makers do seal up storage these days, outside of PC towers.

I think it's worth pointing out when Dell and Framework embrace engineering that allows users to add storage on to their own devices. I think more makers should do it. And if Apple does not do it only because they make more profit in sealing it up, they should be called out on it. I, for one, couldn't see buying a Mac Studio. Pretty much for that reason.