What are you doing on your mac?
I shoot raw with file sizes of 25-30mb. I could easily use 1tb ssd, too but i didn't want to spend so much.
with a bit of reasonable file management you can move files to an external drive.
While this partly defeats the point of a laptop it saves a lot of money!
I think the OP will never use 256gb.
Usually if you're asking that question, you won't benefit from 16 GB of RAM.
Yes! Exactly right, if you have to ask about whether more is better, than your needs are probably like the other vast majority of people who could easily get away with the 2.4/8/256 model or even the 128GB base one will be more than sufficient for some.
Some/vast majority of people are just looking for something affordable yet capable, to carry around when they're out and about, not a warhorse of machine to defeat Skynet at any given moment.
A lot of people are also just giving into Apple's 'genius' marketing tactics/pressures and opting for the higher spec'd models for no real gain/need - it's Human nature to want more; whenever we are presented with the choice. Ofc, if you know you need the higher spec'd hardware, than you wouldn't be reading this as we speak, you'd be modelling something for Pixar by now or something powerfully related.
Fight your Human instincts and go with your gut feeling instead, you know yourself (and your computing habits) more than anyone else right now. Don't look into the reasonings of things so much, you'll just go around in circles, a bit like an endless loop of on and off (1s and 0s) which computers run off at their very core.
And for all you Futurists saying 'get more, it's soldered in' many average consumers don't even think about upgrading their laptops or even desktops! They just go out and buy a new computer from a retailer every 3-5 years or if they're more informed, they'll pay to have it custom built as far as PC desktops go. My Brother still uses my old 2.5k HP Paviliom dv5 1010tx laptop. That came with 4GB DDR2 RAM, 2.53GHz Centrino 2, 320GB 5400RPM HDD, 9600M GT w/ 512MB of VRAM from Oct 2008. That is still going strong 6 years later! (Although the thermal paste on the CPU and heat sink is starting to wear out (This laptop has endured a lot of gaming over the years and still does), so the laptop safely powers down to prevent heat damage. (I have to reapply some new thermal paste soon). He games and does heavy web browsing on it. The point here is, your laptop will probably need some maintenance done to it, before your hardware needs ever dramatically change (if they ever do).
