Base model Apple M2 MacBook Pro SSD Up To 50% slower than M1 MacBook Pro SSD | Half the NAND chips, half the speed

[Obioban]

15 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

A 1080P screen is fine on a 14" display

 

1080p looks like ass at 14", once you're used to a high DPI display (and an OS that takes advantage of it). Its the primary reason my work provided laptop collects dust while I use my personal MacBook Air instead. 

[igormp]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Without wanting to start that discussion all over again: Hard disagree. I'm very glad my 13.3" MBP has 2560x1600 and I often use it at 100% scaling. I agree that is a bit of an edge case (too small fonts for most users) but even at mildly scaled resolutions the panel is just noticeably sharper and I'd be really happy if 1080p panels would finally go the way of the Dodo.

16 minutes ago, Obioban said:

 

1080p looks like ass at 14", once you're used to a high DPI display (and an OS that takes advantage of it). Its the primary reason my work provided laptop collects dust while I use my personal MacBook Air instead. 

lol both of you sound the same as the people saying that 256gb isn't enough or 1gb/s+ is crap.

 

Currently using a 13" mbp retina with its 2560x1600 with scaling to 1680x1050 (you can see the screenshot I sent before comparing browsers, had to use easyres for that since MacOS won't allow you to change the actual resolution in an easy way), and did use before a 14" 1080p on linux, both are fine and the extra real space in such a tiny screen isn't that useful IMO (specially on a Mac, it seems like the system only wants you to have a single window open at a time). You should be complaining about the 768p notebooks that still go rampant on the sub $1k market.

 

My next laptop will likely be a 13~14" 1080p, no reason to go higher than that and sacrifice battery for when I'm on the go. I have a 43" 4k display at home for whenever I actually need screen real state anyway.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Brian McKee said:

I think a better question is who cares about desk jockey business users. 

Plenty of people do. Not sure why you are dismissing all those users when they are most likely the majority.

I might as well say "who cares about video editors?" to dismiss any complaints that might be relevant to them.

 

 

2 hours ago, Brian McKee said:

Apple has marketed the apple silicon and especially the macbook pros as laptops for creatives. 3d modeling, video editing, photo editing, etc... The 256GB base option seems to clash with this marketing.

1) Who cares what something is marketed at? Stop trying to judge products by marketing material and start judging them for what they are.

2) Have Apple marketed the 256GB M2 MacBook Pro for people doing 3D modelling, video editing and photo editing? I can't find any info like that.

 

2 hours ago, Brian McKee said:

For most companies they're looking for large contracts at cheap prices; I'm sure most businesses will not be getting macbook pros. Basically every macbook purchased will be on the consumer end of thing, or be higher spec'd models for studios.

Okay, so if you are saying the M2 MacBook Pro will mostly be bought by regular consumers, why have you brought up professional use cases? Just a little while ago you said 256GB was not suitable for "professional machines". Again, it seems like the anti-MacBook Pro crowd can't decide if they want the MacBook Pro to be a device for professional use or home use, yet you seem very insistent on labelling it as either or.

 

 

2 hours ago, Brian McKee said:

Edit: Just to back myself up here:

 

Is that your "evidence"? You got to be fucking kidding.

Did you even look at that video?

1) It's about the MacBook Air, not the Pro.

2) The tasks being done in that video are:

• Very light weight video editing in iMovie.
• Playing the game Tunic, which is very easy to run.
• Doing very simple photo editing. In fact it doesn't even look like editing, just changing the intensity of some color channels.
• Look at a calendar.
• Make a PowerPoint presentation.
• Be on a video call.
• Watch a Youtube video.

Are you seriously going to try and argue that this is evidence that Apple are marketing the 256GB MacBook Pro model towards professional users who would be limited by the 256GB model? 

[Dracarris]

8 minutes ago, igormp said:

Currently using a 13" mbp retina with its 2560x1600 with scaling to 1680x1050

Try the native resolution. It‘s insane how much more space you‘ll get even on such a small screen. For coding or text editing it‘s a game changer - and at scaled resolutions it‘s just WAY sharper.

 

Is it strictly required? No

Does it help some in productivity? Yes

Is it a nice to have and comfort feature? Yes

Is there any excuse for a >2k laptop still using 1080p panels? Hell no!

[AlTech]

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Try the native resolution. It‘s insane how much more space you‘ll get even on such a small screen. For coding or text editing it‘s a game changer - and at scaled resolutions it‘s just WAY sharper.

 

Is it strictly required? No

Does it help some in productivity? Yes

Is it a nice to have and comfort feature? Yes

Is there any excuse for a >2k laptop still using 1080p panels? Hell no!

Considering how many applications still have terrible HiDPI scaling there is a legitimate use case for lower resolution laptops for business and pros

[Dracarris]

48 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

A 1080P screen is fine on a 14" display,

Let me guess - you were among the Einsteins that screamed „trash“ when Apple announced the iphone SE with a 720p display? Go ahead and calculate the pixel densities of these two devices.

50 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Also that is some interesting cherry picking

Which is exactly what this whole thread is and what YOU have been doing all this time, ranting about a single MBP config that no one is forced to buy! Ooh the double standards, and yet there are no complain-threads about these Thinkpads.

51 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

And you're still making the 1GB/s SSD sound better than it really is, it sounds fine when you say its "double the speed of SATA" but its still crap in comparison to laptops that comes with a pci-e gen 3 or gen 4 SSD.

So you admit that your earlier statements about speed comparisons where other BS and plain wrong?

And just as a quick reminder: No matter how they compare to gen3/4 SSDs, it simply just doesn‘t matter in every day usecase on a device with 256GB storage and the typically associated use cases and tasks. Period.

 

Which is not true for a freakin 1080p 14“ display from the stone age on a „pro/enterprise/bussines“ laptop.

But yeah, these are fine bcs they‘re not from Apple. Oooon the double standards again. FFS.

[Dracarris]

8 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Considering how many applications still have terrible HiDPI scaling there is a legitimate use case for lower resolution laptops for business and pros

Windows problem? Don‘t wanna know. This never ever has been a problem on macOS thanks to the whole OS being vector-based since the dawn of time, as it should be.

 

And even assuming a legit need for a 1080p screen still leaves the asking price as an absurdity.

[Obioban]

15 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Let me guess - you were among the Einsteins that screamed „trash“ when Apple announced the iphone SE with a 720p display? Go ahead and calculate the pixel densities of these two devices.

Which is exactly what this whole thread is and what YOU have been doing all this time, ranting about a single MBP config that no one is forced to buy! Ooh the double standards, and yet there are no complain-threads about these Thinkpads.

So you admit that your earlier statements about speed comparisons where other BS and plain wrong?

And just as a quick reminder: No matter how they compare to gen3/4 SSDs, it simply just doesn‘t matter in every day usecase on a device with 256GB storage and the typically associated use cases and tasks. Period.

 

Which is not true for a freakin 1080p 14“ display from the stone age on a „pro/enterprise/bussines“ laptop.

But yeah, these are fine bcs they‘re not from Apple. Oooon the double standards again. FFS.

iPhone SE is 326ppi. 

 

13" MacBook Pro is 227ppi (which is okay it's lower, because it's a longer viewing distance). 

 

14" 1080p display is 157ppi

 

I agree windows sucks at high DPI interfaces. 

 

Apple has been pretty spot on with their resolutions in everything they label as "retina". High enough to not be able to see pixels, low enough that resources aren't being squandered in resolution beyond that-- and with OSs that can actually function properly at high DPI. 

 

This conversation is why windows fanbois can't understand why Mac users are excited about the studio display.

[igormp]

15 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Try the native resolution. It‘s insane how much more space you‘ll get even on such a small screen. For coding or text editing it‘s a game changer - and at scaled resolutions it‘s just WAY sharper.

 

Is it strictly required? No

Does it help some in productivity? Yes

Is it a nice to have and comfort feature? Yes

I did, and found that I'd need to increase the font size everywhere for it to be useable at the distance I usually have the laptop at, so it's more comfortable to just use it at the aforementioned resolution.

The sharper text is nice but it's already crispy enough IMO at 1080p.

 

Quote

Is there any excuse for a >2k laptop still using 1080p panels? Hell no!

I did agree that the price is abusive. But going in the same grain, is there any excuse for a >1k laptop to have a 256gb ssd and 8gb of ram? (also not that this complaint is valid for not only Apple). And hey, if you ever need more than that, you can just upgrade to a 2240x1400 or even 3840x2400!

 

So, the same arguments you people been using to defend this model can be applied to others.

 

 

I still don't get why people defend companies like that, all of them are shit offering you the shiniest piece of turd they can while price gouging you and racking a insane amount of profit margins. And this applies to all of them, trying to justify such compromises at such high prices is idiotic no matter the side you chose.

 

A 1080p laptop should be cheaper

A 256gb laptop should be cheaper

A 8gb ram laptop should be cheaper

 

Is a combo of the 3 options above unuseable? Heck, by no means, it's a pretty capable machine for the MAJORITY of people, but it shouldn't cost over a grand, no matter the brand.

[Dracarris]

13 minutes ago, Obioban said:

Apple has been pretty spot on with their resolutions in everything they label as "retina". High enough to not be able to see pixels, low enough that resources aren't being squandered in resolution beyond that-- and with OSs that can actually function properly at high DPI. 

So much this. On Windows laptops it‘s either 1080p (clearly pixels visible) or full-blown 4K (total overkill and brings more problems than advantages). Why??

[Dracarris]

9 minutes ago, igormp said:

A 1080p laptop should be cheaper

A 256gb laptop should be cheaper

A 8gb ram laptop should be cheaper

I agree - but upgrade the M2 MBP to 16GB RAM to match the Thinkpad, it will still be way under 2k. Disregarding screen, trackpad, speakers and so on of the Thinkpad, and the iGPU, the quad-core i5..

 

The result IMHO: The MBP is a bad value. The Thinkpad is an outright horrible value. And yet there is only a complain-thread about one of them.

[igormp]

15 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

The result IMHO: The MBP is a bad value.

I'm glad we can agree on that for this specific model.

 

16 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

The Thinkpad is an outright horrible value. And yet there is only a complain-thread about one of them.

I didn't see anyone saying otherwise. Feel free to create a thread, but I believe no consumer actually buys such product out of their website (that's why you won't see anyone complaining), and I doubt companies are paying anything over 2/3 of that price (I'd even dare to say half the price, but I don't have enough insight on that).

[Lightwreather]

10 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Did you ever wonder why Apple have 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB options, but not 12 GB? How much of their promised "up to 100 GB/s" are you actually getting?

-forget what I said-

[igormp]

8 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Did you ever wonder why Apple have 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB options, but not 12 GB? How much of their promised "up to 100 GB/s" are you actually getting?

My bet is availability. Samsung only has 48Gb modules, skhynix only has 64Gb, and micron has both 48, 64 and 96Gb modules in mass production.

 

So I  believe they are only using 64Gb and 96Gb modules (two modules per laptop, which explains the 16 and 24 variants). I don't think they got any 48Gb modules (otherwise 12gb would be an option as you said), but I have no idea how the 8GB model works since I saw no availability for 32Gb modules, and I don't think they're using only a single 64Gb module for the base model.

[Ydfhlx]

On 6/27/2022 at 11:01 PM, hishnash said:

I don't think this is saving money, typically going from 2 NAND dies to 1 die that is 2x the capacity costs more as high density dies have a higher price due to lower yields.

There's also supply and demand. 128GB dies are becoming too small. You'd need 8 of these for a 1TB SSD, which in M.2 format is too much. It's just not going to fit. Let alone 16 dies for a 2TB. So factories produce 256GB modules or even bigger, because of economy of scale.

 

A side result of this is that it's quite hard to get a decent ~120GB SSD.

 

And another thing is that with current technology, yelds are good enough that 256GB modules aren't that much more expensive. Yes they might cost a bit more, but that's twice as many modules to solder onto SSD or ship from NAND factory to SSD assembly. If it weren't the case, you'd see 2.5" SSDs using 128GB modules (because they're cheaper) being significantly cheaper than M.2 counterparts forced to use denser modules due to size limitations. In reality this isn't the case, suggesting that less dense modules aren't that much cheaper.

[Brian McKee]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Are you seriously going to try and argue that this is evidence that Apple are marketing the 256GB MacBook Pro model towards professional users who would be limited by the 256GB model? 

I believe even an average user who uses imovie would be seriously constrained by 256GB. I'm done with this inane discussion, think that 256 base is perfectly cromulent, I've said what I want to.

 

You're deadset on bringing up people in cubicles who are acquiring these through their job with big contracts but fail to realize that a lot of people are freelance in the creative space. People like myself buy it from the consumer end even though my use case is "professional". And for literally everyone else obviously 256 is just not enough and hasn't been enough for over a decade.

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, igormp said:

On the other hand, most of its competitors on the consumer side start at 512gb, such as the dell xps, hp spectre and lg gram.

Yep, most consumer oriented laptops offer more storage than business laptops, since most businesses try and save files remotely. Home users are far more likely to need more local storage since they save most of their stuff locally.

That's why I am trying to get the anti-Apple crowd to decide if they want the MacBook Pro to be a consumer oriented device or a business oriented device. Right now they flip flop depending on what fits their narrative the best.

 

 

10 hours ago, Rauten said:

*Sad story voice*

I was once naïve and foolish, like you. 

But then, I saw them. And I wept.

The endless sea of Excel files, filled to the brim with formulas, connections and graphs.

The countless Word documents explaining the most absurd minutiae possible.

The overburdened, overcomplicated PowerPoint presentations.

The multi-gigabytes Outlook OST files, capable of crippling the freshest and cleanest OS installations.

And so, I wept. For I knew there was no hope. No salvation.

I was surrounded by users, and no deity, above or below, would come for me.

Tell your users to stop saving important documents locally and start using Office 365, or save files on a remote file server.

If you aren't doing that then you are arguably "doing IT wrong".

Users should not have hundreds of gigabytes of files stored locally. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

 

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Except those are for a completely different market, the Macbook "pro" laptops are usually targeted at photo and video editors, running multiple apps at once, anything more intensive than what a basic office laptop is for.

Who gets to decide that the entry level MacBook Pro is targeted at "photo and video editors", and does that actually reflect the real world? I can't imagine that a lot of photo and video editors buy the baseline MacBook Pro.

I feel like you are trying to argue the MacBook Pro is a bad computer because it doesn't suit the needs of a very minor group of people, and when I say it would work fine or really well for a much larger group of people you basically go "no, they are not allowed to use that computer because I say so!".

 

Also, who the fuck cares what group of people you feel like the computer is marketed towards? Since when do we judge products solely on what some commercial might say? I honestly do not give two craps about what Apple says in their commercials, because I judge products based on their merits. I strongly advice you start doing the same.

Any argument that contains "but in the ads they say..." is completely irrelevant and stupid in my eyes. Nobody should give two craps about what some company says in their commercials.

 

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

The Thinkpad T14 or an HP Elitebook in the most basic configurations are going to be fine for Excel and Word documents, and a point missed is all of those can be upgraded later to more storage so they aren't e-waste once 256GB isn't enough.

And who are you to decide that the 256GB MacBook Pro isn't allowed to be used for things like Excel and Word processing? Why are you so dead set on the MacBook Pro only being allowed to be used by video editors, when it is clearly not suited for it?

Have you ever heard the quote about judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree? Because that is what you have been doing all throughout this thread. 

 

If you are going to do video editing in your MacBook Pro then don't get the base model. Is that really such a hard concept for you to grasp?

 

 

And big companies (you know, professional users) typically don't upgrade their computers. They completely replace them every 3-4 years.

And if those decommissioned laptops ends up being reused they will most likely end up in a place where a lot of local storage is not needed. Things such as schools, or PCs for home users that just need to be able to send emails and such.

Very few people actually need a lot of local storage. People who need a lot of local storage but will try and get free handouts from local companies is an even smaller group.

 

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

A sequential rating is an important metric when dealing with large files, and again its a downgrade from the M1 macbook pro. I meant to say its just slightly better than SATA, and still find it ridiculously slow on a system in that price range.

Oh fuck off. It is not "slightly better than SATA". It's about 200% faster than the best SATA drive.

What you are saying is just as ridiculous as saying the RTX 3090 Ti is "just slightly better than the GTX 1660". Please, stop with the bullshit arguments. There are plenty of good criticism of the M2 MacBook Pro. Saying that the SSD is barely better than a SATA SSD is so far from the truth that you are making yourself look ridicelous.

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

A high end M.2 SSD like a Samsung 980 Pro is still a much better SSD in every way

Source? Again, all I have seen regarding the M2 256GB MacBook Pro is a single benchmark testing a single thing, and I am not even sure how the test is done. For all I know, the SSD in the M2 MacBook Pro might be faster than the Samsung 980 Pro in every single way, including sequential read and writes.

Like I said earlier, in Anandtech's SSD benchmark the 980 Pro only achieves 1.1GB/s of sequential performance.

 

I asked earlier but I'll ask again, are you looking at the single benchmark provided by that (seemingly ignorant) Youtuber as the basis for your entire view of the SSD performance, and then comparing that to manufacturer provided numbers? Because real world benchmarks do not always match the advertised numbers. Especially not for something that can vary so much, like SSD performance.

Right now I have no idea how the M2 256GB MacBook Pro performs like, and my guess is that you don't either. All I know is that in one particular test, it is roughly half as fast as the M1 MacBook Pro for sequential read and writes. That is all I know. Just because one benchmark says 1.4GB/s does not mean another benchmark would say the same.

 

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

and a concern with an SSD that only has a single NAND die is how long it will last before performance degrades, Apple clearly went cheap with the 256GB model so again it doesn't make any sense to have the "pro" naming.

"Pro" != "Video editing".

There are a lot of "pro" workloads that do not stress the storage at all. I know you like to pretend like those do not exist or that we for some reason should ignore them, but it is true.

[Brian McKee]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

"Pro" != "Video editing".

There are a lot of "pro" workloads that do not stress the storage at all. I know you like to pretend like those do not exist or that we for some reason should ignore them, but it is true.

You don't need  hardcore video editing workloads, just having enough browser tabs open forcing caching (which is real easy on the 8GB base model) will put big stress on the SSD over time. Which is why for a laptop with no ability to replace the nand packages the 8 GB configs should be avoided, especially at low capacities.

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

I believe even an average user who uses imovie would be seriously constrained by 256GB. I'm done with this inane discussion, think that 256 base is perfectly cromulent, I've said what I want to.

 

You're deadset on bringing up people in cubicles who are acquiring these through their job with big contracts but fail to realize that a lot of people are freelance in the creative space. People like myself buy it from the consumer end even though my use case is "professional". And for literally everyone else obviously 256 is just not enough and hasn't been enough for over a decade.

I am not failing to realize anything. All I am saying is that the 256GB model is usable by a lot of people. If you are one of the people who need more storage then don't get the 256GB model. It really is as simple as that. 

I totally get that some people might need more than 256GB of storage. I get it. What you seem to don't get is that some people do not need more than 256GB of storage.

 

Different people have different needs, so Apple, and other OEMs for that matter, make different SKUs to meet the needs of those different groups of people.

A laptop is not a "one size fits all" type of thing. 

[LAwLz]

2 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

You don't need  hardcore video editing workloads, just having enough browser tabs open forcing caching (which is real easy on the 8GB base model) will put big stress on the SSD over time. Which is why for a laptop with no ability to replace the nand packages the 8 GB configs should be avoided, especially at low capacities.

See:

On 6/30/2022 at 6:28 PM, LAwLz said:

8GB is more than enough for most people using Chrome.

People really need to stop overestimating how much RAM they need.

On 6/30/2022 at 6:59 PM, LAwLz said:

To add to this, I just tested it out.

 

Clean install of Windows, clean install of Chrome.

I opened the 25 most visited websites in the US (according to this site, I skipped over microsoftonline), all in a new tab (so 25 tabs open with websites fully loaded).

Chrome is using 1.4GB of RAM...

 

I opened the 40 most popular websites and the memory usage jumped up to 2.4GB, mostly because sites like Twitch and Fox News are apparently very bloated (uses over 100MB of RAM each, while other sites are hovering around 50MB).

 

 

My VM with 8GB of RAM that currently has the top 40 websites open in Chrome is currently sitting at 6.1GB of memory used, but 2GB of that is just cached stuff that could potentially be freed up.

In other words, even a PC with 4GB of RAM could run Chrome and keep ~40 tabs open without running into memory issues. My guess is that most people do not keep 40 active tabs open either. Even if you are one of those people who never close your tabs, after a while Chrome will expunge them from memory due to inactivity. I wouldn't be surprised if even tab hoarders only have like 10 active tabs.

 

Now, I am not saying that a computer with 4GB of memory would be pleasant to use for everyone, but it is in fact more than enough for a large portion of people. 8GB is plenty for most people. This idea that you need 16GB of RAM, even in gaming rigs, is not really true. It probably stems from people buying more RAM than they need, then looking in the task manager and seeing let's say 10GB of RAM used, without realizing how Windows manages memory.

 

 

The idea that you need 16GB of memory just to browse the Internet using Chrome is quite frankly ridiculous.

  

  

And before you go "but I have more than 40 tabs open!", please keep in mind that not everyone does the same things you do on their computer.

I know it is hard to believe, but some people only have 5 tabs open on their computer. 

 

Remember, the task manager is not a good tool to estimate how much RAM you use or need. It lies to you about how much memory is used (try it yourself, add up all the running processes and you will see that the amount of RAM used do not match the % used) and it misleads you by including things like cached and Superfetch'd (now called SysMain for those wondering) processes.

 

[igormp]

13 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

You're deadset on bringing up people in cubicles who are acquiring these through their job with big contracts but fail to realize that a lot of people are freelance in the creative space. People like myself buy it from the consumer end even though my use case is "professional".

I'd agree with you if weren't for the fact that you can buy a model with more capacity and then this becomes a non-issue.

 

18 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

And for literally everyone else obviously 256 is just not enough and hasn't been enough for over a decade.

I like how you know about the demands of the entire population while many laptops sold out there come with only 256gb. Even my previous work laptop had only 256gb and it was fine 

10 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

You don't need  hardcore video editing workloads, just having enough browser tabs open forcing caching (which is real easy on the 8GB base model) will put big stress on the SSD over time. Which is why for a laptop with no ability to replace the nand packages the 8 GB configs should be avoided, especially at low capacities.

Again, if someone uses that much ram, why not just go for a higher end model?

[Blademaster91]

On 6/30/2022 at 2:36 PM, igormp said:

On systems above $1k? Sure thing, however it's not uncommon to see such "premium" laptops starting with 8gb only, even if they're $1k+

 

As for systems bellow that range, specially budget ones, I disagree. 4gb for sure shouldn't be a thing anymore, but 8gb is still fine for most regular users.

The only premium PC laptops I've seen that still come with 8GB ram are Microsoft Surface laptops or 2in1's, and that isn't any better imo.

And for regular users I think the Macbook air is a better deal if they have to go with a Mac.

On 6/30/2022 at 2:36 PM, igormp said:

Yeah, for sure, but power users aren't the norm, and they should know better what they need anyway.

I agree they should know better, although this laptop is in the "pro" lineup, 8GB and 256GB storage isn't enough for editing, or Photoshop while having a browser open with more than a few tabs.

On 6/30/2022 at 2:36 PM, igormp said:

The website is about a specific bug that seems to happen only on MacOS, with a linked issue on the chromium bug tracker that so far has no resolution yet (even though apparently a google employee really tried to debug this issue).

 I should've read through the article, it makes a lot more sense now, and I'd have to guess the bug isn't fixed on purpose, but I doubt most people on MacOS care or are likely using Safari as Apple kinda pushes users to use it by default, something Microsoft and Google don't really get away with.

13 minutes ago, igormp said:

I like how you know about the demands of the entire population while many laptops sold out there come with only 256gb. Even my previous work laptop had only 256gb and it was fine 

I would think the 256GB of storage would be more acceptable if it were user replaceable, but ofc not so only 256GB really limits what you can do with it.

14 minutes ago, igormp said:

Again, if someone uses that much ram, why not just go for a higher end model?

IMO going for a higher end model on the 13" doesn't make much sense, going to 16GB and 1TB makes it a $1900 laptop, you may as well go for the 14" for the faster SoC with a fan, better screen, and more ports.

[Paul Thexton]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Remember, the task manager is not a good tool to estimate how much RAM you use or need. It lies to you about how much memory is used (try it yourself, add up all the running processes and you will see that the amount of RAM used do not match the % used) and it misleads you by including things like cached and Superfetch'd (now called SysMain for those wondering) processes.

 

Quite so. On my machine currently I've got a few apps open, nothing extreme, two Safari windows with ~30 tabs open across them.

 

 

Nearly 10GB of the total memory used is being taken up by file system caches. Also, check out how much memory is allegedly being used by the twitter tab I blame continuous scroll. Nothing to worry about though, the memory pressure on my machine is very comfortably in the green. I don't have an 8GB model MacBook available to see what the same sort of config would look like there.

 

 

[Paul Thexton]

9 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

IMO going for a higher end model on the 13" doesn't make much sense, going to 16GB and 1TB makes it a $1900 laptop, you may as well go for the 14" for the faster SoC with a fan, better screen, and more ports.

In the UK bumping the M2 up to 512GB / 16GB brings it to £1749, while the base spec 14" with 512GB / 16GB and the binned 14-core GPU starts at £1899.

 

I would agree with you though that for the extra £150 you get a much, much better all round machine at the expense of it being slightly heavier (about 0.5lbs) for traveling with.

[HenrySalayne]

18 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

In the UK bumping the M2 up to 512GB / 16GB brings it to £1749, while the base spec 14" with 512GB / 16GB and the binned 14-core GPU starts at £1899.

 

I would agree with you though that for the extra £150 you get a much, much better all round machine at the expense of it being slightly heavier (about 0.5lbs) for traveling with.

Exactly the same in the Euro zone with just a 200€ difference. If you bump the configuration to a sensible "I will use this for a few years" level (16 GB RAM, 512 GB storage), you are less than 10% away from the 14" Macbook Pro with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage. Except the 14" Macbook is faster, offers an SD card slot, so at least bulk storage is easily expandable, it has a better screen, more connectivity, the better webcam, the better keyboard (lacking the touch bar) and MagSafe.

The base price for the Macbook Air will go from 1199€ for the M1 model to 1499€ for the M2, which is way too expensive. What device should all those people buy who do nothing but surfing the web, using the office suite and watching some Netflix now and then? And somehow the new Macbook Air is still cheaper but better equipped than the base model Macbook Pro 13"? Apples 2022 laptop product stack makes absolutely no sense. They need to get an entry-level machine "I just want to do light tasks" for around 1000€ and they need to clearly differentiate the models and pricing in the middle of the product stack. A 13" Macbook Pro with all its downsides shouldn't be marginally less expensive than a better equipped Macbook Pro 14" and it should definitely not be as expensive than the better equipped Macbook Air.