[fluffything]

I have a MacBook Air 2012 with an SD card reader.

It has a 256GB SSD drive, and a 1 TB SD Card inside that I use for storing photos, video, music, etc. essentially everything that does not need fast storage.

This laptop was only meant to be a 1 year temporary solution, so I’ve been waiting 9 years to upgrade.

I’ve yet to find a new reasonably priced MacBook with 1,256Gb of built in storage.

Carrying an external drive sucks.

Unless Apple makes 1-2 Tb SSDs lower in price to the 100$ mark, the lack of an SD card is a killer for me.

Paying 500$ for an extra 256GB SSD when I can get 1 Tb SD card for 100$ is just ridiculous.

[texasbigdata]

This is sort of unreasonable too hot too cold type thinking.

If you need a certain price point for a certain feature, why not expand to not limiting your search to only one manufacturer, which seems to be your binding constraint here since you’ve delayed updating 7 years, instead of expecting a manufacturer that has less than 10% of the total market share of an industry to meet you needs?

[dunmalg]

>why not expand to not limiting your search to only one manufacturer

Software. People become accustomed to the closed ecosystem of OSX, which you can't duplicate on others' hardware. This is a key facet of Apple's business model and as GP poster illustrates, it works. Apple can screw up the hardware for 7 years, and GP poster will simply wait for them to come back to doing it right.

[fluffything]

More like a computer is a combination of hardware and software.

A different vendor product with cheaper storage can still be a much worse value proposition than my 2012 MacBook Air.

The problem here is that the Parent you are replying to assumes “storage” is the only issue why I haven’t upgraded. That’s an incorrect assumption.

I haven’t upgraded because paying >1000$ should add value over my MacBook Air 2012, yet for me all laptops in the market do not add enough value to justify the cost.

A new MacBook with 1 TB SSD storage sets you over 2000$, but the value just isn’t there.

Everybody’s mom is recommending an M1 these days, yet crappy webcam, support for 1 monitor only, expensive storage, low ram, being 1st gen of apples arm lineage with 1st gen flaws, no MagSafe, ... make it a bad value proposition right now for me compared with my 2012 air which doesn’t have most of these flaws.. sure it is better in many aspects, but it is also much worse in others (eg 1 external monitor support is a deal breaker for me)

[hungryforcodes]

True, well expressed. Which of the other macOS based laptop manufacturers would you recommend to them?

[TravelPiglet]

Too true. Apples extra tax on storage is horrible. Baseline model with 256 GB drive of which half is required for the OS to function normally if you use is as something other than an iPad is crazy to release in 2020.

The price difference between 8GB/256GB and 16GB/1TB is insane.

[xiphias2]

Apple could just make 2TB MacBook price cheaper instead of bringing back SD card reader into new models.

I didn't like having only 256GB SSD either in my Razer laptop and just bought a 2TB one, changed it in a few hours myself, and never thought about SSD space since.