[mysteria]

Do regular users use more than 250GB or so of local storage? Large media collections are likely stored on a NAS or external HDDs and the local disk is more for the OS, apps, and scratch space. Nowadays many files are on the cloud as well. Developers, video editors, and other people who actually handle large amounts of data locally will likely purchase an upgrade.

While they're Linux systems pretty much all my desktops and laptops only use 50-100GB of disk space, and I still issue 128GB SSDs with no complaints as everything's stored on the network. Considering how expensive storage is on Apple devices I don't want to be paying the premium for 1TB of NVME which I won't use.

[macNchz]

Arguably Apple would love to push people who handle large amounts of data into absolutely unreasonably priced upgrades, and people with large media collections into lifelong iCloud subscriptions.

It's not especially hard to fill up 250GB over time. Apps these days seem to have little concern about conserving disk space, and many are super bloated themselves. A hobbyist wanting to enjoy their iPhone camera's capabilities on that pretty 4.5K display might find themselves filling the drive awfully quickly with 75MB RAW files and 400MB/minute video, plus Photoshop itself taking up 10GB.

Macs clearly aren't a first choice for serious gaming, but a casual Mac user who were to want to, say, try the top selling Mac game on Steam—Baldur's Gate 3—would find that at 150GB it'd use up nearly their whole drive. I've certainly had to help a bunch of family and friends sort out why their Mac kept telling them their startup disk was full.

I'm a lifelong Mac user who switched to a DIY Linux machine (6TB storage & 64GB of RAM) primarily over this issue. Sometimes looking at the base specs of new Apple products and the cost for upgrades feels a little like if the base model Porsche 911 came with a go-kart engine, and for another $100k you could get an actual flat six.

[duped]

This reads like Apple Stockholm syndrome.

I haven't bought a device with less than 1TB storage in a decade. The users that you're talking about would be happy with a Chromebook or iPad, not a $1k+ machine that ostensibly is for "pro" work. In fact the last time I did it, it was an Apple device and I wouldn't buy one again.

AAA video games will take 100GB of local storage. I'm not claiming Apple is good for gaming, but they pretend Macs can game - never mind you can't fit many games on an entry level Mac.

I haven't checked recently but iirc a hefty chunk of disk was used by the system too - so 256GB isn't really 256GB for a user. It's more like 128.

[fennecbutt]

To add on, my phone is 512 let alone what I want my laptop to be. Apple claims that their ssds are magically super fast as if they don't use the same technology all other high end ones do, it's just that Apple massively overcharges for them, no wonder they make so much profit.

If a user only needs 256g then fine, but it's just creating ewaste as if they sell it 2ndhand there's fewer people that will want it.

[Toutouxc]

My next machine will probably be 512GB model, but I’m still doing fine with my 256 GB Air and a 4TB NAS. I use an action camera for mountain biking and I take photos with a 24Mpix mirrorless camera. I just offload the material to the NAS as soon as possible, and I don’t game on the thing.

Also, macOS definitely doesn’t take up 128 GB.

[musicale]

Schools and companies often buy low-storage configurations.

[Allybag]

I think “regular users” are very unlikely to use any sort of external drive, other than maybe some sort of cloud service.

[theodric]

Mate, I have VM images that are bigger than 250GB. Xcode, libraries, local cache of my cloud storage...already full. It's inadequate on purpose to get you to pay the exorbitant uplift for a higher storage tier. 1TB should be base spec these days.

[andoando]

I have near 300GB of just photos/videos.

Video games now take up 50-100GB too.

[crazygringo]

Exactly this.

Regular users keep their photos and videos in the cloud these days, whether iCloud or Google Drive.

And video editors are going to be using external drives anyways, the internal SSD is just for scratch.

If Macs were used more for gaming then that would be a major reason... but they're not.

[shmoogy]

I bought my wife a base storage mini with this assumption and her iCloud messages was 95gb because of all the pictures and videos sent. There is no way to offload it or move it to store on my nas, or an external HDD that I could find

It's a very intentional thing to try to make you need more space.

I pay $30 a month for the 6tb iCloud plan and could find no other workarounds other than logging her out of iMessage - which is absolutely rubbish

[crazygringo]

If her iCloud backup is 95gb then it only costs $3/mo. for the 200 GB plan [1].

If you're paying $30/mo. for the 6 TB storage plan then that's because you're choosing to store a ton of stuff there. It's certainly not because of your wife's messages. And you're making my point for me -- I do the same! $10/mo for 2 TB. It's great.

Cloud pricing is pretty decently competitive when you compare it to building your own storage with the same reliability, which is going to involve redundant on-site hard drives in a NAS, and an extra off-site backup.

You can also just delete the largest iMessage media files directly from the phone, there's literally a feature for that. Since most people don't really care about saving any of the videos or images after they've been seen, or you can save them individually to your Photos at the time if you do care. I do a mass-delete every year or two.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047

[shmoogy]

We pay for iCloud regardless because we've crossed the 2tb threshold for our devices and our kids devices backups + photos and videos.

Deleting the iMessage data off the device is not feasible after like ten minutes it was showing me 20 at a time that had small sizes relative to the amount left to delete. Thank you for your attempt at helping though