I do not know whether this topic is already an old hat, but I cannot remain silent. I must vent out somewhere.
Is it me or a laptop with 128GB of disk storage is a disgrace? I mean the entry-level MacBooks released in 2017. Seriously, even a smartphone nowadays goes with 64GB of built-in memory AND you can pop-in 256GB SD (!)
Who will even buy such a thing? Is it only for promotional purposes? Releasing a cheap and useless model only to have a possibility to rub its price into competitor’s faces? However, when a customer opts for a bigger SSD (or an adequate amount of RAM for that matter) the sum grows up to be pretty hefty.
Being a graphic designer, disk space shortage is a constant pain for me. I had my own ways of dealing with it for years. I use Mac cleaners for my 2011 MBP (most recent one is MacFly Pro
https://macflypro.com), I get rid of everything I do not need, keep an eye on duplicates, and dump all localizations I do not need. I use external storage units for my “archives”, so the disk contains only the files I currently work with.
However, even for my modest appetites, 128GB is next to nothing – simply unjustifiable. Even a cat would not squeeze into it
Is it maybe a new trend? Maybe I am just behind the times. There is a possibility that such disk capacity is okay for some people. After all, it became a norm to store everything in a cloud and use streaming services instead of having your own media library. However, as a person that deals constantly with media files, I prefer having them on my disk at least while I am still working on them. After all, I do not want to throw myself at the mercy of coffice’s Wi-Fi each time I work out of home.
Okay, maybe it’s just my specific view of the problem. Maybe students who use their laptops for research and web-surfing will be satisfied with this minimum capacity.
Still, is this scarcity enough for merely running a sufficient number of apps? I mean, I tried to install an antivirus (I know, rather a luxurious precaution on a Mac, but I wanted to test it) and it requested 2 GB of free disk space. 2 GB for one flipping app, seriously… it’s not even a game. (A game, on the other hand, would have gobbled up at least ten times that amount, but I digress, as Macs for gaming has always been a controversial topic).
What I am trying to say is that even some word processor, a browser, and a couple utilities can hardly be squeezed into this “premium machine”. And that to say nothing of the RAM they will hog all the time. For someone who doesn’t like watching everything they install, 128GB will run out in a week!
Even back in 2015 people were quite cautious about it and asked on Apple Support forums would 128GB be enough for OS and app updates alone (
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7132673?start=0) Even back in 2015 they were answered it would not.
High Sierra tackled the problem to some extent (new file system and video coding aimed to make files take up less disk space). However, software devs aren’t as keen on optimizing as I’d wish them to be. Apps became more and more resource-hungry.
Will the competition for disk space begin keeping them at bay? Unless, as I pointed out earlier, this ridiculous 128GB MacBooks aren’t supposed to be actually used.
What’s your game, Apple?
