> So if you want to buy something and have it last 5+ years you need to spec it out from the start to have way more drive space than you think you'll ever use.
Yup. When I bought my MBP M1 2020, I foolishly went with 256GB of storage.
Installed Xcode and that was like 15GB of available storage space gone right then and there. The simulators take another few GB on top of that.
Add to that all of the other software that I use, another significant portion of storage space is taken.
And with my own files on top, I routinely have only about 10-15 GB of available space out of the 256 GB, which is quite annoying. And it also means not being able to install some stuff that I use only sometimes, because with the limited amount of space I have I cannot waste it on things that I only rarely use. But that means I don’t get to use those things at all unfortunately.
Not being able to do anything about this is about the only gripe I have with this machine. So all in all I am still very happy with it. But not as happy as I would’ve been if I wasn’t constantly running out of storage space.
And I even thought I was giving myself enough room for everything, because my previous computer was a MacBook Air 2018 model with 128GB storage, where I was also running out of space all the time, so even though I really wanted to buy the 1TB model of MBP M1 2020 I landed on the 256GB thinking that hey it’s still twice what I had so it should be enough right. Well, no, not quite enough as it soon turned out.
That made someone's numbers at apple like $400 better at least.
And it would probably be better for me financially to wait 4-5 years until I really needed 4TB before upgrading (if I ever needed to, which I might not).
Same thing with RAM. 16GB is proving to simply not be quite enough, so I would have gone with 32GB, but instead I went for 64GB for future-proofing.
I'd much rather have bought 32GB now, and then upgraded to 64GB maybe multiple years down the road when I needed it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q54GHTC/
I'm certainly not enthused about being stuck with current market capacities, but at least I don't feel gouged on price.
Except for simply running of out drive space.
So if you want to buy something and have it last 5+ years you need to spec it out from the start to have way more drive space than you think you'll ever use.
Or else when it runs out and you really need that extra space you're forced to upgrade everything in order to get the extra space since you made an initial mistake in specing out the machine when you first bought it.
(I also strongly question the idea that un-removability provides much better lifetime over simply removing the spinning parts. That seems of questionable benefit to the end user, while taking upgradability away creates planned obsolescence that increases someone's financial metrics at apple and takes away consumer freedom).