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What percentage of Macbook profit margins accrue from overpriced flash storage? While other components of a Macbook benefit from Apple's well-earned brand prem

What percentage of Macbook profit margins accrue from overpriced flash storage? While other components of a Macbook benefit from Apple's well-earned brand premium, Apple internal storage prices bear little relationship to flash memory cost or retail prices for NVME SSDs. Would macOS/iOS network file transfer (e.g. automated sync/backup/restore) be more reliable or better supported, if Apple had a revenue model for network (LAN/VPN, not public cloud) storage? Could Mac Mini with 10GbE networking be a reliable file server with an external Thunderbolt disk array?

FourOnTheFloor 3y ago
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crooked-v 3y ago
> if Apple had a revenue model for network storage Well, they did, once upon a time. I still don't understand why they killed the AirPort and Time Capsule range right as they were trying to expand HomeKit.
- lxgr 3y ago
  My pet theory: Because they wouldn't have any excuse for not allowing network backups of iOS devices to them, driving people into overpriced iCloud storage plans.
VHRanger 3y ago
> What percentage of Macbook profit margins accrue from overpriced flash storage? They want to sell iCloud subscriptions, because it's the recurring revenue for them. I'm still somewhat amazed photo/video/audio creatives, who deal with large files all the time, have to deal with apple's bullshit around storage. Most of creatives I've worked with end up with file storage solutions like messy solutions like "stack of external drives".
- gyomu 3y ago
  I'm a photographer dealing with many terabytes of files (numbers go up fast when you're shooting 100 megapixel RAWs). As far as I'm concerned, having a stack of redundant external drives is a feature, not a bug. I can easily plug them to a collaborator's computer when network is slow (which is almost always). If one fails, no big deal, I can just swap it out with another one bought at a local store. We're really spoiled, SSDs are tiny and super fast and relatively cheap these days. I remember lugging around 3.5" drives... I always get a laptop with the minimal amount of storage, the money you'd spend upgrading is better spent on drives. That way if it fails, I can buy a new machine, plug in my existing drives, and I'm ready to resume my workflow in 30 minutes. No single point of failure. Same with SD cards, much better to have a bunch of 64 GB than one single expensive 512GB. (of course, I have a nice beefy storage array at my home studio) Now if software would catch up...
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Yeah on premises drives are where it’s at for anything data intensive. I don’t regularly handle the volumes of data you do, but have on occasion and based on past experience I wouldn’t use cloud storage for anything remotely heavy duty, regardless of the desktop platforms and cloud services involved. Too much room for things to go awry when I can’t physically plug the storage in. I’ll use cloud storage for off-premises backup in addition to local backups, but that’s about it.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    But how are you backing up your external drives? I think Time Machine supports it, but you'd need one single drive large enough to store the content of all external drives you use.
  - VHRanger 3y ago
    Look, if you're in the field and having a bunch of SD cards and drives, that's cool. As long as you back your stuff up correctly at some point. The pile of drives can be part of your 3-2-1 if you want. Retrieval is also terrible with "my stack of drives" as well. Having to physically search through drives to get to a file is why we left paper to the 20th century.

FourOnTheFloor 3y ago

[dead]

crooked-v 3y ago

> if Apple had a revenue model for network storage Well, they did, once upon a time. I still don't understand why they killed the AirPort and Time Capsule range right as they were trying to expand HomeKit.

lxgr 3y ago
My pet theory: Because they wouldn't have any excuse for not allowing network backups of iOS devices to them, driving people into overpriced iCloud storage plans.

VHRanger 3y ago

> What percentage of Macbook profit margins accrue from overpriced flash storage? They want to sell iCloud subscriptions, because it's the recurring revenue for them. I'm still somewhat amazed photo/video/audio creatives, who deal with large files all the time, have to deal with apple's bullshit around storage. Most of creatives I've worked with end up with file storage solutions like messy solutions like "stack of external drives".

gyomu 3y ago
I'm a photographer dealing with many terabytes of files (numbers go up fast when you're shooting 100 megapixel RAWs). As far as I'm concerned, having a stack of redundant external drives is a feature, not a bug. I can easily plug them to a collaborator's computer when network is slow (which is almost always). If one fails, no big deal, I can just swap it out with another one bought at a local store. We're really spoiled, SSDs are tiny and super fast and relatively cheap these days. I remember lugging around 3.5" drives... I always get a laptop with the minimal amount of storage, the money you'd spend upgrading is better spent on drives. That way if it fails, I can buy a new machine, plug in my existing drives, and I'm ready to resume my workflow in 30 minutes. No single point of failure. Same with SD cards, much better to have a bunch of 64 GB than one single expensive 512GB. (of course, I have a nice beefy storage array at my home studio) Now if software would catch up...
- jwells89 3y ago
  Yeah on premises drives are where it’s at for anything data intensive. I don’t regularly handle the volumes of data you do, but have on occasion and based on past experience I wouldn’t use cloud storage for anything remotely heavy duty, regardless of the desktop platforms and cloud services involved. Too much room for things to go awry when I can’t physically plug the storage in. I’ll use cloud storage for off-premises backup in addition to local backups, but that’s about it.
- lxgr 3y ago
  But how are you backing up your external drives? I think Time Machine supports it, but you'd need one single drive large enough to store the content of all external drives you use.
- VHRanger 3y ago
  Look, if you're in the field and having a bunch of SD cards and drives, that's cool. As long as you back your stuff up correctly at some point. The pile of drives can be part of your 3-2-1 if you want. Retrieval is also terrible with "my stack of drives" as well. Having to physically search through drives to get to a file is why we left paper to the 20th century.