5 ms·

Also, there are some really amazing deals on used/refurb M2 Macs out there. ~$700 for a Macbook Air is a pretty great value, if you can live with 16GB of RAM a

by haiku2077 1y ago

Also, there are some really amazing deals on used/refurb M2 Macs out there. ~$700 for a Macbook Air is a pretty great value, if you can live with 16GB of RAM and a okay but not amazing screen.

socalgal2 1y ago
a 30% discount for a 3 yr old machine is good? A new one is $999.
- DrBenCarson 1y ago
  When the 3yo machine does 100% of what you need without missing a beat and has 8h screen-on battery life, yes, yes, it is
nicoburns 1y ago
Even better deals on M1s which aren't much slower than M2s
paxys 1y ago
$450 for a M4 Mac mini (at Microcenter, but Best Buy will price match) is possibly the best computer hardware deal out there. It is an incredible machine.
- xp84 1y ago
  Having run a Mac Mini with a 256GB internal drive for 2-3 years I will dispute that anyone should buy base models for that reason. MacOS makes it as painful as possible for you to use external drives. For instance, no software for "cloud" drives (google drive, onedrive, icloud drive) is allowed to locate its local copy on an "External" drive, so you can't keep your files locally and in the cloud, have to pick one. Photos can have its library moved at least. I like the hardware, hate the absurd greedy storage and RAM prices.
  - paxys 1y ago
    AI FOMO at least made them bump the base RAM to 16GB. 256GB is pitiful but manageable if you don't need to handle large files. And jumping up to $800 just for another 256GB is absolutely not worth it.
    - xp84 1y ago
      I agree on your second point, which is why unless Apple ever moves away from only having 2010-era storage amounts and absurd prices to size up, from now on I'll be buying used only. Just picked up an M3 MacBook Air with 16GB and 1TB SSD, mint condition, for under a grand.
  - GeekyBear 1y ago
    The M4 Mini ships with 16 Gigs of RAM minimum and accepts third party SSD replacements.
    - xp84 1y ago
      Not SSDs. Weird little proprietary NAND modules that someone reverse-engineered and that Apple will hopefully not issue a software update to brick. The controller part of the SSD is in the CPU. For “reasons” I guess
      - GeekyBear 1y ago
        > The controller part of the SSD is in the CPU. For “reasons” I guess Probably because Apple spent half a billion dollars for the patent portfolio of a company building enterprise SSD controllers a decade ago. People seem to like data storage integrity. > Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably. Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant improvements in NAND longevity and reliability. https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-bringing-nand-endurance-technology-inhouse https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-br...
xp84 1y ago
Indeed. I just grabbed a mint M3 MBA on ebay for about $950 with a 1TB ssd (which tbh was my main need to upgrade this family member in the first place, as they weren't CPU-bound on the old M1). Wild deals to be had!

Also, there are some really amazing deals on used/refurb M2 Macs out there. ~$700 for a Macbook Air is a pretty great value, if you can live with 16GB of RAM and a okay but not amazing screen.

socalgal2 1y ago

a 30% discount for a 3 yr old machine is good? A new one is $999.

DrBenCarson 1y ago
When the 3yo machine does 100% of what you need without missing a beat and has 8h screen-on battery life, yes, yes, it is

nicoburns 1y ago

Even better deals on M1s which aren't much slower than M2s

paxys 1y ago

$450 for a M4 Mac mini (at Microcenter, but Best Buy will price match) is possibly the best computer hardware deal out there. It is an incredible machine.

xp84 1y ago
Having run a Mac Mini with a 256GB internal drive for 2-3 years I will dispute that anyone should buy base models for that reason. MacOS makes it as painful as possible for you to use external drives. For instance, no software for "cloud" drives (google drive, onedrive, icloud drive) is allowed to locate its local copy on an "External" drive, so you can't keep your files locally and in the cloud, have to pick one. Photos can have its library moved at least. I like the hardware, hate the absurd greedy storage and RAM prices.
- paxys 1y ago
  AI FOMO at least made them bump the base RAM to 16GB. 256GB is pitiful but manageable if you don't need to handle large files. And jumping up to $800 just for another 256GB is absolutely not worth it.
  - xp84 1y ago
    I agree on your second point, which is why unless Apple ever moves away from only having 2010-era storage amounts and absurd prices to size up, from now on I'll be buying used only. Just picked up an M3 MacBook Air with 16GB and 1TB SSD, mint condition, for under a grand.
- GeekyBear 1y ago
  The M4 Mini ships with 16 Gigs of RAM minimum and accepts third party SSD replacements.
  - xp84 1y ago
    Not SSDs. Weird little proprietary NAND modules that someone reverse-engineered and that Apple will hopefully not issue a software update to brick. The controller part of the SSD is in the CPU. For “reasons” I guess
    - GeekyBear 1y ago
      > The controller part of the SSD is in the CPU. For “reasons” I guess Probably because Apple spent half a billion dollars for the patent portfolio of a company building enterprise SSD controllers a decade ago. People seem to like data storage integrity. > Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably. Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant improvements in NAND longevity and reliability. https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-bringing-nand-endurance-technology-inhouse https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-br...

xp84 1y ago

Indeed. I just grabbed a mint M3 MBA on ebay for about $950 with a 1TB ssd (which tbh was my main need to upgrade this family member in the first place, as they weren't CPU-bound on the old M1). Wild deals to be had!