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Comment by denimnerd42 | Hacker News Reader

They must have made like 90% of the models they sent out to retailers 256gb/8gb. This is frankly ridiculous as it's not a model I can recommend even on sale. I know they have their reasons, icloud, etc. but what a bad situation it creates for the consumer.

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I wonder if Apple have the ability to unlock storage that they secretly left on the chip and just had disabled in order to sell lower tier models? And more flexibly repurpose them to higher storage if that's selling better?

I'm guessing not (it's already wrapped in the box) and I imagine it can't be accessed by software alone. Like, blown fuses.

no but the chips can be swapped out.. by a real electronics pro https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgr...

My extended family has 5 M1 Air (base model) laptops and they're absolutely great and are way more powerful than they need. I only hear the occasional compliment, and no complaints.

The storage is expandable externally, and the RAM is actually quite usable even on heavy loads.

> The storage is expandable externally

I have tried a variety of methods of expanding the storage. I bought an M1 system with this very thought.

None of the USB storage devices I tried worked well. MacOS drops every device I tried periodically. Sometimes it would go as long as a week, but I'd have to yank it and plug it back in for it to continue to work. Very unreliable for a permanent storage augmentation.

NFS doesn't work, MacOS issues. Samba has been the most reliable network storage drive method, but it tends to be slow on my middling servers - and I really tried to optimize it.

If you really want to do this, I suggest trying the thunderbolt route.

I really don't get your struggles. I bought a crucial 1TB external TB4 SSD - the speeds over TB are fantastic and it's extremely small and reasonably fast (about half the throughput of the builtin drive). Most of my video processing is on this drive, but other than that 256GB is completely usable.

the m1 is plenty powerful. not doubting that. my issue is the storage.

the storage is not expandable actually. 256 is pathetic unless you only have cloud based workflows (which is what apple wants obvious for that reoccuring revenue).

My extended family bought an SUV instead of a minivan a few months ago. No complaints from them either, but I won't pretend it's a perfect car.

I think my point was that the commenter above mine complained that Apple pre-produced 90% of the base model. Fact is, 90% of people don't need any more than 256GB local storage or 8GB ram, so I think the distribution ratio is fine.

disclaimer: Sienna owner.

same manufacturer issue there too lol. like the toyota highlander and toyota sienna share the same factory but you can't find a sienna anywhere and a highlander can be found at dealers.

Sounds like they don't know what they're missing with the minivan.

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