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My MacBook is now seven years old and I would like to replace it soon. I’ve fully upgraded its RAM and swapped the hard drive for an SSD so it’s running as well as it possibly can.
The next Mac I get needs to have a 1TB drive, as my current 512GB SSD is feeling the strain of all my songs, photos, videos and design files I’m accumulating. However, because of Apple’s measly laptop storage options, and their decision to not allow the end user to perform their own upgrades, the only laptop I can get is totally out of my budget.
My budget is around £1,200. In the past I could have purchased a lower end Mac, bought my own RAM and/or SSD upgrade and swapped them myself. This would have worked out much cheaper than using Apple’s massively inflated upgrade prices. For example, right now I could buy the entry level Retina MacBook Pro for £999 and easily buy a 1TB SSD for about £240. This would cost me £1,239 – perfect for me. However, Apple is forcing me to get a highend MacBook Pro for £1,800 just because I need 1TB of storage. I find this ludicrous. Barry Smith
Christian Hall says… To some extent we share you’re frustration, and the choices in the new 4K iMac are a little puzzling as an example. If you choose the 1TB hard drive you’re stuck with an aging 5,400rpm model. 7,200rpm exists for the 5K iMac only. For the entry-level iMac (at £899) there’s only 256GB available as the SSD option too, rather than 512GB elsewhere. In the MacBook lineup the 1TB Flash option is indeed and extra £400, so when you see those kinds of SSDs at the half the cost elsewhere it can be quite an eye opener. Have you looked on the refurb store though, a quick pass over it showed that you’re more likely to pay closer to £1,600 for a MacBook Pro with a 1TB SSD – still not in your budget admittedly but it’s worth keeping an eye on. Another option of course is to start moving that data. Your internal drive shouldn’t be used for absolutely everything. Music and video can easily be shifted to a portable hard drive at a fraction of the cost of getting a large capacity SSD.