SSDs are fast, but still expensive compared to spinning metal drives, giving us less storage capacity in today’s Macs than we got in older models. Pick up a classic 13-inch MacBook Pro with a hard drive, for example, and you’ll get 500GB of storage for $1100, compared to just 128GB of SSD storage in the $1300 entry-level Retina model.
That may be set to change thanks to new 3D NAND technology announced by Intel and Micron, allowing them to fit far greater storage capacity into the same space as today’s drives. By stacking flash cells on top of each other, up to 32 layers deep, they can can triple the capacity in the same size chip without the usual high price-tag, reports PC World.
For a standard 2.5-inch SATA drive that means up to 10TB of space; for the M.2 drive type used by most laptops, the 3D NAND will boost capacities up to 3.5TB.
We’ve been promised this technology before–Samsung demonstrated 24 layers of 3D NAND back in 2013–but Intel and Micron say that manufacturers will be able to buy the new chips later this year. Of course, with Apple not noted for its generosity when it comes to storage capacity, you may not want to hold your breath.
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I think Apple will have to at least adjust to move with the industry value standard. Not to say that Apple’s giving you your SSDs on the cheap now, but they’re not insanely high compared to other manufactures, just a little Apple taxed.
What’s interesting is that the MacPros are supposed to have very fast SSD’s and if they are faster than their competitor’s counterparts, then they aren’t that unreasonably priced. SSD’s in general, are still quite a bit more expensive than HDDs. There are different grades/speeds of SSDs, so that might be were there is a price difference. Since we don’t necessarily get all of the information about what we are buying, it’s sometimes hard to determine if the price is reasonable, high or excessively high.
This stacking is happening throughout the industry and including processor technologies. Anyone interested in learning more can research Through Silicon Via’s (TSV).
You’re right, I’m just wondering if they have found any heat problems when the chips are implemented in a real world scenario. I would be a little nervous until they have really tested these 3D chip designs. Just my initial reaction.
As someone who stores a lot of music and photos on my computer, I would love to have this kind of storage. I just don’t see Apple doing it, though. At least not any time soon. Their big push right now seems to be on iCloud and cloud storage. Perhaps it will be reserved for the Pro lines of their products?
What I’m looking at is just buying an external Thunderbolt 2 RAID that’s bootable, that way I can just store off the ext RAID and not have to worry about internal storage ever again. :-)
If you want bootable, be careful, not all RAID boxes are bootable, but check out CalDigit, G-Tech, Promise if you want a 4 Drive bay model. I think the speeds are at least 500MB/s+ for RAID 5, and that’s pretty good for most applications.
Obviously, spend some time getting all of the facts about ext RAID boxes. If you haven’t bought one before, there are a lot of things to consider before making your final decision, but a RAID using HDDs is probably the most reliable, fast and affordable solution, unless you are financially capable and can afford those expensive SSD RAID solutions.
I just priced a Dell Alienware and they wanted $250 to add a 250 GB SSD. Apple isn’t the only one that’s greedy.
There is a thing called profit. These computers don’t have a lot of profit and it’s partly because they have to sell at a discount to resellers and distribution companies like CDW that resell to resellers. It’s what they have to charge.
Having been in the computer reseller industry since the mid-80’s the profit margins were a lot higher for the reseller than they are now. What Apple, IBM, Compaq did back then is they artificially lowered the MSRP and then they reduced the reseller markup to remain competitive as they opened up from predominately selling to businesses to consumers. Back prior the internet, most homes did not have a computer. After the internet gave people more reasons to own a computer, they had to bring down the costs because back in the early to mid 80’s the average computer would cost more like $3500 to $5000 for a complete setup with a printer. Now, the average price of an Apple computer is $1200 to $1300 and printers are around $100 for something usable. HUGE difference.
Yeah, I know people bitch and complain when they see the price tag of storage and RAM, but these companies simply have to look at their cost and sales structure and they have to turn a decent profit. What would happen if Apple dropped their prices for add on memory, etc. to compete against the heavily discounted memory, drives, that are being dumped through Amazon, etc.? Their profit margins would drop and then Tim Cook and their CFO, would be looking for a job, OR they would have to lay people off which is what HP and others have had to do.
Apple has actually tried to maintain the profit margins that IBM, Compaq used to have back in the 80’s. Those three used to retain a little over 20% Net Profits to Gross Sales, that’s what was acceptable in the personal computer industry. Now, with the exception of Apple, these PC mfg are lucky if they can retain 5% Net Profits to Gross Sales. That’s why you see companies like Acer go through 3 CEOs within 6 months, or you see companies like Dell go back to being a private company, or HP having tens of thousands of people getting laid off, or companies like IBM, Compaq, AST, etc. getting out completely and just dumping the company to the next idiot that wants to buy the company that was failing.
These companies can’t operate with low Net Profits. HP doesn’t even make any profits from their PC division which is why they combined it with their printer division and now they want to split it off from their software and services division and try to sell off to some idiot that wants low margin business.
From the consumer side, we have to recognize this and deal with it. Not all of the 3rd party drives work as reliably as the name brand companies’ components. Why? They have to typically pass more stringent tests than what they dump on the market, and/or there might be a technical reason as to why one component may not work.
Look up the support forums for companies like Apple or Dell and see what problems there are, with regards to 3rd party RAM, SSD’s or HDDs, people tend to have more problems when they install a third party drive or RAM than using the name brand supplied component. You have to watch the SSDs when you buy one, there are little things that might make one not as good as the next. I have a RAID box where the mfg indicates that certain brands/models of SSD simply won’t work. I know people don’t want to hear this, but the best way to deal with upgrades on a computer is use what the mfg tells you to use and that they will support, they are the mfg and if they can’t support it, then there’s probably some technical reason as to why and it’s not always just to make some money by selling you a marked up component.
I would agree with you on most of that, but I must say that the majority of Apple’s margins do not come selling extra RAM or storage. I’d say Apple can keep the same price – but start the iPhone off with at least 32GB of storage. With Macs, 256GB bare minimum. You know? Apple doesn’t need to be as greedy – they make literally 87% of the profit out of the entire smartphone industry. And Samsung does the same thing with their phones – extra $100 to bump from 32GB to 64GB. Does Samsung have high margins? Not really.
That said, I’m a pretty big Apple supporter. I just think they could be a bit more generous with all their extra cash. (That, and their software department needs to be a lot more efficient.)
Wow… great article until the end. If you follow the history of the notebooks, say MacBook Pro vs. ThinkPad, you will see that Apple has always been the first to offer the most storage. It is really only the iPad that Apple has become “cheap” in offering us what we need (OMG a 256 GB iPad would be sick).
As for the MacBook Pro, I will put my money on that being the first notebook to offer 3.5 GB or 10 GB in the industry.