It has always amazed me how many people are apparently running their systems with almost all of their storage space in use. You can fill up a 256GB or 500GB storage device pretty quickly with photos, videos, and music.
That’s what happens when people can’t afford the extortionate Apple storage upgrades when purchasing a Mac, and have soldered on NAND.
Do you and your cohorts ever get tired of playing that broken record?
No, but we do get tired of overpaying for memory and SSD space. Do you ever get tired of making excuses for Apple’s memory prices?
Example: M1 Mac Mini 512 vs 256GB SSD is $899 vs $699. A 250GB SSD is $55, a 500GB SSD is $80. Suddenly $25 becomes $200???
Yes, because you are likely looking at 2.5" SATA SSDs for your low price point.
Apple's SSD storage is many times faster than that.
"as Macs with a T2 security chip can suffer data loss when FileVault 2 encryption is activated. As detailed by Mr. Macintosh, users are unable to use their Mac's admin password to initiate the recovery process."
This doesn't mean some random form of data lose, it just means you're unable to regain access to the disk, right?
Glad I splurged for a 2TB disk with a 3 their deep backup routine!
i have a 4 tier backup routine.
1) apple time capsule 3tb 2) SSD 1tb 3) SSD 0.5tb 4) HD 2TB
This is excellent, especially if one or more are stores offsite. It’s also not a likely scenario for average computer users.
Apple need to fix their internal developer culture and start testing their dogdamned product again.
That 35.5GB free space requirement is surprisingly large for an installer that itself is “only” a bit over 12GB for the complete Big Sur version. Apple has made some useful changes to iOS to allow system updates to be smaller and install within reduced free storage space. Sound like the macOS group should be talking to their colleagues about that.
It’s been our experience at the office that most ordinary users don’t really keep track of disk space (and some don’t even know how), forcing me to stop buying 256GB Macs, even though we’re nominally working from file servers.
It does a snapshot of your current system volume (14GB on my current Big Sur), that doesn't consume storage space right away. You need the space for the download - 12GB. You need the space for the uncompressed download - ?????. Then a new logical volume for the system is created for the new OS version - 14GB. I can easily see how this adds up to the required 35.5GB free space - 12+(12+)+14...
This does not excuse the installer for not confirming enough free space!
Second NOTHING justifies locking Apple locking access to data owned by people even in security schemes. I noticed that even security is so skewed on Big Sur after upgrading that downloading older Catalina just to make USB stick so it could be used on other computer and you cannot remove that downloaded file from Big Sur unless you go through hoops of disabling SIP (Apple, really? Cannot remove downloaded files to clean up disk in Application space? No wonder that regular user who does not care about crazy steps of SIP may run out of space by mistake just by accumulating some files and apps).
I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I've never had any issue downloading & the removing older versions of macOS on any newer version of macOS. Never had to touch SIP.
On my 2018 Mac mini running Big Sur, I just downloaded the latest patched version of Catalina, moved it to a network drive for safe storage, and deleted the downloaded installer. Didn't have to mess with SIP (which is enabled).
It has always amazed me how many people are apparently running their systems with almost all of their storage space in use. You can fill up a 256GB or 500GB storage device pretty quickly with photos, videos, and music.
That’s what happens when people can’t afford the extortionate Apple storage upgrades when purchasing a Mac, and have soldered on NAND.
Do you and your cohorts ever get tired of playing that broken record?
No, but we do get tired of overpaying for memory and SSD space. Do you ever get tired of making excuses for Apple’s memory prices?
Example: M1 Mac Mini 512 vs 256GB SSD is $899 vs $699. A 250GB SSD is $55, a 500GB SSD is $80. Suddenly $25 becomes $200???
If the prices are too high, why do you pay it? Vote with your wallet!!!!
I imagine another reason for this is the complexity (bloat?) of the modern macOS installers. They shuffle partitions around, add partitions (preboot, VM, EFI, recovery), switch and upgrade partition schemes, fiddle around with partition types, move "incompatible" files into a folder, convert from CoreStorage to APFS containers, switch from HFS+ to APFS, fiddle with APFS versions, add snapshots, then move user data to a separate partition, and add hard links to user data. Then after all that it upgrades the recovery partition. No wonder it miscalculates the required space occasionally
The installer installs into a folder then "shoves" the contents to where it's supposed to be, which is supposed to avoid things like this, though that won't help fiddling with partitions.
More accurately, the installer installs to a new logical volume, which happens to share the same free space as the existing volumes, of which the current system volume had a snapshot taken. Then after reboot, it removes the old system volume.
Even with my 2020 iMac's 8TB of internal storage, 90% of my data resides in Dropbox/iCloud, and the rest is on a 24TB Promise R8 RAID tower, which is then backed up occasionally to my Promise R6 Tower. My iMac could be erased on a whim and I wouldn't really care.
Cloud services in particular have been a godsend for me. It simplified my digital life immensely.
You won't find any of that in the general user land and lots of users are still on copper based ADSL. Uploading a fully loaded system to the cloud isn't an option.
Apple has historically been on the low side of internal storage. Often the ridiculously low side. Pair that with high starting prices and exorbitant BTO RAM prices and users will ultimately try to squeeze by with the base storage option. I can't fault them for that.
Problems like these should never ever reach user land.
Comments
Apple's SSD storage is many times faster than that.
Apple need to fix their internal developer culture and start testing their dogdamned product again.
This does not excuse the installer for not confirming enough free space!
I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I've never had any issue downloading & the removing older versions of macOS on any newer version of macOS. Never had to touch SIP.
On my 2018 Mac mini running Big Sur, I just downloaded the latest patched version of Catalina, moved it to a network drive for safe storage, and deleted the downloaded installer. Didn't have to mess with SIP (which is enabled).
If the prices are too high, why do you pay it? Vote with your wallet!!!!
Or maybe you feel there's still value there...
More accurately, the installer installs to a new logical volume, which happens to share the same free space as the existing volumes, of which the current system volume had a snapshot taken. Then after reboot, it removes the old system volume.
Apple has historically been on the low side of internal storage. Often the ridiculously low side. Pair that with high starting prices and exorbitant BTO RAM prices and users will ultimately try to squeeze by with the base storage option. I can't fault them for that.
Problems like these should never ever reach user land.