It is one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern age. It ranks right alongside “Why do people eat kale?” and “How does a fax machine actually work?”
You are talking, of course, about the catastrophic, brain-melting, universal confusion between Memory (RAM) and Storage (the Hard Disk).
Every single day, someone can walk into an Apple Store—a place that looks like a high-end operating theatre but smells faintly of eucalyptus and smugness—and make a catastrophic error. They say, “My old Mac only had 8GB of RAM, and this new one has 16GB! That’s double! I’m basically a NASA scientist now!” But what they are actually doing is conflating the kitchen counter with the pantry, and they are about to spend a fortune on a disappointment.
Imagine your old computer, or any computer for that matter, is a kitchen.
The RAM, the figure that says 8 or 16GB, is the size of their chopping board. The bigger the chopping board, the more ingredients you can have out at once. You can have your onions, your tomatoes, your herbs, and your questionable bottle of white wine all right there, ready to be used. If you can chop, stir, and season five things simultaneously, you can cook quickly.
The hard disk, the figure that reads 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB, is the pantry. It’s the shelves where you store the 40kg bag of rice and the twelve jars of pickles you’re never going to eat. It’s where you store things. 1TB is the kind of pantry Gordon Ramsay has. 256GB is the kind of pantry you’d find in a one-bedroom apartment above a shoe shop.
Here is where the trap snaps shut. You see “16GB” on the website and you think, “Well, that’s more than 8, so it must be fine.” and you go and order an iMac with 16GB of RAM.
But you haven’t looked at the other number. You haven’t looked at the storage. This is really the only number that matters. Forget RAM…most people won’t need 16GB of RAM in a lifetime, so you’re covered!
But storage… that’s a different matter altogether. You get the wrong-sized hard disk when buying your new Mac, and you’ll be madder than Mad Jack McMad… the winner of the maddest man competition.
And it’s not a simple case of putting in a larger hard disk either because Apple has done something truly malicious with their new machines. They use “Unified Memory”. This isn’t just a fancy marketing term; it means the RAM and hard disk are physically welded to the main computer processor. It makes things faster and more reliable but it also makes things unupgradable after the receipt has been issued and the box opened.
If you take away anything from this rant, let it be this:
Your new Mac will come with enough RAM… don’t look at the RAM figure.
Look at your old Mac’s hard disk and see how big it is and how much of it you are currently using.
The safest bet is… if your old Mac has a 1TB hard disk, make sure your new Mac has a 1TB hard disk. If it’s 512, make sure the new one has 512… and so on.
However, if you want to be really clever about it… look at your old hard disk and see what percentage of the disk you are using.
In this example… I would need a new with a 1TB hard disk
Even if your old Mac has a 1TB hard disk, if you are only using 200GB of it… get a 512GB model and save some money.
If you are using 50% or less of the hard disk you have now… get the next size down.
If you are using 50% or more of the hard disk you have now… get the next size up.
Do not buy a Mac based on how much RAM it has – this, but rather many photos of your garden it can hold in the “larder.” That’s just a big cupboard.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering… how the hell do I find out just how big my old hard disk is…
Click on the Apple menu.
Choose System Settings.
Click on General.
Click on Storage.
or for older Macs.
Click on the Apple menu.
Choose About this Mac.
Click on the Storage tab.
