Chapter 4
Storage
How has storage changed for users over the last five years?
Not surprisingly, the size and speed of drives have come up while the cost has gone down, and Apple is strongly pushing consumers to flash and solid-state drives (SSDs) in its product lines. Today, only the low-end Mac mini and MacBook Pro models offer spinning 5400 RPM drives (7200 RPM is not an option), and only the iMac offers 5400 and 7200 RPM drives. Everything else from MacBook to Mac Pro is flash or SSD, which offers 5x the performance of 7200 RPM drives according to Apple’s web site. Drives shipped with a minimum of 160 GB in 2010, compared to a minimum of 500 GB five years later.
Fusion drives, built on Apple’s Core Storage technology introduced in 2012, ...
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