What do you do about Mac's that are full due to pictures?

[Mainstay]

wow - harsh.

There are all types of users with a wide range of needs and economic constraints.

Is this comparable to the perfomance and reliability of a PCI-e SSD? Absolutely not. No-one is saying that. Would I put my road trip movie collection on it for use while traveling? For sure - at a fraction of the cost. This will go over very well for many of my customers.

The drive is still "local" so will be eligible to be backed up to TM and other cloud services like BackBlaze.

I think it hits a happy middle ground and offers another option for customers to choose.

 

[pcpete]

I must be doing something wrong. I recommend the Transcend Jet Drive 256 GB for ~$160 on Amazon this week https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Je...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=M76DTEZMAKTGJGP36JJQ
Format it, then move the photo library or Music folder to it & update the links. Done. Total cost ~$250 & takes 1/2 an hour. It fits inside the SD card slot that no one ever uses, nothing to lug around or lose. Bonus: customer does not feel like I have taken advantage of them and may possibly recommend my services to their friends.

I have a few thoughts. first off, I think that is a good solution in many cases. One drawback maybe to do with backing up using time machine, does it back up the library if it is on the card? I personally think your prices are a bit low. We would offer a one year warranty on the card but mark it up at a minimum 50% so sell it at 225, plus we would charge $129 labor. We are one of the most expensive shops in town and one of the only ones still in business 10 years later. The point being is you need to make good margins on easy jobs, because you are bound to have some crappy jobs that take too much time and eat your margins. Don't sell your obvious skills short. Your knowledge is super valuable!

 

[pcpete]

You mentioned 1/2 hour labor, but with checking them in and gathering information about their needs, checking them out and showing them what you did, you may have closer to one hour of work on it. Even if you marked the part up only 30%($48), that is leaving you only about $42 for an hour of work labor. That is why I mean those prices are barley enough to make a business out of. Just my opinion.

 

[sapphirescales]

There are all types of users with a wide range of needs and economic constraints

Agreed, but most people with no money aren't buying $2,000 Macbooks and taking thousands of photos on their $1,000 iPhones. Besides, at $160 it's not much more for a 256GB original OEM SSD:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MacBook-Pro...602485?hash=item4d61d183b5:g:it4AAOSwkklZnIFv

I quoted a 1TB SSD, and @BrianofNazareth implies that I'm ripping people off because he can put in some cheapo SD card with 1/4 the capacity and 5% of the speed for less. That's exactly the mentality that makes pizza techs such a pain in this industry. It's all about cheap, cheap, cheap, rather than doing things correctly. Yes, an SD card is an option - an option that everyone already knows about (even end users). But implying that I'm taking advantage of someone because I offer a superior product for more money is totally bananas. Well have fun with that @BrianofNazareth. An SD card was NOT designed to be used like this. When it dies from the constant hammering by the Photos app, I'm glad I won't be the one getting the angry phone call. You should have more respect for your client's data rather than trying to save a few bucks using improper equipment.

 

[Your PCMD]

What do you do about Mac's that are full due to pictures?

Easy

 

[BrianofNazareth]

I quoted a 1TB SSD, and @BrianofNazareth implies that I'm ripping people off because he can put in some cheapo SD card with 1/4 the capacity and 5% of the speed for less. That's exactly the mentality that makes pizza techs such a pain in this industry. It's all about cheap, cheap, cheap, rather than doing things correctly. Yes, an SD card is an option - an option that everyone already knows about (even end users). But implying that I'm taking advantage of someone because I offer a superior product for more money is totally bananas. Well have fun with that @BrianofNazareth. An SD card was NOT designed to be used like this. When it dies from the constant hammering by the Photos app, I'm glad I won't be the one getting the angry phone call. You should have more respect for your client's data rather than trying to save a few bucks using improper equipment.

I implied nothing. Whatever you chose to infer is up to you. My comment was based upon my experiences with my own customers. But thanks for the unwarranted insults. Someone better call Transcend to let them know their product is so horrible!

Where I live in Northern California everyone has a Mac & an iPhone & few want to spend any more money on them & expect them to work flawlessly forever never needing maintenance. They will spend $1000 on a new pair of skis every year and $5000 for a new Mountain Bike but then try to run their business off a 5 year old MacBook Air & spend months to years struggling on hardware that - lets face it - was not really meant for that. The SDCard is sold as a life extender to said MBA to get another year or maybe two out of the old hardware & the customer is aware of the limitations. The Transcend Jet Drive Lite SDCards also come with management software and a lifetime warranty.

 

[timeshifter]

@BrianofNazareth thanks for the idea about the SD card that disappears into the machine. I followed your link. On Amazon they also show other SKUs that fit MacBook Pro Retina and other models. I might even end up picking one up one day for my MBPr. It already has 1TB SSD from the factory and it's about full.

To my knowledge there is no good way to upgrade the SSD storage in newer Mac laptops without a performance hit. MacSales sells SSD kits but they're always slightly slower than the factory bits. I guess you could buy a used Apple OEM SSD on eBay.

Not sure if it was mentioned already, but if they're using Photos and iCloud the way Apple intended you can set the Preferences in Photos to have the Mac "Optimize Mac Storage" to save local space.