Hands-On Tech 213 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. Let's talk about Mac storage options for a family computer. Stay tuned. 

Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. I'm Mikah Sargent and today, as is always the case with Hands on Tech, we are answering tech questions. We've got a great one that has come in from Dustin, who is kind of pondering what he should do for a family computer. Here's what Dustin says.

A couple years back, I inherited a 2008 iMac when my uncle passed away. I set it up in our kitchen and absolutely loved having a kitchen computer, so much so that I now want to pick up an M4 iMac to replace it. 2008 was ever so long ago and it's really struggling these days. My wife and I would both be using it and, as a result, I don't know how much storage to get. Normally, I would be absolutely fine with 256 gigabytes, but I genuinely don't know how macOS deals with two users logged into iCloud accounts on one system. We wouldn't store all our iCloud data on it, only pull it in on demand over the web. It would mostly be used for surfing the web, watching media and video chatting. What do you think? So, Dustin, I love this question because it's complicated, and I love a complicated question are only downloaded as needed and you are making sure that your music library is stored in the cloud and you only are downloading music when needed and you make sure that any of the TV shows you buy or rent or the movies that you buy or rent all of that stuff is not stored on device, that you wouldn't need that much storage space and for the most part that is true.

However, due to the nature of the work that I do, I have a personal account, my name, and then I have what I call my Mikah Twit account and quite literally that is what that account is called First name, Mikah, last name Twit, and I do most of the kind of like screen recording and showing how Mac OS works with the Mikah twit account, because it lets me keep it set to a default profile that looks like most people's Macs look, meaning that there aren't my customizations that I do to change Mac OS, like the, where, the, the, where I've got my different stuff, like the dock, or how I have things set up. That means that I'm very familiar with what it means to have an account that frankly, a macOS account that frankly does have a lot downloaded and an account that does not loaded and an account that does not. And here's the thing Even without store and I also should note that I have almost all of mine set the same way that photos and music and all of that is downloaded as needed and everything else is stored in the cloud One would think that that means that there's not a whole lot of storage space that gets taken up locally, but the problem is, each instance of Mac OS account is going to have its own home folder that is going to include different applications and application settings and cache files and all sorts of stuff that are specific to that user and depending on how you have other third-party apps set up. You talk about surfing the web. Are you using Safari? Are you using Chrome? Are you using Firefox? Watching media Are you doing that from the TV app? Are you doing that from online in a browser, because you're watching I don't know Amazon Prime or something, and video chatting? Are you using Zoom? What tools are you using? They may have different settings for how those devices are, or rather how those files are stored locally on your device.

So the thing about macOS is and the thing about a Mac is that once you have the storage space selected. That's it, that's all. It's there, it's done, and so because of that, you can't really undo a boo-boo Once you've locked into 256 gigabytes of storage space. If you find yourself needing more, you can plug in a hard drive, but when it comes to it just being macOS itself, that doesn't really work. It is some people, to save storage space, will sort of put their photos library or their music library on an external hard drive. Right, and that's fine. But when you've just got user accounts, and if you perhaps do time machine backups or you are trying to again watch TV shows that are in the TV app or whatever that happens to be, a lot of that stuff gets downloaded in the background and a lot of it can be removed.

But what you'll end up running into, my biggest concern is that your account will start to collect some stuff, and then your wife's account will start to collect some stuff, and then you go back on to do something else, and now you're suddenly having to manage the storage space because you're running out of storage space. That, for me, is enough to want to bump it up by one degree to the next storage option, just to make sure that there's plenty of room for both of you to exist. Just to make sure that there's plenty of room for both of you to exist, because there have been a couple of times where my Twit account and my main account have run into some storage space issues Because, again, even though the underlying system is pulling from the same files and is pulling from the same you know data, each of those accounts on the network gets its own set of documents and music and other folders that are in your application, or rather your home folder, and that means that they all start to kind of spread out and make room for themselves, and then you're suddenly running up against okay, what do I have to get rid of? How do I have to make an adjustment here? Oh, I just wanted to sit down and watch the show but I can't. So if you can swing it, I really do feel, Dustin, that the next storage space of 512 is going to be a better choice for you versus the 256. That said, you did not include in your email what the storage space of your current 2008 iMac is and, depending on how things have been for that 2008 iMac and how much storage space that has, that could help inform your decision. So, if that 2008 iMac is at 256 gigabytes and you've used it for, I guess, since 2008,. Whenever you started using it and you haven't had issues, you haven't needed to sort of make adjustments to how the files are stored, then you're probably good to go. But given that we don't know I don't know how much storage space is on there that for all I know, maybe your uncle invested in a very hefty bit of storage and so in that case it's got a lot more to spread out into and is not an issue. So yeah, I know that it's always a complicated question and it always comes down to budgetary requirements and what somebody's comfortable with doing. If you feel good about just having to potentially manage storage between the two accounts, then 256 is enough, especially if this is just kind of a shared machine that you have as a media viewer, video chatter, web surfer. But for me, I want to make sure that I don't have to worry about that, that I don't have that inconvenience of you know, running into an issue of being able to have space for my account and not require my significant other to log in and delete stuff from theirs, and then I do it and then we sort of get somewhere that's close. That gets messy. So, Dustin, thank you for taking the time to write in with this question Again, a really juicy one, I think, and I appreciate it.

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0:11:02 - Leo Laporte
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