2023 MacBook Pro SSD has performance drop similar to M2 MacBook Air

Smart way to cut costs because for a majority of users it's still fast enough. A SATA SSD would be enough too.

I am still annoyed at Apple that they lock down the hard drives so much. I would rather pay $200 more for a NVMe slot than for more storage soldered on the motherboard.

The mac mini pricing makes it look even worse. A full desktop pc is $600 but adding 256gb of storage is $200?? A regular 512gb nvme goes for under 40 dollars.