NEWS YOU CAN USE: iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 16 Pro: Here’s everything new.

Apple has big storage changes coming to this year’s iPhone 17 lineup.

All iPhone 17 models, including the Pro and Pro Max, now start at 256GB of storage.

With iPhone 16 Pro, the smaller model started at 128GB while only the Pro Max started at 256GB.

Also new this year: iPhone 17 Pro Max offers the first-ever 2TB storage option.

On the pricing front, despite persistent rumors of price hikes, Apple’s new Pro models have good news.

• iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099: this is technically a $100 increase over iPhone 16 Pro, but with the higher starting storage, it’s actually the same cost as a 256GB 16 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199: exactly the same price as the iPhone 16 Pro Max

If you want to upgrade storage, the 17 Pro Max will cost you $1,399 for 512GB, $1,599 for 1TB, and a whopping $1,999 for 2TB. iPhone 17 Pro has similar $200 bumps for 512GB and 1TB, but there’s no 2TB option.

The obvious question is, “who needs a two TB iPhone?” YouTubers and other social media video shooters could certainly find it appealing, as this 2023 article at Lifewire suggests:

“If iPhone brings USB-C and up to 2TB of storage internal, then if you were on the road and running out of space on your laptop, you could potentially transfer over a bunch of your files to your phone temporarily until you get home to clear things off,” filmmaker Travis Johansen told Lifewire via email. “A huge benefit of having a two terabyte phone is also just the fact that shooting 360 video in 4k or even 8K takes a ton of space.”

Record With ‘Reckless Abandon’

As the iPhone’s video capabilities improve, professionals can shoot TV shows and movies with just a phone. But at that level, storage fills up fast, and because there is no option for external storage on the iPhone (no SD cards, for example), you need to make sure you have enough space.

It’s not just movie makers either. Musicians can also fill up their SSDs pretty fast, as can podcasters, especially video podcasters, or folks recording multiple audio streams from several participants.

“For me, as a podcaster and content creator, I am definitely interested in the freedom of having that much space to be able to record, edit and store all of the episode assets without being tethered to the cloud,” podcaster Nate Runkel told Lifewire via email. “I like that I will have essentially a mobile podcast studio in my pocket that I will not have to worry about running out of space in the middle of a project and will be able to edit on the fly. It will also grant me the freedom to shoot videos in 4K with reckless abandon and zero fear.”

Also, it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come in 70 years. This 1956 photo gives a sense of how much physical space a five megabyte hard drive required:

Now two terabytes fits in your hand.

So how are Apple’s AI features, which proved to be an enormous bust this year, after last fall’s massive hype, coming along? This doesn’t sound promising: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event.