Can someone help me pull the trigger here?
I can't decide between the two (both 13" retina):

2.6GHz
256GB SSD
16GB RAM

OR

2.6GHz
512GB SSD
8GB RAM

If I really had to choose between the two, which one do you think is better?
Please pardon my noobness :(

In my opinion, I'd go with the the bigger SSD over the ram upgrade. 8GB is more than enough for almost anything you'd want to do.

I have the 15 inch retina with a 256GB SSD and I've found it a little bit limiting, space-wise, but that's just me.

Unless you are doing editing/simulation/coding and alot of it. the ssd would hands down be bettr

I am a PC guy but decided to give a Mac a try. Even though it doesn't come cheap but the quality we pay for surpasses what we expect out of it. So really, it pays for itself.

I've had it for five years through the abuse it endured. It fell out of my backpack, fell off my desk, my bed, scratches and dents, etc. Although I didn't precariously take care of it after I owned it for so long, it treated me really well. I try to do the same.

I decided to put Windows 7 and then Windows 8 on it (and my model doesn't have Windows 8 support) and it performed awesomely. Especially when I updated the ram and replace the HDD to SSD.

The price may seem outrageous but I'd rather buy quality over cheap hardware. For a price of 1 Mac, you can get yourself at least decent 4 laptops but it won't last as long. I've had Gateway, Acer, and Dell (before ASUS gained a foothold in the market) and Mac blows them all in the water in terms of laptop life and quality.

It's your call.

Thanks everyone, I've decided to go for the 512GB SSD. I've been monitoring my RAM usage and it never exceeded 5.10GB

Originally Posted by Afzal

Spoken like a person who's never used a Mac on a daily basis. I'd argue that it's waaaaaay easier to pirate on OS X than Windows.

lol, correct identification but as I said, I use indie apps for art or writing, and in my experience those have taken a long time to be made available for macs. it also works the other way sometimes where programs are mac-compatible only until the pc version is released much later.

I find them quite useless. There might be a reason while Mac computers have dual booting while Windows PCs dont....

The 3D modeling software used in eng is not made for macs so that made up my mind very fast.

Originally Posted by tylern

I find them quite useless. There might be a reason while Mac computers have dual booting while Windows PCs dont....

The 3D modeling software used in eng is not made for macs so that made up my mind very fast.

I used Autodesk Inventor for my capstone project all year round. Never had a problem with it.

Originally Posted by tylern

There might be a reason while Mac computers have dual booting while Windows PCs dont....

You can dual-boot any computer, regardless of the operating system. Apple just won't let you install OS X on non-Apple hardware (not that it's impossible); you can always dual-boot Linux.