iPhone vs imac storage

Did you check the graph for the storage on your Mac and compare it to the one on your iPhone?

See used and available storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage? - Apple Support

The size for Apps and iOS is optimized for storage size on your iPhone, because you can't change the size of your SSD, whereas you can buy a Mac, having much more usable space on the drive.

User wrote " when I migrate all data from my old iMac onto my new 2021 24” IMac with 512GB of storage,my new IMac registers that I have only approx. 130GB of 512GB of storage available despite"

Having Migrated Everything from another computer to the new computer,.

What was existing on the new computer Before the migration took place and ADD all the Data from the Previous computer and presto - the available space on the new computer is as you have outlined above

I suspect the iPhone is designed to be ultra space efficient; the iMac is designed too be a workhorse. A bit like the difference between a Shetland pony and a Clydesdale.

An iMac provides greater capabilities with greater and different programming. I want my iMac to be more powerful than my iPhone ... by a long shot. And if that means I have to buy greater space for the more powerful unit, with greater attributes and abilities, I do just that.

There is a program called Daisy Disk that shows where every bit of storage is being used on your Mac. The most information is provided when you tell it to look as an Administrator and enter an Administrator password.

One thing you did not mention is email. Depending on the type of email you are using, some IMAP and MS-Exchange accounts will completely mirror all the email on the Mac, but will not physically download it all to the iPhone until access to specific emails is requested. Also, sometimes attachments are not downloaded (to the iPhone) until requested. For me this results in close to 100 GB difference, largely in the email attachments, but your situation may be different. And 100 GB would not make up all the difference you have noted, but you could run a program like Daisy Disk on the Mac and compare it to the Storage info available in the settings on your iPhone (it will show you where your iPhone storage is being used and how much, for each app on the iPhone).

There may also be differences in how Messages (iMessage) are stored on the phone versus the Mac. Again, I'm not sure this amounts to the large difference you see, but it might account for part of it.

In addition, if you do iPhone backups on your Mac, each of those may take up tens of GB (not the full 60 GB but a good portion of it).

And, the Mac stores "snapshots" that are used in Time Machine, these take up disk space and reduce the amount that is available but the Mac deletes those to make more space available when disk space runs short.

Well at least you had the presence of mind to use the Apple 14 Day Return Policy, no questions asked.

Good Work there

If you what to have a better understanding, suggest reading from this link about APFS / GUID drive and specific to M1 / M1 Apple Silicon Computers. https://eclecticlight.co/2022/05/18/how-much-free-space-does-an-apfs-disk-need/

You might be surprised that even before the new machine was started up, there was already space used on the drive. That is even before the Actual Operations System ( Monterey ) was installed at the Factory.

Then and depending on your Options for Additional Apple Software to be Customized installed, the 512 GB SSD was already using some semi serious space. Adding a Migration from Old to New computer - Real Estate on the drive became an issue for your computer needs.

You're welcome 🙂

Welcome