Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/apple-keeps-flogging-8gb-of-ram-for-its-mac-computers-but-its-still-a-dead-horse/Open linkView original on lemmy.world593
Comments305
But but the memory is more efficient, 8 is actually 16!
LMAOOOOOOO 🤡
To be fair I had an 8Gb M1 Mac mini for about a year and never even once felt like it was lacking memory. I could open as many things as I wanted and it didn’t slow down, so I can kinda see where they were going with this. Not saying it makes that situation much better though.
I think the current base iPhones with 4Gb or 6Gb suffer way more from lack of memory than the 8Gb Macs, and people aren’t taking about this enough.
I needed a cheap laptop for audio, so i decided to pick up a second hand m1 air a couple months ago.
It is honestly pretty impressive for the price, I generally don't have issues either. Everything is snappy, and it handles multitasking fine. Its even faster than my $2000+ PC at several things, which frustrates me greatly.
However... When running ableton live (or presumably anything that involves heavy image, video, or audio editing), 8gb of ram is honestly not enough. If you push it too hard, it hangs for a second, then the offending app will just close.
Also there is a weird delay in factorio, absolutely unacceptable.
Yeah, audio and video workloads really need the ram. The base model is fine for content consumption though.
A 2k pc can game. You can't really game on mac
Linux till I die, am I right.
This place is yawn at times.
Ya it's kind of silly.
I dual boot if you were concerned
You didn’t even ask which several things OP was referring to.
Base 8GB MacBooks also tend to have base storage, meaning a single NVMe controller instead of dual. If you’re relying on virtual memory then it would make sense to get the Mac that has double the SSD bandwidth. I bought a base M1 Mac Mini for the kids and it’s pretty good for their needs, but they tend to prefer the old i3 win 10 PC connected to the same monitor. The M1 Mini could run Intel Civ 6 faster than my 32GB i7 MacBook Pro could, which surprised me.
I have a old HP Elitebook with 8GB ram with Windows 10 and even on Windows I don’t notice slowdowns for daily tasks. Yes the machine swaps but because of the SSD you don’t notice much performance decrease. However, because it’s constant swapping the lifetime of the SSD will decrease and that’s exactly the problem of 8GB machines these days. Yes the machine stays fast (Windows or OSX it really does not matter) but there is extra load on the SSD.
Don’t believe Apple marketing bullshit that 8GB is enough because of the “super duper advanced memory management” of OSX. If it really was enough then Apple would not release MacBooks with 16+ GB ram. The only reason that the 8GB MBP still exists is to sell more 16+ GB machines.
I have an old 8GB Toshiba laptop that I threw an SSD into and slapped Pop_OS! on for fun. There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros that can breathe life into older hardware if you want to tinker with them. If nothing else, my old Toshiba is good for just basic Internet usage.
The thing you didn’t notice is that you significantly decreased the service life of the permanent storage on the device, because it ABSOLUTELY dips into swap far more frequently than models with more memory, and all high-speed SSD technologies that I’m aware of have limited lifetime write capacity before performance and fidelity start to degrade.
The MBPs (MBAs too in my opinion, but that’s more debate as it’s the “entry level” laptop) should have a minimum ram config of 16gb. 8gb MBP is honestly a really dumb spec level to purchase anyways - if you want something with that little RAM in laptop form, get the MBA.
People have proven that this problem was massively exaggerated. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 10-15 years the SSDs of the vast majority of these computers will be perfectly fine (but only time will tell)
NO! No fair.
I delivered a season of 4k animations for a network show using Motion, AE, C4D, Ps, AI…all using a base model M1 Mini (8/256), with zero problems.
Of course more would be better, but unless you’ve actually used one, it’s hard to imagine how well it works. I tried mentioning this in another post, but it’s all Apple hate all the way down here
To be honest, I can still do most of my work on my old Core2Quad 4GB DDR2 PC, when using Linux.
And as long as I setup my swap properly, I can also keep as many Firefox tabs open as I want , as I tend to forget tabs (running out of brain memory) before I run out of RAM.
But I just like my 64GB RAM.
Increasing swap on Linux is a great way to save money on cloud servers btw. One nice thing on Mac is that there is no swap file that you need to manage. System handles it transparently. Firefox (and really all modern browsers) require a ridiculous of RAM if you use them like you and I do.
Core2Quad?
That thing is a space heater that can do some math.
My point being, "I can work on it", can be used even on a space heater.
Same for the IBM R52, which I no longer turn on, because a Pi would be better.
People are, just not PC spec heads that like to compare numbers. Practical use is the only real comparison.
Actually the opposite is true for a basic spec. like RAM. People may not understand CPU/GPU naming conventions. BUT they understand something simple like 16>8.
They also understand their "old slow" PC probably had 8gb and they want to UPGRADE so when they see this "new" mac with same amount of ram they immediately think slow whether it is or not...
Some of the YouTubers comparing the new MacBook found that the 16GB Air smoked the 8GB version for creative tasks and rendering, but they found no difference between 16 GB and 24GB. Seems like Apple could up the RAM to 12 GB and see a big improvement.
UM on an SoC is not the same thing as RAM on a PC with a CPU and GPU. It’s purely a storage liaison, since data is passed directly from core to core.
It’s not that it’s more efficient, it’s simply used less than in conventional PC architecture.
MacOS is also designed specifically to leverage the hardware, so practical use is the only legitimate comparison to a PC.
Maybe PC Gamer isn’t the most informed reviewer of technology outside of PCs.
It's not that you're wrong from a philosophical perspective with that, it's that you're factually incorrect. Memory addresses don't suddenly shrink or expand depending on where they exist on the bus or the CPU. Being on the SoC doesn't magically make RAM used less by the OS and applications, as the mach kernel, Darwin, and various MacOS layers still address the same amount of memory as they would on traditional PC architecture.
Memory is memory, just like glass is glass, and glass will still scratch at a level 7 just like 8GB of RAM holds the same amount of information as.....8GB of RAM.
The article actually quantitatively tests this too by pointing out their memory usage with Chrome and different numbers of tabs open.
Looks like you didn't read the article.
You should familiarize yourself with the architecture before commenting. The GPU is broken into several cores of the SoC, along with the roles of the CPU. The UM is not part of the SoC. However, data is passed from what could be referred to as the CPU to what could be referred to as the GPU without interacting with UM.
I'm actually deeply familiar with the architecture, and how caches, memory, and UM's work. I understand all of that. None of that changes the storage available. Having high memory bandwidth to load/unload memory addresses doesn't fix the issue of the environment easily exceeding 8GB. I also understand the caching principles and how you actually want RAM utilization to be higher for faster responsiveness. 8GB is still 8GB, and a joke.
Use your experience and analyze Apple’s M SoC before we continue this conversation.
A weeklong battery life, efficient cores, rapid response time, and great software environment make it a great choice......at 16GB for my needs. I will not recommend 8GB to any user at all going forward. It's marketing malarkey with no future proofing, degrading the viable longevity of the machine.
There's no conversation to continue. Glass is glass, and 8GB is 8GB, as well as being a joke.
If it’s great for your needs, the base model isn’t for you. You can stream video with have 30 tabs open in Safari and only use 4.6GB of UM on an M1 Mac. I just verified for you.
What a load of nonsense. You've got no idea how a computer works. RAM isn't just used for passing data between cores. If anything that's more the role of cache although even that isn't strictly accurate.
Whether a system has a discrete GPU or not doesn't really factor into the discussion one way or another, although even if it did having more RAM would be even more important without a discrete GPU because a portion of the system RAM gets utilized as VRAM.
Guessing you haven't rear the article. That quote is from apple not author, he is actually 100% against it throughout the article.
This is a truly terrible article.
Like why not test these things? This just sounds like ai generated garbage.
That being said, 8gb is an abysmally low amount of ram in 2024. I had a mid range surface in 2014 that had that much ram. And the upcharge for more is quite ridiculous too.
I know it's pc ram but I bought 64gb of ddr4 3600mhz for like $130. How on earth is apple charging $200 for 8!!!!
Looks like you didn't read the article either.
Earlier it's mentioned that they have 15 tabs open. I don't like a lot of things they do in "gaming journalism" but on this article they're spot on. Apple is full of shit in saying 8GB is enough by today's standards. 8GB is a fuckin joke, and you can't add any RAM later.
That doesn't make sense. I have the 8GB M2 and don't have any issues with 20+ tabs, video calling, torrents, Luminar, Little Snitch, etc open right now.
15 tabs of Safari, which is demonstrably a better browser by some opinions due to its efficiency and available privacy configuration options. What if you prefer Chrome or Firefox?
I will argue in Apple's defense that their stack includes very effective libraries that intrinsically made applications on Mac OS better in many regards, but 8GB is still 8GB, and an SoC isn't upgradeable. Competition has far cheaper 16GB options, and Apple is back to looking like complete assholes again.
I'm using Chrome.
The fact you got downvoted for someone else's assumption (that was upvoted) makes me chuckle. There's some serious Apple hating going on here*.
*sometimes deserved. Not really in this case.
That’s because PC people try to equate specs in dissimilar architecture with an OS that is not written explicitly to utilize that architecture. They haven’t read enough about it or experienced it in practice to have an informed opinion. We can get downvoted together on our “sub standard hardware” that works wonderfully. lol
The only memory-utilization-related advantage gained by sharing memory between the CPU and GPU is zero-copy operations between the CPU and GPU. The occasional texture upload and framebuffer access is nowhere near enough to make 8 GiB the functional equivalent of 16 GiB.
If you want to see something "written explicitly to utilize [a unified memory] architecture," look no further than the Nintendo Switch. The operating system and applications are designed specifically for the hardware, and even first-party titles are choked by the hardware's memory capacity and bandwidth.
The Tegra is similar being an SoC, however it does not possess nearly as many dedicated independent processing cores designed around specialized processes.
The M1 has 10-core CPU with 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores, a 16-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine, and all with 200GB/s memory bandwidth.
Oh no I read the article, I just don't consider that testing.
It's not really apt to compare using ram on a browser on one computer and extract that to another, there's a lot of complicated ram and cache management that happens in the background.
Testing would involve getting a 8gb ram Mac computer and running common tasks to see if you can measure poorer performance, be it lag, stutters or frame drops.
You do have a point, but I think the intent of the article is to convey the common understanding that Apple is leaning on sales tactics to convince people of a thing that anyone with technical acumen sees through immediately. Regardless of how efficient Mach/Darwin is, it's still apples to apples (pun intended) to understand how quickly 8GB fills up in 2024. For those who need a fully quantitative performance measurement between 8 and 16GB, with enough applications loaded to display the thrashing that starts happening, they're not really the audience. THAT audience is busy reading about gardening tips, lifestyle, and celebrity gossip.
Written by someone who apparently has no understanding of virtual memory. Chrome may claim 500MB per tab but I'll eat my hat if the majority of that isn't shared between tabs and paged out.
If I'm misunderstanding then how the fuck is chrome with it's 35+ open tabs functioning on my 16GB M1 machine (with a full other application load including IDE's and docker (with 8GB allocated)
I have plenty of understanding of what virtual memory memory is. For one, virtual memory is orders of magnitude slower than physical RAM.
My point still stands, 8gb is fine if all you do is light web browsing and writing documents which is basically nothing, but at that point you don't need a 2024 Macbook anything, you could use a older M1 Macbook and be perfectly happy.
All web browsers will use up as much ram as possible, that doesn't mean they need it.
Even you don't have a device with 8gb of memory, just because it's usable doesn't mean that's it's optimal, or that it's not a ripoff to charge $200 for another 8gb.
Your 64 gigs of ram probably uses 10x the power and takes up significantly more space than the single memory chip that's on the M1-M3s die. And yet it still has less bandwidth than the M1, and on top of that the M1 utilizes it more efficiently than a "normal" desktop or laptop can since there's one pool of memory for RAM RAM and VRAM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#:~:text=While%20the%20M1%20SoC%20has%2066.67GB/s%20memory%20bandwidth
Chat GPT guestimates 57GB/s for dual channel DDR4 at 3600mhz
$1000 for 8 gigs of RAM in the Air is whatever. $1200 for 8 gigs of ram in the Pro was not great. But 1600 for 8 gigs of ram in the new M3 MBP is really awful.
That's not how it works, unfortunately.
A UMA (unified memory architecture) enables zero-copy texture uploads and frame buffer access, but that's not likely to constitute notable memory savings outside games or GPU-accelerated photo editing. Most of the memory is going to be consumed by applications running on the CPU anyway, and that's not something that can be improved by sharing memory between the CPU and GPU.
It's by necessity that the M1 has higher memory bandwidth. UMA comes with the drawback of the GPU and CPU having to share that memory, and there's only so much bandwidth to go around. GPU cores are bandwidth hungry, which is mitigated by either using a pile of L2 cache or by giving the system better memory bandwidth.
Memory bandwidth is useless if you run out of memory and need to swap.
GPU not having it's own pool of memory is really going to help to.
Pigs fly in apple land.
Thanks to the modern web, web browsing of one of the most RAM intensive tasks. Add a few Electron based apps and you're in hell.
For browsing the web 4 GB is enough, unless you do some multitasking. Still I wouldn't buy a computer with less than 8 GB of RAM nowadays.
Multitasking = more than one tab and the background tabs not immediately put to sleep.
This is called capturing consumer surplus through segmentation. There's a pretty good explanation of it here.
The long and short of it is that some people are just perfectly fine spending more money on a macbook, and apple wants to give them a good enough excuse to do so.
I think it's mostly to have a price tag that doesn't immediately turn off people.
Yes, Apple is expensive in general, however people are generally fine with paying a premium. But if they'd come at you immediately with the full price for a reasonably specced machine, it would still turn many people away.
Instead they fix you on with a high, but still somewhat reasonable price and then upsell you in steps for everything. Like sure you could buy the 128gb iPhone pro, but then the storage will fill up fast with photos and videos. A great camera system being the huge selling point of the device.
On a side note I actually find the 256gb non upgradeable/replaceable ssd much more egregious, than the 8gb RAM.
As you say, for people with basic needs (and that is actually a quite large group), it is enough for daily use. Those people just browse the Web, view photos and write short documents in word. However especially if they have an iPhone and take lots of picture/videos, they will still fill up that storage fast. And then it gets really frustrating, unless you maybe pay even more to outsource everything to the icloud and pay monthly.
The low ram and storage are to drive you up 2 tiers.
By the time you go "256gb isn't enough storage, so I'll pay 10% more for something useable", you are pretty much at the stage of "if I'm spending this much, I might as well get the ram upgrade as well". And suddenly you are paying $500 more.
Exactly my point. Not sure if there is a better term, but in some way it is a bait-and-switch tactic.
With the "starting at" sticker price of the lowest configuration they get you into the mindset of wanting (and being able to afford) their premium device. And then once you are mentally commited they it's the choice between spending even more or compromising on a premium device (where you really should have to).
An extra $100 takes you from 8GB to 64GB on a PC if you install it yourself.
If you have a laptop that supports that, yeah. Which you should, but definitely isn't always true.
Used to be true on Macs...good ol' days
That seems too cheap.
not by much; here in central europe a 2 module 64gb kit costs about 125€ (~135$ incl. VAT). not the greatest timings, but very much faster than the swapfile.
I do wish Apple had dimm slots for “slow” ram just to get the numbers up. IMO the 8GB model isn’t a serious offer and is to be ignored by anyone who tells the difference. That said, If I had only $200 for upgrades on a Mac I’d spend it on ssd. I had a 32/512 MacBook and I wish I’d paid up for 1TB. 16/1TB would’ve been more useful.
When they charge many $100s for an extra 8gb the value of the bare minimum 8gb doesn't look so terrible (if only comparing to Apple). Especially considering the performance of swap on a fast SSD.
8 is fine for a tablet.
8 is not fine for a brand-fucking new state of the art laptop.
"With an apple silicon architecture, 8gb is like 16gb" -some stupid apple flunkey
The irony is that it's arguably the opposite, since the GPU and CPU just have a shared memory pool, rather than having dedicated memory and the shared memory pool.
So if you're watching a 4k video, you might have lost a gigabyte or two just for VRAM.
It's because they think that people only do one thing at a time.
New feature turns off the screen to flush graphics memory so the cpu can process data.
The "touch grass" mode.
They certainly don't want to connect more than one external screen, just ask Tim Apple
That was just after face planting in a Scarface size pile of cocaine as is standard procedure with all apple marketing teams
It's not even enough for a tablet and apple know it, which is why the iPad Pro has 16GB of RAM
Sure or a phone.
My iPad has 3GB RAM and honestly that’s enough. I don’t know what you do on your tablet, but for my everyday activities I have never felt limited
iPads don't really multitask so it is super easy to hide the low ram with swap.
We’re talking about laptops though. I was just using tablets as a comparison point.
I replied to the wrong comment
It's totally so they can list a really low "starting at" price and then upsell marked up parts in the configurator.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article and just came in to shit on scummy business practices that I made assumptions about.
Your assumption is based and factual
8GB of RAM is perfectly usable for basic things, but on a new computer, with that price, non-upgradable... ech...
Less is more, removing features is a innovation - apple
and selling it with an extra apple logo is the newest thing.
my 3 year old phone has more RAM than that
This is nothing to brag about, when Android needs this to run smoothly, compared to the same performance of a 6 GB RAM iPhone.
Edit: Just look at benchmarks and every day use cases. How exactly has any Android smartphone ever achieved any significant speed gains by using huge amounts of RAM compared to the then-current iPhone model? I agree with the Apple criticism when it comes to computers. When it comes to efficiency of smartphones, Android just seems to have tons of overhead and has always needed significantly more RAM than iPhones while not being faster at all. Maybe we can put the „look at how edgy I am for not using Apple devices“ aside for a moment.
Who let the apple marketing people in here?
I can say that it wasn‘t any of the Android edgelords or Linux neckbeards.
Some of us want to buy tools instead of toys. 4GB was great for the xbox 360 slim. Will it run anything a sane person would get a mac for? Probably not, most mac DAW I've used personally are hungry and 4gb is less than the machine I had my last crash filled experience on.
What most people use a Mac for could be just as well handled by a Chromebook and an Apple decal.
At least in the consumer market. Not knocking graphic artists or any other industry that prefers Apple (though I'm still really not sure why, at this point it seems to go back to things that don't apply anymore)
I work with my Mac every day. It‘s not a toy. I chose the platform in the early 2000s because I liked the OS, the far superior app experience across many 3rd party apps and because I like to work with things I like aesthetically. I chose a 32 GB MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and paid for the upgrade. Because I could and because I wanted to (100% tax deduction helped as well). No need for pity or anything.
Android has a garbage collector, meaning it requires an additional 2GB of RAM of overhead to keep things smooth. iPhones run significantly hotter than Androids, and consume more energy to achieve their performance gains.
It's not true to simply state "one is better than the other". There's various metrics in which either one may be better.
That‘s exactly what I was criticizing. So how is “more RAM = better“ as an absolute statement right, then?
Well, more RAM will always help. An iPhone with more RAM will allow it to perform better than one with less RAM. Similarly, too little RAM will hamper performance regardless of the device.
Okay. But why is it that Android phones don‘t all just have 128 GB of RAM built in, then? I‘m still talking about smartphones only. And there, RAM is completely irrelevant for users unless it‘s a necessity for the OS and for apps to run well. This is the case for Android smartphones. This is not the case for iPhones. Because everything you want to do just works, without thinking about RAM. This has been the case since the iPhone X.
But here it seems to be really hard to accept that getting an iPhone is the far superior choice for many people, also for tech savvy people. While others choose an Android smartphone and are happy with that.
And for computers: just accept that it‘s plain economy calculus to offer 8 GB RAM as standard because this will lead more buyers to choose an upgrade and pay more than the standard price, instead of accusing Apple to offer this without this plan in mind. Just don‘t buy these machines and continue your life as a superior tech being, where companies like Samsung or Dell have the sole purpose to make as little profit as possible.
jfc this is inane.
there's this thing called multitasking, you might have heard of it. when you want to open more than one app and use them all at the same time, GUESS WHAT BRIGHT LIGHTS? Takes more memory.
This is the dumbest shit take I've ever seen.
I‘m talking about smartphones. Funny that you‘d call me bright lights when you even lack the basic skill of reading.
Never had any problems with „multitasking“ there since the iPhone 5.
LOL, you think people don't multitask on smart phones and tablets?
oof.... and yes, on android you can have both open on the same screen at the same time. I don't know about fischer price unix, er, aye-aye-aye-os...
nah, didn't misread, you're def the sharpest tool in the spoon drawer.
Sure. I have just never encountered any problems. I used to, to be honest, as mentioned back with the iPhone 4 where Safari tabs were reloading because of the lack of RAM. But Android had its own problems back then, for example with the update policy of most manufacturers leaving my wife‘s Android phone obsolete after only one year.
What exactly do you do? Hook up your smartphone as a desktop replacement with a bulky USB dongle, firing up some CAD software on two 6K displays while rendering an 8K HDR video in the background? People never disappoint creating completely made-up scenarios just to discredit.
Never talked about tablets, so it’s reading – again!
Zero reason why any modern computer should be less then 16gb
Honestly we're kinda edging up to the point where I think 32gb of ram should be the minimum, especially for heavy use cases like games and production jobs.
Even then, 32GB might be cutting it a bit fine for production or professional work.
Yeah, in my work I don’t even do a lot of 3D rendering, but 64 GB main RAM and at least 8 GB GPU RAM barely manage to cut it performance wise for the GIS and CAD systems we use.
Most heavy games do need 32GB ram. 16GB RAM will overflow to page file and we all run QLC SSDs, it's gonna get corrupt over time being in constant writes.
i havent seen a game (without mods) that required 32gb yet, personally, but its getting close enough to go to 32gb anyway.
Now with mods? Oh boy..I've seem games that require 64gb or more of ram with mods.
Diablo 4 beta was totally 32GB i literally bought a ram kit from 16gb to 32gb after that experience. Cyberpunk 2077 needs over 16gb, and just that if you like to multitask, watch some YouTube or twitch with discord sharing screen and gaming with your friends during these games will need 32gb to avoid over using page file on 16gb. Maybe 24gb is enough with ddr5 kits if your lighter on multitask or don't play the newer unoptimized games.
I play modded cyberpunk and I've never had an issue on 16gb. and I am also a multitasker with multiple windows and other things open and tabbing between them while gaming.
Yeah i didn't have an issue but i noticed all my ram used and my total commit was like 31gb everyday which is a bit concerning for my write limited qlc SSD
this is a trap to upsell you 16 GB or sell you upgrade
You can't upgrade a Macbook's ram, you need to replace the whole machine
for grossly inflated pricing, in proud apple tradition.
It's also a nice way to tax their poorest customers more. A lot of people are keeping their machines way past what apple provides updates for, if the ssd that can't be changed dies (because of constant swapping) faster than what they intended or could keep the machine for, I guess it's too bad for them.
> most powerful chip available in a laptop and arguably one of the greatest overall laptops ever
> 8 gb ram
my phone has 12 GB of ram what the fuck is apple on
It's a strategy to push customers toward the more expensive models. Their markup is massive, it's a blatant profit move.
And, since the ram is soldered to the fucking mobo, you can't upgrade it yourself. It's a ridiculous and craven strategy for a company already nickel and diming their customers.
but the cultists still love them.
They've being doing this for a very long time, and they do it on all their idevices too (with storage).
Their silicon is really good. I'd argue it is mostly because they have a node advantage but it is what it is.
But especially in the MacBook Air it can only really show off its stuff in the short-bursty workloads of casual users (and Geekbench). My four-year-old PC would pull ahead quite quickly on any task when you actually have to run it at load for a while.
It also is perfectly fine for running a few minute long compile cycles - without running into thermal throttling. I guess if you do some hour long stuff it might eventually become an issue - but generally the CPUs available in the Airs seem to be perfectly fine with passive cooling even for longer peak loads. Definitely usable as a developer machine, though, if you can live with the low memory (16GB for the M1, which I have).
I bought some Apple hardware for a customer project - which was pretty much first time seriously touching Apple stuff since the 90s, as i'm not much of a friend of them - and was pretty surprised about performance as well as lack of heat. That thing is now running Linux, and it made me replace my aging Thinkpad x230 with a Macbook Pro - where active cooling clearly is required, but you also get a lot of performance out of it.
The real big thing is that they managed to scale power usage nicely over the complete load range. For the Max/Ultra variants you get comparable performance (and power draw/heat) on high load to the top Ryzen mobile CPUs - but for low load you still get a responsive system at significantly less power draw than the Ryzens.
Intel is playing a completely different game - they did manage to catch up a bit, but generally are still running hot, and are power hogs. Currently it's just a race between Apple and AMD - and AMD is gimped by nobody building proper notebooks with their CPUs. Prices Apple is charging for RAM and SSDs are insane, though - they do get additional performance out of their design (unlike pretty much all x86 notebooks, where soldered RAM will offer the same throughput as a socketed on), but having a M.2 slot for a lower speed extra SSD would be very welcome.
The incoming Snapdragon Elite chips should make for an interesting change to the laptop landscape.
Not entirely sure about that. I have a bunch of systems with the current 8cx, and that's pretty much 10 years behind Apple performance wise, while being similar in heat and power consumed. It is perfectly fine for the average office and webbrowsing workload, though - a 10 year old mobile i7 still is an acceptable CPU for that nowadays, the more problematic areas of IO speed are better with the Snapdragon. (That's also the reason why Apple is getting away with that 8GB thing - the performance impact caused by that still keeps a usable system for the average user. The lie is not that it doesn't work - the lie is that it doesn't have an impact).
From the articles I see about the Snapdragon Elite it seems to have something like double the multicore performance of the 8cx - which is a nice improvement, but still quite a bit away from catching up to the Apple chips. You could have a large percentage of office workers use them and be happy - but for demanding workloads you'd still need to go intel/AMD/Apple. I don't think many companies will go for Windows/Arm when they can't really switch everybody over. Plus, the deployment tools for ARM are not very stable yet - and big parts of what you'd need for doing deployments in an organization have just been available for ARM for a few months now (I've been waiting for that, but didn't have a time to evaluate if they're working).
My 6 year old CHROMEBOOK has 16gb...
My 13 year old MB has 16GB.
It came with 8GB and at some point I spent $50 or so to add another 8GB.
You know, back when upgrading Macs was a thing.
Ok Gramps, we need to get you to bed now
Pretty sad trolling effort
Because Chrome takes up 75% of it.
Laugh. I made fun of Chrome.
Wamp wamp so true
Let's put 100hp in this new apple truck that weighs 9000lbs!
What? Our competitors have 350hp? It doesn't matter! Our 100hp is very efficient and performs just as well!*
*only when compared to light usage and not towing or driving on inclined roads
A more apt analogy would be to use the truck bed size. Horsepower is more akin to the CPU speed.
Most people don’t fill their truck bed just like most people don’t fill their RAM. I’ve had no issues with my family users who just do typical light laptop tasks on 8GB RAM. I think the memory upgrades need to be much, much cheaper, but 8GB works absolutely fine IME. I would like 16GB but it’d be a waste for the other users in my household.
You're in the minority actually.
Why buy an overpriced Mac and not use it to its full potential?
Just for the logo on the back?
How do you know I’m in the minority when I didn’t say how I use my laptop? I don’t get it. I do use it to its potential, and there’s no logo on the back. It’s in a case.
Also not overpriced with the base model, which is what I have.
You just said you never utilize all of your ram, so it's apparent that you don't heavily utilize your machine
I did not say that. I said I’d actually like 16GB. It’s my family users (normal, non nerds) who have no issue with 8GB RAM and having 30+ tabs and two dozen apps running. Memory management handles multitasking very smoothly, and I’ve not found many apps that are limited by 8GB. I’d like 16 for the few times I edit on laptop, typically I use my desktop.
Fine, so why buy them an overpriced Mac if they don't fully utilize it?
My original question is still valid
I disagree it’s overpriced. The base model Air at $850 is great, meets their needs, and decreases the amount of family sysadmin tasks I’d have to do for them if they had Windows or Linux laptops.
Such a weird hill to die on for Apple. How much does it really cost to just add 8GB more RAM? $5?
This is just like the iPhone (lack of) storage and the (lack of) SD cards. Apple is trying to maximize profits by using less RAM and by forcing people into buying more hardware in a few years. Apple does a lot of stuff very well but then they also pull this crap.
Acknowledging that 8GB only delivers mediocre performance at best would upset anyone who already bought a device with only 8GB. And as later upgrades are not supported by Apple it would abandon these users like buyers of a 1st gen Apple device...
The fun think is that I don't think apple would mind abandoning these people. Most of them would just buy a new device.
My guess is they're going to sell like hotcakes to clueless parents whose kids insist their first laptop needs to be apple
Its all on-die not on the board, so Apple gets to charge you more.
My mid-range smartphone from 2022 has 8gb of ram. I paid $250 for it brand new.
Do you have a Kimovil link for this incredible phone?
Poco x3 pro 8/256, and it have 3.5 jack and microsd slot, i still using one, in fact I'm writing from it right now
Yeah, my (sigh) "Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G 2023" has 8GB. And the 3.5 jack. And an actual fingerprint sensor. And I spent $160, although I bought it used.
Why sigh tho) i always saying that obscure devices have the best peripheral support, no need to buy popular devices because they often skimp on peripherals and overpriced, be proud my man) you have good phone for good money after all
Sigh was because I was about to type out that stupid-ass name :)
I like the phone a lot.
That is the phone I was originally referring to, except mine in the 2022 version. And I understand the sigh. I do it every time someone asks me what kind of phone I have.
https://www.kimovil.com/en/where-to-buy-xiaomi-poco-x3-pro-256gb
Listed at $322 currently, meaning you bought it half price or less in ‘22. Good purchase!
Don't forget 120Hz screen. The phone has a great value. I paid mine €290 two years ago and I am not replacing it any time soon.
Even more, kernel source code is available and xda-developers community on device is active, unofficial support gonna be really long term, since 2 years of usage i just swapped battery on mine once, it's truly a long lived phone
Overpowered Chinese phones sold at minimal margins my beloved
Don't. Unless it's a slightly older Pixel A-series 2nd hand phone. Manufacturers of cheap Android phones skimp on everything and add bullshit crapware. Shit like that is the cause of many "Android sucks" comments.
Ohh that’s sad to hear. I was thinking to get the Samsung Galaxy A14.
The A30 and A50 series are fine to be honest, plenty fast for most people. Not sure about the A10 line though
Don't the new ones have shit processors?
They're okay, nothing to write home about and also not really any better than their predecessors, but they handle day to day tasks just fine
would be a very ecological phone if it had a waste treatment facility built in
Apply phone directly to anus.
Honestly imo 200€ phones are allright, but you do get what you pay. And the A14 at least here in Germany starts at like 120€, which is substantially below 200€. So if you get it and end up comparing it to an iphone, then it most certainly will look lackluster.
I would say that the sweet spot is probably in the 300-350€ range. There you have a decent amount of selection and get some really solid phones that are good for daily drivers. Like the already mentioned pixel A series that gets you clean software and shoots some of the best pictures. Or the samsung a54/55 that gets you a nice allrounder, which still includes a headphone jack and sd-card slot.
The A series is great to be honest.
It's the same as the S series, but for people who don't play high end games or live stream or render videos or don't need to record videos in a high quality that I can't even replay on my other devices.
They're acceptable for basic productivity but very sluggish if you're coming from a flagship device. Get an S10 series if you're looking for something cheap and Samsung
Samsungs come with excellent Windows support right out of the box, so if Windows is you jam it's a good choice. Not familiar with the A14, though. Would advise against cheap Chinese brands.
Windows support? What does that even mean in the context of a smartphone?
Windows Phone Link has: Shared clipboard, notification sync, media player widget, you can even share the Android screen to Windows and run apps from there. It's quite nice. The Samsung file manager and photo gallery also support OneDrive, Samsung Mail has Exchange support.
Phone Link overlaps quite a bit with KDE Connect which also works between two Android devices and comes out of the box with Steam Deck which is why I prefer KDE Connect to Phone Link but that's just me.
Don't do that, I can tell you from experience: Most of them suck, especially cheap Chinese ones.
The Google Pixel 7a is currently $350 and it will get cheaper when the 8a comes out. The 7a will get security updates until May 2028. If you want to get into mobile device privacy/security, a Pixel is an excellent choice. You can install an alternative operating system called GrapheneOS, it's a much more private and secure, improved version of Android. It doesn't include Google spyware and thus also improves battery life. It also extends your feature updates, by default the 7a would only get feature updates until 2026, but GrapheneOS provides Android feature updates as long as the device gets security updates. That would mean 2 additional years of Android feature updates. I highly recommend it!
I agree with this. Pixel A series are pretty much the smoothest android experience for cheap. Plus they have a pretty good camera as a bonus. The low end Chinese phones and even the Samsung A series just don't quite do it for me. I think OneUI was made for faster hardware.
The affordable Sony Xperia 10 series is really good. My new Xperia runs circles around my OG Pixel, costs basically nothing, is waterproof, has upgradable storage and a headphone jack, and besides Apple, Google and Intel, Sony is the only manufacturer that actually has working bluetooth.
It's weird how you draw the line at MacBooks for being overpriced, considering every other apple device you name dropped is equally overpriced.
The best way to have a MacBook is your employer giving you one, but trust me you kinda wont want to work on regular notebooks after experiencing macbook.
I don't have one of the ARM ones, and after using Macs for like 20+ years, I barely use the ones I have. But that 16 hour battery life and performance is really nice.
Mac OS X used to wow me in the 2000s and even 2010s; it was definitely why I used Macs. But nothing about it is all that interesting to me anymore, and in some ways it's gotten worse.
I dunno, I’ve got a base model M1 and it feels like one of the best laptops I’ve owned. Overpriced is exactly what I feel it isn’t. $1000 for a decent laptop is not bad. Nothing below that price has a good trackpad.
Lol $1000 for "decent"
Beats the $800-1200 PC laptops that I would consider trash based on the trackpad and display. I’ve had it for years now and haven’t found myself wanting for anything but dual booting.
Are there any other good ARM laptops?
There's the thinkpad x13s. But its pretty slow. Should be snapdragon elite laptops coming out this year tho.
And I'm here contemplating upgrading to 32 GB...
Yup. My MacBook Pro for work has 16GB and I keep running out of RAM. I can't fathom being limited to 8GB...
I guess it works for basic browsing and whatnot, but for any kind of professional work, you're going to have a bad time.
I built a gaming PC for the first time since ~20 years ago. Decided to dump 64gb into it for no good reason other than ram is cheap and I figured I might as well.
8gb...jeebus.
I did the same thing. It's one of the cheapest upgrades you can get for a PC, but Apple will charge triple the actual cost to maximize profits.
This is not exclusive to Apple, any pre-built reseller does the same thing, Apple just has their flair of a little bit more
I daily drove a laptop with 8gb of RAM less than a year ago. Works just fine for most tasks. Granted, at Apples typical price point, I'd want more than that, but it is far from unusable. Running VMs wasn't fun though.
How did you do that? My laptop is at 14gb now and I am not using it (typing on phone)
Me, with my PC that has 32 gb of ram: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
The 8gb ram MacBook works great for your average Mac user. The person who uses it for writing resumes and surfing YouTube which I'm sure is a huge chunk of the market. Devs/Gamers/power users can't make do with 8gb, but my sister in law who just does paper work and teams meetings all day is served well by her 2016 laptop, and wouldn't have any issue with an 8gb MacBook.
Except it's cost 3x more than average 8GB ram laptops
Not cost effective by any means, but then again none buys apple for cost effective anything. Some people just the brand it seems 🤦
If the alternative is Windows which is increasingly filled with ads or Linux which shifts the burden of computer administration to a user who might not have a clue about what they're supposed to do if their WiFi doesn't "just work", paying for a managed walled garden that doesn't try to install candy crush without you asking for it isn't such a bad option.
Given how terrible Teams performes, I'd dread to have merely 8GB to run it on.
If you ran teams on the CERN supercomputer I'm pretty sure it would use up all the RAM as well. The more you have the more it seems to eat up.
Very much like Chrome.
Yeah it works fine by swapping and eating away the SSD
It has terrible future proofing however. Sure, apple is generally good at supporting their devices, but I'm sure a device with more than 8 would remain usable for a longer time.
Generally good at supporting phones but not at supporting computers, a 5-6 years lifetime is unacceptable from an environmental point of view.
I experienced it last week when I turned on an old Mac with MacOS 10.7. It can't run anything. Everything that you download doesn't run anymore, Firefox and chrome are limited to some ancient version like 40 that breaks every modern website and due to some expired SSL root certificate you can't access any website that's using let's encrypt which is a big chunk.
And it's like this not from recently but at least 5 years, so it was put in a corner and never turned on anymore until last week
It can theoretically be updated to some newer version but the updater to 10.8 has been delisted from the store so you have to alternatively source that.
For comparison, a PC that was purchased the year prior to that Mac is running the latest version of windows 10 without any issue (except slowness due to the 1st gen core architecture)
Ah, thats terrible then. A computer should last longer than that, especially with a battery replacement mid-life
Um I'm not sure where you heard that but ChatGPT requires a shit ton of memory
(Sorry, I'll show myself out)
laughs in 64GB ram
Apple has their niche, but you'll never find me owning a Mac. They are not useful for me. And fuck the proprietary nature of Apple in general.
That being said, I run 64GB of RAM and it's glorious!
Yup, I have a Mac for work and I'm not a fan, I don't even like the look of them, much less the UX. The keyboards suck, they don't have actual mouse buttons on their laptops (I really miss my middle mouse button), and the gestures on the trackpad annoy me. I use a Logitech mouse (MX Master 3 at work, Triathlon at home), and both are way nicer than anything I've used from Apple.
I much prefer my Linux machines at home. They don't lock up, my laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad) has real mouse buttons and the Trackpoint, the package manager just works, and updates don't take forever and a day like on macOS. Oh, and I use Docker for work, and on Linux it uses far fewer resources because I don't need a full VM.
Oh, and I can easily add more RAM to both of my Linux machines. I am not interested in any Apple products, and them selling with 8gb RAM just makes no sense to me since memory upgrades are so expensive and must be done at the time of purchase. So screw em.
I have a Linux workstation and a MacBook. The arguments about keyboard and trackpad are personal preference at best. You can use whatever external devices you want with the Mac. I used Logitech mice with mine too.
If you want a package manager on Mac use Homebrew. It’s better than you’d expect for a system that doesn’t include a native package manager. I use docker on both Mac and Linux and can’t really tell the difference.
I bought my last MacBook with 64gb ram. It was probably overkill but I didn’t see any reason not to since you can get one refurb for essential 50% off. It sucks that you can’t upgrade the ram, so make sure you have a good idea what you need when you’re buying the machine. Anyone buying one with 8gb is essentially buying a Chromebook. That’s not adequate for a power user like you.
Yes, it's personal preference, but I can't realistically use an external keyboard and mouse on an airplane or whatever. I like my ThinkPad way more than my MacBook Pro for actually getting work done. It feels nicer to type on, and my hands don't need to leave the home row to press mouse buttons. Apple's trackpad is nicer, but I think it's solving the wrong problem.
That said, I have a very keyboard-driven workflow. I use:
openis nice)alt+taband `alt+`` mostly)That mostly maps to macOS decently well, but there's also random differences I need to work around.
I use macports, which I much prefer.
::: spoiler Rant about homebrew Homebrew feels bolted on, macports feels more like an actual package manager. Stuff keeps working across macOS releases, which is nice because o use fish as my shell and don't want to fix that every time I do an upgrade. :::
::: spoiler Rant about macOS as a dev But it feels like putting lipstick on a pig. I constantly have to fight builders that grab the system version of something instead of my macports one (I think I've resolved everything now?), especially Python. I can't do system upgrades through it. And so on. It's just an add-on package manager, and while it's nice, there's friction at the edges. :::
That said, I very much prefer macOS to Windows, but I prefer pretty much anything else to macOS. I would prefer FreeBSD if it had better hardware and docker support.
Do you have Docker Desktop or CLI-only? Because IIRC Docker Desktop on Linux runs in a VM like on macOS, whereas CLI Docker ruins directly on the kernel, so it's way faster.
Here's some practical issues I have with Docker Desktop on macOS:
We have a bunch of docker containers, and I'm regularly running 10+. I feel like I'm constantly fiddling with Docker on macOS, whereas it's mostly transparent on my Linux machines.
So to me, it's just a crappier experience. I honestly can't think of a single upside, other than the pretty GUI, but learning a few CLI commands is a small price to pay IMO.
And that is also my general experience with macOS. It looks pretty, but it just feels like I'm interacting with the system way too much, whereas on Linux the system gets out of the way.
::: spoiler Rant about macOS Some specifics:
::: spoiler Rant about work policy If my work let me pick whatever computer I wanted, it would probably be a Framework or Lenovo laptop with Linux. But my options are locked down, crappy Windows (IT box) or MacBook Pro (no IT nonsense), so I pick macOS.
In fact, I think only 2 of my coworkers prefer macOS, but we use them to get around IT policies and the outside team that started the project convinced the uppers that we need it. However, as a lead, I need to be the support for our team, which means I should probably use the same devices as them.
My last job let me pick my OS, so I ran Arch for 5-ish years before switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed, which I still run today (like 5+ years now). I'm not going to leave because of Linux vs macOS and I love my team and boss, but I do prefer Linux. :::
Anyway, I'm kinda excited because I'll be getting an upgrade soon. I'm on an Intel Mac, but I could get an M3 if I push, or maybe I'll wait for the M4. I'd much rather run Linux on that hardware though.
It sounds like you want to have a mobile server, which makes sense too for some use cases. I just switched from 2018 Intel to M1 Pro Max and the difference is absurd. They were giving them away at MicroCenter refurb so I got one with overkill specs. Sometimes you can throw hardware at your problem and in this case it worked. It is faster, quieter, cooler, longer battery life, etc. I use BetterTouchTool to address some of the UI issues you noted and forget I have it until I use someone else’s Mac.
I initially set up the new machine via Thunderbolt and copied the apps, which was a mistake. That said every homebrew installed app worked. It was not too hard to purge the Intel homebrew and reinstall the Apple silicon version, and battery life got much better after doing so. Apple Silicon is a game changer. Everything I’ve seen about M4 says it’s supposed to be on TSMC N3E. Personally I’d go with whichever generation lets you get the most ram and ssd.
I'm a fullstack engineer that mostly focuses on backend, so yeah, I basically want a copy of our production app running on my work computer. I have Docker configured so it only uses 4GB or so, but when I add our frontend (1-2GB), web browser (1-2GB), Microsoft crap (1-2GB), etc, the RAM adds up, and that's just running half of our backend infrastructure.
The silly thing is that almost all of my job is on Linux services, except our mobile app, which is React native and largely targets iOS (though we also support Android). I work across the stack so I need to be able to run all three (backend, web, and mobile).
But I have to pick and choose what I run because my 16GB system is barely enough. So yeah, I wish we would've gotten 32GB at the outset, because swapping to disk is by far the biggest performance issue.
So yeah, get more memory than you think you need.
I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts about this medium article describing the use of Lima VM for docker on MacOS.
https://medium.com/@guillem.riera/the-most-performant-docker-setup-on-macos-apple-silicon-m1-m2-m3-for-x64-amd64-compatibility-da5100e2557d
Oh come on...640kb is more than enough for everyone...
He never said that, by the way.
No, and we all know it, but it's still going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
I don’t disagree that 8GB is generally less than I would accept for normal usage, but the way this article is written you can tell the author really doesn’t have any reasonable grasp of memory management.
Pretty sure my phone has 8GB of RAM. Apple should probably rethink this.
They have, they want you to buy the more expensive model with greater profit margins.
Yeah they've spent $1 extra on manufacturing costs, but charge you an extra $2,000 for the privilege.
Who doesn't love a 20,000% profit margin
The reality distortion field is collapsing.
Since the act of writing to an SSD is an act of wear that will eventually lead to a broken storage device, using an SSD for swap is a uniquely bad idea, right? Are Macs still designed so that you can't replace your own hardware easily? I've never owned one, but I was asked to service one many years ago and it was a real pain.
Those SSD are both hardware and software locked to the mother board. Once the SSD goes, the whole machine goes. The same can be said about RAM...once that goes, the mother board does too.
Perhaps the goal is to use the SSD as a sacrifice in order to extend the life of the obviously more important RAM.
Although RAM is vastly more durable than the flash chips of an SSD, so that wouldn't make sense.
It might make more sense from a cost viewpoint, since flash is typically cheaper than RAM.
I know. I wrote it as a crap excuse. The SSD that stores user data is infinitly more important than RAM.
I know they did it with RAM which is bad enough but to do it with SSDs as well. That alone is a reason not to get an Apple device.
They might not specifically software lock the drive, but I do recall somethibg about them enabling disk encryption by default. So you're data is essentially tied to the system.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/protect-data-on-your-mac-with-filevault-mh11785/mac It is enabled automatically, and unless you actually know to store the key somewhere you're fucked.
What’s the thermal impact of a ram module? Don’t they use like 2 or 3 watts even in a desktop? Can’t be much…
Your guess is bad and you should feel bad.
8 GB non-upgradeable. Not unusable yet, but probably will be in a few years. Then they can sell you a new one.
They said that with the release of the M1 Air.
This option kind of make sense. For those using laptops for very light use, such as basic web browsing, Document editing, replying to emails and want to have a Mac could buy them.
If apple could sell 16GB variant at the price of 8GB, then that would be the best.
If that's all you're doing you could save a $1000+ and just get a cheap Chromebook. Or if you want to be sustainable and reduce e-waste you could spend around the same amount on a framework laptop that's upgradeable and then spend a tiny fraction of that every few years keeping it up to date, rather than going the Apple approach and chucking the whole thing in the trash every few years and buying a brand new one.
No matter how you slice it, an 8GB macbook is a crap deal.
I said, want to have a Mac. Anyways you are right.
Indeed, many people must have a mac as it is a fashion accessory.
Some people prefer a Mac because it integrates nicely with the rest of the Apple ecosystem.
Some people prefer a Mac because it
integrates nicely with the rest of the Apple ecosystem.matches the rest of their overpriced wardrobe.I think a lot of people buy Macs because they think the only other choice is a computer running Windows.
This stuff is almost ewaste.
This is just not enough memory to make a computer last, especially since you can't upgrade.
Websites and apps that a lot of people use just aren't really expecting to only have 8gb ram available. Any kind of multitasking could easily run out of ram
I'm fairly sure my computer uses more than 8 GB of RAM every time I much as look at the Chrome icon.
Macbooks, even these low spec ones tend to outlive other laptops substantially. The better build quality and higher resale value keeps them in use much longer.
The argument these devices are e-waste doesn't make sense and doesn't track.
8GB is enough as that’s what I have on my 2019 Surface Go.
But that’s a device I bought 399.- (almost the same as dollars) 5 years ago.
So I don’t think it’s okay to sell a new laptop with Pro in its name for a high price in 2024. Especially because it wouldn’t cost them much to upgrade the RAM.
It’s like buying a 30bhp car in 2024. Yeah it’s enough, but not for the price of a normal car.
I'm other words, base config is good for people needing a Chromebook but want an Apple device.
And wanting a macbook is a perfectly acceptable reason for getting a MacBook. I just get annoyed when people try to argue that it's an actually sensible decision.
but for the price...
At these prices I'd expect at least 32 GB of RAM. 8 GB is for entry level phones and SOHO 2 to 4 bay NAS boxes.
"Nobody needs more than 64k of memory."
The ramifications of Apple standardizing on-die RAM are going to be felt all over.
Who cares? Buy em or don't.
I can't remember when I had such little RAM in a machine I own.
I can! It happened to be the last Mac I owned, which I bought in 2008.
My mid-range 2014 laptop has this little. This was considered the minimum for a productivity-oriented device a decade ago.
Much to my annoyance, it's also one of the first (edit: modern) laptops with non-upgradeable RAM, which I didn't know beforehand. It's still usable, but I'm using Firefox instead of Chrome (so 50 tabs are no issue) and it's never been my primary device.
I spent about a year arguing with C-levels that our fleet running 8GB was slowing down productivity, with evidence to prove it. It was like pulling teeth to procure some SODIMMs.
I’d still say this article is coming at things from the wrong perspective. That $700 Walmart M1 MBA is more than adequate for most kids doing school work, and/or grandparents farting around on FB. If you have a family and had to grab a few identical laptops, and you aren’t able/willing to be tech support, it really makes a lot of sense financially.
If you were just going to use it for browsing the web then you don't need anything that's capable as an M1 processor, you're just paying for performance overhead. Just buy a cheap Lenovo. Yeah I know we don't like Windows but it's a well-known operating system and when it inevitably breaks you don't have to go to Apple to fix it. Any random PC repair shop will be able to deal with it.
Just need to make sure the cheap Lenovo has sufficient RAM. I have a $300 HP laptop and it’s slows down if I have more than 10 tabs open on Firefox.
What you mean more than 8 GB yeah I think we might be able to achieve that.
Do not take anyone that buys a mac seriously. In any way.
32GB has been my minimum laptop memory for YEARS now. My current laptop was 64GB from the factory and 2 years later I made it 128GB. Nice socketed ECC RAM. If the RAM or SSD is soldered on a laptop, I'm not buying it.
Oh Timmy... Linux typically uses less RAM than macos and I have 64 gigs in my laptop.
Everyone’s experience and usage is different, but I have a base M2 MacBook Air with 8gb of RAM and besides web browsing, streaming/air playing some videos, and typing some documents, I don’t do much else. I never feel the need for more RAM.
PC (so, presumably meant for Windows) laptops with 4GB are still all over the place.
They'd probably work reasonably well under [not Windows]. How well they do with Windows is left as an exercise for the reader.
Macbooks are meant to be for creative professionals and those of us deluding ourselves into thinking we might one day be one of those
8G RAM for that purpose is NOT enough in 2024. Shit, it barely was when I went through college in 2016 with a macbook (which is why our models had 16)
Here in Portugal the lowest is 8gb. The 500 euro models have 16gb already.
My car radio update would have much more than that! LOL.
Admitted, I haven't read all the comments. I bought a refurbished M2 Mini to use as a cheap media server last week, and so I can use AirMessage with apple users in my life. The M2 Mini is a step down in every way from my ancient mid 2012 MacBook Pro except heat and efficiency. RAM, gotta pay extra for it. Disk space, gotta pay out the ass for it too, and you can't even get a Mini with the amount of apace I put in my mid 2012 MBP. (4TB)I want to like it, but it's SO LIMITING without paying out the ass and getting nickel and dimed for everything. I love macOS, especially compared to the disaster that is windows 10 and 11, but it's ridiculous and so anti consumer nowadays! Which to be fair, Steve Jobs' ultimate goal with all their products was to make it this way. Want to backup an iPad and iPhone? Good luck. You run out of space almost immediately with the 256GB of storage. Want to use an external disk for those backups? Use symbolic links and terminal, but you'll have to manually move them to the Mac if you ever need to restore. I have a 6tb external disk attached to it now, but I'm afraid I'm still gonna be hamstrung somehow. All my photos, time machine backups, and media are on the external for obvious reasons. I was also going to pick up a MacBook Air 15" m3 (with upgrades) from Apple, but I'm really rethinking it right now, macOS or not.
By any chance, does that dell run windows?
Just because you can get away with 8 does not mean you should. Go google around and find just how cheap an additional 8 gb of laptop RAM is these days.
I didn't say 64. I said 16 which is perfectly reasonable. Your comment reads like damage control from an apple employee.
But can it compile UE4 from source?
::: spoiler explanation If you compile using multiple threads by core count and low RAM, you may see crashes depending upon size and configuration of the project. :::
sure it could! It would just take two weeks!
But not with the default option of using as many threads as there are CPU cores.
Please do educate me on as to how to get Unreal Engine 4 as a "plugin" (of what?) without building it.
The only ways I see to get UE4 on Linux is to install the AUR, which compiles from source, or Compile it with your own settings from the GitHub project.
Sorry, that didn't work last time I tried.
How is it not true? Damn near everyone I know that has a macbook uses it to cruise the internet and look fancy doing it.
This author needs to go back to a time where you had to manage 512MB of memory.
People back then would've killed for 8GB now.
The problem I see though is software developers having a field day with not caring about optimizing and not making their software bloated as possible so that it doesn't require so much memory.
the 'problem' is: you can't upgrade; you're stuck with that 8gb.
want more in a year or two? you have to buy a new mac. and that's apple's goal--sell more product. buyers will be back (because they're hooked on the platform and ecosystem) to buy a new one sooner than they otherwise would have.
Well that's what you get for being a tool and buying Apple products.
All of us PC users have had the convenience of upgrading anything we want. While Apple users just bitch about the choices they've made where a company decides how much they think they need and whether or not they can upgrade.
Wah wah wah.
it's not just apple anymore. all the major 'pc' makers have non-upgradeable laptops now.. just not across their entire line-up (yet).
Yes, no big deal. We can go back to having 640x480 displays too.
1.2 GB hard drives, too.
I had to think twice, it didn't sound right..
The first HDD I ever bought was an 80 GB Maxtor. I have games now that wouldn't even fit on that drive.
my first HDD was a whopping 40MB big (you could fit sooo many floppys on that!), weighed 10 pounds and was about the size of a watermelon. when starting wing commander i could determine - by the noises the motors in that thing made - at what point of the loading i was (like an acoustic progress bar lol).
That's a daft take. The reason that software now requires more RAM is because it can do more than in 1998.
That doesn't excuse the ridiculously high requirements.
Yeah it does because no one in 2024 expects those limitations to exist. You can find software that can run on 15mb of ram but what's the point when 99% of systems won't have that limitation?
You realize that just because things used to be worse, doesn't invalidate complaints about how things could be better now, right?
I think the comparison went over your head and I didn't use a word wrong. Try not to think too much into it. Oh wait, you did.
What kind of stupid world is it where 8GB of RAM is actually not enough? I'm not doing anything that fundamentally different to what I was doing 10 years ago, and back then 2GB was fine on the low end of things.
Because ram is incredibly cheap and developer hours are incredibly expensive. I think it’s a bit silly too but there’s just no financial incentive for companies to care about memory usage when they know most consumer devices have tons of extra headroom.
It's like adding lanes to a highway, it doesn't reduce traffic, it increases demand. Developers will create software that needs more ram just cause they can. So unless you want to be running office 2010 then it's necessary.
Not gonna lie, writing code in various ways can be more efficient processing time wise, but often at the cost of complexity, or readability or time to code it.
As phones have gotten faster, and depending on what I'm working on, I'll often take the easier to code and read route than the absolutely best optimized route.
Although there are definitely times you still need to optimize
It's less about individual developers writing bad code and more about whole inefficient frameworks gaining popularity because of ease of use or deployment
Are those frameworks so poorly written they can't be optimized then? That'd have a pretty substantial impact if widely adopted.
I'd argue that's true in some cases, for example web apps might work well enough on modern device hardware but they'll never meet the performance of even mid-tier native apps
Ah gotcha. They're just inherently less performant in some/many cases but that provides a benefit in some other way.
640k should be enough for anything right?
fuck progress, eh?
goddamn this is dumb.
I too come to the internet to feel and be generally mad at random things