16 GB of RAM for a Pro device is not okay

[Happy_John]

Well, I'm 60 this year, and I have had macs since the early 90's. I have worked with all sorts of Macs since then, in work places, mainly daily newspapers (mostly as a night editor). I bought a Mac mini i7 Late 2012 in 2013 and immediately installed 16 GB RAM. I am now typing on an MBP i7 15" Mid 2014 (I'm staying with my girlfriend), and at home I have an MBP M4, both with 16 GB RAM. That has been the sweet spot for over a decade. 8 GB RAM has been too little all that time for serious computing with Mac OS X/macOS. I just don't understand why people are defending 8 GB RAM.

I don't think they're defending 8 gigs in 2025, but then, you can't buy a new a with 8Gb of Ram.

What is significant is that, for a lot of people, as you've said, RAM requirements have stayed pretty stable. 8 gigs of Ram in a Mac was absolutely fine for most tasks until and including Monterey - it wa sonly after that it became a problem.

Most with with a Mac are not editing 4K or 8K video, they'r not running LLMs at home and they're not gene sequencing.

I still have two Mackbook Airs, 2014 and 2015, with 8 Gb soldered on in both - they are still very capable "traveling" laptops. The issue with them isn;t the RA,, it issue is the screen quality.

For Monterey and below, no, I don't think 8Gb is too little RAM.

 

[Happy_John]

8gb was absolutely not standard…I didn’t have 8gb in 2006, or know anyone that did, on Mac or PC. I didn’t even get to 4gb until 2008-2010, and 16gb around 2019.

Yep. You were pretty fancy if you had 4 gigs at that time. Of course, you still had slotable RAM, so anyone who had above 4 gig of RAM had put it in long after the laptop's / desktop's purchase.

 

[Analog Kid]

...,.,.,,,

Maybe, but the additional RAM shouldn't cost $200

Again, you're assuming Apple sets their pricing model off the cheapest configuration. They don't. They calculate margins off of the average selling price which is more than the cheapest unit.

Think of the system cost as the cost of the Mac (Apple's contribution) plus the cost of the RAM (not designed by Apple). What does Apple pay for that RAM? $50? So if you get the exact same system with less RAM for $200 less, you are getting a $150 discount on the Mac part of the Mac.

 

[henkie]

I really don’t understand how 16 GB of ram is default in the MacBook Pros! I should at least start from 32 GB of ram to be considered a Pro Device for that price.

Is this thread going to hit the 122 pages like this one did as well? https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s-the-bottleneck-in-real-world-tests.2410564/
I mean, people were vehemently defending 8GB on a “Pro” machine last year. My main gripe was that 8GB does not make sense on a CPU that powerful. There is no added benefit of going from m1 to m3 if it stays at 8GB. It is like a Ferrari with only 2 instead of 5 gears. At 16GB, I think it is much better. But for real pro workflows you probably would go for the m4pro anyway that comes with 24Gb standard.

 

[Happy_John]

That will be an interesting box. My guess is that it will be very K-12 edu-channel specific plus serve as entry to Mac as well as K-12 box entry to Mac. But that is just a guess.

Apple could call it the MacBudget. Sounds like a tacky fast food entrée, but people buy billions of tacky fast food entrées.

They can't really call it an "eBook", but bringing back the "iBook" name fits, I think.

 

[klasma]

I really don’t understand how 16 GB of ram is default in the MacBook Pros! I should at least start from 32 GB of ram to be considered a Pro Device for that price.

In case you hadn’t caught on yet, “Pro” stands for higher price.

That being said, I’m still using an 8GB PC for work without issues. 🤷

 

[Happy_John]

Again, you're assuming Apple sets their pricing model off the cheapest configuration. They don't. They calculate margins off of the average selling price which is more than the cheapest unit.

Think of the system cost as the cost of the Mac (Apple's contribution) plus the cost of the RAM (not designed by Apple). What does Apple pay for that RAM? $50? So if you get the exact same system with less RAM for $200 less, you are getting a $150 discount on the Mac part of the Mac.

So again, smart buyers should spend a bit of time to work out if the cheapest configuration meets the needs of their use-cases, rather than thinking "I deserve the higher spec because I'm worth it". Monitor the current RAM usage, rather than assuming 32Gb+ is needed.

I honestly don't believe that many users have investigated how much RAM they are really using.

It makes more sense to aspire to less RAM, not more RAM, given Apple's pricing structure.

 

[ThailandToo]

8gb was absolutely not standard…I didn’t have 8gb in 2006, or know anyone that did, on Mac or PC. I didn’t even get to 4gb until 2008-2010, and 16gb around 2019.

I might be wrong about 2006. The MacBook Pro models that sold in 2008 all started with 8GB of RAM except when they came out with the unibody MacBook 13” that they called a MacBook Pro.

 

[iHorseHead]

8GB was the standard back in 2006. Tim’s focus was greed on the upsell. It’s about 94% profit to AAPL when you upgrade each level. So the base configuration doesn’t make them much.

2:31 - video added in 2011. How was 8GB the standard back in 2006? I most certainly didn't have 8GB. I had two back in 2006 and it was impressive amount back then.
Others had even less and San Andreas was lagging on their computers. This was a time when I complained that San Andreas takes up too much storage (4,7GB)

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I might be wrong about 2006. The MacBook Pro models that sold in 2008 all started with 8GB of RAM except when they came out with the unibody MacBook 13” that they called a MacBook Pro.

I should add, I don’t think anything you are saying about Tim (and Apple’s) greed is incorrect. You just got your timing off.

 

[iHorseHead]

I might be wrong about 2006. The MacBook Pro models that sold in 2008 all started with 8GB of RAM except when they came out with the unibody MacBook 13” that they called a MacBook Pro.

No they didn't. Where do you even get that stuff???!

 

[Happy_John]

I think you might be confusing these machine’s maximum RAM capacity, not what the standard models were shipped with.

I am pretty sure my 15” 2009 MBP came with 4 gigs - I upgraded the RAM myself a yearor so after.

I do remember when I put the full fat 8 gig in that this seems to be an insane amount if RAM, so 8 gigs was not standard for most Macs and PCs at the time.

 

[macbookj0e]

It’s not the starting ram I have a problem with, it’s apple’s refusal to offer fair upgrade prices that bothers me.

 

[NewOldStock]

Why do people post meaningless drivel and leave the conversation hit and run style?
Somebody is home and posting only to stir things up.

 

[Happy_John]

Random thought: Imagine of some of the people here applied their perspective on buying a Mac to their grocery shopping.

“why are you buyjng 40 kilos of butter?”

“Because it’s impossible for me to cook dinner tomorrow without it. And the dairy is ripping me off because I can only buy the butter in 200g packets. Boo, hiss”.

I imagine I’ve made a load of new friends with this post, but reading so much whining and inflated entitlement does wear me down.

 

[NewOldStock]

As (if) there isn`t any other (options) for more Ram! Again Drivel.
Slow day.

 

[kwikdeth]

Honestly the paltry storage options and hideous upgrade pricing is what gets me more than RAM. I can get 128gb SD cards for $20 now. Apples to oranges of course but it's not like apple storage is made out of magic beans. If anything it should be cheaper since the disk controller is in the CPU now.

 

[scrapesleon]

A few years ago y'all were saying 8 gig of ram was more than enough that’s why I don’t take u people seriously

 

[Zdigital2015]

Honestly the paltry storage options and hideous upgrade pricing is what gets me more than RAM. I can get 128gb SD cards for $20 now. Apples to oranges of course but it's not like apple storage is made out of magic beans. If anything it should be cheaper since the disk controller is in the CPU now.

You didn’t just compare a 128GB SD Card at 200MB/s to a 256GB flash upgrade at 5,000-6,000MB/s on an M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro?

 

[Technerd108]

It was inevitable. How many years were there posts MAD at Apple for only having 8gb ram memory on base model pro devices and even air devices.

Now finally it has been about a year or so since Apple finally delivered on the premise that 16gb is now the standard across Macs and people are already complaining 16gb is not enough.

I just wanted to laugh... Like industry wide on Windows 8gb ram is still shipped on Windows Laptops. However, most Windows laptops even cheap ones will have a minimum of 12gb ram.

So Apple has reached parity with the industry.

Once 32gb ram becomes the standard on Windows laptops like Surface line then Apple will up the base ram memory. Apple is always behind in base ram numbers to the competition for several years normally. How long was 8gb ram the standard-decades?? So how long do you think Apple will keep 16gb ram on all base models??? I would say at least a decade.

Honestly 16gb ram on a base model pro is enough. It may not be optimal on a pro machine which is why you can buy more but 16gb ram on the base is decent for the base model cost.

8gb was truly a limit but 16gb is still not a limit yet.

If you have an M4 MacBook Pro base model with 512gb ssd and 16 ram is pretty well equipped and I would find it hard to believe that in real life situations that a pro at 16 ram would be any different than 32gb. Sure there might be some extreme situations but most workstation requirements would be satisfied by the base pro model which is what it is. If you need more than you have special needs above the average which is what the base model is made for and to have a cheaper entry point for the masses.

The prices Apple is charging for new models with base 16gb ram is extremely competitive and I would say a value in the current market.

I honestly don't see how anyone could be upset at Apple now. I could see still being upset it took so long to get 16gb ram on base models but beyond that I don't understand??

 

[grammatica]

I am now reaching the limits of 16GB of Unified Memory. Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, my machine is slow and apps are "paused."

 

[Howard2k]

In case you hadn’t caught on yet, “Pro” stands for higher price.

That being said, I’m still using an 8GB PC for work without issues. 🤷

Rubbish. That implies a "professional" use, which we all know is simply impossible on 8GB.

 

[Technerd108]

I am now reaching the limits of 16GB of Unified Memory. Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, my machine is slow and apps are "paused."

You have a newer Mac and are reaching memory pressure forcing a slowdown?? I mean you must be doing really intense work. My old M2 MBA barely heats up even under very heavy load on macOS Tahoe. In fact, Tahoe has improved performance in my MacBook.

I did do a clean install by wiping Sequoia and reinstalling MacOS. When I just did the update I noticed start up was significant slower and it didn't make sense. Having a long history with computers I decided something got corrupted in the update process which has happened to me in the past with MacOS.

Once I did a full wipe and reinstall of MacOS everything is significantly faster.

Give it a try. Might fix your issues????

 

[Ethosik]

Again with these posts. Each professional is different. For instance, I need 192GB at least for my system. Therefore, zero Macbook Pros will work for me. To that end, I use a Macbook Pro as an extension to my "Pro" workload and 16GB is just fine for that.

 

[Ethosik]

Y'all need to read up on the physics of Apple's Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) approach prior to claiming "Soldered RAM is so anti-consumer."

Note that although I too complain about the high cost of RAM, I still buy the max available. Perhaps because I have paid $400 for 4 MB via third party in the past.

I believe the equivalent to socketed RAM would require at least 16 channels, especially on the Ultra variant.