You can select the 16 GB option box to drop the price a couple of hundred. But it also drops some of the other options.
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16 GB of RAM for a Pro device is not okay
- Thread starter MrWayne
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You can select the 16 GB option box to drop the price a couple of hundred. But it also drops some of the other options.
$1,800 for a Snapdragon. You must really want the form-factor to buy that one.
I see Snapdragons getting discounted for the other brands. Lunar Lake and Strix Point have people asking why go with a Snapdragon. There were a ton of inflencers pushing Snapdragon laptops in the spring talking about how great they were but a lot of people don't want to have to deal with compatibility problems. Maybe the X2 is a lot better but I don't see a good reason to buy them unless you're sure your software runs well on ARM and you don't need good GPU.
You could buy a 2014 Mac mini with roughly the same specs ( 16 gigs Ram etc..), add in a 2Tb NvME, and have spent the same amount (or less) as for the Raspberry Pi. Perfect as a small home server ? media centre etc.
If you stop being hung up on "must be the latest, must be the highest spec, must be shiny. must make me feel important", there are loads of ways to have effective functional hardware without overspending with Apple.
All I have to say is when the non-Pro MacBooks get the base model RAM that the pros have, the pro should upgrade the base model. They should never be at the same base model RAM configuration.
You could swam DIMMs back then, so it was far less of a concern. The nature of Apple only offering computers with soldered in RAM brought their price gouging front and center.
Intel Lunar Lake chips have RAM on the SoC so it's not only Apple. Arrow Lake systems use DIMMs but we could see more soldered or SoC RAM on Windows laptops too.
I think 16gb is a good baseline and as so many others have mentioned much better then 8gbs. The way the hardware all works together any M chip Mac is going to run amazingly well compared to someone coming from an Intel chip. What people really should be complaining about is the ability, or lack there of to upgrade your computer with a simple thing like RAM. Apple Makes the hardware, they could make it so this was possible.
Lunar Lake comes with LPDDR5X-8533 on the SoC. The standard speed for Arrow Lake is 6400 so it's possible that higher speeds are possible by putting the RAM close to the CPU and soldering it in. It also simplifies the build, configuration and decrease the space required as SODIMMs use up a lot more space than on SoC.
Overspending today to run a machine out to 2+ times the warranty period and into expected hardware failure time whilst enduring worse performance than an entry level machine by 3-4 years in, is not smart.
You're buying hardware when it is expensive and you don't need it to get less benefit when you do than just buying a better machine at that point for far less money and maintaining some decent warranty coverage.
You're holding onto the hardware until it is literally worthless, instead of flipping it while it is worth something.
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Fact is, the vast majority of laptops are never ugpraded.
You know why?
Because by the time someone thinks about doing it, the CPU is out of date, the network connectivity is out of date, the peripheral connectivity is out of date, the storage is also needing to be replaced and at that point you're throwing hundreds of dollars at a machine that may just fail at any moment due to age.
So... yeah slots are kinda pointless for the vast majority of people.
Buy a balanced spec, if it no longer suits your needs after a few years, sell it to someone who can make use of that spec.
If it doesn't suit your needs from the jump.... spend more time figuring out what to purchase in the first place.
No screen
no keyboard
no trackpad
no battery
hilariously bad performance vs. what you're buying from Apple. seriously hilarious. Haven't used a pi5 yet but its not THAT much more powerful than a pi4, and a pi4 struggles to play 1080p youtube properly (I have pi3, pi4 and pi400 here).
Don't get me wrong, the pi is a great product, and as a cheap machine for messing around, it's perfect. But holding it up to what Apple sells as some pricing comparison is.... just silly.
Just because you can do that, doesn't mean you should.
Geekbench 6, Raspberry Pi 5 around 2,144
Geekbench 6 M4 Pro 20,405 (my on M4 Pro Mini).
I couldn't find any GPU benchmarks to be comparable, but I think we can assume the raspberry pi 5 gpu can be likened to a slug, and the M4 Pro to a cheetah - I think that's fair.
I'm a big fan of using the right tool for the job, the raspberry pi's main appeal is not for desktop computing, given its incredibly low power, low core count and lack of a case, cooling, components or buy a Mac who's main purpose is desktop computing?
You don't get to decide what overspending or expensive is for someone else though. My budget was much higher than what I spent.
"expected hardware failure". I have an Intel MBP from 2009 that still boots up and runs today so no that isn't how it always goes, but if it did fail I would just buy something else.
Have you ever heard of Applecare+?
even 128gb is not enough if developers are lazy. and as the hardware specs getting better, they become lazier. so believe me, nothing will change. you will complain 64gb as starting package within next 3 years as well. perhaps, eu should be dealing with app developers and software engineers instead of dealing with apple full time.
I have one and I agree. At least the M4 finally has 3xUSB-C. But it wouldn’t be completely wrong to call that one a MacBook (a category that the 12” rMB completely muddied) and skip the ‘Pro’.
People have to understand something. Production at point of manufacturer at scale is as cheap as production costs get. That is one reason why MacBooks are price competitive with comparable Windows laptops like Dell XPS or Hp Spectre. As others have said even Windows laptops are coming with soldered ram because of the same reason.
To make a laptop more modular so you could upgrade ram later would create problems with bandwidth you don't have when directly connected to cpu. It would also cost much more to produce. If you want to pay about double for your MacBook and there was a big enough market for it then Apple would make them but I don't think there is.
You can't uphold unified memory and it's speed and at the same time want to add ram later which would negate the benefits of unified memory.
Either enjoy the cheaper price, buy as much ram as you can afford even at "inflated" prices if you really need it.
Apple obviously thinks most people 16gb ram is enough and most people agree.
Base model MacBook Air with M4 was selling for $799 with 16gb ram. I dare you to find a better laptop for the price.
If you need more than 16gb ram I don't think the upgrade costs are high when you consider that again a comparable Dell XPS with more ram will cost very close if not more than the MacBook.
If you have owned a cell phone for 3 or more years you understand how durable an SOC can be. In most cases they are more durable than a PC MODULAR setup.
I get that people would like the ability to upgrade ram later. However if you understand you are actually saving money as it is now then you buy base ram unless you know it will be a bottleneck for your workflow. If you are in that case just buy the next level of ram above base and you should be good. Otherwise you are a professional and know what you need and budget for it because you make more money and can write it off. Future proofing can be a fools errand. I buy more often closer to base model and refresh with a new cpu and feel that is a better value than spending thousands more to get a benefit in the future. Meanwhile newer chips are so much better that even with lower ram they perform better.
Keep things close to base unless you get paid for your work. Buy every 3 to 5 years. This saves you a lot of money since as everyone complains the more storage and ram you add the more profit Apple makes and the less return on investment you will get, specially if you consider resale.