Thousands? No, I don’t think so…. Again, why hang out in an Apple fan forum when you seem to dislike Apple so much?
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8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
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What I don’t get is why people think the solution to lack of space is more storage rather than properly managing it.
As long as it sells at desired volume and margin, it clearly is.
If you noticed, this is the third time you're asking me this and I'm giving you the silent treatment.
Because this is an active forum talking about tech. That's more than enough.
Because good sales != good product. And blaming the consumer instead of the company given the context isn't good.
RAM chips are cheap. The screen, for example, is expensive. But apple chose to be flashy.
You clearly don’t seem to like Apple, so why should I (or anyone for that matter) just take your position on a product you likely have never used, when I actually do use such a product and have had a great experience! My 8GB M1 Mac is the best computer I have ever owned (including my older 16GB Intel Mac)! But I’m sure the guy who thinks he can run Apple better than Apple and who constantly shows a dislike for Apple knows better… 🙄😂
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Loving the Mac but not loving Apple Inc. shouldn’t be disqualifying.
It means customers find value in it and thus buy it, which is basic economics.
Pointing out good data management practices isn’t blaming anyone.
Sovwhat? The price of components is irrelevant to product cost.
Because that is what consumers want and buy.
All I’ve seen from the other commenter you’re talking about is love for Windows and disdain for Macs. He clearly doesn’t seem to even own a Mac. And when I’ve asked him if he does or doesn’t, he deflects and ignores… He’s had every opportunity to say he loves the Mac (and actually owns or uses one), but he hasn’t. I suspect he either is one of those former Mac owners turned Windows people who become extra toxic against Mac/Apple, or he’s never owned a Mac a day in his life, is a Windows fan, and just wants to trash on Apple and the Mac. Of course I don’t know this, and maybe I’m wrong. But all of the things he says about the Mac and Apple lead me to believe he isn’t a fan of either…
Exactly. The Mac is a tool, nothing more. Buy the one that meets your needs or buy something else.
Exactly. I don’t like Windows. But I don’t go to Windows forums to tell all the Windows fans how much I dislike Windows, and take potshots at them… Some people seem to do that to Apple fan communities from the other side… I don’t fault someone for concluding the base-spec Mac isn’t enough for them. But making wild claims like it isn’t good for anyone, “I know how to run Apple better than Apple”, and “cOrPoRaTe GrEeD!!!” is not the same thing…
Tend to agree! It's probably the reason why the iPhone mini is no longer around. Not enough buyers of the product. That is the strongest message a customer can send to a company. Obviously there are still too many buying 8GB configurations.
You've been constantly ******** on windows laptops in this very thread.
I don't own any Apple products, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize how influential Apple is. Every design decision apple makes has an impact onto the entire industry as a whole because the others cannot afford to come up with new ideas (look at the LG Wing and the foldable phones to a lesser extent).
This is why they get **** when they release (in my opinion) bad products like the 8GB macbook pro. The reason people don't say this about the surface is because the surface is basically irrelevant outside the US and two or three markets. Microsoft's revenue doesn't come from hardware, all their hard power is concentrated on Windows and everything that comes with Windows. Which is why you see people online taking jabs at Windows and not Surface laptops.
It's impossible to talk about the Macbook Pro without taking the whole bundle into consideration, but it's not like it's fundamentally a different laptop. It has a keyboard, a screen, a trackpad, and it runs applications. It has good things and bad things about it.
You're writing like you represent the average Apple consumer.
The price of components is relevant because of the labor theory of value. It's not expensive to produce RAM chips. You can buy a 16GB DDR4 or DDR5 RAM chip for €40 here.
If you mean SoC memory, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ has 16GB of RAM and costs €300 in China.
Meanwhile apple charges 200 dollars just for an upgrade from 8 to 16GB of RAM.
This is what the consumer sees, this is what apps use, meanwhile some people defend 8gb laptops that are sold for high prices.
This isn’t a Windows fan forum…. And I’ve mostly spoken of the cheap hardware found on many Windows laptops that in my opinion doesn’t provide nearly as good of an experience as the Macs…. I’m not going around making wild claims like “Windows isn’t good for anyone”, or “I know better how to run Microsoft/(insert PC manufacturer) than they do!”…. Because my use case isn’t the only use case, and I recognize that. To me, Windows is awful, and wouldn’t satisfy my preferences or workflow the way macOS does. But I don’t pretend to be the authority on the matter and claim that macOS is superior for everyone and Windows isn’t a good option for anyone. Some here seem to think they know best what everyone needs or wants when they don’t…
And at least now you admit it. You don’t own any Apple products, yet you’re going to try to convince us that the Apple products we own and use every day are supposedly not more than enough for our needs! That we should care more about gobs of extra RAM we don’t need or want because the OS actually runs efficiently and is tailor-built for the hardware, rather than other things that actually make more visible impact on our everyday workflow such as display quality, battery runtime, sound system quality, and overall build quality…. Clearly you don’t seem to care as much about display quality as people like me do. So should I be insisting that 1080P Windows laptops shouldn’t exist, because it isn’t a “good experience”?
“It has good things and bad things about it”. And customers decide which pros are most important to them, and which things they perceive as pros or cons. Some things that one person may see as a con is a pro to someone else, and vice versa. Because different people have different preferences and needs/wants. You seem to believe your preferences should be everyone’s, and yours are all that matters…
Well, you certainly don’t represent the average Apple customer since you’re not even an Apple customer at all… 😂🤣
Yeah, you see, people like you are claiming to represent the average apple consumer who doesn't care about the industry.
It doesn't work like that... the macbook pro is not a concept laptop. It has to compete.
And that 1080p comparison? It doesn't quite hold up. The display will still meet requirements for media consumption, just like it did in 2019. Screen resolution doesn't advance as quickly.
Apple has significantly more hard and soft power than anyone else in the american tech industry. That's the thing.
I actually don’t claim to represent the average Apple customer…. I can only speak for my use case, and those of others I know.
The MacBook Pro does compete. It’s just not a copy-paste of the competition in every way. And with much better M-Series chips and different OS optimizations specifically leveraging the hardware, 8GB Apple Silicon Macs are different in terms of performance than 8GB Intel systems…
And 8GB RAM on M-Series Macs still meets requirements for many people’s use cases…. You’re trying to make some kind of argument that it supposedly isn’t, and that people who actually own and use these models, enjoy them, and use them for their workflows are wrong and they’re somehow tricking themselves into thinking that their computers are more than enough for their needs when you’ve decided it isn’t…. So the comparison is actually pretty fitting. It would be like someone like me who values better display quality claiming that 1080P isn’t enough for anyone, and 1080P computers shouldn’t exist….
It's really very simple, and I will never understand the arguments against it:
Apple should raise their base configuration storage and memory without raising prices, and reduce the cost to upgrade these components.
Maybe I'm naive but it seems like making memory and storage more accessible will increase sales numbers on their products, and so, even with the reduced margin from this change, they may end up earning more overall.
Apple should raise their base configuration storage and memory without raising prices, and reduce the cost to upgrade these components.
Maybe I'm naive but it seems like making memory and storage more accessible will increase sales numbers on their products, and so, even with the reduced margin from this change, they may end up earning more overall.
It’s because margin is an indicator of a company’s financial health. High revenue but low margins is not good because you are less profitable.
Apple’s job is to give the best possible return to their stockholders.
People often think more revenue is always good but that is not always the case.
But the base 8GB configurations continue to sell. This is just an up-sell strategy Apple has created and they are very good at it. You can either choose to accept the up-sell, reject it or choose not to buy anything. It's pretty simple.
"With much better M-series chips"
Depends on the use-case. x86 won't go away anytime soon, especially not on the desktop. ARM is a good alternative for laptops, but it still doesn't completely outclass x86, they co-exist with Intel and AMD. By now x86 has decades of experience in the back, and I'm pretty sure the medical industry and state institutions won't switch to ARM anytime soon.
But let's get back to that "meeting requirements for many people's use cases" argument. 1080p is good enough for phones. Maybe a slight increase to 1220p or QuadHD would be ideal for laptops, but 1080p media consumption has been a standard for like two decades now. And frankly I'd prefer OLED 1080 over IPS 1440 assuming the same refresh rate.
Also, the screen resolution doesn't affect the core functionality of a computer. If your screen is 1080, sure, cosmetically it's behind the times, but we're talking about launching apps, playing games, consuming content and it still does its job just as quickly as a similar laptop but with a 4k display.
The same is not true about memory - the trend of apps consuming more and more RAM grows exponentially faster than the trend of media needing higher screen res for optimal viewing experience.
I don’t think it’s because users are abandoning Macs and flocking to windows, if that’s what you are insinuating.
Or maybe the M1 Mac was just so good that consumers simply haven’t had a reason to upgrade, 8gb ram and all. That has been my experience to date at least. That if Apple released an M4 MBA with more ram tomorrow, I would genuinely hesitate to upgrade because the simply truth is that 8gb ram is still going strong for me. Maybe I will sing a different tune when Apple Intelligence is available in my region and it ends up bogging down my system, but right now, I can't say I have run into a single instance of 8gb ram being an issue over the past 4 years.
I am not saying that 8gb ram suffices for everybody, which is why multiple models of Macs exist. You can also get a MBP with 16 or even 32gb ram, or more, and that's the whole point. Buy what you need, and don't look back.
Let's sum things up here.
All other things equal, I agree that I wouldn't mind paying less for any particular product. I wouldn't say no to Apple halving the price of their ram upgrades tomorrow, or shipping Macs with 16gb ram as the default at the same starting price. Just as in the current world I am living today, I wouldn't mind cheaper groceries, housing, transportation, paying less for taxes etc. Maybe Mcdonalds should stop charging me to upsize their value meal and make the larger potion the default serving instead.
But the world is not a perfect place, and when faced with purchasing dilemmas time and time again, my guiding principle has always been "I would rather spend a little more right now on something that I prefer, than spend less on something I know I won't quite enjoy as much". I may spend more in the short run, but in the long run, these purchases tend to pay for themselves in the form of fewer problems and better productivity overall. That's why I am all-in on the Apple ecosystem, despite there being alternatives elsewhere. I want my stuff to work more than I want them to be cheap.
My work laptop is a windows laptop with i7 processor, 16gb ram, 512gb storage and a 1080p screen that's not very bright or vibrant either. So yes, I am know first hand the limitations of a 1080p display compared to the one that shipped with my MBA. I also know the idiosyncrasies of Windows, and I know that my bugbears with the OS is not something which can be remedied simply by throwing more ram at the system.
Is Apple out of touch? Maybe they are losing a few customers by doing so. I can only speak for myself when I say that my next computer will still be a Mac. You can't pay me enough to go back to windows, and if I have to pay extra to add more ram and storage to my next computer, I will do it. I also wager that I am not alone, and perhaps that's the paradigm Apple is satisfied with. They may not get the highest number of sales with their pricing strategy, but it does maximise profit, and it's good enough for them.
So yeah, while I wouldn't say no to lower prices, I do draw the line at accusing Apple of something I feel is simply untrue and raising a ruckus here, even if it may lead to an outcome that would be beneficial to me, simply because that's what I don't believe.
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Blender runs great on my 8GB M1 Mac. I don’t know of any apps that are somehow supposedly unable to run on 8GB M1 Macs…. Apple ensures that the OS and apps run smoothly on their hardware. There’s no reason to assume Apple won’t support the 8GB configuration M3 Macs just as long as the 16GB M3 Macs…
You seem to only be here to complain about Apple and Apple products. Again, it would be like me going to Windows fan forums to constantly whine about every Windows PC not shipping with 2k or higher displays…
Buying an M3 MacBook "Pro" with 8 GB RAM in 2024, is like buying a Lamborghini Aventador with a $10 Daihatsu transmission. Sure it might work, but not all the 770 HP can be used, and it won't work well in the future.
If laptops need more RAM then it doesn’t matter if they have a marketing “Pro” label. The need for RAM is not dependent on meaningless marketing labels.