8GB M-Series Macs can do a lot more demanding tasks than opening a few Chrome tabs. I can emulate Windows games on my M1 Mac, work with pretty large 3D projects in Blender, do Graphic Design work, and many other things perfectly fine.
Right and it’s pretty wild that a $600 budget computer from Apple (Mini) is capable of doing such things four years later.
I disagree, but I understand and appreciate your perspective. The reason the Mac Mini is as cheap as it is is because it’s essentially just a motherboard and I/O. The $1,599 laptop has best-in-class battery runtime, speakers, display quality, keyboard, and ports. 👍🏻.
The 15 Pro, not the 15 (non pro) will support it. Ram is a limiting factor, but the base model Mac has 8GB of ram. Which is enough to do the job. Is it enough to do that and run 4k final cut? No.
M4 may start at 12GB or so.
What would you say then of these new ARM Windows laptops? They are worse at gaming than a MacBook Air.
Pro just means that it is a nicer display, better speakers, better battery runtime, more ports, and some other hardware differences. It doesn’t mean that every configuration of MacBook Pro is configured to handle every conceivable pro workflow. Many of the niche pro workflows wouldn’t find 16GB to be enough, so they’d still be complaining that the base spec Pro wasn’t pro enough or whatever by that logic. Most people look at the available options and decide which configuration they want or need for their workflow. The base spec has never been meant to fit every professional workflow, that’s why there are plenty of other configurations to choose from. The base spec is plenty for many professional workflows where gobs of excess RAM aren’t needed or wanted, but the higher quality display, longer battery runtime, and additional ports are beneficial. The base specs allow such people to benefit from these hardware advantages for cheaper.
You can be a professional and make lots of presentations. Do you need 16GB of ram for PowerPoint or Keynote?
wccftech.com
Exactly there is no retooling for 16Gb option, only a saving by removing the 8Gb production line and in doing so increasing the run length of the 16Gb which brings even more economies of scale. I do suspect some people posting have an altogether different agenda, and large companies do have a history of paid propagandists.
Kal, no disrespect, but for someone who apparently is happy with 8Gb, you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to justify what is in my opinion unjustifiable. Even when its suggested the 16Gb line would mean a literally nominal increase, because of production line efficiencies, and you even throw in incorrect assertions about cost of retooling to 16Gb when its an existing production line? You discount economies of scale from cutting out the 8Gb production run, thus increasing the 16Gb run, and where the cost of the RAM is negligible, it is the cost for unifying it, where as the 16GB production line is tooled up already, is not relevant, so its feasible that Apple could do it for no cost and still save money just by virtue of streamlining production and economies for scale, and at least try to safeguard a fast diminishing reputation for being ahead of the game and where Apple's own fairy story about 8Gb equivalence to 16Gb is simply not true, as multiple tests demonstrate. I spent 15 years involving computer production even at director level and have worked with Apple, so I know how production works. Overall I've been in computing since 1970.
Fair point, but even running 10 Chrome tabs easily eats up 16 GB of RAM. Zoom and Skype are AWFUL with RAM consumption, especially on Apple Silicon, in my experience.
How so? They would presumably need to retool the 8GB production to be able to handle the demand for the base models. Currently the data indicates that the 8GB base spec is selling very well. Presumably, if the 8GB base spec were to be replaced with a different configuration, the demand for that configuration would increase above where it currently is. So they probably couldn’t just remove the 8GB production, they’d presumably need to retool for the other configuration to keep up with that demand.
I disagree. As I already pointed out, the current 16GB production doesn’t account for the presumably over double demand that would result in replacing the 8GB configuration, since it seems that the 8GB model sells more than the 16GB configuration. They would likely need to retool and ramp up production of the 16GB models. And we simply don’t have any real data on what the RAM costs Apple, and what changing the base spec would cost. And 8GB is plenty to run many games. Apple Intelligence supports 8GB models. If it were a change that lots of people wanted, I’m sure Apple would do it. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Most of the data seems to suggest that base spec buyers are happy with their purchases.
A. I have used well over 10 web tabs plus other apps and never had a crash or beachball. That’s even with using Chrome, and Safari is a way better option that’s much more efficient.