All of the base model MacBooks that have been made for the past 4 years can run AI. And I’m running betas With Apple Intelligence with 8GB RAM. It runs perfectly fine, it is not slow by any stretch of the imagination…
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8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
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Apple Intelligence is something you have to opt into and install on your device. So no, it won’t use resources if you don’t want it to…
There are smart configuration options and not-smart-at-all configuration options. Apple is smart enough to know the difference and courageous enough to only offer options that make sense. Thank goodness, because there are many who don't .. and giving those individuals what they ask for would be a bad thing for them, Apple and eveyone else who relies on Apple.
So, you don't believe Apple who have (a) more objective app and system performance information and (b) more vested interest in maximizing customer satisfaction with their products than anyone on MR, YT and the internet .. are smart enough to know how much RAM is too little for the products they design, manufacture and support .. or is willing to jeopardize their business to "save a few bucks"?
Exactly! It’s laughable that people think they know better how to run Apple than Apple! 😂🤣.
If MacBooks should come with more memory, then all MacBooks should come with more memory this isn’t just an issue for “Pro” models. “Pro” does not mean professional, It’s just a marketing label used to get people to pay more money.
It is not about the BOM cost, it about loosing profits for the lost sale of $200 RAM upgrades.
What a lot of the 16 GB folks are saying, but not out loud, iis they want 16 GB but an 8 GB price point.
The point is that “they’re letting the customer decide!” is disingenuous. The minimum isn’t something the customer decides. It’s something that Apple says is the minimum viable config. What we’re discussing is whether this decision from now many years past is still current.
A. I didn’t say “they’re letting the customer decide”, but rather “they’re offering an option lots of customers choose that works plenty fine for them.” B. It’s current as long as Apple says it is. They have all of the data. They have vested interest in making sure their business succeeds. You don’t know better how to run their business than they do. If 8GB wasn’t satisfying base-spec customers, they’d probably bump it up, but so far, it is. This is pretty well substantiated by the high sales of the 8GB base models and high customer satisfaction.
Both assertions are true. Yes, an SSD will last a long time and you probably don’t have to worry about it. But also: operating at swap will shorten the lifetime. How much? Depends. But yellow memory pressure should be the exception rather than the rule, and is a sign you need to quit apps and/or buy a Mac with more RAM. Red memory pressure is definitely the latter.
But even if that weren’t the case, memory is more than an order of magnitude faster than SSD. The slowest M4 is already 120 GiB/s. The fastest Mac SSD is currently 7.2 GiB/s, as I recall.
And what we’ve been discussing here is whether Macs starting at 8 GiB still makes sense.
Jeopardize their business, no. Allow users to buy a configuration a little too low, absolutely.
A number of poster seem to think their particular use case and needs are representative of the broader user base and thus make blanket statements about what should be a minimum configuration. If Apple wasn't selling enough they would stop making them, but the consumer clearly values them.
Others making arguments about specifications and performance levels that are irrelevant to the average users. Sure RAM is faster than a swap file but for most uses you will never know the difference, and most users probably don't wind up using swap memory very often.
Finally, people argue ram is cheap so Apple should make 16 gb standard, I suspect if Apple did that and raised teh prices $200 they would scream. BOM costs are largely irrelevant to pricing.
Why have a discussion forum at all if any discussion ends with “yeah, but someone else probably knows best”?
However, the OP has a valid point. Apple knows a lot more about their user base and how they Macs perform to use when determining what configurations to offer. Board posters, myself included, have biases based on how we use our machines and limited knowledge about the broader user base.
My needs are 32 GiB RAM, minimum. I’d happily go with 48 if it didn’t require upgrading to the Max.
This isn’t about me.
That’s true to a point, but that point is always shifting. Older Macs had less RAM. Future Macs will eventually offer more RAM. The only point of contention is what the right moment is for Apple to offer more.
I wouldn’t at all mind if upgrading to 12 would increase the M4 Air’s base by $100. That’s fine. A few years down the road, they can then reduce it by $100 again.
And no, I’m not interested in “well, then they should still offer 8 as an option for less!” They should not. Not ten, not eight, not six, not four. Not for any 2024-generation Mac.
There’s plenty of other things to discuss other than whether or not Apple knows what they’re doing with their products…
Certainly — but they’re also biased towards charging more.
You can shut down any review with “well, the writer just didn’t understand Apple’s deep knowledge of their customers!” Sure, but so what? I know what using Sequoia is like with 8 GiB, and it’s a bare minimum. Yeah, you can run one or two or three apps, but you can’t do much more without swapping.
And Apple has arguably overplayed their hand with their ridiculous “8 Gigs on a Mac is like 16 Gigs on Windows” claim. If that’s how they want to play this, I can’t take their assertions seriously. The assertion isn’t entirely wrong: faster RAM means less used RAM. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how fast the RAM is if you’re keeping a certain amount of data.
Which is not now.
Which means a number of people will pay $100 more than the would have too if Apple kept the configuration that is fine for their use case.
Why if it meets the needs of many people?
Not the point, rather a valid comment on Apple's ability to understand their customer's needs versus the posters on a board.
And for may users one or three apps is all they are running; and even if tehy use swap memory the impact for mist users of an 8GB Mac will Neve notice. Sure, there are many users that need more than 8GB but that does negate that 8gb is enough for many users and thus Apple continues to offer it.
Exactly! Why punish all of us who are currently happy with 8GBs with a $100 extra tacked on just to make a few malcontents happy? It makes no sense. And especially why not offer at least a yet cheaper option with 8GB since it’s enough for so many people?
And why not offer a 4GB? For 100 dollars less? Why punish people that only run a calculator and Safari: ssd swap is the way!
Heck, make a macOS Seqoia Basic™ that quits Finder as soon as you launch any app! Now it runs even with 2 GiB.