Apple defends 8gb in laptop

[zapmymac]

I have had a base m2 mini for 8 months, oddly it beach balls weekly, and no heavy 3rd party apps. Why?

I do have my photo library properly offloaded to a Apple Store exclusive (woot j/k) SSD and it performs just fine…

safari
discord
apple music streaming

it all works just fine for me when those apps are running.

it should not Beachball when I have no other apps open, and I check the weather, or open Apple news… on a 500/500 fiber line 2 a copper-hardwired Ethernet.

…This is what infuriates me.

 

[Bregalad]

Back a page or two of comments there's clear evidence of swapping from a user who had just one app in use: Safari. Open a bunch of shopping tabs, like millions of people do on a regular basis, and an 8GB Mac runs out of RAM. Once every memory address is filled with product thumbnails and video adverts there's literally no place left to load anything else. No amount of "unified RAM is more efficient" hand waving is going to change the fact that the next image that loads is going to push an older one out to the SSD.

What allows Apple to get away with this happening on a daily basis for millions of users is the fact that swapping to a modern high speed SSD is so quick that most people don't notice it happening.

Many years ago when Macs came with slow spinning hard drives that was definitely not the case. Swapping came with obvious delays, sometimes including the spinning wheel of death. A friend of mine had a brand new state of the art Mac and was showing me some simple Photoshop filters. Her Mac was theoretically 7x as fast as my old one, but mine actually did those same image edits faster. The reason was clear: I had lots of RAM and she had just the stock Apple amount. You could hear her hard drive being accessed constantly as data was being swapped back and forth.

The critics are right: 8GB of RAM isn't enough. Millions of Macs run out of RAM every day doing some pretty simple, basic stuff like scrolling Facebook for half an hour.
And Apple is also right: 8GB of RAM is enough because most people don't notice when their Mac has to swap.

I do find it rather annoying that iPhones keep getting more RAM while the Mac remains stuck at 8GB. I also feel that Apple's upgrade price for $10-20 parts is outrageous, but that's Apple. If I don't like how they do business I'm allowed to shop elsewhere.

 

[ric22]

Maybe Apple are waiting for the price of buying 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to fall below the price of 8/256? We're under a $20 difference already 😅

 

[ric22]

I just can't 🙄
Look I have only Safari open, I'm shopping, comparing stuff, nothing extraordinary, just one simple task and it goes nearly to 30GB swap and tabs need refreshing...

Something is going wrong with your Safari... did you try contacting Apple? Sounds like a memory leak...

 

[Account25476]

If everyone bought the 8gb version --> Apple would be forced to increase it's base ram due to poor product quality.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Apple polishers defend Apple defending Apple. All is well in the world.

 

[Sami13496]

I think Mercedes Benz is too expensive and I complain about it. Should Mercedes Benz

A) lower their prices so I could afford their products or

B) just ignore me because I’m simply not their desired customer?

After answering that question replace “Mercedes Benz” with “Apple”…

 

[za9ra22]

well, my mom's iMac is currently using 6.4GB of ram on this page & just watching youtube, so...

This is actually not how macOS works. It is designed to use as much RAM as it can, and to scale itself to the use case. There are limits to how effectively it can do this because obviously if an app requires an 8GB minimum for example, or there are dozens of browser tabs open, there is far less wiggle room for it to function that way, but generally it works very well within the confines of available RAM.

For example, testing right now with the same macOS version and the same apps and files open (thus the same load), my 8GB M1 MBA is using 6.2GB, while my 16GB M1 iMac is using 13.5.

no, because if i want to do something besides watch youtube & browse the web,
the imac will slow, (or slow, freeze & restart...)

This suggests there may be something else happening here. Freeze or restart are not behaviors expected from memory pressure issues. Slowing down, certainly can be, but I'd be looking an Activity Monitor at what threads are in use by what processes in the CPU tab (this is a measure of what is being queued up for processing), and what memory is being allocated by which apps in the memory tab.

 

[Geert76]

I think Mercedes Benz is too expensive and I complain about it. Should Mercedes Benz

A) lower their prices so I could afford their products or

B) just ignore me because I’m simply not their desired customer?

After answering that question replace “Mercedes Benz” with “Apple”…

yeah, cause a $50.000 car and $1200.00 laptop comparison really stands well.

Why not compare a $2.000.000 house and a $1200.00 laptop?

 

[Homy]

But dell offers upgrade to 16gb ram for $150, while apple charges $250, and upgrade to 512 gb storage for +$150

In the US Apple charges $200 for the upgrade to 16GB or 512GB, not $250. Dell charges $150, Lenovo charges $170-190 normally (now 149-164 on sale). So Apple charges about $10-50 more. Apple also uses unified memory so perhaps that's why it's a bit more expensive

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Lenovo even sells a laptop for $2769 with 8/256GB and 14" 1080p touch screen.

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[Sami13496]

yeah, cause a $50.000 car and $1200.00 laptop comparison really stands well.

Why not compare a $2.000.000 house and a $1200.00 laptop?

You obviously missed the point.

 

[Random_Matt]

Apple defends ********.
Microsoft defends ********.
Nvidia defends ********.
AMD defends ********.

Companies love profit margins, sorry if this is a new revelation for anyone.

 

[transpo1]

I got that far and knew I had read enough.

Yeah, he’s got a bad rep in these parts— but if you actually take the time to read what I wrote and see the throttling for yourself, then you’ll understand. Turns out that fans cool things down

 

[za9ra22]

Yeah, he’s got a bad rep in these parts— but if you actually take the time to read what I wrote and see the throttling for yourself, then you’ll understand. Turns out that fans cool things down

Exactly what throttling? I mean yes, the system will throttle as it is intended to, but so far I haven't experienced it on the M1 or M3 MBA.

There again, if I needed the workflow that would cause throttling, the MBP would be the right choice of system for me to buy.

 

[dumastudetto]

My view is this is how the standard configs should lineup:

• MacBook Air starts at 8GB
• MacBook Pro M3 starts at 16GB
• MacBook Pro M3 Pro starts at 16GB
• MacBook Pro M3 Max starts at 32GB
• iMac starts at 8GB
• Mac Mini starts at 8GB
• Mac Studio Starts at 32GB

Apple is broadly already in the right place across all of these. It's only two of the three 14 inch MacBook Pro standard configurations that start at 8GB.

People overdramatising this as usual IMO. The Mac lineup is strong and represents exceptional value-for-money.

 

[unchecked]

Apple defends ********.
Microsoft defends ********.
Nvidia defends ********.
AMD defends ********.

Companies love profit margins, sorry if this is a new revelation for anyone.

Yea and that’s why we’re complaining about it. Just because the world is like that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Since there’s nothing much we can do about it, all that’s left is to bitch about it.

Do we expect Apple to suddenly think of us out of goodwill? Of course not. But we can still bitch about how crappy that is.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

We are all complaining 8+256 is too expensive.

Or, to rephrase “We are all complaining that Macs are too expensive”. Which, I mean, they’re not saying anything new…

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Apple defends ********.
Microsoft defends ********.
Nvidia defends ********.
AMD defends ********.

Companies love profit margins, sorry if this is a new revelation for anyone.

And, usually, defend isn’t even against some deep technical analysis or vision into a novel business perspective. Someone, with not enough money to buy a thing they want, simply attacks with ‘the thing I want should be cheaper’. It barely even warrants a “defense”. That’s why the defense hardly comes with reams of facts and data (because the attacker will go, “Yeah, but it should be cheaper.”). They just have words that spin it into a positive for those that are persuadable and leave it at that.

 

[Timpetus]

The vast majority of consumers are fine with the base models. It's those of us who need more that get screwed, as the upgrades are so expensive. My workaround was to buy an M1 Max 14" MBP with 64GB/2TB when they were on sale for what the base config was originally. The upgrade prices revert to what the market will bear once they are a year or two old, so I just buy the previous model MBP and get a better config for my needs (RAM+storage matter more to my use case than raw processing power) vs. buying the current base model or spending far more on an upgraded model.

 

[transpo1]

Exactly what throttling? I mean yes, the system will throttle as it is intended to, but so far I haven't experienced it on the M1 or M3 MBA.

There again, if I needed the workflow that would cause throttling, the MBP would be the right choice of system for me to buy.

Throttling when doing intensive CPU/GPU workloads for photo/video rendering/exporting.

Exactly— unless you’re doing those kinds of workloads, you really don’t need a fan. MacBook Airs are excellent computers for most tasks.

 

[Bodhitree]

I’m so sick of this debate. Maybe 8 GB is enough today for a select few. The point, however, is that any machine, in 2024, with 8GB of ram cannot be legitimately called “insanely great”.

Further, I don’t believe it costs Apple more than $20 for the extra 8GB and the fact that this isn’t standard is just another upset with the current ecosystem.

I know Tim and Co don’t care now but as more and more people move way from Apple, they soon will. Betting the entire company on the future of a single product family, the iPhone, is damn risky. I wish Apple would return to making all their products, hardware and software, “insanely great”. Though Tim is, no doubt, an excellent CEO, and, no doubt, has altered Apple’s trajectory; therefore, I doubt, Apple will make a change under current leadership.

I entirely agree. When I bought my M1 iMac, at 8/256 it would have cost a not unreasonable 1200 euros. With the 4 USB ports, 16 GB ram and 512 storage it cost an egregious 2000 euros. Now the extra ram if mounted as default costs peanuts, as does the extra ssd storage. At most 100 euros, which I believe is a trade-off most customers would happily agree to.

The thing is, it’s blatantly unreasonable pricing, on a product which makes needing upgrades unavoidable. It sucks that Tim and co choose to do this, and I don’t think Steve would have agreed to it in the days that Apple was becoming great.

 

[MayaUser]

8gb with 256 M3 Macbook air is totally fine for entry level laptop..the issue with people is that non-professionals are price sensitive ...if an M3 Macbook air would start from $799 there was no debate as long as there are also BTO options

 

[Contact_Feanor]

View attachment 2368472 View attachment 2368471

My how times have changed. The MacBook Air was introduced in 2008, with 2Gb of RAM. Not bad for the time. In fact, probably more than most people needed. 17 years later, the base-level comes with a whopping 4x as much.

Let's compare that to the past. The iMac was introduced in 1998, with 32Mb of RAM. 17 years later, the base level had 8Gb, which comes out to 250x as much. But since then, it stayed there for a total of 14 years. The iMac has come with 8Gb of RAM for 14 years. The iMac has not had its RAM increased since Tim Cook's second year as CEO. The iMac has started with the same amount of RAM since the iPhone 5.

What's this mean? The progress computers made in the 90s and 00s was dramatic and fun to live through. RAM is just one metric, but this metric has definitely stalled. Whether that's a good or bad thing can be debated, but you can't say it's not true. On one hand, it's nice to have a computer that doesn't go obsolete in 4-5 years because the new models have such higher specs. But on the other hand, it sucks that we can't look forward to all the new cool things that computers will be able to do in 4-5 years like we used to.

Base RAM not increasing doesn't seem to me to be an indication of no more progress. It seems more like an indication of what file sizes people use. Except for photos and videos that have become higher resolution, most files (text, spreadsheets, ...) didn't dramatically increase in size between 2012 and now. Sure, people working with databases or who code apps have seen bigger and more files, but even that hasn't been so dramatic as the file size increase was in the nineties. At the same time more files have seen more and faster compression and even RAM has become compressed these days. 8GB of compressed RAM has become better for your battery life than 16GB of uncompressed RAM because the compression has become less power-intensive than actually powering the RAM all the time.

If most people just use about 8GB RAM, it would be bad for battery life to keep increasing it without good cause. In the 20th century, cars kept on going faster and faster. Until they could easily go 160km/h and then it plateaued because outside of some niche uses, most people never go faster than 120-130km/h. The engineering effort is better served somewhere else (like better compression, more power-efficiency, etc.)

 

[AlixSPQR]

8gb with 256 M3 Macbook air is totally fine for entry level laptop..the issue with people is that non-professionals are price sensitive ...if an M3 Macbook air would start from $799 there was no debate as long as there are also BTO options

Noone needs a Mac, really. There are cheaper computers for price sensitive people.

 

[MayaUser]

Noone needs a Mac, really. There are cheaper computers for price sensitive people.

for non-professionals non-one needs a computer then..but who wants/likes macOS and needs an overall very good device with great battery life...the mac is the way, also there are those who wants the so called "status symbol" but dont want to spend money that they dont have