Apple defends 8gb in laptop

[Chuckeee]

Still, they are forced to pay 200$ for an upgrade that would cost apple almost nothing if 16 gigs were the base.

No you are looking at it the wrong way, it would have cost Apple $200 in lost revenue plus it could cost Apple loss of another sale if the user is forced to not upgrade sooner (planned obsolescence).

Apple’s prices and RAM offerings are intended to maximize Apple profits, not necessarily to be user friendly.

 

[redheeler]

Here: Firefox with 1 YouTube page open: 9.6GB ...

View attachment 2381689

How much RAM do you have? Firefox likely adjusts its caching behavior based on how much is available. Same with many MacOS processes and other apps.

Not agreeing with or defending Apple putting 8 GB in Macs, but this is something to consider.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Objectively, most users/consumers would be satisfied with a Pi. The Raspberry Pi OS is generally very simple/basic. Furthermore, the recommended installation includes:

• Chromium: Web browsers are one of the most used apps, especially because the Web is now Web apps and not simply static pages. Plus, of course, common consumption is social media — which, again, most are available as Web apps/platforms.
• LibreOffice: Generally compatible with MS Office, and what kind of “advanced” features do most people use?
• VLC: While most media is streamed or consumed via Web browser, the option to download and watch offline is still significant enough.
• Claws Mail: It’s there, however, to be honest, most users would probably opt to use their email provider’s Web app/portal. In other words, from what I’ve observed, users prefer mail apps with some flare, elegance, and extras.

One of the hurdles, possible deterrents would be a lack of default messenger despite many popular (compatible) clients being available:

Pi-Apps - Apps List

Raspberry Pi App Store for Open Source Projects.

pi-apps.io

The only other obvious hurdle would be software updating/upgrading as it’s only done via CLI. Not complicated, but plenty of users may still be deterred nonetheless.

Actually, most users / consumers who need or want a laptop would be most satisfied with a decent Chromebook.

I used to diss Chromebooks until I bought one for my mom. The thing was freaking awesome. Very fast, very stable, frequent updates that self-install in background and don't break things. Perfect for basic tasks especially if you're using Google services. It was supported for 7 years and it was fast and stable all that time. Just replaced it with another one.

 

[SkweeBop]

Why people go and download something like Firefox when you have Safari that is made specifically for Mac 🙄

in their defense, sometimes Safari's cursor arrow doesn't recognize when it hovers over links on random basis

 

[Alameda]

Here: Firefox with 1 YouTube page open: 9.6GB ...

View attachment 2381689

Specifically, since that 9.6 GB is cached video, can you see any performance difference between having that video cached into RAM or cached onto SSD? Maybe if you scrub back and forth, you’d see a very slight difference as you page from SSD to RAM, but not significant.

There are plenty of people who benefit from more than 8 GB, but most users don’t have any problem with 8 GB. My college student kids don’t have any trouble with their 8 GB MacBook Airs.