Apple is not going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. And that's good.

[mrmister]

Is 8GB of Apple RAM equal to 16GB? I doubt that. But it is definitely more efficient, and with dynamic caching, even more efficient than we've seen it become.

Is it equal to 12GB of PC RAM? 10GB?

Apple isn't going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. They know that bumping up the low end will increase costs across the board...and especially since going to Apple Silicon, 8GB is a good amount if you're a simple user who doesn't run many apps at the same time, or you don't have 40 tabs open.

It's actually good they aren't just going to 16GB, because it incentizes them to make the system as efficient as possible, which pays dividends by making all Macs better machines. And if you are reading this, you're a power user—you come to Macrumors, come on—so you already know you want at least 16GB, so pay the tax.

It's not smoke and mirrors—Apple Silicon does use RAM better, and 8GB is increasingly enough depending on what you do with it. Bleating over and over that Apple "needs" to give away double that amount is silly...they will only do that if they look at what their average user is doing with the machines, and seeing that those folks are starting to have real memory pressure at such a level that the floor needs to be raised.

And when they do—count on it being 12 GB, not 16.

In the meantime...just buy your damn RAM up to 16GB if you are obsessing over it!

 

[wolfboy]

Wow, you guys will find out inventive ways to rationalize every crappy Apple practice lol

With this train of thought, you might as well keep all the macs at 128gb/8gb ram because "the average user doesn't need it, everyone uses the cloud". C'mon, just pony up $100 for 256gb, $300 for 512gb, or $500 for 1tb and another $200/$400 for 16/32gb of ram to pay your power user tax.

EDIT: Your only job as a consumer should be to make sure you get the value you deserve for how much you're spending on a product. I'm sure you guys do this for everything else you buy, but turn a blind eye when it comes to Apple.

 

[mouthster]

Is 8GB of Apple RAM equal to 16GB? I doubt that. But it is definitely more efficient, and with dynamic caching, even more efficient than we've seen it become.

Is it equal to 12GB of PC RAM? 10GB?

Apple isn't going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. They know that bumping up the low end will increase costs across the board...and especially since going to Apple Silicon, 8GB is a good amount if you're a simple user who doesn't run many apps at the same time, or you don't have 40 tabs open.

It's actually good they aren't just going to 16GB, because it incentizes them to make the system as efficient as possible, which pays dividends by making all Macs better machines. And if you are reading this, you're a power user—you come to Macrumors, come on—so you already know you want at least 16GB, so pay the tax.

It's not smoke and mirrors—Apple Silicon does use RAM better, and 8GB is increasingly enough depending on what you do with it. Bleating over and over that Apple "needs" to give away double that amount is silly...they will only do that if they look at what their average user is doing with the machines, and seeing that those folks are starting to have real memory pressure at such a level that the floor needs to be raised.

And when they do—count on it being 12 GB, not 16.

In the meantime...just buy your damn RAM up to 16GB if you are obsessing over it!

You do make a good point that Apple has more data on what their customers are doing than all the tech journalists, YouTubers and Redditors combined.

 

[wnorris]

Is 8GB of Apple RAM equal to 16GB? I doubt that. But it is definitely more efficient, and with dynamic caching, even more efficient than we've seen it become.

Is it equal to 12GB of PC RAM? 10GB?

Apple isn't going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. They know that bumping up the low end will increase costs across the board...and especially since going to Apple Silicon, 8GB is a good amount if you're a simple user who doesn't run many apps at the same time, or you don't have 40 tabs open.

It's actually good they aren't just going to 16GB, because it incentizes them to make the system as efficient as possible, which pays dividends by making all Macs better machines. And if you are reading this, you're a power user—you come to Macrumors, come on—so you already know you want at least 16GB, so pay the tax.

It's not smoke and mirrors—Apple Silicon does use RAM better, and 8GB is increasingly enough depending on what you do with it. Bleating over and over that Apple "needs" to give away double that amount is silly...they will only do that if they look at what their average user is doing with the machines, and seeing that those folks are starting to have real memory pressure at such a level that the floor needs to be raised.

And when they do—count on it being 12 GB, not 16.

In the meantime...just buy your damn RAM up to 16GB if you are obsessing over it!

Nice article from Macworld on this topic.

"Even relatively casual users who load up on browser tabs and inefficient Electron apps (household names like Slack, Teams, Discord, etc.) can find performance compromised by running out of RAM."

"To be clear, 8GB of LPDDR5-6400 (the RAM used in these products) costs Apple a tiny fraction of that amount. Nobody knows precisely what Apple pays its suppliers, but the going price for 64Gbits (8GB) of that sort of RAM is less than $40 in quantity. Apple’s deal likely has them paying $30 or less.

There’s nothing special about Apple’s RAM. It’s high quality, and it’s integrated on a very wide memory bus very close to the M3 chip, but those manufacturing complexities don’t make the RAM cost more. Apple’s charging you $200 for RAM it buys for $30."

"Here’s a fun experiment: Configure a MacBook Pro with the M3 Max, the full 16-core CPU version. Every additional 16GB of RAM costs $200, the same as 8GB of RAM on the lower configurations."

 

[NEPOBABY]

Probably around 60% of portable Macs are sold to office workers who do their job in the cloud using Google sheets, email and wetransfer. They don't need 16 gigs, not this decade anyway.

But if they need a little bit more umph in the CPU then a Pro is a better choice than an Air, until the Air gets an M3. So it makes sense to sell a Pro with 8 gigs. Give them some horsepower but keep the cost of the machine down.

If all Macs and PCs started with 16 gigs then we'll see more demand for ram, and that means production has to ramp up or wholesale memory prices go up for everyone.

Not ideal. That's how shortages and demand has always caused price spikes. We saw it happen with memory prices many times since the early days.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I would be okay with this if they reduced the upgrade price to something more reasonable. Say $75 for 16GB and $75 for 512GB. That would be a more reasonable middle ground.


I take that back...an XPS 13 from Dell is available front and center for $1099 with 16/512:

 

[NEPOBABY]

I would be okay with this if they reduced the upgrade price to something more reasonable. Say $75 for 16GB and $75 for 512GB. That would be a more reasonable middle ground.


I take that back...an XPS 13 from Dell is available front and center for $1099 with 16/512:

View attachment 2309394

You can give that Dell 128 gigs of ram and it would still be a slow plastic piece of crap that runs the ugliest OS Microsoft has put out in 15 years. I thought we stopped comparing this garbage to Macs?

 

[wnorris]

If all Macs and PCs started with 16 gigs then we'll see more demand for ram, and that means production has to ramp up or wholesale memory prices go up for everyone.

Not ideal. That's how shortages and demand has always caused price spikes. We saw it happen with memory prices many times since the early days.

Sorry, but this is stretching things quite a bit. Supply chain for RAM will not be impacted by Apple adjusting base RAM from 8GB to 16GB.

People are doing some amazing gymnastics to justify Apple's pricing on RAM. Great that they can maximize margins via RAM, but there is also a point where they need to increase the RAM sizes in a similar way they improve the processor.

Why iterate on the processor on a yearly basis and only update storage and RAM every 8 years?

 

[Eidorian]

Wait I've seen this one before. nVidia claimed that 8 GB of VRAM was enough in 2023.

It's not.

 

[RokinAmerica]

How does the 8GB Unified Ram compare to 16GB Ram and a 8GB or 12 GB GPU in pc? I have 16GB ram and 12GB VRam GPU. How does the Unified compare to that? I have no swap, no sharing, just dedicated Ram for each purpose.

Genuine Q, I am a windows user since the original iMac I owned, the purple, late 90's? Recently bought an MBA 15" with 16GB, because until I can see real results, I just don't believe 8GB can ever be equal to 16GB ram with a dedicated GPU of 8 or more VRam

 

[wolfboy]

Wait I've seen this one before. nVidia claimed that 8 GB of VRAM was enough in 2023.

It's not.

Yes, user needs increase over time and Apple has a tendency to drag out their base configurations as long as they can.

We've been through this song and dance before with 4gb to 8gb RAM a few years ago with some users adamant that 4gb in their MBA was enough. And now we're doing it again for 8gb to 16gb.

In the PC world, 8gb ram is usually reserved only for the base/budget laptops. For $1600, they definitely will be getting 16gb at least.

 

[NEPOBABY]

Sorry, but this is stretching things quite a bit. Supply chain for RAM will not be impacted by Apple adjusting base RAM from 8GB to 16GB.

I have to do the internet thing when someone says stop misquoting the person you are responding to because you want to win internet points.

I said...

"If all Macs and PCs started with 16 gigs..."

 

[Evil Spoonman]

8GB of RAM is actually less on a Mac than in many PCs because it has to be shared with the GPU. No dedicated VRAM on any Mac sold today.

The most offensive thing about the 8GB/256GB starting config is that getting it up to 16GB/512GB costs so much money. It is completely detached from memory pricing and is pure margin.

 

[Shirasaki]

If all Macs and PCs started with 16 gigs then we'll see more demand for ram, and that means production has to ramp up or wholesale memory prices go up for everyone.

Not ideal. That's how shortages and demand has always caused price spikes. We saw it happen with memory prices many times since the early days.

By the same logic, why we need more than 640K RAM? Heck, 4K in Commodore PET would get dirt cheap a couple years down the line so let’s just keep the RAM at 4K shall we? Permanently cap the demand to permanently ease supply shortages.

On that note, 5.25” floppy should be popular again, because of the same logic.

You can give that Dell 128 gigs of ram and it would still be a slow plastic piece of crap that runs the ugliest OS Microsoft has put out in 15 years. I thought we stopped comparing this garbage to Macs?

Categorically deny any and all PC just because. 😏
It’s not like Mac itself doesn’t have their own problems either.
I get it. You love macOS to death. But people out there who cannot even afford baseline M1 MacBook Air don’t give a crap about macOS.

 

[GuyDouche]

AppleHeads unite! The hard cope is real. Vote with your coin. Either don’t purchase or purchase a higher tiered device. Don’t settle for sub-par products.

 

[Thisismattwade]

I would be okay with this if they reduced the upgrade price to something more reasonable. Say $75 for 16GB and $75 for 512GB. That would be a more reasonable middle ground.


I take that back...an XPS 13 from Dell is available front and center for $1099 with 16/512:

View attachment 2309394

In all fairness, the battery on that laptop will probably last 3-4 hours, compared to 12-14 using our (base) M1 MBA. (I work on a Dell XPS 13 with that exact config. It's a great computer, just a little loud on the fans, but I make sure I have my power supply with me at all times if I'm going mobile vs docked. I did have a Lenovo with 8GB back in the day. I could work just fine on it, too, but again the battery life was terrible.)

I'm not excusing/justifying the RAM decisions Apple makes - $200 is a lot to upgrade - but they have so much data on their consumers that either people are willing to pay that tax and Apple sees that in sales figures, or they study macOS feedback and see that really 8GB works fine and helps them keep prices low. I guess it could be both...

 

[mouthster]

I'll admit I am conflicted on this. On one hand I agree that in this day and age 8GB is a paltry amount for what they are charging.

On the other hand, when M1 came out I sold a 16GB 2019" Intel MacBook Pro 16" and bought an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB/512. I wanted 16GB but I was impatient and the ship times were around a month out.

It felt faster and smoother in every single way compared to the Intel with 16GB. And this was in the early days where a lot of my software was still running in Rosetta.

As soon as the M1 Max came out I jumped on that (mostly for the screen and multiple-monitor capability). But my time with the 8GB Air was good.

My wife also moved from an Intel based Air to an M1 with 8GB. She's in marketing and has a lot of chrome tabs and a few electron apps open and from time to time I ask about her experience and she has no complaints.

So I do believe there are a lot of people that wouldn't notice the difference between 8GB and 16GB. But I also think Apple can afford to increase the base config to 16GB.

 

[Mainsail]

The base model are for everyday computing, and I kind of agree with the OP that Apple will increase the base 8GB RAM when it becomes essential to improving the typical consumers' computing experience.

I am a typical MBA consumer that bought the base 13.6" M2 model (8GB/256GB) last year on sale at BB. I paid $1,050.....today, it would be $899. One heck of deal! I have never had a problem. The computer is fantastic. Silent and buttery smooth. Of course, I don't spend my day staring at Active Monitor worrying about memory swapping. I just use the thing to do stuff that many other consumers do:

• email
• messaging
• contacts/calendars
• iWork
• MS Office
• iMovie (mainly glorified slideshows for family events)
• markup PDFs
• web browsing
• streaming TV and video
• FaceTime and Zoom
• etc..

If and when 8GB of RAM limits the typical consumer experience, Apple will change the base configuration. Why? Because they want people to have a great experience so they will buy their computers. It's as simple as that.

 

[sw1tcher]

Probably around 60% of portable Macs are sold to office workers who do their job in the cloud using Google sheets, email and wetransfer. They don't need 16 gigs, not this decade anyway.

🤣 @ thinking 8GB will be enough in 2029 (i.e. "this decade")

 

[glhiii]

I had a cousin who worked for IBM a long time ago when computers took up a whole room. A computer with 8 megs of RAM cost $1 million (which would be 2 or 3 million today). Someone had the bright idea of automating the whole US postal system with it. In those days, that seemed like an unimaginable amount of RAM. Today's 8 gb of RAM will be tomorrow's 8 terabytes.

 

[tutubibi]

...
The most offensive thing about the 8GB/256GB starting config is that getting it up to 16GB/512GB costs so much money. It is completely detached from memory pricing and is pure margin.

This ^

I am OK with pathetic 8/256 base configuration but upgrade prices for RAM and storage are pure greed.

 

[TracerAnalog]

Wait I've seen this one before. nVidia claimed that 8 GB of VRAM was enough in 2023.

It's not.

Who needs more than 64K? - Bill Gates

 

[mouthster]

This ^

I am OK with pathetic 8/256 base configuration but upgrade prices for RAM and storage are pure greed.

I agree with this. The debate should shift away from what the base configuration is to the cost of upgrading.

 

[erikkfi]

Apple is all about being able to say their devices start at some low price, but carefully crafting a ladder of upgrades that most users need. The iMac starts at I believe $1300 but most users should get the $1800 configuration with more memory, storage, and ports.

So again, the goal is to get people to not have sticker shock when they get to the website -- "oh, $1300, that's better than I thought" -- but then lull them into spending $1800 before taxes, and maybe getting them to buy AppleCare too. If they start the iMac at $1800, some set of people who are going to end up buying it would balk immediately and look at other options.

 

[Sunset Cassette]

I'm starting to think the major problem here isn't really that the base configuration of Macs start with 8GB RAM, but more so the fact that you aren't able to upgrade your machine after purchase as was possible in the past.

If you think that you might end up needing more memory later down the line, you are faced with the choice of either buying a lesser machine now and potentially needing to purchase a new machine sooner, or paying exorbitantly for upgrades at time of purchase since it's the only chance you have at improving specs/performance for the lifetime of that device.

Granted, all of this is to assume that you are purchasing a machine in the present with the understanding that your needs may change in the future, and whether or not you can justify (read: stomach) the costs of Apple's upgrades.