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

[Mainsail]

There are lots of videos showing how light of a workload already results in using the SSD storage for memory.

The SSDs are non-replaceable and their failure means a logic board failure (has to be replaced entirely). SSDs have a limited lifespan of write cycles.

None of this is even contestable. The only question is whether or not it causes a device failure ahead of the end of its useful life. 8GB non-upgradeable RAM starving the device at new in 2024, maybe the whole device will be simply too slow before the SSD fails. Could only take a couple of years anyways. How else is Apple going to convince people to hand over another $2K three years from now? They love nothing more than people who don't have a clue what's going on.

I suspect only Apple has the data on why logic boards fail, if anyone. When the board on my 2020 5k iMac 8GB failed, Apple didn't say why, they just replaced the whole thing. I since tossed in 32 GB for $75 so hopefully it'll be fine for the rest of the decade that it will be good for.

You really think Apple's business model is to have SSD failures after a couple of years so people need to buy new laptops? That's their revenue maximizing strategy? Destroy their brand and get a reputation for cheap crappy laptops. I seriously doubt it.

My family and I have purchased numerous base configuration MBA with 4-8GB of memory over the years. Most of these are college computers that get used plenty. Never ever had an SSD failure or logic board failure. All lasted 5-7 years and worked perfectly when traded in for something newer. BTW- these computers cost $999 not $2K.

The idea that there is significant risk of SSD failures due to insufficient RAM after a couple of years of everyday use sounds like an exaggeration to me. It certainly is not my experience.

 

[Altis]

You really think Apple's business model is to have SSD failures after a couple of years so people need to buy new laptops? That's their revenue maximizing strategy? Destroy their brand and get a reputation for cheap crappy laptops. I seriously doubt it.

If only that's what I said. But it isn't.

That said, it's not like they would advertise frequent failures to the public. The 2019 16" MBP has what many jokingly call "suicidal SSDs" because of their very high failure rate (thermal design flaws, in this case). There are tons of problems over the years affecting various devices, from the dGPU days of 2011-era MBPs, butterfly keyboards, display problems, etc... In the case of logic board failures, only Apple really knows what's causing them.

My family and I have purchased numerous base configuration MBA with 4-8GB of memory over the years. Most of these are college computers that get used plenty. Never ever had an SSD failure or logic board failure. All lasted 5-7 years and worked perfectly when traded in for something newer. BTW- these computers cost $999 not $2K.

The idea that there is significant risk of SSD failures due to insufficient RAM after a couple of years of everyday use sounds like an exaggeration to me. It certainly is not my experience.

There is exponentially more drive swapping going on now with 8 GB of shared system and graphics (non-compressable) RAM, especially with higher resolution displays and ever-increasing software/webpage/asset size. Swap used to be reserved for rare cases of running out of memory to prevent the system from crashing entirely. Now it's used even in light workloads as system memory (which it isn't).

I don't know what the fail rate will be or how long they'll last on average, but the SSD is a wearable part that's not only now soldered on to the logic board, but is also required to boot the computer at all (since the ever-so-magical Apple Silicon). You can't even boot the computer from an external drive or into recovery mode without a functioning SSD anymore.

And no doubt the same people who claim Apple machines are so reliable also tell us to get the maximum amount of AppleCare+ (which is only 3 years, anyways).

All this is easily avoided by a few extra bucks worth of RAM in a $2K "pro" machine. Seems like pretty much everyone who understands computers agrees 8GB is rather petty on this machine, and the rest don't know any better or are more interested in AAPL gains.

 

[Mainsail]

All this is easily avoided by a few extra bucks worth of RAM in a $2K "pro" machine. Seems like pretty much everyone who understands computers agrees 8GB is rather petty on this machine, and the rest don't know any better or are more interested in AAPL gains.

Wow. The arrogance! You start with the assumption that people are buying $2K machines. That's the echo chamber of "everyone who understands computers". When millions of people are buying $999 MBAs and are perfectly happy with the base configuration and use them for years and years. You have no idea what the typical user does with their computer if you assume they are buying $2K machines. You are overlaying your requirements and then demanding specs at the entry level to meet your needs.....so what, then we are all stuck buying machines twice as expensive as the ones we need.

 

[iF34R]

As cheap as ram actually cost, there is no excuse for Apple not to either lower the cost of ram upgrades or increase the base amount of ram.
I don’t give a **** about Apple’s bottom line. I vote with my dollars, and they won’t get my money until they change the above.
I am sick of you shareholders and Apple shills defending Apple. They don’t deserve it.
They have low MacBook sales but don’t change this nonsense, thus they deserve the low sales.
Their sales could increase by so much to offset the small amount of ram cost it’s bs

I'm with you on this. As much as I want a new upgraded Mac to replace my late 2012 iMac, I'm not buying something that comes in a bare min specs and then having to pay out the wazoo for the configuration I want.

 

[AustinIllini]

The price of RAM upgrades is the problem here, not the base configuration. 8GM of RAM is probably fine, but the price to increase RAM is highway robbery.

 

[Altis]

Wow. The arrogance! You start with the assumption that people are buying $2K machines. That's the echo chamber of "everyone who understands computers". When millions of people are buying $999 MBAs and are perfectly happy with the base configuration and use them for years and years. You have no idea what the typical user does with their computer if you assume they are buying $2K machines. You are overlaying your requirements and then demanding specs at the entry level to meet your needs.....so what, then we are all stuck buying machines twice as expensive as the ones we need.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but Apple sells the new MacBook Pro M3 with just 8 GB of RAM for coming up on $1800 USD (C$2100 here). That's the model I am referencing. If you think 8 GB is fine for $999, do you not maybe expect a bit more than bare minimum when you go to the "pro" model for much more expense?

For machines that cost less, 8 GB might be reasonable (even the Raspberry Pi SBC comes with 8 GB now). It's still quite low and will end up doing swap so it's far from ideal -- especially considering how inexpensive 16 GB (or 12 GB) is in parts. I expect a new machine in this age of highly matured and slowly developing desktop/laptop computing to last quite a few years as the software simply isn't changing that much anymore. The last thing we need is more e-waste in a few years because of a bottleneck or excessive drive wear. So it isn't that nobody could get by on 8 GB, many could, but then the price should reflect that. Looking at Apple's page for the MBP shows all the incredible things it can do because it's so powerful -- someone with little computer knowledge (such as young students) would easily trust that Apple wouldn't sell an expensive MBP like that and starve it of RAM so badly it would struggle to do many of those advertised tasks, and with limited multi-tasking at that.

And to the point of "arrogance", I recently installed an SSD in a family member's desktop PC from 2013. It was running incredibly slow on the HDD and they were looking at buying a new computer, even though they only use it for web browsing, email, storing photos, and other light tasks. Instead I tossed a fresh SSD in there for about $40 and now it runs about as fast as any computer at those easy tasks. It does help that it came with 12 GB of RAM (in 2013) and a low-power but dedicated graphics (with its own memory), but that old i7 4770 will keep on for several years to come. My laptop, which I only really on occasion for web browning, office, and remote desktop, is a 10-year old MacBook Air with 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core i5. Granted, macOS runs so poorly on it that I now dual-boot it with Linux as it runs about 75% as fast as a new computer at those tasks. I'd upgrade to 8 GB on that machine if it weren't soldered.

Apple sells premium devices at a premium price, so I find it petty when they knowingly bottleneck a device. We're to celebrate when they increase the processor performance by 10-15%, but when they use the SSD as memory at a fraction of the speed and introducing wear, or cut the SSD speed in half by using single NAND chips, or cut memory bandwidth in half, etc, we're told it's inconsequential to the average user, and that it's "just fine"/ "sufficient"/ "adequate."

 

[Mainsail]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but Apple sells the new MacBook Pro M3 with just 8 GB of RAM for coming up on $1800 USD (C$2100 here). That's the model I am referencing. If you think 8 GB is fine for $999, do you not maybe expect a bit more than bare minimum when you go to the "pro" model for much more expense?

For machines that cost less, 8 GB might be reasonable (even the Raspberry Pi SBC comes with 8 GB now). It's still quite low and will end up doing swap so it's far from ideal -- especially considering how inexpensive 16 GB (or 12 GB) is in parts. I expect a new machine in this age of highly matured and slowly developing desktop/laptop computing to last quite a few years as the software simply isn't changing that much anymore. The last thing we need is more e-waste in a few years because of a bottleneck or excessive drive wear. So it isn't that nobody could get by on 8 GB, many could, but then the price should reflect that. Looking at Apple's page for the MBP shows all the incredible things it can do because it's so powerful -- someone with little computer knowledge (such as young students) would easily trust that Apple wouldn't sell an expensive MBP like that and starve it of RAM so badly it would struggle to do many of those advertised tasks, and with limited multi-tasking at that.

And to the point of "arrogance", I recently installed an SSD in a family member's desktop PC from 2013. It was running incredibly slow on the HDD and they were looking at buying a new computer, even though they only use it for web browsing, email, storing photos, and other light tasks. Instead I tossed a fresh SSD in there for about $40 and now it runs about as fast as any computer at those easy tasks. It does help that it came with 12 GB of RAM (in 2013) and a low-power but dedicated graphics (with its own memory), but that old i7 4770 will keep on for several years to come. My laptop, which I only really on occasion for web browning, office, and remote desktop, is a 10-year old MacBook Air with 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core i5. Granted, macOS runs so poorly on it that I now dual-boot it with Linux as it runs about 75% as fast as a new computer at those tasks. I'd upgrade to 8 GB on that machine if it weren't soldered.

Apple sells premium devices at a premium price, so I find it petty when they knowingly bottleneck a device. We're to celebrate when they increase the processor performance by 10-15%, but when they use the SSD as memory at a fraction of the speed and introducing wear, or cut the SSD speed in half by using single NAND chips, or cut memory bandwidth in half, etc, we're told it's inconsequential to the average user, and that it's "just fine"/ "sufficient"/ "adequate."

I am not a customer for the base 14” MBP or any MBP for that matter, but the base MBP is $1,599 USD not $1,800.

 

[picpicmac]

The idea that there is significant risk of SSD failures due to insufficient RAM after a couple of years of everyday use sounds like an exaggeration to me.

Because it is. Recent computers don't have SSD failures as a common complaint. They just don't. You can always find someone somewhere who had an SSD failure, sure, but on recent computers that is really rare.

I first started using hard drives, that is spinning platters, with the first IBM PC that supported such. Over the decades I have had many HDs fail after only a couple of years.

Right now I am booting off of an external SSD, that has yet to fail me, and on my old Mac there is constant swapping, the SSD is about 85% to 90% full for the past 5 years... still no failure. I've had many HDs give up.

There are a lot of drama queens among the Youtube "content creators", and I find their fear mongering baseless.

 

[picpicmac]

I find it petty when they knowingly bottleneck a device.

You might find it petty, but for a large organization (corporation, institution) who might buy computers by the thousands, unit costs are important.

And many professionals, by which I mean real professions as in people who have professions, just need a laptop to go give a presentation or take notes, etc., and could care less about specs on their computer.

All they want are: 1) light weight to carry, 2) good battery life, 3) reliable.

Why should these use cases be burdened with higher procurement costs just to satisfy the lusts of tech nerds/hobbyists?

Said professionals will use the laptop for three years and then just buy a new device.

Is it wasteful to not keep a computer for a decade? Yes, it probably is. I'm typing this on a 15 year old iMac, so I know how to get the most out of a device.

Yet in this world our modern society has collectively chosen to go down a path of faster is better, bigger is better, etc., and to that end we flip computers (and flip houses, and automobiles we lease instead of buy, etc.)

It sounds like your complaint is one of cost. I too was disappointed that Apple did not adjust their upgrade schedule now that the chip shortage (remember the pandemic?) is abated and memory costs have gone down.

I will add this too: all NAND chips are not alike. Some will work longer than others, some will work faster than others. I hope that the engineers at Apple have specified the NAND chips in Macs to be among the very best.

 

[Hopscotcher]

You might find it petty, but for a large organization (corporation, institution) who might buy computers by the thousands, unit costs are important.

And many professionals, by which I mean real professions as in people who have professions, just need a laptop to go give a presentation or take notes, etc., and could care less about specs on their computer.

All they want are: 1) light weight to carry, 2) good battery life, 3) reliable.

Why should these use cases be burdened with higher procurement costs just to satisfy the lusts of tech nerds/hobbyists?

Said professionals will use the laptop for three years and then just buy a new device.

Is it wasteful to not keep a computer for a decade? Yes, it probably is. I'm typing this on a 15 year old iMac, so I know how to get the most out of a device.

Yet in this world our modern society has collectively chosen to go down a path of faster is better, bigger is better, etc., and to that end we flip computers (and flip houses, and automobiles we lease instead of buy, etc.)

It sounds like your complaint is one of cost. I too was disappointed that Apple did not adjust their upgrade schedule now that the chip shortage (remember the pandemic?) is abated and memory costs have gone down.

I will add this too: all NAND chips are not alike. Some will work longer than others, some will work faster than others. I hope that the engineers at Apple have specified the NAND chips in Macs to be among the very best.

The point is that Apple simply charges too much for RAM and storage upgrades. They charge 2 to 4 times as much as anyone else on the market. It's absurd. You also won't find another laptop in this price range with this little RAM and storage. Apple is the only company on planet earth doing this. And people are okay with this and make excuses for it. It has nothing to do with whether people are going to use it or whether they need it at all. It's the fact that Apple is getting away with skimping on parts and blowing up the cost at the user's expense for no other reason than to increase their bottom line. I get they are a business. But this is the Apple tax fully at work. One time, when someone questioned Phil Schiller about the pricing of their products, he responded by saying that people are paying more for the “experience” … which is one of the dumbest explanations I have ever heard. Nothing you just said in that wall of text excuses Apple for overcharging their consumers on upgrades and skimping on basic specs that every other computer company on planet earth charges 2 to 4 times less than Apple. There is no logical defense for Apple doing this. And trying to be okay with this is exactly why Apple keeps getting away with it.

 

[Macalway]

They locked the other thread, hmm.

I'm sure Apple makes the best use of ram, which is nice. But I agree with some of this thread. I have 18GB and just a few minutes ago I looked and it was swapping like crazy, (a VM froze up). Of course VM's consume large amounts of ram , 8gb in this case, but using a small to moderate Windows VM does not a power user make.

Then they charge such incredible amounts for ram just to get decent functionality. It's troubling.

 

[Rutherling]

I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment from OP but based on my small anecdotal evidence I think they’re partially right.

I recommend the M1 iMac and M1 MacBook Air to a few normal people I know. None of them took my advice on upgrading from the base spec. Whenever I see them, I ask how the computers are and they all seem to love them. All of their computers have over 100gb of storage left on their 256gb SSDs. (They all have the 200gb iCloud plan for photo syncing, etc.) When I opened Activity Monitor, the RAM usage varied but swap was never over 2gb. They’re all Safari users so I don’t know how that would compare if they were using Chrome…

I do agree that the people buying these computers (especially the MBP) should have the headroom to do more extensive tasks, and that the baseline should have a higher base RAM, but with the normal people I know (all who upgraded from intel machines) the current lineup would suit them just fine for the years to come.

I will praise Apple for their decision to upgrade the baseline MacBook Pro to 512gb. While in university (art/design school with Adobe CS heavy coursework), I encountered way too many people who didn’t have enough storage on their MBPs as they bought the base 256gb models. (Three people asked me if they could delete their /Library folder because “it was using too much space”).

 

[hans1972]

is that Apple marketing is misleading the public by calling this device a "Pro" and implying it's great for pro workloads,

You have a different interpretation of the word "pro" than Apple.

Nothing in Apple MacBook Pros for the last 10 years implies that all models should have large amount of RAM or large sizes of SSD.

I don't even know what "pro workload" means. If it is short for professional workflow, then it is meaningless since professionals have such different usage of computers.

Also, the usage of "Pro" in the iPhone should have teached people how Apple is using the word in product naming.

 

[agregson]

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.

I use 8/256 MBA on ASD. Notice Window Server task consumes just under 1GB. As each window opens I guess the back buffer for it will consume more. 8/256 is fine for what I do as I am strict with tabs (move to groups), avoid most web apps, tend not to keep apps open, work mainly in terminal/VIM with lightweight code editing in CodeRunner. I do find it annoying that apps such as Mail, Messages, Music and TV consume so much memory.

I could afford to add +8/+256 but not sure I need it. Would pay £50 or £100 for each - but £200 each in 2023? Hmm.

I have several PCs - both SFPC - one to run Linux and one to run Windows. Each have 16/512 (outright purchase of 16/512 with a decent/fast SSD cost less together than upgrade of just one of memory or SSD). One PC has dedicated VRAM one does not. With same sort of workload on each the Windows machine with shared GPU shows similar memory usage/free to MBA. With dedicated VRAM machine it is less on Windows/Linux than macOS.

I am reluctant to pay the upgrade tax. I accept I may not need it and it could be under utilised. But to sell an MBA, iMac, Mini or MBP in 2023 with same memory/storage as my iPhone 15 Pro Max seems a little questionable even insulting and abusive of my loyalty. I tend to favour Apple and have a full complement of devices - MBA, ASD, 4xHomePod, 2xAppleTV, iPad Pro 12.9, iPhone 15 Pro Max, AirpodPro, Watch. I also prefer iOS/macOS over alternatives. However the cost of upgrades compared to mainstream prices for PC components has started to cause me annoyance.

 

[jpf293]

Typical Apple price-walking. If you just need 8Gb then probably the Air is fine for you, but if you really want a Pro then there is the MB Pro M3 for you for a bit extra money. Then you might think, why don't I future-proof it and add a bit more RAM, which gets you up towards the cost of the M3 Pro, so you go for this instead. Happy days for Apple.

8Gb is fine for most things and we all know that Apple's definition of "Pro" is more related to status than performance.

Personally, as my livelihood depends upon my MB working properly, 32Gb is the minimum for me.

 

[ignatius345]

With this mindset if Apple sold machines with 4GB of RAM you will be happy about it insofar it’s “getting the job done” barely.

If 4GB made my Mac run smoothly, I honestly wouldn't give a crap. And for a lot of ordinary use that's where 8GB is right now.

 

[Jack Neill]

I have a few 8GB Macs still and they are all usable just fine for my needs. I think a 8GB Mac is going to feel like my 4GB Airs do right now pretty soon tho.

 

[clangers23]

It's the upgrade costs more than the base 8gb that bothers me particularly given that it's soldered on and therefore fixed for the lifespan of the device.

8gb for $200 or £200 in my case simply outrageous and and an exploitative attempt to push consumers into buying a higher spec laptop than they need or accept that in a few years time 8gb ram will render their device limited forcing them to seek an upgrade earlier than needed.

 

[ignatius345]

There are lots of videos showing how light of a workload already results in using the SSD storage for memory.

The SSDs are non-replaceable and their failure means a logic board failure (has to be replaced entirely). SSDs have a limited lifespan of write cycles.

I don't know about all these "videos" but here's some actual real-world usage as a counterpoint to all this pearl clutching and FUD about RAM and swap space.

I have a MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and a shrimpy 256 GB SSD. I've had it since 2021 and I've used it for some intensive design work, which it handles quite decently. I don't see any beachballs, because swap is actually normal and SSDs are fast enough you don't get the performance penalty we got back in the bad old days of spinning HDDs. Anyway, I don't haunt Activity Monitor all the time, but every time I happen to notice, there's several GB of disk swap space being used.

So, I fire up DriveDx just now and... 86% SSD health. So, there goes your theory. I could keep using this M1 Air for years. And this is a worst-case scenario, by the way: smallest (and hence most wear-prone) SSD they sell.

 

[ignatius345]

I'm with you on this. As much as I want a new upgraded Mac to replace my late 2012 iMac, I'm not buying something that comes in a bare min specs and then having to pay out the wazoo for the configuration I want.

You realize that with inflation factored in a new iMac is going to actually be about the same price, right?

Don't know which you have, but here's a base model iMac from 2012. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i5-2.7-21-inch-aluminum-late-2012-specs.html

It retailed for $1299, which is about $1750 in 2023 dollars. That's $400 more than the cost of a base model M3 iMac today.

 

[Coreymac84]

LOL ok man. I don't know about all these "videos" but here's some actual real-world usage as a counterpoint to all this pearl clutching and FUD about RAM and swap space.

I have a MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and a shrimpy 256 GB SSD. I've had it since 2021 and I've used it for some intensive design work, which it handles quite decently. I don't see any beachballs, because swap is actually normal and SSDs are fast enough you don't get the performance penalty we got back in the bad old days of spinning HDDs. Anyway,
I don't haunt Activity Monitor all the time, but every time I happen to notice, there's several GB of disk swap space being used. By your logic, my SSD should be trashed by now, yeah?

So, I fire up DriveDx and... 86% SSD health. So, there goes that theory. At this rate, I could keep using this M1 Air for years.


View attachment 2311711

I mean by comparison my 32GB RAM M1 Pro from 2021 is sitting at 98% on DriveDx. I don't think your 86% is anything to be concerned about though.

 

[ignatius345]

I mean by comparison my 32GB RAM M1 Pro from 2021 is sitting at 98% on DriveDx. I don't think your 86% is anything to be concerned about though.

Yeah, seems in normal range to me as well. I'm definitely not sweating it, and have gotten a great deal of utility out of the machine to this point and anticipate a lot more ahead.

 

[name99]

There are lots of videos showing how light of a workload already results in using the SSD storage for memory.

The SSDs are non-replaceable and their failure means a logic board failure (has to be replaced entirely). SSDs have a limited lifespan of write cycles.

None of this is even contestable. The only question is whether or not it causes a device failure ahead of the end of its useful life. 8GB non-upgradeable RAM starving the device at new in 2024, maybe the whole device will be simply too slow before the SSD fails. Could only take a couple of years anyways. How else is Apple going to convince people to hand over another $2K three years from now? They love nothing more than people who don't have a clue what's going on.

I suspect only Apple has the data on why logic boards fail, if anyone. When the board on my 2020 5k iMac 8GB failed, Apple didn't say why, they just replaced the whole thing. I since tossed in 32 GB for $75 so hopefully it'll be fine for the rest of the decade that it will be good for.

So in other words you DON'T have any evidence?
Well that settles that.

 

[rog]

Why all the complaints about 8GB? It's plenty of RAM and more than most users will ever need. I'm posting this from 2009. Where you at?

 

[julesme]

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

Thank you for inspiring my pitch for an upcoming Apple TV+ series: I've decided to call the show "Macstar: Never Stop Never Stopping."