I'd be okay with 12GB as a baseline. If Apple went that route instead of upgrading to 16, it'd probably be for upselling/market-segmentation reasons, but it would still be game changing for users who are right on the cusp of 8GB not being enough.
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Apple is not going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. And that's good.
- Thread starter mrmister
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This, right here is peak economics: Value for money pursuant to personal standards of quality. Wants Mac. Has Mac. Happy with Mac. No Apologies. Ayn Rand thanks you for sharing 😎.
Power users and hard-core content wranglers undeniably face a steeper spend to meet the demands (or sometimes merely aspirations). And, yeah, Apple's ludicrous upgrade pricing, planned obsolescence and anti-repair ethos feel hard to swallow. Despite Apple's undercurrent of douchbaggery, I prefer Macs for reasons settled over decades using other platforms. The price is the price 😕; I make the stretch, or I stay home, as it were. Ain't no sense pretending to be an Apple Apologist, which doesn't seem possible because Apple ain't the least bit sorry.
I'd trust random anecdotal reports before I'd trust MaxTech. I have no idea why anyone looks to those clowns as a source of truth.
This strange hate for them brought by some users here is crazy. They do benchmarks and tests everyone can reproduce at home so it's more accurate than 'I know a guy that once had this happen to him with his MacBook" Or do you think they put the MacBook in the oven before the test or something? 🤡 Come on man, what are you talking about?
The average mac user could get by with Chromebooks, they don't need all that power. Hell, we should put the M3 as a custom order option too since clearly its too much wasted power for regular users. Lets just put in an old Intel chip because thats all the average user needs, charge high Apple prices, and have power users subsidize everything in the BTO option for profit margins.
Then, would you please start your own YouTube channel and test the systems for us so we can get the straight scoop
I have read that 90% of sales include no upgrades. That means 10% of us, myself included, give them a bunch of free money all the time. I even know it and just ordered the M3 Max in 14” with 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD. $4k! Not even close to fully specd out machine so not full profit for them.
The thing that always sucks like if you pay for the 512GB iPhone when you’re trading it in get the same money as the 128GB iPhone. Or to all the people who bought the Intel Mac Pros. Wow, I would not feel good about that one. Super happy I didn’t buy the M2 MacBook. This update is substantial. But just 10% of us give them so much of their profits. They know what they’re doing. The average person probably only needs 8GB of RAM and if they had 300 browsers tabs open they would think it’s the app making the computer slow.
Threads like this push me further and further toward switching away from Mac. For desktops, it's my computer and I should be able to put any amount of RAM I want inside, either before or after purchase. For laptops, soldered RAM is more justifiable but starting at 8 GB for a "Pro" machine is just ridiculous.
If you want a good experience on low RAM then forget about MacOS and install Linux. Linux runs fine on 4 GB, even 2 GB depending on the distro and use case. But to say that MacOS only needs 8 GB and will only need 8 GB for the entire lifetime of the machine is disingenuous.
If you want a good experience on low RAM then forget about MacOS and install Linux. Linux runs fine on 4 GB, even 2 GB depending on the distro and use case. But to say that MacOS only needs 8 GB and will only need 8 GB for the entire lifetime of the machine is disingenuous.
The biggest thing is computers arent used the same way even 5 years ago, I dont keep open 40 things on 1 device. I have an ipad pro, iphone 14 pro and a 13 inch macbook pro, and i only got 8gb of ram, Previously I had 24 GB in my 2020 imac... But i never used it. I game on my switch (Super Mario RPG cant wait
), if I'm surfing the web its either one or the other device. I can open discord on my ipad, while surfing on my macbook, so Why would I need more ram, Since I can offload 99% of my task onto another device having one device with 24gb is silly today.
But apple is just cheap with the 8gb default model, but we saw this with the single ssd memory modules as well. Not unusually for apple I suspect its a inventory thing.
), if I'm surfing the web its either one or the other device. I can open discord on my ipad, while surfing on my macbook, so Why would I need more ram, Since I can offload 99% of my task onto another device having one device with 24gb is silly today. But apple is just cheap with the 8gb default model, but we saw this with the single ssd memory modules as well. Not unusually for apple I suspect its a inventory thing.
Yeah, I remember back when Apple's RAM and storage upgrades and hardware prices in general were super competitive with commodity PCs.
Oh wait, no I don't -- because that has never been the ****ing case.
Apple has been charging high premiums for storage and RAM for decades, and people have been complaining about it for decades. First on Macs and now on iPads and iPhones and every other device they make. Go back on these forums if you don't believe me.
This is the same tired old complaint: "Macs are too expensive and they should be $XXX price" OK! Good luck with that. If you want the bargain on hardware, go buy the Dell or the ACER or whatever, my dude. I'll be spending that extra two hundred dollars or whatever on a RAM upgrade for my Mac, if I want it, because the platform and the hardware work well for me. I'll leave the armchair supply chain management to y'all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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That‘s even better. Instead of the 200€ Ram upgrade just buy an iPad Pro 🫡The biggest thing is computers arent used the same way even 5 years ago, I dont keep open 40 things on 1 device. I have an ipad pro, iphone 14 pro and a 13 inch macbook pro, and i only got 8gb of ram, Previously I had 24 GB in my 2020 imac... But i never used it. I game on my switch (Super Mario RPG cant wait
But apple is just cheap with the 8gb default model, but we saw this with the single ssd memory modules as well. Not unusually for apple I suspect its a inventory thing.
I expect apple will discontinue most 8 ram machines in the next year or so (as they have been making many changes as of late), or keep in the very base machines. Although it "maybe similar to 10, 12 or 16" in the PC world that will be an uphill battle for Apple for consumers.
LOL, ok guy.
I'm over here getting all kinds of use out of mine. My wife is doing just fine day to day as well -- both of us on M1 base model Airs. Document creation, video conferencing, email, etc. You know, the normal **** people do with their computers day to day. No beachballs, no sluggishness, all snappy and good. Hell, I run Illustrator and Photoshop on mine in a pinch and (you're going to hate this) it's fine. The only time I seriously bog the machine down is when I log in with multiple users -- way outside the scope of normal usage.
Sure, I have an M1 iMac with 16GB of RAM for design work, but that's a special purpose and that (clutches pearls in indignation) $200 upgrade more than paid for itself with the first piece of billable work I made with it. JFC, you can easily spend that much on a couple dinners out at this point in time.
Seriously, how many consumers (like me) of the base MBAs with 8GB of memory would consider installing Linux? How many of these consumers even know what Linux is? This is the classic problem with these threads. The people complaining about the Mac base configuration are not the intended customers for the base configuration. They are overlaying their requirements on a computer that was not intended for their use.
As for useful life, I have been buying base configurations MBAs for myself and family members (i.e. college students) for years, and we never had a problem getting 5-7 years out of these $999 computers. Assuming no trade-in value, that's like ~$165 per year, or less $0.50 per day......not bad considering some people spend 10 times that at Starbucks everyday.
BTW: I agree that Apple's upgrade costs are high. They have always been that way.
Those base configurations 5-7 years ago had the same amount of RAM as today's base configuration. I have my doubts that 8 GB will be able to last another 5-7 years without problems showing up.
Yes, I'm not the target audience for this. Apple is smart and knows what it's doing to maximize profits. For folks buying those 4K iMacs with slow 5400 RPM HDDs, I'm sure they were betting that many people would say "well, it's slow, but no worse than the 7-year-old computer I'm upgrading from" rather than initiate a return. In reality, and with the addition of an SSD to the base model, it should've been a lot faster.
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8GB... fine for the average person, at least currently. I don't have much problem with that on a $999 MacBook Air. But for $1,599, or over $2,000 in Europe, on a "Pro" machine, they could easily afford to do better. That outlay deserves a RAM amount good for decently heavy use for the next half decade.
This RAM question is way less impacting on user experience than SSD vs HD. I think they took too long to migrate fully off hard drives.
I had a base 256/8 M1 MB Air. It was swapping just using Safari with maybe a dozen tabs, and a few default apps open like Messages.
Had I been running a real memory hog like MS Teams, I can't imagine how bad it would have gotten.
I regularly use a base M1 MBA. It has Fast User Switching enabled because both my wife and I use it. (We don't log out or pay much attention to memory, especially my wife couldn't care less about Activity Monitor.)
I have Chrome (2-3 tabs), Safari (I think just 1 tab), and Edge open. In Edge I use Teams, Outlook, LastPass and a Citrix launcher regularly, in addition to 2-3 other tabs open for research/goofing off. I also have Music, Messages, Photos, and Calendar open, and probably more if I checked. (I choose not to Command-Q apps unless I have to.) My wife is logged in in the background with all her stuff open (Calendar, Music, Messages, Safari, Chrome, Preview, maybe 1 or 2 more) because she doesn't care to close apps unless they break.
Our memory pressure is yellow (7GB or so, like always), and there are a 2-4GB of Swap being used, but the machine is buttery smooth and quick. (I think the cache is 5GB or so, depends on when I last restarted it.) I'm going from memory because I'm not working on the machine today. We've had the machine since Sep 2021, and it's as fast as the day we got it. The battery life isn't quite as great, but it easily eeks out 10 hours of regular-to-intermittent use.
This is just one family's use case, of course, but I wanted to provide some perspective.
I am no tech guru, but it seems like there is more going on here than getting hung up on RAM specs and staring at Active Monitor obsessing over swapping stats. For example, is there any difference between the performance of those old intel processors and the current M chips? How about the performance of modern SSD compared to what was available 7 years ago? At the end of the day, all that matters is how well the computer performs doing the things you need to do. My base M2 MBA performs so much better than any computer I have ever owned I have a hard time believing it is going to be an issue.
You doubt that 8GB of RAM will be enough in 5-7 years. Enough to do what? Build a spreadsheet? Make a Powerpoint presentation? Write a college paper? Stream Netflix? Create an iMovie? My experience is that it hasn't been a problem in the past, and I doubt it will be a problem in the future. If it is....no big deal. I'll buy a new MBA after 5 years rather than 7 years. I have already owned this one for a year and a half....
For most people 8 or 16 won't make a difference.
What does make a difference is Apple's crappy software. macOS has so many online security checks now that simply launching an app is often met with a few seconds of delay, same thing when showing open/save dialogs, etc.
You can buy a maxed out M3 Max with all the gigabytes and it will still hang a few times a day, because Apple just doesn't care. Everything is god-awful slow.
What does make a difference is Apple's crappy software. macOS has so many online security checks now that simply launching an app is often met with a few seconds of delay, same thing when showing open/save dialogs, etc.
You can buy a maxed out M3 Max with all the gigabytes and it will still hang a few times a day, because Apple just doesn't care. Everything is god-awful slow.
Teams in a web browser....perhaps it's not as bad. The Mac app Electron version is a huge resource hog though.
Yes my base M1 Air was smooth....but I just felt like it shouldn't be swapping with such relatively light usage.
My M1 Pro (default 16GB) doesn't swap with the same light usage.
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I would say it's not so much about the cost to Apple of providing a higher base level of RAM but that they would be giving up upgrade revenue.
Currently they know that X number of customers will pay an extra $200 to upgrade form 8GB to 16. If they change the base to 16GB at the same price as the 8GB, they lose that upgrade revenue and their margins would go down. Apple is usually reluctant to reduce their margins. Sales volume alone is unlikely to increase enough to make up the overall revenue, and the margin would still be lower.
The way they might handle that would be to increase the both the base config to 16GB and increase the base price. Perhaps increasing the base price by $100 would make up for the loss of upgrade revenue.
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