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

[JoeDezibel]

It is absolut impressiv how many people know how many GB of Ram I need for my work. 😂😂😂

(pssssst 🤫 btw, its 8 GB but nobody cares 😂)

 

[mouthster]

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.

Not saying I didn't get swap. Definitely could see it if I opened Activity Monitor. But didn't feel like it was slowing down in anyway.

 

[Analog Kid]

Then, would you please start your own YouTube channel and test the systems for us so we can get the straight scoop

I lack the charisma to compensate my unwillingness to manufacture controversies.

 

[ric22]

If the other poster was right that 9/10 people buy the base model of each Mac, were Apple to raise the base price by $100 they'd make a hell of a lot more money than they do now, if they still manage to sell as many.

 

[IG88]

Not saying I didn't get swap. Definitely could see it if I opened Activity Monitor. But didn't feel like it was slowing down in anyway.

I noticed some stutters at infrequent times. It wasn't anything I got worked up over....just more that mine was swapping under what I consider very light load.

And my suspicion that it shouldn't really happen was conformed by having a 16GB M1 Pro.

 

[Thisismattwade]

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.

Fair enough. I do hope you enjoy using your computer. I know it's a "tool", but I genuinely like using my Apple products. (Our 11" iPP is my favorite electronic device, even though its use is so limited.)

Frankly, I didn't know what "swapping" was until I started browsing these forums and agonizing over my Apple purchasing decisions. I'm not a "Pro" user (I've started a few threads in macOS Basics that confirm that! ),and I used to be so blissfully ignorant. However, my budget no longer allows spending whatever I want on Apple devices (a growing family will do that), so I have to be somewhat discerning.

To give you another side of my full humanity: I only feel comfortable buying 256GB iPhones and not the base model. I have no idea why!

 

[name99]

If I recall, wasn't hardware memory compression introduced on the M1 / A14?

Haven't been able to find much information on this.

PAGE compression is not the same thing as TRANSPARENT MEMORY compression.

Why do you think I specifically CALLED OUT THESE DIFFERENCES?

 

[ArkSingularity]

PAGE compression is not the same thing as TRANSPARENT MEMORY compression.

Why do you think I specifically CALLED OUT THESE DIFFERENCES?

I was just asking an honest question.

 

[name99]

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?

Come on, they are total clowns!

No-one with a brain is saying "buy an 8GB laptop and you'll be fine using it to engage in large content creation tasks"!
They are saying "for MANY people, 8GB is just fine for a machine whose job is email, light web, video conferencing, that sort of thing".
Then why buy a "Pro" laptop? Because even people who are "just" doing email and light web might want a larger screen! Is that so hard to understand? Especially people who are getting older, whose eyesight is getting worse, and who don't mind paying an extra few dollars for a nicer screen that's "1 inch" larger, whether that's at the 14 vs 13" level or at the 16 vs 15" level.

But MaxTech is totally avoiding that reality; the channel would rather attack a strawman and then pretend they're engaged in some brave truth to power that makes them heroes.

Do people here even know how management, for example, use laptops? Or are we all supposed to snicker like stupid freshmen, pretending we're so cool that we know whatever management does, it's totally "non-professional"? Grow TFU!

 

[HackMacDaddy]

Come on, they are total clowns!

No-one with a brain is saying "buy an 8GB laptop and you'll be fine using it to engage in large content creation tasks"!
They are saying "for MANY people, 8GB is just fine for a machine whose job is email, light web, video conferencing, that sort of thing".
Then why buy a "Pro" laptop? Because even people who are "just" doing email and light web might want a larger screen! Is that so hard to understand? Especially people who are getting older, whose eyesight is getting worse, and who don't mind paying an extra few dollars for a nicer screen that's "1 inch" larger, whether that's at the 14 vs 13" level or at the 16 vs 15" level.

But MaxTech is totally avoiding that reality; the channel would rather attack a strawman and then pretend they're engaged in some brave truth to power that makes them heroes.

Do people here even know how management, for example, use laptops? Or are we all supposed to snicker like stupid freshmen, pretending we're so cool that we know whatever management does, it's totally "non-professional"? Grow TFU!

Whatever let‘s you sleep at night my man.

 

[kc9hzn]

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."

In other words, it’s Chrome being Chrome. Tell me, how much money does Corsair have in Google?

 

[gpat]

Plot twist: Chrome developers are also Apple shareholders

 

[Tagbert]

...

 

[name99]

I was just asking an honest question.

Fair enough. I'm just so sick of people spouting off opinions based on zero technical knowledge :-(

Transparent memory compression looks for pairs of successive lines in memory and compresses them to a single line (so 2x compression). It is usually associated with the last level cache which, like the RAM, store compressed lines.
The cost of the compression is a few extra cycles of latency in accessing the LLC, not enough to worry about.
The win is the effective size of DRAM (and the LLC) increase. Generally not by a full 2x (since some pairs of lines cannot be compressed) but across a wide range of uses cases by a reasonable amount, say 1.5x or so.
The effective bandwidth to DRAM also increases since pulling one physical cache line from DRAM is effectively pulling in two logical cache lines.

Page compression is a much more heavyweight operation. A page of memory that has not been used for a while is compressed by a powerful compressor taking many cycles (not the lightweight compressor of transparent memory compression) and compressing by a factor of 4x or more. Page compression frees up a lot more RAM, at the cost of substantially higher overhead.

Apple has had (ever improving) versions of page compression since OSX (and before that in NeXT).
Windows and Linux have their similar versions, added a few years after Apple.

Qualcomm had transparent memory compression in their Centriq server chip which was cancelled. This means it's probably part of the Snapdragon X Elite (since QC has all the IP), but who knows for sure?

 

[SolarBear28]

If Apple wants to offer a base model with 8GB RAM for less intensive use I don't see any issue with that, but it should be priced as a premium laptop intended for basic use. The 8GB Macbook Pro M3 starts at $2100 CAD - that's pretty outrageous. Upgrading from 512GB to 2TB of storage costs $750... I know these are unique, quality machines, but I can't justify Apples pricing.

 

[redheeler]

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....

We don’t know exactly where things will be computationally, but it’s a safe assumption that using 8 GB in 5 years will be much like using 4 GB today. Generally the system requirements of software get heavier over time, and this hasn’t been reflected in Apple’s base model MacBook Pro.

Regarding whether 8 GB is enough for basic tasks right now…sure. My kitchen computer is an iMac from 2013 and it can do web browsing, streaming, and video chat just fine with 8 GB.

The debate seems more centered around longevity and price point. I wouldn’t be buying a $1500 computer to do what I currently do with a 2013 iMac either, unless I expect it to be able to do it as long as the 2013 iMac has…it won’t, or at least not nearly as well. And the RAM will be the biggest reason.

 

[name99]

We don’t know exactly where things will be computationally, but it’s a safe assumption that using 8 GB in 5 years will be much like using 4 GB today. Generally the system requirements of software get heavier over time, and this hasn’t been reflected in Apple’s base model MacBook Pro.

Regarding whether 8 GB is enough for basic tasks right now…sure. My kitchen computer is an iMac from 2013 and it can do web browsing, streaming, and video chat just fine with 8 GB.

The debate seems more centered around longevity and price point. I wouldn’t be buying a $1500 computer to do what I currently do with a 2013 iMac either, unless I expect it to be able to do it as long as the 2013 iMac has…it won’t, or at least not nearly as well. And the RAM will be the biggest reason.

You're making a lot of assumptions in this extrapolation. Maybe they're correct, but I'd like to see more data than just "this is my gut feeling".

Exponentials keep doubling – right up to the point that they don't.
We've seen other exponentials in computing run out of steam; it's no impossible that the "amount of DRAM required for everyday usage by the median customer" exponential ran out of steam two or three years.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

They start with 8 and 256 because they know this serves a segment of users big enough to start there. They do not run into issues with either of those. Many use for simple apps at work and cloud based apps. They don’t need more, and more wouldn’t benefit them.

The numbers will stay here until that changes, whether is OS requirements or standard app requirements.

Also, architecture is more efficient. However, 8GB is still 8GB. 2 cars may have a top speed of 150mph. 1 car can get there twice as fast as the other. But they both have the same top speed.

So it is with unified memory and 8GB. The architecture is fast and efficient. But 8GB is 8GB and will always be 8GB.

 

[flybass]

By OP’s logic, should we not have half the CPU speed and 2GB ram as base configurations so that Apple can be motivated to optimize the OS?

 

[ignatius345]

You're only proving my point, as now you're trying to gaslight me over calling you out on gaslighting others that "Oh 8gb is fine and if it's not then just pony up and pay the RAM upgrades"

And then in your other replies when people call you out you just double down, like so:

LOL calm down. Nobody is “gaslighting” you. We are talking about computer specs here my dude.

 

[Tagbert]

We don’t know exactly where things will be computationally, but it’s a safe assumption that using 8 GB in 5 years will be much like using 4 GB today. Generally the system requirements of software get heavier over time, and this hasn’t been reflected in Apple’s base model MacBook Pro.

If it helps, remember that Apple has been using 8GB RAM for their base spec for 9 years now. For general usage there hasn’t been an enormous jump in RAM requirements. It’s been pretty slow and steady.

i agree that Apple should start the base MacBook Pro at 16GB because almost anyone using this professionally will need to do at least multi-tasking of text based apps even if they aren’t videographers and programmers. I just don’t see that it will be a total dead end for someone with relatively simple needs. Still that kind of person might as well get an Air, then.

 

[KenkoPa]

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!

With all the efficiencies put in place I'd rather Apple maintains the standard SKUs at the current MSRP but increase LPDDR5T 2x & SSD sizes 2x like so below:

​

Mac model​	MSRP​	Chip​	RAM (GB)​	SSD (TB)​	CPU (Core)​	GPU (Core)​
MBP 16"​	$2,499​	M3 Pro​	36​	1​	12​	18​
MBP 16"​	$2,899​	M3 Pro​	72​	1​	12​	18​
MBP 16"​	$3,499​	M3 Max​	72​	2​	14​	30​
MBP 16"​	$3,999​	M3 Max​	96​	2​	16​	40​
MBP 14"​	$1,599​	M3​	16​	1​	8​	10​
MBP 14"​	$1,799​	M3​	16​	2​	8​	10​
MBP 14"​	$1,999​	M3 Pro​	36​	1​	11​	14​
MBP 14"​	$2,399​	M3 Pro​	36​	2​	12​	18​
MBP 14"​	$3,199​	M3 Max​	72​	2​	14​	30​
iMac 24"​	$1,299​	M3​	16​	0.5​	8​	8​
iMac 24"​	$1,499​	M3​	16​	0.5​	8​	10​
iMac 24"​	$1,699​	M3​	16​	1​	8​	10​

If that was available I'd opt for a $2,499 MBP 16" M3 Pro 36GB RAM 1TB SSD.

Sweet price point for a 3nm Mac laptop. That would last me until Oct 2033.

They'd prefer I do not do that but instead replace every 4-6 years.

 

[ArkSingularity]

Fair enough. I'm just so sick of people spouting off opinions based on zero technical knowledge :-(

Transparent memory compression looks for pairs of successive lines in memory and compresses them to a single line (so 2x compression). It is usually associated with the last level cache which, like the RAM, store compressed lines.
The cost of the compression is a few extra cycles of latency in accessing the LLC, not enough to worry about.
The win is the effective size of DRAM (and the LLC) increase. Generally not by a full 2x (since some pairs of lines cannot be compressed) but across a wide range of uses cases by a reasonable amount, say 1.5x or so.
The effective bandwidth to DRAM also increases since pulling one physical cache line from DRAM is effectively pulling in two logical cache lines.

Page compression is a much more heavyweight operation. A page of memory that has not been used for a while is compressed by a powerful compressor taking many cycles (not the lightweight compressor of transparent memory compression) and compressing by a factor of 4x or more. Page compression frees up a lot more RAM, at the cost of substantially higher overhead.

Apple has had (ever improving) versions of page compression since OSX (and before that in NeXT).
Windows and Linux have their similar versions, added a few years after Apple.

Qualcomm had transparent memory compression in their Centriq server chip which was cancelled. This means it's probably part of the Snapdragon X Elite (since QC has all the IP), but who knows for sure?

I didn't know that this was a thing. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Apple have to defend 8 GB RAM in China, and now people here have to defend it. Apple are really having trouble with this, and rightfully so. It is damaging their brand, and somehow they haven't realised it. It is no longer a question if 8 GB RAM is enough for most users or not.

 

[christlinah]

IMO the (ridiculous) 8GB of base ram isn't the main problem but instead the cost of upgrades... if you could spec up the ram for a reasonable price I'd be fine with the lackluster base spec but as it currently is it's atrocious for a "pro" machine like the new baseline 14".