The real issue is that it's a $200 difference now at launch, then the base model will go on sale and it will be $1500, $1400, $1200, while the 16GB RAM model will remain at $1800, so you'll be paying up to an additional $600 or even more for that additional 8GB RAM. That's Apple strategy to get you to buy the M3 pro, which is honestly the one to get, especially as that base model too will go on sale and at some point it will also be at $1600
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How can Apple sell a Mac with 8GB of RAM in 2023 and call it "Pro"
- Thread starter parseckadet
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You know, I do really love how Apple has now started using phrases like "it's our most Pro ever" just to troll the folks that think it's something other than a category of products.
It never meant anything more than a particular form factor and set of capabilities. It's a word that they put with other words to help differentiate them.
But for whatever reason, and I think it's mainly out of a misplaced belief that they can somehow manipulate Apple into giving something for nothing, some people decided to craft a very narrow view of "professional" that they think somehow invalidates Apple's marketing and have turned it all into a thing.
Apple's response was to start using Pro as a general purpose adjective and change their stage pitch from "our best Macbook Pro ever" to "now even more Pro". That phrase would seem bizarre if you didn't know this exact same thread started with every new product release.
Every time they do it I can envision half the Forums here with steam coming out of their ears and I have to admit it gives me a laugh every time. That surely makes me a bad person-- this whole issue is obviously causing some people real distress-- but it really does feel like people have brought this upon themselves.
It never meant anything more than a particular form factor and set of capabilities. It's a word that they put with other words to help differentiate them.
But for whatever reason, and I think it's mainly out of a misplaced belief that they can somehow manipulate Apple into giving something for nothing, some people decided to craft a very narrow view of "professional" that they think somehow invalidates Apple's marketing and have turned it all into a thing.
Apple's response was to start using Pro as a general purpose adjective and change their stage pitch from "our best Macbook Pro ever" to "now even more Pro". That phrase would seem bizarre if you didn't know this exact same thread started with every new product release.
Every time they do it I can envision half the Forums here with steam coming out of their ears and I have to admit it gives me a laugh every time. That surely makes me a bad person-- this whole issue is obviously causing some people real distress-- but it really does feel like people have brought this upon themselves.
Regardless of whether 8GB is ‘enough’, their Pro machines should have 16GB anyway. The cost of the extra chips is negligible. This is 100% about cajoling buyers into a pricey upsell, given that even the base machine is a relatively expensive laptop, and there‘s no way of upgrading later.
As ever with Apple, the base machine, however tempting in price, is a false economy. Yes it’s fine for basic use - but then so is an Air, or indeed any other laptop made in the last decade.
As ever with Apple, the base machine, however tempting in price, is a false economy. Yes it’s fine for basic use - but then so is an Air, or indeed any other laptop made in the last decade.
It wasn't just that they were still selling hard drives, but the worst ones imaginable. 5400 rpm drives went out back in the aughts and yet apple was still using them up until the bitter end.
It does though. People very regularly recommend the base CPU option or even the version from last generation or even the gen before. The M1 Air is still the best value laptop for most people and is plenty powerful for a ton of uses. I'm not sure how else you would even make that argument beyond recommending old hardware?
Yup. If you went by what's said on forums, you'd think that developers and video editors are the only professionals that have ever existed.
The new grift is upselling RAM & SSD costs by the factor of 3-4x over what you can buy retail for actuall dimm/nvme products, not just soldered on RAM & NAND.
The adult MBP temper-tantrums happen every year and I don't see them stopping, unfortunately. As you said, these people created their own "pro" logical fallacy and then get mad at Apple for not meeting their logical fallacy expectation. I also think many of the MBP folks around here hate the idea that the MBP is also for the common folk. The forum has created a status symbol with the MBP and when the base comes with 8GB of RAM, it crushes their idea of having an elitist Mac.
Not a really good argument in 2023. Wasn’t even good 5 years ago. What sites? How many ads are there? How much JavaScript is used? Etc
This is equivalent to the argument is I have 5 programs running. Okay…..notepad? Or After Effects?
As a point, one of my client has 10 tabs regularly and it’s nowhere near 8GB. Green and low memory pressure.
I still have my 2010 MBP and I upgraded it from 4GB to 8GB of Ram. It still works well for web browsing and Notes/Word docs. That's the majority of what I do with it.
If they started the Pro's at 16GB of Ram I'm sure we would hear the other side of the argument which would be;
"I only need 8GB, why am I forced to buy a machine that has 16GB. I'll never use it but I still want to benefits of the Pro machine like better screen and ports. This is BS. Apple is ripping us off by making the MPBs start at 16GB of Ram when 8GB would be fine for a lot of their target users."
Yep! And what about the other side of the conversation? A LOT of professional work can't even get done with 16GB of RAM. 32GB is far too limiting for most. Does that mean we cannot label something as PRO unless it has 128GB of RAM? A lot of pros need NVIDIA QUADROs or $5,000 graphics cards to do their work. Should we stop calling anything other than a $10,000+ or $50,000+ system as PRO?I still have my 2010 MBP and I upgraded it from 4GB to 8GB of Ram. It still works well for web browsing and Notes/Word docs. That's the majority of what I do with it.
If they started the Pro's at 16GB of Ram I'm sure we would hear the other side of the argument which would be;
"I only need 8GB, why am I forced to buy a machine that has 16GB. I'll never use it but I still want to benefits of the Pro machine like better screen and ports. This is BS. Apple is ripping us off by making the MPBs start at 16GB of Ram when 8GB would be fine for a lot of their target users."
I have heard these same damn arguments for decades. I remember especially the 2010 Mac Pro days they were STILL claiming that was not a pro system because this or that. Get real people.
I don't think so, not at this price. A MacBook at $749 can start with 8GB of RAM but not the $1299 Air nor a $1599 so-called "Pro". It's absurd and yes, I'm voting with my wallet as I'm slowly drifting away from Apple products.
Excellent points!
I think having the base M3 in the 14" Pro shell with 8GB of ram is a win win for those who want it.
I think this will pull people away from an Air more than the 13" MBP did.
8GB RAM is enough for booting up the OS and opening Safari before you start swapping to the SSD 🫤 By Apple standards that may be a Pro workflow, but it's not by anybody else's. A real Pro workflow as they advertise will kill the SSD in 3 years. The SSD is fast enough to where you may not notice the performance problem too much, but you're committing acts of violence on that SSD. 3 years into Apple silicon, and I know of 2 people who have killed their base models. It seems like the 256GB SSDs last for around 300TB of data written before they die - one of them needed just 7 months to reach those numbers. Mine is at 100TB written and does already report "bad sectors" together with having kernel panics, although I've had it for 3 years so at least that's better. And still, below 5 years is the time I'd expect a $500 Windows computer to last before it starts having problems, not a computer at 3 times that price. It's OK to have 8GB of RAM as base but not while you advertise the product as a Pro machine and explicitly mention longevity, telling users they will last "many years" in your keynote. Straight up lie if you use it like that.
Exactly.
Not true. I have a client that has the launch M1 iMac at 8GB of RAM and their SSD lifespan barely took a hit and while they have Photoshop and Final Cut Pro open, it's still green memory pressure. I checked TBW and it only has 15 TB.
Not everyone works on 10,000x10,000 pixel images in Photoshop or 16k video editing.
I'm currently running Safari with half a dozen tabs, Spark (email client), Beeper, GoodNotes, Xcode, Affinity Photo 2 and Activity Monitor (plus the dozen or so background apps I always run, adblockers, Maccy, etc), and I'm at 7.1GB (out of 16GB) used on my M2 Air with nothing in swap. So I think you might be exaggerating just a little bit.
EDIT: Opening Maps and Photos spiked it up to 11.4.
Now try running a VM on both with 6GB of RAM assigned and see which one does better.
I’ll wait.
Personally I don't do that either. macOS at idle uses about 5.5GB and Final Cut without a project open goes up to around 600MB for me on average. Editing off of an external drive?
Currently have Safari with 3 tabs (MacRumors, Reddit, YouTube which is not playing) and Apple Music playing music - (Edit: Calendar and Notes open too, if that is of too much significance) - 7,2GB of physical memory used and 6,7GB in 'Swap used' with memory pressure in the orange 🤷 Uptime is 6 hours and since then I've only been browsing the web, but 300GB has been written to the SSD. I think there's not a day I don't write at least 200GB by just doing basic computing. Also, take note that you don't have to be using all the 8 for it to swap. It starts swapping around 5GB from my observations. So you really are constantly swapping with the 8GB ones from the moment of boot.
I can understand 8gb for base model Air. But 8gb ram for base model pro is really unacceptable.
You won’t have to wait long for that Intel MBP to overheat and be loud as a mf.
And I’ll wait for you to tell me why anyone that knows how to instantiate and need a 6GB VM would purposely buy a 8GB model, regardless of what Apple names it.
To be fair, those are all pretty heavy websites. I don't even like leaving MacRumors tabs open on my phone because it always seems to hit my battery a little harder than usual. But point taken. I guess just like applications, it's important to note not just how many tabs you have going but also what those tabs are.
People keep defending Apple but it has now been a decade since the last time the MacBook Pro saw an increase in base memory. It’s been 11 years since the iMac first got 8GB as base memory. Prior to Tim Cook Apple doubled memory at most every 2 years. Post Tim Cook we have only seen 1 increase in base memory for the Air (4GB to 8GB in 2017) and 2 increases for the MacBook Pro (and the first increase was in 2012)!!!
Let’s face it, they don’t use 8GB in the base models because they have to, but because it makes it easier to upswell to the more profitable models.
Let’s face it, they don’t use 8GB in the base models because they have to, but because it makes it easier to upswell to the more profitable models.
This is a bit disingenuous. There's nothing wrong with 8GB machines, it's still plenty for a bunch of people. I agree that the prices they charge for upgrading RAM and SSD capacities are way too high, but setting their baseline at 8/256 isn't the travesty people are making it out to be. While I see a lot of people complaining about the specs, if you ask them what's actually wrong with that it seems like the price is what they really have an issue with.
Yes it is, 256GB when combined with what they charge to get 512GB or 1TB, considering what flash chips actually cost, is laughable.
It is annoying to see, year after year, people defend the halt in progress because things are “good enough”.
The problem with this argument, it could just as easily defend upgrading nothing! The M1 was good enough, should they just stop upgrading the base model because people who know they need more will buy the Pro and the Max? It’s the same logic after all…