I refuse to buy an Apple Silicon Mac with only 8 GB RAM!

[ADGrant]

You're making the common mistake or projecting your wants and needs to everyone else and then declaring it's "overpriced" just because you personally don't see the value for you. For many people, that 1" smaller screen is highly desirable for portability, just like you hear people saying they wish they would bring back the 12" MB even though we have 13" MBA and MBP.

Is it the 1" smaller screen that is highly desirable or the thick bezels surrounding it? Or perhaps it is the milky grey blacks of an edge lit LCD display). If portability is such a priority, wouldn't an MBA be better? Perhaps its not the portability that is appealing but the Touch Bar. I know some people like it. Maybe the 13" MBP appeals to people that don't like ports on their laptop (perhaps some of the same people who wish for the return of the 12" MacBook).

In all seriousness though the 13 does have one advantage over the 14" MBP and the MBA, the battery life is quite good. That doesn't mean its not overpriced. The Magic Keyboard on my 12.9" iPad Pro is overpriced but I bought it anyway because a better alternative does not exist. I still think it is overpriced.

 

[pastrychef]

Two weeks of busted fingers and yes. Running apple silicon flavor of Mac OS on an AMD PC. Not perfect. But it only took two weeks.

That's amazing. How are you able to emulate the Neural Engine and Media Engine? How are you able to get graphics acceleration? Are you able to run iPhone/iPad apps from the App Store too?

 

[usagora]

Is it the 1" smaller screen that is highly desirable or the thick bezels surrounding it? Or perhaps it is the milky grey blacks of an edge lit LCD display). If portability is such a priority, wouldn't an MBA be better? Perhaps its not the portability that is appealing but the Touch Bar. I know some people like it. Maybe the 13" MBP appeals to people that don't like ports on their laptop (perhaps some of the same people who wish for the return of the 12" MacBook).

In all seriousness though the 13 does have one advantage over the 14" MBP and the MBA, the battery life is quite good. That doesn't mean its not overpriced. The Magic Keyboard on my 12.9" iPad Pro is overpriced but I bought it anyway because a better alternative does not exist. I still think it is overpriced.

Again, your personal opinion of the value of a product to you personally is not representative of the market at large - it's only one drop in an ocean. As for the Magic Keyboard, if you bought it, then regardless of what you say here, you thought it was worth it (at least at the moment of purchase). Actions speak louder than words. And you even just said a better alternative doesn't exist, meaning you saw value in that particular product that was absent in others.

 

[spcopsmac21]

That's amazing. How are you able to emulate the Neural Engine and Media Engine? How are you able to get graphics acceleration? Are you able to run iPhone/iPad apps from the App Store too?

Neural engine is running in emulation. And the current media engine code is extremely similar to the same code as its original on the A11 chip. It’s been added to and added to. It’s easy to designated a single or group of cores on the processor I’m running. I’m using a current thread ripper. The thread ripper is way more powerful than a M1 ship in almost every way. But with all of this emulation it really has been tough to get more performance out of the cpu. What’s weird is I have a development sample of an early dedication intel GPU, and it’s not running an intel cpu. It’s an arm cortex core repurposed to run as a GPU. A guy I worked with in the past works for intel and he and a team are actively reverse engineering every apple cpu on the market right now.
With intel's resources they will have a competent competitor in a 5 years.

 

[pastrychef]

Neural engine is running in emulation. And the current media engine code is extremely similar to the same code as its original on the A11 chip. It’s been added to and added to. It’s easy to designated a single or group of cores on the processor I’m running. I’m using a current thread ripper. The thread ripper is way more powerful than a M1 ship in almost every way. But with all of this emulation it really has been tough to get more performance out of the cpu. What’s weird is I have a development sample of an early dedication intel GPU, and it’s not running an intel cpu. It’s an arm cortex core repurposed to run as a GPU. A guy I worked with in the past works for intel and he and a team are actively reverse engineering every apple cpu on the market right now.
With intel's resources they will have a competent competitor in a 5 years.

How efficient is using CPU cores to emulate dedicated co-processors? If this worked well, things like co-processors, GPUs, and Afterburner cards would not exists. Just keep tossing more CPU cores at it.

Well, considering Threadrippers have so many cores, it's not surprising that they are more "powerful" than M1. Even still, it has middling single core performance by today's standards.

In 5 years, we should hope that Intel will be able to catch up to an M1. Unfortunately, it's a moving target and Apple will probably have an M5 by then. They also said they'd be on 10nm 5 years ago...

Which Threadripper are you using? How many cores?
What emulation layer are you using to run Arm64 code?
How do you get any graphics acceleration?
How well do iPhone/iPad apps run?
How are Geekbench and/or Cinebench benchmark scores?
How does macOS see the CPU and GPU? M1? M1 Ultra? How many cores are seen?
What drivers are you using for USB, ethernet, and Thunderbolt?
Does macOS see the PCI-e slots? Are they usable?

 

[kasakka]

Again, your personal opinion of the value of a product to you personally is not representative of the market at large - it's only one drop in an ocean. As for the Magic Keyboard, if you bought it, then regardless of what you say here, you thought it was worth it (at least at the moment of purchase). Actions speak louder than words. And you even just said a better alternative doesn't exist, meaning you saw value in that particular product that was absent in others.

You can consider something overpriced and still buy it out of necessity (no other option exists) or because you feel that despite being overpriced it's the best choice. Or you can wait for the thing to go on sale or get replaced by a next gen model so it gets discounted to a price that you feel is more appropriate.

For example I don't think anyone disagrees that Apple's RAM and SSD upgrades are overpriced compared to similar upgrades on the PC market. But because you cannot use 3rd party parts for these on a Mac, if you want a Mac and need something beyond the base offering you have no choice but to pay that excess cost (or haul around an external TB drive). I can give Apple the RAM as the Apple Silicon stuff is a bit unique in this regard but if I could slap a regular M.2 drive into a Mac I would not bother with Apple's SSD upgrades.

 

[leman]

The thread ripper is way more powerful than a M1 ship in almost every way. But with all of this emulation it really has been tough to get more performance out of the cpu.

Especially since threadripper is around 30-40% slower than M1 when you look at individual core performance.

Anyway, mind sharing some of this wondercode you are using to emulate Apple Silicon on a threadripper with GPU and Neural Engine functionality?

 

[usagora]

You can consider something overpriced and still buy it out of necessity (no other option exists) or because you feel that despite being overpriced it's the best choice. Or you can wait for the thing to go on sale or get replaced by a next gen model so it gets discounted to a price that you feel is more appropriate.

For example I don't think anyone disagrees that Apple's RAM and SSD upgrades are overpriced compared to similar upgrades on the PC market. But because you cannot use 3rd party parts for these on a Mac, if you want a Mac and need something beyond the base offering you have no choice but to pay that excess cost (or haul around an external TB drive). I can give Apple the RAM as the Apple Silicon stuff is a bit unique in this regard but if I could slap a regular M.2 drive into a Mac I would not bother with Apple's SSD upgrades.

We're not using the term "overpriced" in the same way. I prefer to reserve that term for items that are actually priced too high for the target market, inhibiting maximized profit. That's not the same thing as "it's priced higher than competing products" or "it's more money than I feel like paying."

 

[mpetrides]

Again, your personal opinion of the value of a product to you personally is not representative of the market at large - it's only one drop in an ocean. As for the Magic Keyboard, if you bought it, then regardless of what you say here, you thought it was worth it (at least at the moment of purchase). Actions speak louder than words. And you even just said a better alternative doesn't exist, meaning you saw value in that particular product that was absent in others.

Just because one purchases something at a price they feel is too high because there isn't a more cost-effective alternative available that doesn't make the item not overpriced. If I buy gas at $7 a gallon because I have no other choice, that $7-a-gallon gas is still overpriced.

 

[usagora]

Just because one purchases something at a price they feel is too high because there isn't a more cost-effective alternative available that doesn't make the item not overpriced. If I buy gas at $7 a gallon because I have no other choice, that $7-a-gallon gas is still overpriced.

See my reply to kasakka just above yours.

 

[dukebound85]

Buy when you need and what you need. There's nothing like future-proofing, so beware of over-spending on what you might never need in the long run (or before updating to another machine, that is). That's what I've learned in the past years

agree

usually better to save the money on upgrades and get base models

 

[mpetrides]

See my reply to kasakka just above yours.

In that reply, you said: "We're not using the term "overpriced" in the same way. I prefer to reserve that term for items that are actually priced too high for the target market, inhibiting maximized profit." And that's precisely what I'm saying. Price gas at $7 a gallon and you'll get some people who will pay that because they have to and you'll also get people who drive less because they refuse to submit to highway robbery; that's exactly what happened earlier this summer--demand for gasoline went down when prices got exorbitant.

The Magic Keyboard is a great device but there are a lot of people who will buy a lesser keyboard simply because they refuse to pay the $349 price tag; priced at a lower point, AAPL would sell more and might well make more profit. And I suspect there is sufficient wiggle room in the cost of producing the Magic Keyboard that AAPL's profits would rise with a larger sales volume at a lower price point--unlike the OG HomePod (which was also overpriced but evidently couldn't be sold at a more reasonable price and still be profitable),

 

[usagora]

priced at a lower point, AAPL would sell more and might well make more profit.

If that were true, they'd lower the price. They're not stupid. I'm sure they pay people big money just to do market research.

 

[hans1972]

For the premium prices Apple charges I do think the base RAM should be bumped to 16 gigs. They know people will keep paying though for upgraded machines with 16 gigs of RAM or more. So if they were to remove the base 8 they would lose money. I seriously doubt there is a huge price difference on the backend between 8 gigs and 16 gigs. Apple is slow to do this, they did this for ages with the 64 gig iPhone, that storage option was way past over due to being bumped up to 128 gig.

I have 64Gb on my iPhone now and don't need anymore. I would like to pay less to get a new iPhone 14 with 64Gb storage.

 

[hans1972]

8 GB was maybe fine in 2013 (that's the RAM on a PC that I built back then, now it's been upgraded to 16 GB and is normally using about 60% of it).
8 GB on 2017 iMac wasn't enough. I upgraded it myself, as Apple RAM was a rip-off.
8 GB in 2022 is already a joke. I believe, 16 GB is an absolute minimum these days, no matter the architecture.

And yet, Microsoft recently released a new modell in their premium Surface brand with 4Gb of RAM and a 128Gb SSD.

 

[hans1972]

The following guy's 18 month old 8GB MacBook Air SSD lifespan is down to 48%.

Source:https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...ntura-available-fall-2022.320667/post-2332010

He writes up to 500GB/day.

If you write 500Gb/day is a bit on the extreme side. But you should get at least 5 years on most SSDs.

Long term studies of SSds have shown them lasting up to 9 000 000 Gb of data.

 

[spcopsmac21]

You are still running an Intel version of macOS.

There are no drivers for Intel Arc GPUs in macOS. There's no way you have acceleration.

Being able to run macOS on some AMD CPUs is nothing new. I did it before OpenCore was ever released using Clover. I posted about it here.

I don't know what you're talking about in regards to spoofing AES.

This is what I do for a living. And I’m doing it.

 

[spcopsmac21]

Especially since threadripper is around 30-40% slower than M1 when you look at individual core performance.

Anyway, mind sharing some of this wondercode you are using to emulate Apple Silicon on a threadripper with GPU and Neural Engine functionality?

When I have a 90% viable build and walkthrough I’ll be posting it on YouTube. Virtualizing the cores was actually very year. Building a closed packet of code to run on a specific bundle of cores was the hardest thing to over come. Building these “ gated “ areas that still interact with each other is not easy. So far linking processes to each packet of cores has been working smoothly. I’ve gotten twenty people telling me I’m not doing this but it’s 100% happening. I’ve used an intel arc development GPU because it’s running on an arm core. It was as simple as spoofing a few ID codes to get the GPU up and running.
I pulled the OS I’m patching and working with the beta from an M1 iMac.
I’m even working on a patched loader that will turn a raspberry pi into a Mac. Give it a year and this whole set up will be viable unless apple completely changes how it injects processing into each engine. Which I don’t think will happen because each interaction of the “ M “ line up it’s just a build upon of the last model.

 

[pastrychef]

This is what I do for a living. And I’m doing it.

I didn't ask what you do for a living. Lol

Anyway, back to the questions I did ask...
Which Threadripper are you using? How many cores?
What emulation layer are you using to run Arm64 code?
How do you get any graphics acceleration?
How well do iPhone/iPad apps run?
How are Geekbench and/or Cinebench benchmark scores?
How does macOS see the CPU and GPU? M1? M1 Ultra? How many cores are seen?
What drivers are you using for USB, ethernet, and Thunderbolt?
Does macOS see the PCI-e slots? Are they usable?

 

[spcopsmac21]

I didn't ask what you do for a living. Lol

Anyway, back to the questions I did ask...
Which Threadripper are you using? How many cores?
What emulation layer are you using to run Arm64 code?
How do you get any graphics acceleration?
How well do iPhone/iPad apps run?
How are Geekbench and/or Cinebench benchmark scores?
How does macOS see the CPU and GPU? M1? M1 Ultra? How many cores are seen?
What drivers are you using for USB, ethernet, and Thunderbolt?
Does macOS see the PCI-e slots? Are they usable?

If you wanna talk about this outside of this I’m happy to. I’ve gotten a lot of push back. I’m just trying to build a project to have fun.
All I can say is parallels has helped a lot. There is a lot of code that helps push processes to cores in virtualization. And it does see the PCI bus and ports. Within the current apple beta there lays a lot of code for the new Mac Pro. And let’s just say that has been invaluable. I’m not doing this to make a single red cent. USB drivers work cross platform from the parallels distro. The code for the Microsoft Windows ARM build are just a few lines opposite the Mac versions. They are using a a standard driver. The executable to to force the usb to be always on is a straight pull from the windows version for arm. Right now everything is just a mish mash of code from five different sources.
Graphics acceleration is working because intel is actively working on supplying graphics cards for the newer Mac Pro systems. Intel doesn’t want to loose any footing with apple. Well at least as much as they already have. And intel is actively building CPU’s that happen to be almost exact clones of standard arm cores. I have a good friend at intel. And if people don’t think intel had an entire team at work reverse engineering apple silicon then people are crazy. Same thing with AMD. I’ve seen an imbedded cpu with onboard GPU, ram AND storage in the works over at AMD.
The next ten years are gonna be crazy.

 

[hans1972]

This is intentional strategy for planned obsolescence, by only making 8GB RAM as the only available pre-configured models. Apple know that most of the sales will be on the base and pre configured models as they’re the ones most widely available in retail. We already see that 8GB of RAM just doesn’t cut it anymore for modern computing tasks. It will only be doing more swap, and thus reducing the SSD life quicker. Thus I can see many users of base models will be quickly looking for an upgrade in less than 5 years. Win win for Apple. They have higher margin and quicker upgrades in the future.

SSDs can handle so many writes that for those people using a low-end Mac, it will last many more years than 5 for almost all of them.

 

[ADGrant]

Again, your personal opinion of the value of a product to you personally is not representative of the market at large - it's only one drop in an ocean. As for the Magic Keyboard, if you bought it, then regardless of what you say here, you thought it was worth it (at least at the moment of purchase). Actions speak louder than words. And you even just said a better alternative doesn't exist, meaning you saw value in that particular product that was absent in others.

My opinion on the value of the M2 13" MBP is not exactly niche. Many reviewers of the laptop have said similar things. However they were mostly comparing it to the M2 MBA which is the wrong comparison, it should be compared to the similarly priced base 14 MBP perhaps because most reviewers have been looking at Apple's list price, not the street price.

One question to ask yourself, if the 13" MBP was more expensive than the base 14" MBP (say $2100), how many would Apple sell?

The Magic Keyboard has three important features that are not present in its competitors in combination.

1) Keyboard connector so no BT
2) The iPad can be easily detached.
3) It allows the iPad to be used as an actual laptop (it needs no kickstand).

I don't know why only Apple has provided a keyboard that can do this. But because they have, they are able to charge a large premium over every other alternative.

 

[redheeler]

Buy when you need and what you need. There's nothing like future-proofing, so beware of over-spending on what you might never need in the long run (or before updating to another machine, that is). That's what I've learned in the past years

Future-proofing my 2019 Intel MacBook Pro for the next 7 years and having M1 be introduced just one year later was lovely. Lesson learned on that...buy only what you need.

That being said, RAM is one of those things were I was counting myself fortunate that both my primary computers have 32 GB. One less thing to worry about when e.g. running multiple heavy Docker containers. Or if you're like me and too lazy to close browser tabs then better opt for at least 16. While a basic user who is good at managing tabs can likely get by with 8 GB, for the price of new Macs the OP's argument is valid, the new generation of M2s should start at 16 GB.

 

[pastrychef]

If you wanna talk about this outside of this I’m happy to. I’ve gotten a lot of push back. I’m just trying to build a project to have fun.
All I can say is parallels has helped a lot. There is a lot of code that helps push processes to cores in virtualization. And it does see the PCI bus and ports. Within the current apple beta there lays a lot of code for the new Mac Pro. And let’s just say that has been invaluable. I’m not doing this to make a single red cent. USB drivers work cross platform from the parallels distro. The code for the Microsoft Windows ARM build are just a few lines opposite the Mac versions. They are using a a standard driver. The executable to to force the usb to be always on is a straight pull from the windows version for arm. Right now everything is just a mish mash of code from five different sources.
Graphics acceleration is working because intel is actively working on supplying graphics cards for the newer Mac Pro systems. Intel doesn’t want to loose any footing with apple. Well at least as much as they already have. And intel is actively building CPU’s that happen to be almost exact clones of standard arm cores. I have a good friend at intel. And if people don’t think intel had an entire team at work reverse engineering apple silicon then people are crazy. Same thing with AMD. I’ve seen an imbedded cpu with onboard GPU, ram AND storage in the works over at AMD.
The next ten years are gonna be crazy.

How would OpenCore be helpful in this? Your efforts sound more like virtualization or emulation than a bare metal set up. Assuming the emulation layer works, you'd probably be able to boot into Proxmox or ESXi and be able to do it. I also think you'd need some serious hardware to get the JIT translation working at reasonable speeds and it would still never achieve what dedicated co-processors would do.

I don't doubt the competition has people trying to figure out how Apple Silicon works so well. Cristiano Amon even went out of his way to hire away former Apple engineers. The fact that everyone wants to mimic what Apple has done is just a testament to how good Apple Silicon is. Intel has their own problems. Even after conceding that their own foundries are too far behind and deciding to outsource to TSMC, they still can't get 7nm and 5nm out the door.

 

[hans1972]

Most people commenting on this thread are probably americans who have no understanding of the global market. Here's my take on this subject, from a country in Europe:

For my European country with no physical Apple stores:

• 5-year fit for sale protection by law (≈AppleCare minus the support and accidental damage)
• Any model from Apple
• Any model from almost all resellers
• Discounts from Apple is not limited to base models
• Many resellers also have discounts on non-base models (although it's more common for base models)
• Minimum 14 days return policy from Apple (required by law when buying on the web)
• Some resellers provide 30 days return policy
• Free shipping from Apple and also most resellers when buying a Mac

And I live in a country outside the EU with a small population which has accented characters in its alphabet making Apple have to make a special keyboard for us (and maybe one other country).