Leaked battery suggests first AS Mac is Air or MB12

[JMacHack]

I feel like browsers are the only reason typical users would need more than 8GB for normal usage anyway, and they haven't dealt with that for years anyway.

Permit me to disagree, I think the typical user would benefit greatly from having 16gb. I think we're being too narrow in defining a "typical user" as someone who only surfs the web and reads email. (I think in 2020 that's a vanishingly small amount of people, and the iPad serves that market better than any MacBook could)

A lot of modern apps (unfortuantely) are built on web libraries like Electron. Javascript can get very resource hungry very quickly. If you have say, Discord and a few Google Chrome or Firefox tabs open I could easily see it eating up 8gb very quickly. Or if said person wants to play a relatively modern game and chat with their friends over Discord, the 8gb could easily be a limiting factor, also taking into consideration the integrated graphics having to share the system memory.

Looking at things as they are I think it's past time for a doubling of base RAM.

Apple makes a small fortune overcharging for RAM. They finally have everyone over a barrel with no cheaper alternatives. If they ship with 32GB basic they will lose a lot of upgrades. Remember they still have to ship an OS that functions well on 8GB for the next 5+ years.

1. Apple really needs to reassess their friggin' RAM prices. I'd understand paying a small premium, but when you can save four figures by DIY'ing it it's a serious problem.
2. The OS working on 8gb for the next 5+ years really has no bearing on the amount of RAM base configurations ship with. At the office El Capitan worked on the '09 iMac. (though "working" is debatable as it was unbearably slow)

 

[aednichols]

Looking at things as they are I think it's past time for a doubling of base RAM.

We arguably have just entered the next RAM doubling with the latest MBP 13" release, the higher end SKUs went from 8 to 16 GB.

 

[awesomedeluxe]

I just don't see Apple doubling the base RAM of the Air. 16GB is probably the ceiling for the Air's capacity because the machine will use an SoC design that layers the memory on rather than using a pinout.

With this in mind, do you really think Apple would give up the opportunity to sell you a $200 RAM upgrade that costs them $20?

If it's any consolation, I do think the Air will start a lower price.

 

[Kostask]

I have always been of the opinion that the DTK sets the baseline for what will be in the AS Macs. There will never be any AS Mac with less than 16GB of RAM, 4HP Cores, or with mechanical storage.

Apple is far more than willing to charge $200 for a RAM upgrade, but that will be off SoC RAM; the SOC will have 16GB of RAM. If you want more, you pay more. Maybe the entry level laptop doesn’t have any possibility of off SoC RAM, and the Pro laptops do; that would make sense to me as a differentiator between the entry level laptops and the Pro laptops. Or maybe the Pro laptops can go to 64GB or 128GB, and the entry level laptops canonly go to 32 GB.

 

[triangletechie]

Are AS laptops going to run cooler? My new MBP gets really hot even while doing very minimal tasks.

 

[Kostask]

The major goal of the AS Macs (all of them) is pwerformance/watt. That would mean that they will run cooler (much cooler in most cases) than the Intel Macs they are replacing, while being significantly faster.

Your MBP runs hot because the Intel CPU in it was supposed to be built on a more advanced process node than it currently has (this has been an on-going saga with Intel since 2015/2016). However, Intel, while promising to Apple that the new CPUs were going to use less power, and Apple re-desinging their chassis/enclosures for those lower power CPUS, has failed to deliver those lower power CPUs. Your MBP is using a CPU that generates a lot more heat that the case was designed for, so it runs hot.

 

[Zorori]

I wonder if Apple will do away with the typical ram doubling with its own chips. They won't be limited to having to run dual-channel memory and could do something different.

The iPhone has had "non-standard" ram amounts like 3Gb in the past, so they could do the same with their desktops/laptops. For example, instead of 16Gb and 32Gb, they could offer 16Gb and 24Gb. A few years back Intel chips used to support triple channel memory with similar configurations (4Gb, 8Gb, or 12Gb)

 

[Kostask]

You could have 16GB on Soc, and 8GB (just as an example) off SoC. The limitation on this is tge available sizes the RAM chips come in; the SoC can be designed to work with any combination.

There are Xeons with 4 channel memory, and they have been around for years.

 

[rezwits]

No its not. Th lowest end Mac will match the current DTK in every significant way. The DTK, or Developer Transition Kit, is designed to allow developers to see how well their software runs on a real piece of AS hardware. Please tell me how this does not define the lowest common denominator of AS Mac?
...
That is why the AS Macs HAVE to be better; there is no going back, there is no Plan B.

Exactly, and they are gonna use A12X, A13X, or A14X etc, i.e. A/AX series chips. Because they want iOS apps to run natively on ArmBooks to boot. Plus as a developer, this would be GRAVY to run your App right on an Apple Silicon Mac to just run FLAT out in Xcode 12, no Simulator at ALL (or needed)!! woot woot

 

[triangletechie]

The major goal of the AS Macs (all of them) is pwerformance/watt. That would mean that they will run cooler (much cooler in most cases) than the Intel Macs they are replacing, while being significantly faster.

Your MBP runs hot because the Intel CPU in it was supposed to be built on a more advanced process node than it currently has (this has been an on-going saga with Intel since 2015/2016). However, Intel, while promising to Apple that the new CPUs were going to use less power, and Apple re-desinging their chassis/enclosures for those lower power CPUS, has failed to deliver those lower power CPUs. Your MBP is using a CPU that generates a lot more heat that the case was designed for, so it runs hot.

well, not anymore since I returned it. But thanks for the explanation. I'll just wait for an ARM laptop.