Me either... and for the first time since being a Mac owner (1985), I am ready to purchase as new machines are being released.
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New Mac Mini Provides Two Clues About RAM in Upcoming MacBook Pros
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Better display, better speakers, better everything. The commentary "for people who only need a MacBook Air but want to be seen in public with a more expensive device" is just ignorant and rude.
I guess my one-year-old buddy M3 Max with 64GB of RAM won't be jealous about the upcoming M4 Max' RAM tho.
Many pro desktop usages offload mass storage to cheaper/redundant external SSDs and/or to the cloud, making additional pricey onboard SSD capacity inappropriate.
I’m waiting for M5 as well, but because my M1 mini is serving me well. I edit video with Final Cut Pro and it’s still running strong.
People only use external SSD or the cloud because of the pricy onboard SSD not be cause they are better. That's like saying pros don't need built-in ports cause they use dongles.
The M3 Pro used three RAM chips if I recall, hence the sometimes odd numbers (ie: 18 GB = 3x 6GB modules). The lower end M3 Max used a similarly odd number of chips. That's also why the M3 Pro's memory bandwidth dropped from the M2 Pro; the M2 Pro had 16 memory controllers forming four memory channels going to four chips, the M3 Pro only had 12 controllers forming 3 channels. (The M3 Max uses 24 and 32 controllers depending on the tier; the M2 Max used 32 across the board).
The base M4 has 120 Gbps memory bandwidth and the M4 Pro has 273. While slightly more than 4x (and honestly a bit puzzling), that number, coupled with the more traditional RAM capacities, implies we're back to using four channels and therefore four chips.
So 24 GB for the M4 Pro base is likely 4x 6GB chips; 48GB is 4x 12GB chips; and 64GB is 4x16GB chips.
"Pro" level is just a marketing term, it has nothing to do with professional.
The M3x MBP already start at 512GB SSD already. Even the non-pro M3. I would expect 16/512 to be the base model spec for M4 too.
It’d have to be a lot more. The current low-end M3 Max MBP starts at 36GB of RAM and if you go with the unbinned chip, it starts at 48GB. Note that the lowest end M3 Max has twice the RAM of the M3 Pro at 36GB and 18GB, respectively. If Apple maintains that ratio, the lowest end M4 Max will start at 48GB.
EDIT: Just noticed your edit which agrees with mine.
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I don't understand why these don't start with either 512 SSD or 1 TB SSD. It is ridiculous to have to pay an extra $200 if you want to use it. Once you load the OS and sync your phone to it, you are already almost or even over the 256 GB. The real big issue is if you want to install any software as there just won't be enough space. Anyone who has a 512 SSD Mac knows the feeling trying to find something to delete to get space under 500 GB free. Just think about trying to do that with a 256 GB model.
The MacBook Pros already start with 512GB SSD. Only the Air, the iMac, and the Mini start with 256GB.
Remember when none of that mattered because we could just upgrade it later? Good times…
16GB is a good starting point and should have happened long time ago. Price for increased RAM is still insane and every „pro“ needs RAM in a „pro“ machine for e.g. upcoming AI solutions. We need to keep in mind that this amount of RAM is shared between CPU and GPU (where all the AI stuff happens).
Apple is still to blame since it created a huge amount of electronic waste during the last years, cause all those machines with Apples „we need only 8GB“ are falling behind now.
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M3 Pro is the worst Apple Silicon, not only looks terrible compared to the p-core count and memory bandwidth of m4 pro, but was also a huge step back in both compared to m1 and m2 pro. The two additional geekbench, sorry, efficiency cores saved it's benchmark results, but it hardly qualified for the pro label, which in the first two generations meant a chip for professionals not using much gpu power. For the latter, there is the Max (also my prediction: it will stay at 10 and 12 p-cores, and offer the most improvements in gpu cores and memory bandwidth).c'mon, M3 Pro is as good as it was when you bought it. If it handles everything you need, no need to invest money to new one. I bet M5 will be even betterMy M1 Max still as good as new (except battery -> 90% )
Only reason to invest more money is if new one will enable you to do something you could not do with old one, or saves significant amount of time. And M4 Max might
If 6GB on a phone wasn’t enough for supporting Apple Intelligence and 8GB is the minimum, then this tells me that AI will be occupying your RAM and it won’t be available for non-AI tasks.
So, if AI consumes 4GB of RAM all the time for Siri requests, email summaries, and whatever else it does, my 16GB is really 12GB or less.
Doesn’t seem like a big upgrade, does it? Especially if you don’t actually use the AI and cant use that RAM for RAM things.
Your first new Mac in 39 years. Now that’s what I call getting the most of your money.
Even as a staunch defender of the 8GB option (or rather, objectionist to the viewpoint that it is useless - different thing), I see 256GB SSD of much less of an issue. For many use cases, that is plenty. As i have mentioned before, I am literally not able to fill 100GB of my work computer without breaking company policies, or installing apps that I have no use for.
Does it? It tells me that it needs 2GB of RAM so that you have the same 6GB for other stuff as before, to give the same user experience. Remember, Apple doesn't count how much RAM you are using. They are counting what the user experience is.
If the actual user experience is an upgrade, I don't give a fårk how much RAM I have. And nothing suggests Apple Intelligence is hoarding 4GB "all the time". Apple Silicon is all about dynamic allocation. It will hoard 4GB and probably a lot more some of the time, but I 100% believe that if the system is, say, running AI indexing of video files in the background, rather than hoarding an amount of RAM and leaving you with the leftovers, it will slow down or pause the background indexing until you don't need the ressources.
I see no reason to not expect a 16GB Mac with AI to be significantly faster than an 8GB Mac without AI. I'm 100% certain an 8GB Mac could run AI if they let it, but it would be below Apple's threshold of acceptable performance.
That's not what he said.Your first new Mac in 39 years. Now that’s what I call getting the most of your money.
Agree. In my case, I was (and am) never defending Apple, as much as rejecting the notion that an 8GB Mac is "useless". Like you, I use mine often and it performs the tasks I use it for perfectly. I might be able to notice some apps opening faster with more RAM, but overall, it would make little difference to my enjoyment. And I do not plan to upgrade, until I actually feel some sort of limitation in my use. Which is not likely to be because of AI, since I can't use it where I live, probably not until at least 2026. But of course it is a good thing for everyone that Apple made the base version even better.
Not even close. "Falling behind" does not mean "now useless and I have to throw it out". Seriously, I just sold a 2010 Macbook Pro I had lying around, to someone who is going to actually use it. There are people using G4's for home servers, for crying out loud. I'm not replacing my base M1 Air before I actually feel it being sluggish, which I don't right now. When I do, I'll sell it to someone with less money who will live with the sluggishness, while my 16 GB work Lenovo will be scrap metal at that point.
If anyone has scrapped any working Apple Silicon product since launch, they have been setting money on fire.