That would be a great move on Apple's part. Producing models with 50% more RAM than is technically necessary would be a real boon. I'm seeing quite a few people purchasing the base 8GB of RAM configurations and discovering that it's not enough for multitasking of any substantial kind. Massive system performance issues with multiple apps running. Making the base model have enough RAM where buyers aren't surprised into "this is crap" reactions (even though it's clearly the base model and they *should* expect this) would ultimately benefit both the buyers and Apple. 8GB (even a bit less, see below) performs very well, but only if a user is running a very small number of basic Apps. (Yes, the consumer should know that, but many do not.)
This is something Apple has repeatedly done; released a base model that has *just enough RAM* that it will quickly become a problem with future MacOS updates alone, let alone multiple apps, even small ones. Often the difference between insufficient performance and excellent performance is such a small amount of additional RAM that it makes no sense at all for Apple to release those models (I suspect that planned obsolesce ultimately drives enough buyers away that it offsets any additional profits gained.) Working largely in education I have plenty of experience with a variety of strange memory configurations (older upgradable iMacs, Mac Pro system running OCLP, etc.) and even a miserly 6GB is plenty to make the OS and basic Apps perform very well, even on older hardware. At 4GB (the base for many older laptops, many of which cannot be upgraded) performance is absolutely terrible. Today the 8GB configurations are nearing that point where it's so minimal that any future update may completely bork the performance across the board.
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