Will 16GB of Memory Finally Come Standard Alongside the M3 Chip?

[leman]

IMO the Macbook Pro lineup should start from features designed around users with "pro" needs, the Air (or in the past the non-Pro Macbook) are for e.g the business person more likely to write documents, spreadsheets and whatnot and thus not need a ton of RAM or disk space. To me the M2 Pro + 16 GB + 1 TB spec should be the base spec for the MBP lineup.

The base spec for the MBP is M2 Pro + 16GB + 512GB, close enough to what you say and a decent enough prosumer setup. Forget the 13” MBP, that’s just an air with active cooling, Apple said so themselves.

Yet you don't want to be in that small section of users with dying SSDs. On a more sensible system, you would simply replace the M.2 drive with a new one. On an Apple device, you can't. There is no good reason for the non-upgradeable drives, there are tons of laptops that easily fit a standard M.2.

I see this as Apples problem, not that of the user. Since they offer extended warranty as a subscription now, figuring out how to fix failed SSDs is up to them. And they seem fairly confident that the SSDs are as reliable as they get.

 

[dmccloud]

Do you have any data on how many customers fall under 'most' or 'majority'. I've never seen a Mac that wasn't upgraded.

The other way around, the more professional you are, the less you care about price and performance becomes the only factor in your purchase decision. That's why the Pro machines are the most expensive ones.

And lo and behold that's almost the exact same base configuration Apple chose.

But I also don't want to be in the small section of users who experience connection problems with socketed components like CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD. All of them have a small chance of failure and still benefit from being soldered together for good.

And on a modular PC I can't save three quarters of my electricity bill and enjoy virtually eternal battery life.

Yes, there is. It's called a System-on-a-Chip. It achieves way higher performance per watt, because of much tighter integration. You need to stop thinking of the SSD as a separate component. Data encryption and storage controller are integrated into the M1 itself. Only the storage chips are still separately soldered on the board nearby. But it's all just one part. And it might well last longer than your own remaining lifetime.

And the limited choice on RAM is good. People would abuse such freedom to create nonsensical combinations like 128 GB RAM on an passively cooled M1 MacBook Air.

There you have it. The risk to delay your work is worth the money.

There are benefits of buying Apple hardware instead of building a Hackintosh from cheaper PC parts. You just want to have your cake and eat it too. The best of both worlds. Wether you live in a golden cage or a golden castle is a question of attitude. Be grateful that you have time to reason about such 1st world problems!

1. Unless you have data showing a hard number of people who upgraded their Macs, your first comment is irrelevant and misleading in nature. I never upgraded my older Macs, going all the way back to the Powerbook 145B and Performa 630CD days. Even back then, the cost of RAM on the Mac side was higher than equivalent RAM on the PC side, so it wasn't just Apple itself setting prices higher than the market at the time.

1. The SSD is separate from the SOC, not part of it. While it is located close to the SoC for purposes of reducing latency and maximizing available throughput, it is still separate from the SoC itself.

 

[turbineseaplane]

An extra NVMe slot should be standard on Macs and RAM, if it really needs to be soldered, should simply cost a lot less to spec up.

We aren't dumb

Apple has designed all of this to purposely be able to rip us off on overpriced upgrade charges at the time of purchase.

I mean .. my lord ... even Sony has added a standard NVMe slot on the PS5 so a customer can easily add storage after the fact with their compatible drive of choice.

(major kudos to Sony for going with a standard on that)

 

[bobcomer]

I see this as Apples problem, not that of the user. Since they offer extended warranty as a subscription now, figuring out how to fix failed SSDs is up to them. And they seem fairly confident that the SSDs are as reliable as they get.

I agree, they are more than reliable enough to be soldered onto the motherboard, I have no problem with that, but, it sure would be nice if they put in a socket so we could expand storage easily. I know, I'm a dreamer, but for my job, I will pick a laptop with expandable storage over a laptop that doesn't have expandable storage, all else being close.

TB3/4 just doesn't cut it for fast external storage.

 

[leman]

I agree, they are more than reliable enough to be soldered onto the motherboard, I have no problem with that, but, it sure would be nice if they put in a socket so we could expand storage easily.

If they put it in the socket it would be for their benefit (ease of replacement/repair), not yours. I mean, I would love for Apple to sell SSDs as upgrades, but that's unlikely to happen — not to mention the price.

Worth reiterating at this point that Apple doesn't use standard SSDs. Their controller is in the SoC and their SSD cache is the system RAM. Apple SSDs are crazy resilient though, most brands out there lose data on power loss.

 

[bobcomer]

1. Unless you have data showing a hard number of people who upgraded their Macs, your first comment is irrelevant and misleading in nature. I never upgraded my older Macs, going all the way back to the Powerbook 145B and Performa 630CD days. Even back then, the cost of RAM on the Mac side was higher than equivalent RAM on the PC side, so it wasn't just Apple itself setting prices higher than the market at the time.

1. The SSD is separate from the SOC, not part of it. While it is located close to the SoC for purposes of reducing latency and maximizing available throughput, it is still separate from the SoC itself.

I have upgraded other people's MBP with better SSD and RAM, and I've added RAM to my own iMac.

No reason it couldn't have a standard m2 socket too, even with the internal ssd being just chips...

 

[bobcomer]

If they put it in the socket it would be for their benefit (ease of replacement/repair), not yours. I mean, I would love for Apple to sell SSDs as upgrades, but that's unlikely to happen — not to mention the price.

Like I said, I'm a dreamer, I would want it for me, for when I need extra ssd.

Worth reiterating at this point that Apple doesn't use standard SSDs. Their controller is in the SoC and their SSD cache is the system RAM. Apple SSDs are crazy resilient though, most brands out there lose data on power loss.

I know that, but there's no reason a 2nd disk storage would need to be the same non-standard Apple ideal.

Most laptops don't totally lose power, so that's not a concern. It's not even a concern with my desktops with no battery, power loss is rare and damage from it is a lot rarer.

 

[dgdosen]

If they wanted to, couldn't Apple offer the best of both worlds - keep their close-to-the-CPU SOC memory and on-board storage - and also offer slots for standard memory and storage? They could call them something like "L4 cache" and "secondary storage".

There's definitely more open space in their latest designs... I'd bet customers would love it. Not sure how that would impact Tim's cash flow projections...

 

[leman]

If they wanted to, couldn't Apple offer the best of both worlds - keep their close-to-the-CPU SOC memory and on-board storage - and also offer slots for standard memory and storage? They could call them something like "L4 cache" and "secondary storage".

This would make sense for the Mac Pro, and maybe some desktops. Won't happen on the laptop though. The internal space is too much of a premium to waste it on something almost nobody will use, and this kind of expandability will kill the battery life. Not to mention that having multiple storage devices would complicate disk management — something that Apple will never allow.

 

[bobcomer]

Not to mention that having multiple storage devices would complicate disk management — something that Apple will never allow.

I don't agree at all. They already allow multiple disks now, the extras just have to be external and there really no complication in managing that. (it's just SLOW access-wise) Mac's know about disks and volumes and hard links...

They also "allow" multiple internal drives on older Macs, namely the fusion drive macs.

As for RAM, I don't like any of the schemes discussed around here for adding RAM not part of the SoC. But that's a problem for the Mac Pro, if they ever release a new one, and I have my doubts on that.

 

[dmccloud]

I have upgraded other people's MBP with better SSD and RAM, and I've added RAM to my own iMac.

No reason it couldn't have a standard m2 socket too, even with the internal ssd being just chips...

Small sample size does not illustrate a larger trend. With the SSD controller being in the SoC, how would you programmatically handle potential conflicts between the SoCs controller and the controller on an M.2 SSD?

 

[bobcomer]

Small sample size does not illustrate a larger trend.

Agreed. But on the other hand we don't know how many upgrade their PC's. In the gaming area, you can bet it's a good percentage and the gaming area is a good percentage of the high end pc market -- so by that, I'd say a lot more do upgrades than people talk about around here.

With the SSD controller being in the SoC, how would you programmatically handle potential conflicts between the SoCs controller and the controller on an M.2 SSD?

There is absolutely nothing to be done programmatically to handle that. The OS knows different disks and different controllers for those disks -- otherwise it wouldn't be able to use USB or TB externals.

 

[leman]

Small sample size does not illustrate a larger trend. With the SSD controller being in the SoC, how would you programmatically handle potential conflicts between the SoCs controller and the controller on an M.2 SSD?

What conflicts? These would be just two separate devices with different drivers. I mean, you can use external storage without any issues. That is not a concern at all. As I said before, I see two main issues — internal space and "simplicity" (multiple internal storage devices need extra configuration which breaks Apple's philosophy of "just works")

 

[Scarrus]

256Gb SSD built-in MacBooks are great, I'm going to buy some more of those!

 

[thebart]

An extra NVMe slot should be standard on Macs and RAM, if it really needs to be soldered, should simply cost a lot less to spec up.

We aren't dumb

Apple has designed all of this to purposely be able to rip us off on overpriced upgrade charges at the time of purchase.

I mean .. my lord ... even Sony has added a standard NVMe slot on the PS5 so a customer can easily add storage after the fact with their compatible drive of choice.

(major kudos to Sony for going with a standard on that)

We live in a world where a gaming console is more expandable than a "pro" desktop computer. Crikey

Makes me want to return my mini on principles alone

 

[turbineseaplane]

We live in a world where a gaming console is more expandable than a "pro" desktop computer. Crikey

Makes me want to return my mini on principles alone

Really something isn't it?

Can pop in aftermarket standard NVMe storage on a gaming console ... but not on any of the "premium" computers from Apple.

 

[thebart]

BTW did I read that right? the SSD is soldered on? I thought it was just serial locked to the machine so you can't swap it, but if it died you could take it to apple and they could replace it with an apple blessed ssd.

this really changes the calculation on buying used M machines, as well as buying the base model with smallest ssd

 

[Rafterman]

"Pro" is a meaningless marketing term. Chromebooks can be "pro" is you use it for your profession. Get 8TB if you NEED 8TB. But getting it just to spec chase is pointless.

In my case, I do need 8TB because my video work requires it. But I don't need 16TB, so I won't get it just to claim I am a "pro."

 

[spnc]

"Pro" is a meaningless marketing term. Chromebooks can be "pro" is you use it for your profession. Get 8TB if you NEED 8TB. But getting it just to spec chase is pointless.

In my case, I do need 8TB because my video work requires it. But I don't need 16TB, so I won't get it just to claim I am a "pro."

Call it Pro, Ultra or whatever I don't care about the term, just give me 16TB.

 

[Rafterman]

Call it Pro, Ultra or whatever I don't care about the term, just give me 16TB.

You're not going to get it yet.

 

[Gudi]

BTW did I read that right? the SSD is soldered on? …

This really changes the calculation on buying used M machines, as well as buying the base model with smallest SSD.

No it doesn’t. It takes nothing away from the usability and longevity of Macs. But if it scares PC users away, it may help lower prices. 😜

 

[Gudi]

"Pro" is a meaningless marketing term. Chromebooks can be "pro" if you use it for your profession.

No, they can’t. Apple completely dominates the above $1000 laptop market for a reason. macOS is a necessary requirement for a Pro machine. What differentiates Air and Pro are users who don’t care about the price at all anymore, because the quality of the machine directly reflects on the quality of their work product.

If you’re a journalist and take pictures and videos with your phone which might end up on millions of 4K TV screens, than the idea of an iPhone Pro camera suddenly becomes way less ridiculous.

All Apple products already belong into the category of affordable luxury, but some go even beyond that into the category business expenses. There are no limits to how much a Mac Pro may cost and how much cores, memory and storage it may have.

Pro doesn’t mean I use this for profession, Pro means I don’t care about the costs.

 

[unrigestered]

can't they? or is simply the sarcastic emoji missing?

a pen and paper can be used for professionally (even the cheapest pen plus some sheets of recycled grey paper)

a stick and a plastic barrel can be used professionally even for seasoned drummers, especially if you're aiming for that sound

but a very capable thing like a Chromebook that demolishes everything that has been "cutting edge" and "professiinals" would have killed for something even remotely powerful just a couple of decades ago can't be used professionally?

i'm sure somewhere in this world some people are still using mechanical typewriters professionally

 

[Rafterman]

Pro doesn’t mean I use this for profession, Pro means I don’t care about the costs.

If you were truly "pro," you would very much care about costs. I don't know any corporation that doesn't care about costs.

 

[Gudi]

If you were truly "pro," you would very much care about costs. I don't know any corporation that doesn't care about costs.

You’re talking about corporations buying cheap Windows boxes in contempt of their employees. I’m talking about professionals you want to keep, because they’re irreplaceable.