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

[unchecked]

The only reason for a Mac to come with more ram out of the gate is if software requirements suddenly balloon to the point where 8gb ram is no longer enough. You might have better luck writing to app developers asking them to make their apps more bloated and seeing if Apple will respond in kind.

The thing is apps are already reaching that point even without intentionally making apps any more bloated.

With chrome and only those tabs and activity monitor open, I'm already at

8GB RAM today is bare minimum when you use it together with swap. This is Apple's planned usage intention.

But that sucks.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

Still this begs the question... Using that high speed Ram but only 8Gb of it looks more like using it on dedicated hardware that on a general purpose computer.

Well, it's sharing it with the GPU, which love having high speed ram to play with. Granted, we're certainly at the point where 16 GB's the norm.

 

[Abazigal]

The thing is apps are already reaching that point even without intentionally making apps any more bloated.

With chrome and only those tabs and activity monitor open, I'm already at View attachment 2153802

8GB RAM today is bare minimum when you use it together with swap. This is Apple's planned usage intention.

But that sucks.

Here’s mine.

Seems we are running in memory swap either way.

 

[sam_dean]

Here’s mine.
View attachment 2153808
Seems we are running in memory swap either way.

Unified memory makes 8GB RAM a bit stingy.

At min it should be 16GB RAM

 

[leman]

I see like ”end this thread”, ”no need for another thread”, ”it's just whining”. Would those people argue the same about free speech, in general? ”No need to discuss anything, be content with what you are offered, the powers that are know best”. Perhaps they do.

This thread has been running in circles for days . The main arguments boil down to:

- I want to pay less (wow, what a surprise)
- 8GB base didn’t change in 10 years (neither did the speed limit, what kind of argument is that?)
- cheap PCs have 16GB RAM (proceed to give examples of budget stuff running cheap old DDR4-3200)

You think this is a high quality constructive conversation? I don’t.

For others: Remember that there are potential personal gains when you see Apple being constantly defended. They might be employees, shareholders, and so on. Or, more psychologically understandable, people who have bought 8 GB/256 GB entry macs and have a great need to defend their decisions.

Yes, because everyone who has the gall to point out the naivety of some other posters must be Apple employees. Bravo. Well done.

 

[sam_dean]

This thread has been running in circles for days . The main arguments boil down to:

- I want to pay less (wow, what a surprise)
- 8GB base didn’t change in 10 years (neither did the speed limit, what kind of argument is that?)
- cheap PCs have 16GB RAM (proceed to give examples of budget stuff running cheap old DDR4-3200)

You think this is a high quality constructive conversation? I don’t.



Yes, because everyone who has the gall to point out the naivety of some other posters must be Apple employees. Bravo. Well done.

To correct myself Apple did lower the cost of 8GB RAM & 256GB SSD or bumped up the RAM & SSD with the

- $599 2023 Mac mini M2
- $1299 2021 iMac 24"
- $999 2020 Intel MBA
- $1299 2020 Intel MBP 13"

Apple lowered that RAM & SSD combination price with the Mac mini M1 to M2 by $100 at the trade off a slower SSD.

I made an error of comparing a 2012 iMac 27" Core i5 & 2012 MBP 15" Core i7 to M1/M2 Macs without considering MSRP of each SKU.

 

[AlixSPQR]

This thread has been running in circles for days . …
You think this is a high quality constructive conversation? I don’t.

And yet you insistently take part in it, more than I do.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Yes, because everyone who has the gall to point out the naivety of some other posters must be Apple employees. Bravo. Well done.

I didn’t write that, so why do you quote me?

 

[maflynn]

I am a bit disappointed at the lack of interest to deal with this topic

Yes, because I was tired of beating a dead horse. What's funny is you then complain about the very thing you wanted to continue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This thread has been running in circles for days . The main arguments boil down to:

LOL, you're one of the worst offenders in this thread, you couldn't let the very 16GB pc portion of the conversation go. You had to keep arguing that you're right and I'm wrong. When complaining about how a thread is running in circles, maybe look in the mirror first

 

[Digitalguy]

How so? If you do nothing but run Safari and Word, what do you need more for? If you're setting up an accounting team that does nothing but use web applications, what do you need more for? If you're looking for a first computer for a child, what do they need more for? If your grandmother wants to video chat with the kids every now and then and only ever learns to click the two or three applications in the dock, what does she need more for?

If you take the world as a whole and not the small subset of Apple fanboys in these forums, the granmothers and children of this world don't want or care about Macs, which only make single digit percentages of market share, if they ever want to use a laptop in addition or instead of a smartphone, they'll use a Windows PC, or a Chromebook, and yes 8GB will not matter, as they don't even know what memory swap is...

 

[Scarrus]

- cheap PCs have 16GB RAM (proceed to give examples of budget stuff running cheap old DDR4-3200)

You think this is a high quality constructive conversation? I don’t.

Well I do. See, that "budget stuff" will be a lot more useful in 5 years time than your high speed, supersonic, measly 8Gb of unified memory.

 

[sam_dean]

If you take the world as a whole and not the small subset of Apple fanboys in these forums, the granmothers and children of this world don't want or care about Macs, which only make single digit percentages of market share, if they ever want to use a laptop in addition or instead of a smartphone, they'll use a Windows PC, or a Chromebook, and yes 8GB will not matter, as they don't even know what memory swap is...

They're also the majority of users who do not know what Terminal or Command Line Interface is all about.

Anyone who dispute this should interact more with non-nerds, non-engineers, non-scientists, non-teachers and whole lot of people who are core Mac users.

 

[Digitalguy]

If your concern is the BTO models are too under-spec'd to be usable for any but the lightest users, then you need to not only upgrade the base RAM to 16 GB, but also the base SSD to 1 TB.

I really don't understand where I ever said or implied that... I was talking about something else in my post...

 

[Digitalguy]

They're also the majority of users who do not know what Terminal or Command Line Interface is all about.

Anyone who dispute this should interact more with non-nerds, non-engineers, non-scientists, non-teachers and whole lot of people who are core Mac users.

To be honest I'd only say non-nerds... I am a (university) teacher myself, and most of my colleagues understand very little about computers. I have come to realize that, regardless of the job, you have nerds and non nerds, and while in these forums there is probably a majority of nerds in the real world we are a tiny minority (but a lot of people rely on us for their purchase decisions, and those who don't buy whatever is cheap, maybe not the absolute cheapest thing, but cheap anyway as they don't know any better, and that's also why PCs and Chromebooks sell so much more, as they offer those price points Macs don't offer, at least if you buy new)

 

[sam_dean]

To be honest I'd only say non-nerds... I am a (university) teacher myself, and most of my colleagues understand very little about computers. I have come to realize that, regardless of the job, you have nerds and non nerds, and while in these forums there is probably a majority of nerds in the real world we are a tiny minority (but a lot of people rely on us for their purchase decisions, and those who don't buy whatever is cheap, maybe not the absolute cheapest thing, but cheap anyway as they don't know any better, and that's also why PCs and Chromebooks sell so much more, as they offer those price points Macs don't offer, at least if you buy new)

I really wish smart people would understand this.

The whole allure of Macs is that you do not have to deal with CLI or Terminal.

But 2-3 here keep insisting that >20% of worldwide 100+ millions users who know this.

I had to put a stop to it and just ignore and not reply. They think I was insulting them by pointing out the obvious.

 

[livmatus]

Here's mine ... I have Safari running with a few tabs, then another Safari window with a few Youtube videos, Discord, Viber, Signal, Messenger, MegaNZ, Flux and that's basically it... with one external monitor (3840x1200)

Pretty basic use I'd say ... no XCode or anything like that.

8GB should be illegal to sell ... especially at that price range

I also plan to find some local "Louis Rossmann"-likeish person who will swap my nand flash chips for 2TB of storage ... 256GB is really limiting ... but I'll do that after my warranty ends in 02/2024 (laptop will be 3 years old) ... unless the M3 comes with multiple external display support ... or my employer issues me a Pro machine

 

[AlixSPQR]

I also plan to find some local "Louis Rossmann"-likeish person who will swap my nand flash chips for 2TB of storage

I’ve read somewhere that it isn’t possible. A security chip refuses the mac to boot from anything that isn’t built in from the factory. But maybe it can be circumvented, IDK.

 

[leman]

LOL, you're one of the worst offenders in this thread, you couldn't let the very 16GB pc portion of the conversation go. You had to keep arguing that you're right and I'm wrong. When complaining about how a thread is running in circles, maybe look in the mirror first

Come on man, you single-handedly declared the entire premium ultrabook market that uses LPDDR, with I don't even know how many $$$ global revenue, an "outlier". What kind of conversation is that? We are talking about superbikes and you continue bringing up the scooters. Different market, different kind of customer, different tradeoffs.

Where you are absolutely right though: I have spent way too much time on this entirely dumb discussion.

 

[Ethosik]

Apple is overcharging af … 32GB (2x16) 6400MT CL32 Kingston with RGB is selling for $210 converted here in Czechia

Um...back in 2021 DDR5 was $1,000 for 16GB of RAM. We are finally seeing DDR5 RAM be reasonable pricing.

 

[MilaM]

Short answer: as long as customers are willing to "stretch" to get the higher speced Macs, they won't change the base config.

Here is another way to look at it. In the past, RAM and to some extent SSDs, were upgradable. If your needs changed, you could upgrade your machine with little effort or have a repair shop do it for you. This has been the case for all five desktop Macs I bought in past 12 years.

But this is not true anymore. You have to think ahead and try to judge if youre Mac will have sufficient RAM and disk space in 3, 5 or maybe even 7 years. For this reason I would not want to buy a new Mac with less than 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD space TODAY, because I might need it very soon.

 

[Ethosik]

Well I do. See, that "budget stuff" will be a lot more useful in 5 years time than your high speed, supersonic, measly 8Gb of unified memory.

How about we make things simple. This has been a conversation as old as time. Just buy what you need. You want 16GB minimum, then are you okay with the price of these increasing $200? My parents, grandparents, brother, some friends etc they all get by JUST fine on 8GB....no issues. Sorry you struggle with it. But guess what, I struggle with 16GB so I....GASP...buy what I need.

 

[Scarrus]

Why should I be ok with a 200$ markup if it's just highway robbery basically?

 

[Digitalguy]

Why should I be ok with a 200$ markup if it's just highway robbery basically?

It's actually often more than $200, as $200 is assuming you buy the base model at full price and not on sale, while the upgraded version is essentially never on sale...

 

[Silvestru Hosszu]

Lets be honest, the base model is more than adequate for lots of people. None of my colleagues and very few of my friends bought anything but 8/256 and are very pleased. But they are mostly lawyers and accountants who don't use much except office apps and a web browser.

The real issue is the upgrade price. Indeed charging 200+€ for 8 gb of RAM or 256 of SSD is borderline outrageous. I can afford to pay this prices but this does not mean that the value proposition is good and that I am happy to pay.

On the other hand no matter what high end/luxury product are we talking about, the value proposition is bad.

 

[rgwebb]

Apple will ship 8GBs of RAM on MacBook Air until the engineering side can't make macOS perform well enough without more primary memory.