I am going to give out different statement than the consensus being formed in this thread.
It is a criminal act by any manufacturer to sell a computer with 8G of memory specially when it is not upgradeable.
Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The commenter didn't say they were getting hit with OOMs. Is this something that is happening to you?
I used to hit OOMs on my 16GiB Macbook Pro pretty regularly, but that was IntelliJ + Docker + MySQL + Chrome + Debuggers + Google Meet + Slack Someone using Chrome + Facebook or even a dev writing e.g. Python in VS Code to run locally is probably less likely to hit that.
I have one of the first set of M1 MBPs with 8GB.
All day I run Chrome with 3 profiles (as many as 5) and 40+ total tabs (sometimes a much higher number), VS Code, SourceTree, 8 docker containers running various services for dev (7 native, one emulated x86_64), iTerm, Photoshop CC and XD CC.
I run everything I can in the browser including Slack, GMail, GCal, our PM tool, etc.
With all of that said, I don't even know what a "OOM" looks like. The only real performance issues I have deal with an inherited codebase (which does stuff it really shouldn't be doing) and docker-specific filesystem slowness (which is a known issue).
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#23We are now half way 2022 so I have been stating this for a decade. ( Probably some old HN comments somewhere )
DRAM Cost / GB hasn't been getting any cheaper. ( Not adjusted for inflation ) Unlike NAND at cost per GB, or Consumer CPU cost per core ( not a fair comparison due to die size difference but relevant in this context ), hence it is an expensive component in terms of overall system. You get higher throughput, lower energy, but not lower cost. In fact your 8GB LPDDR5 in latest MB cost more than the 8GB in 2015 MBA even adjusted for inflation.
And there are no current roadmap to suggest we could break this trend. While we could and are continuing to shrink transistors, you can only do so much with capacitor inside the DRAM. Unless we have some fundamental breakthrough, this will remain the case for DRAM in the foreseeable future.
I still remember I was called out and attacked for suggesting this in ~2012. That machines in 2020s will remain at 8GB.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to hit OOMs on my 16GiB Macbook Pro pretty regularly, but that was IntelliJ + Docker + MySQL + Chrome + Debuggers + Google Meet + Slack Someone using Chrome + Facebook or even a dev writing e.g. Python in VS Code to run locally is probably less likely to hit that.
I have one of the first set of M1 MBPs with 8GB. All day I run Chrome with 3 profiles (as many as 5) and 40+ total tabs (sometimes a much higher number), VS Code, SourceTree, 8 docker containers running various services for dev (7 native, one emulated x86_64), iTerm, Photoshop CC and XD CC. I run everything I can in the browser including Slack, GMail, GCal, our PM tool, etc. With all of that said, I don't even know w…
OOM on OS X looks like the OS popping up a modal dialog asking you which application you'd like to kill because you're out of memory.
OOM on Linux looks like the OS just killing the heaviest application if you have no swap, or grinding to a halt if you have swap and actually need to use it as working memory.
OOM on Windows looks like your system grinding to a halt because you're paging all the time.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#258 GB is more than enough for many workloads, especially web development, academics, and remote development (and for that matter, non-development workloads).
Why not increase the potential pool of buyers with specs that are acceptable to them?
Also, M1 Architecture over Intel taps into solid state storage speeds to aggressively use swap storage when mem pressure exists. It really seems to be smooth, I've not noticed much hiccups. You might remember folks getting upset at this a year back because of the unexpectedly high SSD wear that results.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The commenter didn't say they were getting hit with OOMs. Is this something that is happening to you?
I used to hit OOMs on my 16GiB Macbook Pro pretty regularly, but that was IntelliJ + Docker + MySQL + Chrome + Debuggers + Google Meet + Slack Someone using Chrome + Facebook or even a dev writing e.g. Python in VS Code to run locally is probably less likely to hit that.
Yeah, Docker in MacOS and Java are particularly memory hungry as a combination. We stand up our whole k8s cluster in docker desktop as a matter of course and I fear for my 32GB work MacBook.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#27We are now half way 2022 so I have been stating this for a decade. ( Probably some old HN comments somewhere ) DRAM Cost / GB hasn't been getting any cheaper. ( Not adjusted for inflation ) Unlike NAND at cost per GB, or Consumer CPU cost per core ( not a fair comparison due to die size difference but relevant in this context ), hence it is an expensive component in terms of overall system. You get higher throughput,…
In October 2019 I bought two 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 SODIMMs for my laptop for $140 each.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N124XDS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
You can now get a single 32GB DDR4 3200MHz SODIMM for under $120
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FBNQXC4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#288 GB is more than enough for many workloads, especially web development, academics, and remote development (and for that matter, non-development workloads). Why not increase the potential pool of buyers with specs that are acceptable to them? Also, M1 Architecture over Intel taps into solid state storage speeds to aggressively use swap storage when mem pressure exists. It really seems to be smooth, I've not noticed m…
I have a 16GB M1 laptop and my colleague has an 8GB M1 laptop of the same model. Guess which one of us has to be selective about number of browser tabs and other apps that can be open. I don’t mean to be glib here, but I honestly don’t know how 8GB is enough. Add Docker to the mix, and 16 starts feeling a bit cramped.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#29Because 8GB still works fine and will continue to work fine for at least the next 6-7 years. Cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks still come with 4GB ram. I'm currently typing this on a 2008 MacBook Pro with a 2.5GHZ Core 2 Duo and 6GB RAM. It's playing a 1080P video on a second monitor and has 5 browser tabs open in two browsers. Currently using 4.7GB RAM and 60% CPU.
You must have a very different definition of "fine" than me. Only getting OOMkilled several times per hour is OK?
My company has tens of thousands of non-technical users using M1 MacBooks with 8 GB RAM and they don't have any OOM errors regularly, if ever.
It sounds like your use case requires more than the baseline. You may be the outlier.
Re: Ask HN: Why does my '15 MacBook Air have the same RAM (8gb) as a '22 McBook Pro?
#30We are now half way 2022 so I have been stating this for a decade. ( Probably some old HN comments somewhere ) DRAM Cost / GB hasn't been getting any cheaper. ( Not adjusted for inflation ) Unlike NAND at cost per GB, or Consumer CPU cost per core ( not a fair comparison due to die size difference but relevant in this context ), hence it is an expensive component in terms of overall system. You get higher throughput,…
In October 2019 I bought two 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 SODIMMs for my laptop for $140 each. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N124XDS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... You can now get a single 32GB DDR4 3200MHz SODIMM for under $120 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FBNQXC4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
Are you posting these links to suggest that the commenter is incorrect about prices remaining the same?
If so, I'm not sure comparing prices of DDR4 are the same thing, since the commenter was talking about LPDDR4.