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Introducing the next generation of Mac

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Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#821

Post by agakshat »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

For a work laptop that only serves as an interface to a personal workstation set up in a server room, Macs are so much more enjoyable to use. No worrying about wifi drivers, being able to use the Mac touchpad etc.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#822

Post by hoseja »

robertlagrant wrote: post #800
BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

This is a confusing comment. If your mother doesn't need more than 8GB RAM, why should she have to pay for more? It's not as though you can't order more if you want it. It wouldn't force the industry to offer more. It would just mean purchasers such as your mother wouldn't buy a Mac.

Let's not pretend decent amount of RAM is prohibitively expensive.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#823

Post by Asmod4n »

my123 wrote: post #676
Asmod4n wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craig Federighi Said himself that they don’t boot other operating systems. Could you link the talk where they said it can run binaries not signed by Apple? The only thing I could find is where they still allow you to boot older versions which they don’t let you download anymore. To keep the actual mac experience.

It's because they don't want to support drivers for other OSes. See this WWDC session: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10686 and this manpage: https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/RwcT8stYMY/

Can’t find anything in both documents which allows booting of non Apple signed Software. The only thing I See there is something like SecureBoot on PCs, where Apple would need to sign your boot loader in order to be able to boot it.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#824

Post by lhl »

sudosysgen wrote: post #712
kabacha wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get it. How much difference could 8 to 16gb be in terms of price? Is Apple really doing this to save 20$ per machine? Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years? No one should ever buy this device.

They aren't doing it to save 20$ per machine, they are doing it to make the higher price of a 16GB machine seem more reasonable than if it was the base model.

It's worth noting that they are charging $200 for the 8GB memory upgrade.

The spot price for 16GB of LPDDR4 looks like it's currently ~$8 per DRAMexchange: https://www.dramexchange.com/

They're also charging $200 for a 256GB storage upgrade - spot price of 3D TLC is $3/256Gb ($24 for 256GB) - you can currently buy a 256GB NVMe SSD (full stick with controller) at retail for <$30 as well.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#825

Post by qaq »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

8GB is def low. I do have 16GB MBP and honestly it's doing fine for local dev on a large enterprise project with about 40 services running in docker.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#826

Post by thelittleone »

kabacha wrote: post #683
justin66 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this pricing was brought about by the same head injury that caused someone in management to believe 8GB is an adequate base spec for RAM in 2020.

I really don't get it. How much difference could 8 to 16gb be in terms of price? Is Apple really doing this to save 20$ per machine? Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years? No one should ever buy this device.

$20 at the volume they sell does add up.

But I think a more important factor is future sales. They will likely sell more laptops as these 8GB owners upgrade earlier (in 2-3 years) as the OS and apps continue to bloat.

So on one side they save $20 per laptop and they likely sell more laptops.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#827

Post by gideon_b »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

Battery life is easier to market than an acronym that sounds like it's either related to trucks or sheep.

RAM eats battery. Apple has made a strategic decision to pretend RAM doesn't exist, ship underpowered hardware, then brag about the battery life.

This is also the reason RAM is not listed on iPhone specs.

If I remember correctly the iPhone Pro 12 Max has twice as much RAM as the other 12 models and it's nowhere in the marketing materials. This is not accidental, it's a fundamental part of Apple's strategy.

EDIT: The max has 6GB and the rest of the line has 4GB. That is not twice as much. I did not remember correctly.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#829

Post by wukerplank »

agakshat wrote: post #820
wukerplank wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper the new Macs seem like Raspberry Pis with a fancy case and display.

Plus a significantly more polished OS, which is the reason I enjoy coding on my Mac.

I'm also a fan of macOS, but those hardware specs (RAM, SSD) were weak 5 years ago.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#830

Post by zeusk »

dweekly wrote: post #756
justin66 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this pricing was brought about by the same head injury that caused someone in management to believe 8GB is an adequate base spec for RAM in 2020.

Don't forget - with unified memory that means that the GPU has to pull from the same pool, so your usable RAM after display buffers is likely much less.

That's the case for any integrated GPU, even the Intel ones Apple has been using since 2000s
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