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Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

macworld.com

31–40 of 409 posts

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#31
Luxury status items are not priced on BOM. That's the whole point, showing that you don't care paying way beyond actual costs.

It would be a strategic signaling mistake for Apple to sell RAM upgrades at actual cost, it would decrease their luxury brand value.

If you don't mind signaling poor and want to pay just actual costs buy a PC.

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#32
Whenever I pointed this out

"very wide memory bus very close to the M3 chip"

I got voted down here. But the Mx performace you get is partially because of the wide memory bus of the unified memory. The downside is the cost and the you-can't-upgrade-card you have been dealt. Please don't point out again it's "just" DDR5 and not in a system-in-a-package and just like any other laptop.

"We shouldn’t accept this"

Well you raved about the CPU performance and how Apple is genius, you can't eat the cake and have it (the cake is a lie!)

(LDDR5 8gb is ~$25)

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#33
post #11

When I started my current job they gave me an M1 Mac with 8GB because it’s what they had on hand. I could barely run my IDE and a web browser. At least 1GB was for video memory, and it was swapping constantly. I couldn’t run docker containers because of how much input lag I would get. 8GB is barely usable and shouldn’t even be an option for a Pro machine. I used it for a week before switching to a personal desktop wi…

8 Gb is fine, running docker on a dev instance is not

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#34
post #11

When I started my current job they gave me an M1 Mac with 8GB because it’s what they had on hand. I could barely run my IDE and a web browser. At least 1GB was for video memory, and it was swapping constantly. I couldn’t run docker containers because of how much input lag I would get. 8GB is barely usable and shouldn’t even be an option for a Pro machine. I used it for a week before switching to a personal desktop wi…

I work at apple and i use a m1 mac with 8gb for all my work

How? What apps are you using? As soon as I plug in an external monitor it turns into molasses. If I try to do a screen share for a video call, it lags. My memory pressure graph was always maxed out. If I ran the test suite for one repo the system became unresponsive. Docker would eat 4GB with only two containers (just redis and postgresql for local dev) I had to manually tune docker to use a little as possible. It was a nightmare.

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#35
post #10

Having an 8GB version makes it more accessible. Apple could just stop selling it and the complaint about there being a $200 upgrade would no longer be valid.

They should stop selling 8GB configs, but they shouldn't hike the price by $200 to do it. They'd make the same margin dollars (though not percentage) if they hiked the base prices by $40 and bumped them all to 16GB. But obviously this is Apple we're talking about, and they've been playing these cynical margin games with their customers for 30+ years.

It’s called premium pricing. Apple charges more because people expect them to, given that Apple markets their products as premium products.

What you’re proposing is for Apple to raise the price of the baseline model by $40 so that everyone gets 16GB. But most regular people don’t need 16GB. They don’t have a million tabs and applications open all at once. They use their computers for very basic things and Apple makes them very happy by providing a luxurious product for that.

You can see the same pricing strategy play out in countless other premium products, and not just in consumer goods. Check out the prices on Fluke multimeters or Tektronix oscilloscopes sometime (and compare with UniT and Rigol, respectively).

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#36
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at apple and i use a m1 mac with 8gb for all my work

How? What apps are you using? As soon as I plug in an external monitor it turns into molasses. If I try to do a screen share for a video call, it lags. My memory pressure graph was always maxed out. If I ran the test suite for one repo the system became unresponsive. Docker would eat 4GB with only two containers (just redis and postgresql for local dev) I had to manually tune docker to use a little as possible. It wa…

You're clearly a dev who requires at least 16GB. For many office workers, 8GB is fine.

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#38

8GB is still good enough for office workers and students. Heck, I used an M1 8GB Air for 1 year as a dev. Although I wish I had more RAM, it still served me well. For $899 (on sale sometimes), the 8GB M2 Air is absolutely a steal. The screen quality, thinness, battery life, build quality, SoC, quietness, coolness, metal enclosure, touchpad, and speakers are simply unmatched by anything in the PC world at that price -…

Apple geeks eating up and justifying anything and everything that apple throws at them is hilarious to see. It takes 50-60$ for a 8GB stick and people justifying that 200$ markup because Apple needs to make profit too. Is it Stockholm syndrome I dont know.

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#39
post #11

When I started my current job they gave me an M1 Mac with 8GB because it’s what they had on hand. I could barely run my IDE and a web browser. At least 1GB was for video memory, and it was swapping constantly. I couldn’t run docker containers because of how much input lag I would get. 8GB is barely usable and shouldn’t even be an option for a Pro machine. I used it for a week before switching to a personal desktop wi…

8 Gb is fine, running docker on a dev instance is not

"You're holding it wrong"

Re: Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it

#40
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing that we should all be using 10-20 year old computers and that computers should never get faster because it makes us write less efficient code? That’s an asinine argument.

>That’s an asinine argument. Good that that isn't the actual argument made by GP, but just a pretty strawman you managed to think up.

I guess I misinterpreted his argument. How would you word the point he was making, so I can understand it better?
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