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

macworld.com

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

#51

Post by Zanfa »

Osiris wrote: 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 prefer my 8GB M1 Air to my 64GB Intel iMac for basically all of my Node/Rails/Swift development, with Docker running almost 100% of the time.

The only time I’ve seen the iMac be “better”, was when I had a Java project that had around 20 different packages that you needed to have open IDEs for.

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

#52

Post by jack1243star »

shmde wrote: post #38
aurareturn wrote: post #8

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.

Their argument seems like CPU binning for me, except less crazy? (lesser CPU takes more procedure to fuse out the disabled cores)

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

#53

Post by torginus »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

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 -…

No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB.

It's often mentioned that macOS is more frugal with RAM, a claim which I flat out found to be untrue. I regularly saw Dock and Finder leak and eat gigabytes of RAM each.

The unfortunate reality is that base Mac models always existed as an upsell. There were a few precious historical exceptions, most recently the M1 Mac, but that doesn't change this rule.

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

#55

Post by quickthrower2 »

3np wrote: post #21

Counter to title, as a non-mac-user I probably benefit from entry-level Macs having 8GB vs 16GB RAM - it increases pressure on devs to actually try to reign in their ballooning web/Electron apps when resource waste becomes noticable on modern hardware. Accounting for second-order effects over longer timeframes it could be a net benefit for desktop users. 8GB should be plenty. That it isn't is a software problem.

Unfortunately if you use typescript (tsc) it absolutely gobbles memory up

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

#56

Post by Osiris »

aurareturn wrote: post #18
eisa01 wrote: post #9

This will excerbate the problem with electronic waste by shortening the useful life Apple should be more serious about their environmental commitments

The average Mac is in use for far longer than your average upgradeable windows laptop from Walmart/Costco. One strong evidence for this is that macOS market share is actually 20% on desktop/laptops despite Macs selling only about ~8-10% of total PCs worldwide. [0] So yes, on average, Macs are significantly better for the environment. Having less RAM does not mean people replace their Macs more often than Windows comp…

My wife’s computer was getting slow so I stuck another 16GB of RAM in it for like $30. that upgraded added years to its life.

I have a stack of old MacBooks I can’t use because they only have 256GB SSDs that can’t be upgraded and I was constantly running out of space on them.

There is something to be said for being able to upgrade a machine to lengthen its usable life.

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

#57

Post by 3np »

Osiris wrote: post #45
3np wrote: post #21

Counter to title, as a non-mac-user I probably benefit from entry-level Macs having 8GB vs 16GB RAM - it increases pressure on devs to actually try to reign in their ballooning web/Electron apps when resource waste becomes noticable on modern hardware. Accounting for second-order effects over longer timeframes it could be a net benefit for desktop users. 8GB should be plenty. That it isn't is a software problem.

It’s a weird argument. It’s more weird because Apple isn’t the only computer manufacturer. I’ve never sat in a software development meeting in which the amount of RAM on customer machines was discussed, let alone used as an argument in favor of spending significant time doing software optimizations. I would be very surprised if Apple selling laptops with 8GB of RAM had any effect whatsoever on software development pr…

More likely to manifest as "PM complains that our app runs like dogshit on their new computer, just like those user reports we have been ignoring until now"

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

#59

Post by aurareturn »

torginus wrote: post #53
aurareturn wrote: post #8

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 -…

No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB. It's often mentioned that macOS is more frugal with RAM, a claim which I flat out found to be unt…

>No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB.

That's why I said normal office workers and students. I never said 8GB is enough for devs. It wasn't enough for me. It was still manageable for that 1 year before Apple Silicon MBPs got released. But of course I upgraded to an M1 Pro 16GB as soon as it came out.

I just gifted a family member an M1 Air 8GB in late 2023. I felt very comfortable that it was enough for the work this person does on the computer.

PS. 8GB is perfectly fine for Chrome web browsing. You can have 50 tabs open and it'll still run smoothly. macOS does some magic with paging. Don't know how it does it. But never had an issue with 8GB and Chrome. It was always my IDE, Typescript, and docker that gave me RAM issues on 8GB.

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