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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

#151

Post by dns_snek »

goosedragons wrote: post #137
aurareturn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What on earth are you doing to your laptops that has you convinced that six years is an exceptionally long lifespan!?!? When I was a poor college student, I kept buying $500 Windows laptops and they kept breaking after 1-2 years.

Weren't they $800-900 a second ago?

Perhaps it was $900 new, then a $400 discount would explain the mysterious hinge damage. ;-)

Next we'll find out that the system didn't have an SSD, had all manner of crapware installed and had its intake ducts filled with dust. Typical fanboy comparisons.

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

#152

Post by benhurmarcel »

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 -…

The M2 Air 8Gb starts at $1100, not $900. And it's €1300 in Europe. It's not a cheap laptop at all.

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

#153

Post by mmcnl »

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 -…

8GB is way too little for office workers. Outlook, MS Teams and the Office 365 integrations consume a lot of memory. Especially if you are collaborating in big presentations with a few people. My previous Dell 16GB office laptop frequently ran to its limits with regular office work.

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

#154

Post by stephenr »

benterix wrote: post #149
stephenr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're more likely to buy a budget laptop in the 400-500 range I'd imagine the TCO on those bargain basement laptops is terrible, so I doubt they're really a big sell for corporate buyers.

Not necessarily - it depends how easily you can upgrade off-the shelf NVMs and RAM, and how much RAM its motherboard supports.

(A) the actual purchase cost for memory, whether its $200 or $20 is essentially irrelevant when it comes to TCO.

(B) In my experience corporate machines simply aren't upgraded. You get enough for the job when you order it. If you need more, you get a new machine and the old one is repurposed or retired if it's remaining usable life is short.

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

#156

Post by coldtea »

pjmlp wrote: post #133
coldtea wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, are we waiting something drastic in the next 4-5 years before the users gets the new model?

Because that is forced obsolence and damaging for the environment, the computer from today should be perfectly usable in 4-5 years. The upgrade treadmill from the 20 century computers is no longer relevant for most users, besides storage.

>Because that is forced obsolence and damaging for the environment, the computer from today should be perfectly usable in 4-5 years.

And for most users it will be. If we're talking "forced obsolence" Apple is probably the last to blame, given their stuff retains high ratio of original-vs-resale value (meaning they have long second hand careers).

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

#157

Post by solarkraft »

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…

> I regularly saw Dock and Finder leak and eat gigabytes of RAM each

Make sure to view "Real mem" in Activity Monitor. That's the amount of data actually stored in your RAM, the rest being swapped out. That number can be quite small, even for apps that theoretically use a lot of memory.

I have found Docker to be an "actual" memory hog with not much of it being swapped out, but could imagine that it would be possible in the case of Finder.

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

#158

Post by staringback »

stephenr wrote: post #103
lpapez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why I said normal office workers and students. Costing 9 hundos a piece, Air is not something a regular company would buy for their employees. They're more likely to buy a budget laptop in the 400-500 range which you can bet will do just fine for office work, and you can always upgrade it if necessary. If a company really does need their employees to work a Mac, they will have to cough out a lot more for the…

> They're more likely to buy a budget laptop in the 400-500 range I'd imagine the TCO on those bargain basement laptops is terrible, so I doubt they're really a big sell for corporate buyers.

$299 Inspirons these days come with NVMe storage and 6 core Intel CPUs

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

#159

Post by danaris »

benterix wrote: post #150
henry2023 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> running docker on a dev instance is not Why? This is what Docker is for.

The point is, this is not what the lowest-end Mac laptop is for.

If you know you're going to be running Docker, and you buy a computer with 8GB of RAM, I'm afraid I have very little sympathy for you. You should know exactly what you're going to get.

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

#160

Post by tjpnz »

Weren't Apple taking another shot at gaming with some AAA games recently being demoed on Apple silicon? 8GB is barely enough these days with many titles requiring at least 12 to run games at minimum settings, newer releases like Starfield require 16. That's for PC with discrete graphics too.
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