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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

#181

Post by ianai »

I think the best reaction would be shame. Just a big round of shame for a trillion dollar company being so greedy to cripple their top equipment. Tech’s stagnated for over a decade and largely because of greed and at the expense of innovation.

Prove me wrong? Do something genuinely new, like a mass produced cpu on germanium. Make a modern OS that’s a successor to unix-and plan9. Edit-Or at least a moddable iphone that can plug into a monitor/keyboard/mouse.

Edit2-shame the company though, not the people who walk around carrying iphones or other apple devices. The company is the problem here.

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

#182

Post by aurareturn »

pentae wrote: post #169
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 -…

I think you missed the point - we're talking about computers marketed as "Pro" devices which should be able to handle "Pro" workloads. 8GB on the Airs is a completely different issue as these are not marketed as Pro devices. Consumers place a lot of faith in Apple as a brand so when they go and purchase a "Macbook Pro" they should be able to assume Apple has their back and it's actually going to do what it says on th…

I just used the MacBook Air as an example because even at 8GB, it’s still an amazing machine. I know the $1600 MBP with 8GB is strange. It shouldn’t exist. But it does so Apple opened itself up for ridicule.

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

#183

Post by jolt42 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #173
ho_schi wrote: post #163

8GB RAM would be enough. If not companies searched and found a successor for Flash. Is is Electron! It wastes memory, it is slow, it doesn’t integrate to Linux, Windows and MacOS and it allows to deploy bloated JavaScript locally. But it is cheap for them! Basically the target of companies is avoiding to employ programmers for native applications. These people cost money. And optimization cost money. So they opt to w…

It's not the point, but it doesn't hurt that, at least on macOS the 'real native' APIs are... terrible! SwiftUI only just got rounded borders this year https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71744888/swiftui-view-wi... . People here complain about CSS, but that's been a platform feature since like 2003. On Windows the UI toolkit story is just as much of a pain, with microsoft reinventing the toolkit every other year, an…

Unless it lacks the ability to give a MacOSX Look & Feel, I don't see a problem.

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

#184

Post by bakugo »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #171

How is giving people more options a bad thing? If somebody does want a larger screen and two monitor setup but will only ever be using it for light web, the 8GB machine is probably perfect for them. And thinking "you shouldn't be paying extra" is just bias. Just select the configuration you need, look how much it costs and figure if this is what you want to pay. You are not paying anything extra. They clearly tell yo…

When the "option" is paying $200 for an extra 8GB of RAM or 512GB of storage that would cost 1/10th of that if you bought it as a separate part, yes, it's a bad thing.

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

#185

Post by _ea1k »

wlesieutre wrote: post #161
staringback wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still the 1366x768 displays that they were using 10 years ago?

Just a quick glance at the dell website shows me an Inspiron 15 w/ 8GB RAM, and a 256GB nvme for $279. I'm sure the panel isn't great, but it is 1080p.

It is an i3, but still... this is $279! Do some bargain hunting and you can find some pretty decent machines for <$500 now.

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

#186

Post by tornato7 »

taeric wrote: post #175

I'll add to the chorus of folks that is somewhat baffled that 8GB is not enough. That is a ton of memory.

I do heavy dev work on my M1 Air with 8GB, meaning multiple IDEs, dozens of Chrome tabs, iPhone simulators, and plenty of electron apps all open at once. Never had an issue with it. MacOS is very good at paging to it's super-fast SSD.

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

#187

Post by aurareturn »

deafpolygon wrote: post #140
aurareturn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happens when an SSD reaches the write limit. It'll simply not let you write more data and becomes read only.

I have personally experienced this issue. It just gets very slow before slowly dying outright.

On a Mac?

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

#188

Post by ndiddy »

pentae wrote: post #169
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 -…

I think you missed the point - we're talking about computers marketed as "Pro" devices which should be able to handle "Pro" workloads. 8GB on the Airs is a completely different issue as these are not marketed as Pro devices. Consumers place a lot of faith in Apple as a brand so when they go and purchase a "Macbook Pro" they should be able to assume Apple has their back and it's actually going to do what it says on th…

Agreed. IMO the only reason why the 8GB model exists is so Apple can advertise the Macbook Pro line with a starting price that has lower margins than they would otherwise make and then charge anyone who actually wants to use the computer for a professional workload an extra $200-400.

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

#189

Post by savanaly »

taeric wrote: post #175

I'll add to the chorus of folks that is somewhat baffled that 8GB is not enough. That is a ton of memory.

Add on to that the observation that memory for your average consumer computer is something of an arms race between the manufacturer of the consumer's computer and the developers of the software they'll use.

Manufacturers want to have a computer with enough memory that it never feels like a constraint to the user (and blog posts like this one enjoin them to do that).

At the same time, developers of software want to consume as much memory as possible-- up to the point where they've used it all and any extra becomes noticeable as perf problems to the user.

So Apple keeping their default memory offering low could be seen in a certain noble light...like honoring a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

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

#190

Post by _ea1k »

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 -…

I don't really have a problem with 8GB for the base model. There are plenty of people buying Macs, including Pro versions, that won't need more than that.

My issue is the heavy price increase for higher RAM amounts. A $2500 machine should come with at least 64GB.

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