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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

#251

Post by gizmo »

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…

"Pro" usage doesn't mean docker. There are many "pro" workloads that work just fine with 8gb ram. You can get a lot of real work done with an 8gb machine that has terrific battery life, is great for travel, great screen, etc.

If you work on large C++/Rust projects you need dedicated build servers with ungodly amount of CPU/ram. A laptop cannot possibly compete with servers that draw 2000 watts each. Desktop PCs also blow laptops out of the water in terms of raw performance. And yet many professional developers have a MBP as their main device because apparently they don't need the extra performance a high end desktop delivers.

Somehow many people here believe that:

- an 8GB MBP is not pro

- a 16GB MBP is pro

- desktop with 1TB ram is unnecessary for pro use

Somehow their preferred device is the "pro" device and should be called "pro" and less capable and more capable machines are irrelevant.

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

#252

Post by EvgeniyZh »

icapybara wrote: post #194
ianai wrote: post #181

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 tha…

Innovation for the sake of innovation doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A CPU on germanium? Why? The semiconductor industry thought about it decided silicon was a better material platform 50 years ago.

The decision was kind of arbitrary though, and now economy of scale makes it very hard to switch. For instance, GaAs is better semiconductor than silicone in many aspects, and probably somewhat better overall for chips, but switching to it would cost billions

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

#253

Post by Delk »

musha68k wrote: post #178
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 -…

It’s not in my experience. “Normal users” are starting to run into this issue as I can anecdotally pass along (browsing, google suite, slight photoshop use, etc). I actually had lots of reservations before I “green lighted” those first gen M1 MacBook Airs at 8GB across family and friends. Unfortunately I unreasonably fell for the rather over hyped reviews across the board (“I want to believe”). It’s especially on me…

> It’s especially on me as my last private intel MBP before my “maxed out” M1 MBP wore out its on-board SSD after only 4 years and that one was large (1TB) with ample memory for the time (16GB).

I wonder how that's possible, and whether that's an outlier rather than a case of probable risk to SSDs. I've got the impression that it shouldn't be likely to wear out a modern or semi-modern SSD with any kinds of typical laptop workloads.

I daily drove a 500 GB off-the-shelf SSD in a 8 GB ThinkPad for ~8 years, and while it was for personal device, I used it a lot and even played games on it, often ran into swapping, even hibernated semi-regularly at times, etc., and there were never any signs of problems with the SSD.

4 years sounds like pretty bad luck.

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

#254

Post by rs999gti »

weweersdfsd wrote: post #98
aurareturn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked about that point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38215666

I have a 2011 Thinkpad T520 which still works fine, upgraded it to 16GB of RAM. There are high quality Windows laptops out there, but of course they cost as much as a Macbook. I'm okay with laptops being sold with 8GB of RAM, but I'm not okay with artifically shortened lifespan caused by lack of upgradability. Manufacturers should be regulated to force them offer upgradeable RAM. I don't care what new technological i…

> Manufacturers should be regulated to force them offer upgradeable RAM

Or just don't buy LUXURY Macs. Yes, they are luxury goods, they are Louis Vuittons of the laptop world.

You and a bunch of people don't buy Macs with 8GB and complain a lot and Apple will start selling them with 16GB.

But this will never happen because people will keep buying Macs because of the panache and swagger that owning and using a Mac give them.

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

#255

Post by etempleton »

I think Apple should have more memory in their base pro models, but it can not be understated to those who have not used an 8GB Macbook Air how that does not impact day-to-day computer usage compared to a similar spec. Windows machine.

I had used an M1 Air with 16Gb for work in the past and was impressed by it but was skeptical of the 8 Gb version. That is until I bought one because it was on sale.

If you are doing video editing or using similarly memory intensive applications you will see issues, but you can in a sense say 8GB is ~equivalent to 16 GB on Windows for average use cases.

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

#256

Post by NewJazz »

rs999gti wrote: post #247
wafriedemann wrote: post #196

The problem I have with 16GB as a upgrade is that the base model is widely available and often on sale. 16GB does exist as preconfigured option, but it is a lot harder to come by. It's mainly sold as BTO, which means you have to pay full price. That makes that extra 8GB of RAM ridiculously expensive. I mean it's already ridiculously expensive, but the fact that base models sell with huge discounts increases it even f…

Macs are luxury goods, price is the price. If you have an issue with it then you are not the market. No one goes to a Lambo dealer and complains about the cost of an oil change. Price is the price for luxury goods.

Apple has an 8% global market share for PCs. In Q42022, they shipped 7 million units.

Lamborghini shipped less than 10k units in 2022, total.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/11/apples-mac-market-share-jump...

https://www.lamborghini.com/en-en/news/lamborghinis-record-b...

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/19/apple-shipped-sev...

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

#257

Post by dns_snek »

sbuk wrote: post #205
dns_snek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a slightly related note: $/GB for RAM hit a wall starting in 2011 Now that's just disingenuous, it's a log scale and it shows that memory prices fell 40% from 2012 to 2022. Apple charges $200 to upgrade M1 Macbook Air from 8GB to 16GB. A comparable 8GB stick of DDR4-3600 costs $25 retail.

You’re comparing apples to oranges. The RAM is (or extremely close to being) part of the package. A stick of RAM is a commodity part. The M-series package isn’t.

You can bend over backwards all you want, but if you're going to claim that Apple's Unified Memory costs 10x as much as commodity RAM in terms of BOM, you better bring some receipts.

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

#258

Post by emeril »

bluedino wrote: post #164
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 had an old job give me a bottom of the barrel, refurbished HP Desktop. I popped in some RAM I had laying around and bought a $75 SSD, my machine was then the envy of the office.

haha, I remember doing the same thing with various garbage laptops I got years ago at work, it was worth it to just spend like $50 of my own money to not have headaches and finish my work much faster...

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

#259

Post by xw3090 »

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…

> computers marketed as "Pro" devices

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Which is the problem in a nutshell. No one knows what it means.

The parent worked as a dev for a year with the machine and was happy with it. I am also a dev, and am still on a M1 8gb Air that I got in early 2021, and I'm very happy with it. Probably the best laptop I've ever had the pleasure to work on.

For my workload, I don't think the difference between a 8gb and 16gb machine would be measurable. Some people really would prefer the $200.

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

#260

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #174
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…

The actual complaint implicit in all this is that the upgrade pricing has always been, and still is, pretty expensive.

But that complain doesn't make sense IMO.

There are other laptops you can buy for cheaper. And even Apple has Macbook Air which is much cheaper while still more than enough to do most types of office tasks or internet browsing. So someobody wants not only a Macbook, but also a new Macbook and top model for that matter.

It is like saying you want to buy top of the line Mercedes and complain the options are expensive. Yes, they are expensive, but nobody forces you to buy top of the line Mercedes. If you can't afford, don't complain about it.

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