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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

#401

Post by aurareturn »

_ea1k wrote: post #190
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.

Actually, I don't even have a problem with $2500 coming with 16GB. I have a problem with most higher memory options not being standard retail SKUS, which means they rarely go on sale and have to BTO with longer wait times.

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

#402

Post by rewmie »

dahart wrote: post #375
rewmie wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) for their premium pricing (...) That's a creative euphemism for price gouging.

Your framing is not accurate. Apple is capitalist, using the free market, and profiteering, sure, but price gouging is “distinguished by being short-term and localized and by being restricted to essentials such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and equipment needed to preserve life and property.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

I think you tried rather desperate to handwave over the fact that Apple price-gouges their laptops. Their entry-level prices for anaemic 8GB laptops to the small fortunes they charge to update (doesn't even count as an upgrade) their RAM beyond 8GB is nothing but price gouging. You can't hide the fact that Apple charges more for 16GB of RAM than what it costs to buy a full blown PC with 16GB of RAM.

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

#403

Post by tntaben »

aurareturn wrote: post #400
tntaben wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago, Macbook Pro was equipped with 4GB RAM. Back then, the Macbook Pro hardware led the PC industry. Pro is a real Pro. today, you’re saying that it’s enough.

Macbook Pro hardware still leads the industry in my opinion. And has a bigger lead than ever.

CPU benchmarks will tell us the fact. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

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

#404

Post by KingOfCoders »

skrebbel wrote: post #129
KingOfCoders wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree. Usually my comments have some upvotes or none. But my Apple comments get consistent downvotes. "How is CPU performance related to the cost if 8gb RAM?" "But the Mx performace you get is partially because of the wide memory bus of the unified memory. The downside is the cost" I did write this in the comment I think and the others - but I agree not as clearly in this one as in others. (My Apple/M[x]/M…

> "How is CPU performance related to the cost if 8gb RAM?" > "But the Mx performace you get is partially because of the wide memory bus of the unified memory. The downside is the cost" FWIW I still have no idea what you mean here.

FWIW I still don't understand what is not to understand here

Wider memory bus => Better CPU performance + higher cost

Higher cost b/c wider bus with system-in-a-package has higher cost than memory with smaller bus in standard DIMMs.

Better CPU performance b/c a wider bus gets data faster to the CPU.

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

#405

Post by dahart »

rewmie wrote: post #402
dahart wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your framing is not accurate. Apple is capitalist, using the free market, and profiteering, sure, but price gouging is “distinguished by being short-term and localized and by being restricted to essentials such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and equipment needed to preserve life and property.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

I think you tried rather desperate to handwave over the fact that Apple price-gouges their laptops. Their entry-level prices for anaemic 8GB laptops to the small fortunes they charge to update (doesn't even count as an upgrade) their RAM beyond 8GB is nothing but price gouging. You can't hide the fact that Apple charges more for 16GB of RAM than what it costs to buy a full blown PC with 16GB of RAM.

It seems like you must have misread or misunderstood what I said. I explicitly acknowledged multiple times that their RAM & storage prices are higher than market rates. You are still misusing the phrase ‘price gouging’ according to Wikipedia’s definition. There are other common phrases for charging higher than market rates, such as profiteering. That’s fine, you call it what you want, but FWIW the result is you are adding negative spin while accusing me of positive spin.

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

#406

Post by benterix »

stephenr wrote: post #154
benterix wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, you are completely right. In my experience though, the machines do get upgrades if someone insists, and the tech department prefers the easiest possible way.

I remember in a n org I worked a few years ago we got new laptops with SSDs instead of HDDs. Everybody was happy except the people who worked with a lot of data as the first SSDs were very small like 128 GB (still the amount of disk space you would get in an entry-level MBP 2019 I think). So we asked for an upgrade and they replaced our SSDs rather than replacing whole laptops. But I'm sure it's place-dependent.

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

#407

Post by xp84 »

chongli wrote: post #35
xp84 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> most regular people don’t need 16GB. They don’t have a million tabs and applications open all at once

First, I don't know a lot of regular people who DON'T have 20-30 tabs open minimum. And the #1 consumer of RAM for "regular people" is browser tabs. Just a "normal" page with tons of ads is eating a tremendous amout of RAM, and most people would like to keep dozens open. Not to mention running a half dozen Electron apps at once like Slack, Teams, etc. It's been a decade plus of ever-growing OS and software bloat and Apple's base model 8GB hasn't changed in all this time. So, if 8GB was just enough then, it can't possibly be enough for those same consumers now.

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

#408

Post by defrost »

xp84 wrote: post #407
chongli wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> most regular people don’t need 16GB. They don’t have a million tabs and applications open all at once First, I don't know a lot of regular people who DON'T have 20-30 tabs open minimum. And the #1 consumer of RAM for "regular people" is browser tabs. Just a "normal" page with tons of ads is eating a tremendous amout of RAM, and most people would like to keep dozens open. Not to mention running a half dozen Electron…

I have the usual variety of machines and I like to keep the old ones running for "regular people" in the family.

Yesterday an older machine with 4GB of actual memory and 12GB of paged memory on a fast drive running Windows 10 (I know, not an Apple story) died mid use and auto rebooted.

The cause?

Google Chrome, 14 tabs, 8 inactive, an app running extracting subtitles from a queue of MKV files, a terminal window and ... .. windows update triggered to sanity check for new updates in the background.

The (windows) update checks are getting pretty damn heavy these days, you can hear the drives thrashing in the background as every critical file is version and CRC checked and who knows what else these days.

The failure and rebooting was likely linked to my hard limit on paged memory - just this dedicated 12 GB partition and no more .. but the workload was light by any past standard and it's the first instance of the updater kicking in and exhausting resources.

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

#409

Post by xp84 »

defrost wrote: post #408
xp84 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most regular people don’t need 16GB. They don’t have a million tabs and applications open all at once First, I don't know a lot of regular people who DON'T have 20-30 tabs open minimum. And the #1 consumer of RAM for "regular people" is browser tabs. Just a "normal" page with tons of ads is eating a tremendous amout of RAM, and most people would like to keep dozens open. Not to mention running a half dozen Electron…

I have the usual variety of machines and I like to keep the old ones running for "regular people" in the family. Yesterday an older machine with 4GB of actual memory and 12GB of paged memory on a fast drive running Windows 10 (I know, not an Apple story) died mid use and auto rebooted. The cause? Google Chrome, 14 tabs, 8 inactive, an app running extracting subtitles from a queue of MKV files, a terminal window and .…

4GB with Windows seems to be bad to a degree I didn't previously realize. A friend had been assigned a Surface Go 3 from work, and it had a current or recent gen i5 or something, and 4GB of non-upgradeable RAM. My friend assumed she had malware, turns out the OS just consumed 2.5GB or so of RAM, and more than a couple of tabs or programs wouldn't just slow it down, it essentially locked up. It really only functioned after a reboot and before you tried to do anything. As much as I'd like to shame Apple for its 8GB junk, the Surface Go 3's 4GB RAM floor is an absolute travesty.
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