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Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

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Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#61

Post by replete »

silveira wrote: post #21
replete wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew I'd get downvoted, but there are known SSD / T2 chip issues with 2016+ macs. Still present in Mx mac laptops. 2012 Macbook Air was my favourite laptop ever. See Louis Rossman etc... if you get lucky you get lucky, but I don't like the odds, so Apple hardware for me is a subscription model...

+1 on 2012 Macbook Air. That thing was the best.

The 11" MBA was my favourite laptop ever. Powerful enough to do full development workloads, small enough to take anywhere.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#62

Post by replete »

usefulcat wrote: post #38
silveira wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on 2012 Macbook Air. That thing was the best.

I still have a 2012 Air. It's on its second battery, which is shot, but until recently everything else worked. Unfortunately the mic has mostly stopped working as of late. Still, we got a lot of use out of that thing, and my kids still use it--just can't use it for video conf any more.

Exactly, it's great to hand things down to family like that. And with the 2016+ laptops, with these known issues, its quite possible it just becomes ewaste with an expensive repair that you can't do yourself at home

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#63

Post by wmf »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #53

This is likely a function of yields of the process. The better the yields, less the need to bin chips by what works. Likely the M4 yields are quite good at this point. Just a WAG.

An 8 GB Mac is not a 16 GB with defective RAM; it literally only has 8 GB. The RAM is separate dies and Apple presumably buys known good DRAM so the yield isn't their problem.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#64

Post by VancouverMan »

Cockbrand wrote: post #52
danielktdoranie wrote: post #48

As an Apple fan, what Apple charges for RAM is insulting. Pre 2012 it was standard practice to buy your MacBook Pro with the minimum RAM, and you could upgrade the RAM yourself buying from Crucial and the like for WAY CHEAPER than what Apple sold the RAM for. To stop that Apple started soldering the RAM to the logic board. I’d have no problem buying RAM from Apple if they charged a fair market price. Sadly Apple seem…

> Sadly Apple seem hell bent on ripping us off. Did you mean "Fortunately, Apple are laser-focused on maximizing shareholder value"?

While some customers will end up paying a lot for more RAM, I have to wonder if Apple really has a good idea about how many potential sales they're losing at the same time, too.

They've lost several Mac purchases I would have otherwise made over the last decade, thanks solely to the unjustifiable cost of getting a reasonable amount of RAM for my needs.

Yet, as far as I know, Apple has no way of tracking those lost sales. They've never asked me, and I've never told them.

I know I'm not alone. I have a number of colleagues, friends, and family who've been ready to buy different types of Apple computers, but then opted not to once they see how much even a relatively small RAM upgrade will cost. Again, I doubt that Apple is aware of those lost sales.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#65

Post by wtallis »

wmf wrote: post #47
bitwize wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are saying it from the perspective of the RAM being on the same die as the CPU. This is one of the innovations of the Apple Silicon architecture as it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces memory access latency. It's not just TSMC's 3nm process. It's also Apple engineering.

No, it doesn't reduce latency.

Also, the RAM isn't on the same die as the CPU cores. TSMC doesn't even make DRAM.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#66

Post by dzonga »

danielktdoranie wrote: post #48

As an Apple fan, what Apple charges for RAM is insulting. Pre 2012 it was standard practice to buy your MacBook Pro with the minimum RAM, and you could upgrade the RAM yourself buying from Crucial and the like for WAY CHEAPER than what Apple sold the RAM for. To stop that Apple started soldering the RAM to the logic board. I’d have no problem buying RAM from Apple if they charged a fair market price. Sadly Apple seem…

in the days of the macs being on intel silicon yeah ram was crucial. with the 16gb most dev's those doing web api's and fronteds will find 16gb sufficient. at one point I had a 32gb m1 - 16". just too heavy yet performance was similar to my m2 air with 16gb ram. performance as in never felt the difference.

I

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#67

Post by amlib »

IshKebab wrote: post #15
ComputerGuru wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All modern operating systems compress inactive pages.

I don't think Linux does by default. You need to enable it, via some moderately complex commands line commands.

Fedora, Ubuntu and few other distros does this by default since years ago.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#68

Post by myrandomcomment »

wmf wrote: post #63
myrandomcomment wrote: post #53

This is likely a function of yields of the process. The better the yields, less the need to bin chips by what works. Likely the M4 yields are quite good at this point. Just a WAG.

An 8 GB Mac is not a 16 GB with defective RAM; it literally only has 8 GB. The RAM is separate dies and Apple presumably buys known good DRAM so the yield isn't their problem.

Both the memory controllers and RAM on the Mx are on die components. The number of controllers (binned) count here. I should have been more specific in what I was saying.

"The 14-core M3 Max only enables 24 out of the 32 controllers, therefore it has 300 GB/sec vs. the 400 GB/sec for all models of the M1 and M2 Max, while the 16-core M3 Max has the same 400 GB/sec as the prior M1 and M2 Max models."

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#69

Post by Eric_WVGG »

wmf wrote: post #46
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the performance is based around Apple silicon being optimized for the NeXT/ObjC model of retain/release, which they got down from 30 nanoseconds on Intel to 6.5ns on M1 (14ns on emulated Intel). https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-black-magic/#is-... IMO 8gb is still barely acceptable for most consumers in 2024, but not for any laptop that you'd expect to get more than say two years o…

That increases performance but it doesn't save any RAM.

I’m not exactly an expert on this, but I do know from experience that Objective-C programming (and anything coming out of an ARC compiler, like Swift) is a constant game of grabbing memory, using it, and releasing it. My impression is that if you can release memory faster, that means greater availability in the pool.

Guesses aside, I spent a lot of time in Xcode on an 8gb M1 while waiting for the M1 Pro to come out three years ago. It was great, much better performing than the 16gb Intel it was replacing. I still don’t think 8gb is really a big deal for most people, getting more is just important for speculative future needs.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#70

Post by wtallis »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #68
wmf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An 8 GB Mac is not a 16 GB with defective RAM; it literally only has 8 GB. The RAM is separate dies and Apple presumably buys known good DRAM so the yield isn't their problem.

Both the memory controllers and RAM on the Mx are on die components. The number of controllers (binned) count here. I should have been more specific in what I was saying. "The 14-core M3 Max only enables 24 out of the 32 controllers, therefore it has 300 GB/sec vs. the 400 GB/sec for all models of the M1 and M2 Max, while the 16-core M3 Max has the same 400 GB/sec as the prior M1 and M2 Max models."

The DRAM is not on die.
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