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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

#331

Post by Joeri »

elevation wrote: post #240
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…

> The company is the problem here The author feigns indignance at Apple's margins, as if the only possible purpose for that markup is to line the pockets of Apple execs. But this isn't pure profit for Apple. Apple develops feature and security updates which they make available for free (at the point of use) for years to their hardware customers. The significant hardware markup is what enables this! Contrast this to c…

You mean do the right thing by shareholders. Apple spends on the order of a 100 billion a year lining shareholder pockets through buybacks and dividends. That is three times what they spend on r&d.

This company is making obscene amounts of profit only to hand most of it over to people whose contribution to apple’s success is zero, instead of spending it on improving the products or customers actually responsible for that success. If this isn’t a condemnation of what’s wrong with capitalism, I don’t know what is. Tim Cook may have no other choice, but it is despicable that he doesn’t.

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

#332

Post by YetAnotherNick »

bluesign wrote: post #285
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 was not that big of a leap for trillion dollar company. If you looked in A12 bionic or other processor from Apple before M1, M1 wasn't that different in IPC/core or any metric. Also Apple was 2 generation in semiconductor process ahead due to TSMC contracts. If you look closely, yes apple is bit better in manufacturing, bit better in materials etc. and I have many apple products, but its products isn't that differ…

This discussion is a bit like the dropbox/rsync comment, M1 was a huge leap for the users, I am yet to see anyone upgrading to M1 and not amazed around me. It was a technological huge leap or not is not the important part here in my opinion.

Dropbox/rsync thread is so hyped here and most people haven't read it[1]. Firstly most comments were positive. Also the top comment poster who was negative first became positive later after explaination. Top commenter said "You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece of functionality for Windows users". Second commenter said "This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it".

Also you missed the point of thread. I said I like Apple products. It's just that the stage they are in, they aren't trying to solve really tough problems which very likely will just loose money like say google does with quantum computing or AI.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

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

#333

Post by beAbU »

mnky9800n wrote: post #318
beAbU wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time in the late 90s and early aughts when by the time you've unboxed your new computer it's already out of date. I'm sure it was even more so in the 80's into the 90's, but that's a little before my time. We have not really had a quantum leap in the last 20 years. Even longer. Apple's M-series chips are the closest we've gotten in recent times I think.

My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks But it was obsolete before I opened the box You say you've had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos?si=kbkY4H6nepvB7I0o

I don't even need to click the link. Weird Al' is speaking the truth here!

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

#334

Post by rs999gti »

a123b456c wrote: post #268
NewJazz wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Comparing Apple to Lamborghini is laughable. Apple is Audi at best. More like Volkswagen or Honda to me.

Audis are still luxury vehicles.

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

#335

Post by stevage »

al_borland wrote: post #86
hurryer wrote: post #31

Luxury status items are not priced on BOM. That's the whole point, showing that you don't care paying way beyond actual costs. It would be a strategic signaling mistake for Apple to sell RAM upgrades at actual cost, it would decrease their luxury brand value. If you don't mind signaling poor and want to pay just actual costs buy a PC.

This would only make sense if there was some way for people to show off their extra RAM. A MacBook Pro with 8GB or RAM, or 24GB for $400 more, look exactly the same, and no one cares how much RAM someone else has. It's not a flex.

Whoa, I didn't know there was such a thing as a 15" MacBook Air with 24 GB.

That may very well be my next computer. My old MBP died, and the cost of a new MBP is extortionate.

Thank you!

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

#336

Post by alluro2 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #306
satvikpendem wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your current computer? I still have my M1 Pro and it does everything I need it to right now.

Currently have a desktop as my primary device with an AMD Ryzen 5600x. Never felt that I was pushing that system. Had a Macbook Air 2019 that was starting to feel sluggish. Desktop was fine since I was working from home the last 2 years. But I’ve finally got an office and also need to travel so need something more portable Will be switching over from Ubuntu to Mac as well

Just one more subjective datapoint from someone who previously upgraded every 1-2 generations on Intel or AMD mobile platforms and really likes to have the shiny new stuff ("It's TWENTY % faster!"): I have absolutely no need nor desire to upgrade my M1 Pro (using it for web development). If the difference in performance could be felt at all, it definitely wouldn't be worth the price, and other upgrades are basically non-existent. I wholeheartedly recommend finding a well-kept M1 Pro or at least a discounted M2 Pro.

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

#337

Post by devilbunny »

webmobdev wrote: post #316
dahart wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck! People have been trying to shame Apple for their premium pricing since the day they started selling computers, and it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. I think the issue is that a lot of tech people don’t fully understand what Apple is selling, what value is there, and why it appeals to so many consumers, despite whatever reasons we think we have. Nobody needs to prove you wrong, b…

> ... it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. Look up their Mac sales figure - it's down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs. The Gaslighting is also high with Apple claiming that their "8GB equals 16GB" because they are Apple: > Comparing our memory to other system's memory ac…

> And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs

I guess this is a factor, but the main reason I haven't bought a new Mac is that they quit making the 27" iMac. Turning that beautiful screen into a paperweight or strictly-retro computer, only to turn around and buy a Mini and Studio Display, seems silly. OpenCore Legacy Patcher has kept me up-to-date so far, but there's an end on it. It doesn't help that my office is part of the "fancy" part of the house and so having exactly one cable (power) running into the computer is a nontrivial aesthetic benefit. It really does look sleeker, because it is.

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

#338

Post by rewmie »

dahart wrote: post #245
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…

Good luck! People have been trying to shame Apple for their premium pricing since the day they started selling computers, and it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. I think the issue is that a lot of tech people don’t fully understand what Apple is selling, what value is there, and why it appeals to so many consumers, despite whatever reasons we think we have. Nobody needs to prove you wrong, b…

> (...) for their premium pricing (...)

That's a creative euphemism for price gouging.

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

#339

Post by rewmie »

webmobdev wrote: post #316
dahart wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck! People have been trying to shame Apple for their premium pricing since the day they started selling computers, and it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. I think the issue is that a lot of tech people don’t fully understand what Apple is selling, what value is there, and why it appeals to so many consumers, despite whatever reasons we think we have. Nobody needs to prove you wrong, b…

> ... it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales. Look up their Mac sales figure - it's down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs. The Gaslighting is also high with Apple claiming that their "8GB equals 16GB" because they are Apple: > Comparing our memory to other system's memory ac…

> (...) and we have a unified memory architecture.

If Apple laptops have to use their system memory for their graphics stuff, doesn't this mean that their 8GB of RAM leaves even less memory available for applications? I mean, even the cheapest graphics cards out there ship with a few GB of dedicated memory.

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

#340

Post by solarkraft »

vikramkr wrote: post #291
solarkraft wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Swap memory use is worse than actual memory use. If it just reserving a big block and not using it then fine whatever but if it's using a lot of swap that means ram is probably bottlenecking you since swap is slow.

It's of course slower than real RAM, but Apple are using pretty fast SSDs and possibly a novel model of swapping, making it effectively pretty good (certainly not perfect!).
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