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Comment by AnonHP | Hacker News Reader

All the Macs looked quite impressive! It was well worth waiting for these (at least for me). But I was disappointed that the maximum RAM is 16GB. I would’ve preferred a 32GB option for better future proofing (especially with web applications needing more and more memory).

Edit: Considering the fact that the RAM won’t be upgradeable (it’s part of the SoC), this limitation is a big bummer. What may be worse is that all these machines will start with an 8GB RAM configuration option at the low end, which isn’t going to age well at all in 2020.

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It's wild to me. I still love my 1st gen MBP Retina and it has 16GB memory.

Same! Mid-2012 rMBP. Turns out I could upgrade the AirPort card with a used one from ebay for $20, as well as the SSD (although that was maxed out at 1TB with mSATA). Eight years later, it's still a good computer.

> Considering the fact that the RAM won’t be upgradeable (it’s part of the SoC)

While I agree that RAM won't be upgradeable (as it hasn't been in all new models the past few years), are you sure that the RAM is part of the SoC? I believe what they labelled with "DRAM" in the M1 schmatics is very likely the L3 cache instead.

Adding RAM to the SoC would make little sense from a cost and yield perspective. I also believe that 16GB of DDR4 memory are much larger than the "DRAM" part of the SoC.

It's on the SoC package not the die, just like in phones.

Thanks for pointing out. My bad.

Here is a picture of the SoC with the 16GB of DDR4 RAM: https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip__fffqz...

And here is the picture which confused by and tricked me into thinking the OP talked about the RAM integrated into the CPU (although upon closer inspection that picture also seems to cover the whole SoC package): https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_memory...

These are all targeted towards consumers. My last three personal Macs have had 8GB of ram and they were fine.

My work machines on the other hand were all specced with 32GB.

Especially since the Intel-powered 13" MacBook Pro was configurable up to 32GB.

Was that for just mb air or all of them? I missed that part.

13" Pro is also 16GB.

Yes:

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/

“Memory 8GB unified memory Configurable to: 16GB”

How much of this 8GB of basic configuration will be available for user's processes? Kernel+GPU will take quite a bit.

32GB is an option on the pro

No, it isn't.

No, it is not. And 16GB is $200 more.

Only the Intel Pro, not the M1 Pro.

All of them, including Mini.

I'll bet you'll get what you're looking for in the 15"/16" Macbook Pros when they come along.

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