The current default is 8GB and max is 16GB. It isn’t too high even now considering it’s 2023
8GB is fine at the moment on MacOS. The standard is still 8gb for most non-performance laptops and there are legions and legions of corporate HPs and Dells with 8GBs.
I occasionally run my tech stack on a 12' MacBook with an Intel m3 processor to make sure that I haven't gone overboard with tooling, mostly to ensure international, developing country open source contributors don't have to struggle opening local servers and such on their machines.
It's when you've got two or three needlessly-heavy web "dashboards" and Gmail and Slack and Jira and Notion all eating 500-1500 MB each that 8GB starts to feel cramped.
I’ll wait a release or two before upgrading. Apple haven’t lost an M2 sale because they’ve done anything wrong, they’ve guaranteed an M3 or M4 sale because they nailed it. It’ll take a while for that success to show up in their books though.
Also, how can you patch a zero day?
In addition, Apple obsoletes Xcode for new phones quite regularly. Once the M1 was out it and working fine it was clear that support for x86 would get killed post haste.
I imagine Apple will have to accelerate planned obsolescence (maybe dropping from 7 to 5 years of OS and security updates) to make analysts happy. ;-/
More seriously, I've gotten 7+ years of use out of multiple Apple devices. Though my 2014 iPad Air 2 is probably going to be retired from the internet once iPadOS 15 security updates end.
Also I expect a minor boost for Apple if Apple Silicon based Mac Pro machines (and perhaps pro iMac models?) turn out well.
These days laptop PCs are unreliable across most brands I have tried and supplied with crapware and the operating system is hostile and forces stuff like OneDrive on you and begs you not to install Chrome.
Last 2 years over 2 devices:
Broken screen (not due to external)
Touchscreen not working
Lid came apart
Audio stops working while windows uodates pending
Laptop stopped turning on
With the latest device I got all the extended warrantees and accidental damage coverage as the pot odds made it worth paying 33% of the device price over 3 years.
Desktops are a different breed. They last forever.
Unfortunately, today’s Windows OS is spyware, especially Windows 11, so the entire OS needs to be removed, if you want a good machine which fires not constantly send usage data to the Azure mothership, or some 3rd party.
It's still here, and still solid
Maybe they are as solid as they’ve always been, but the bar has been raised and Lenovo, Intel, or Microsoft haven’t responded yet.
There are a lot of smart people working on these problems and I’m hopeful that Intel will soon leapfrog Apple and fast, fanless Windows machines with 12+ hours of battery life will be available.
That said, I think the software stack these days has more to do with it than anything. As I mentioned in another comment its entirely possible to get the power consumption of AMD laptops into the 3-4W range with a modern linux kernel, light browsing, emacs, etc. And that is largely in my case due to assuring there aren't any background tasks consuming CPU time, and running powertop --autotune, assuring inactive HW is turned off when its not being used, cpus are spending most of their time in deep sleep, etc. All stuff that the mac is basically doing out of the box (or running background tasks on low power, etc cores). While I'm getting 15+ hours out of a fairly pedestrian 65Wh battery, which is pretty amazing since the screen and assorted devices (disk, ram, etc) are probably 1-2W of the total. Now all this goes to sh*t when I start running a compiler, or other CPU intensive work, but from my experience that happens on the M1 macs as well, which can get quite toasty and kill the battery life if left building software for an hour or more. Powertop, turbostat, cpupower are all useful diagnostic tools as well as disabling stuff in the BIOS, or powering stuff off (or at least into lower power modes) via the kernel/ACPI power methods.
(presumably some of the more efficient intel might be good too if one clamps the CPU freq/etc I've just not tried one, but i'm pretty happy with a couple of their older generation i3/i5 desktop machines).
Windows used to be reasonably good, but I get the feeling the new generation (modern standby anyone?) isn't as dedicated, and hence the machine isn't forced into a S3 like mode when the lid is closed. Combined with the apparently fragmented way the OS is built means the people in charge of power mgmt can't tell the people in charge of windows defender to get bent or any other part of the platform that excessively consumes power. So that said, the P1's support linux, which means there is an option for S3 in the BIOS, flip it on, and run the windows task schduler/runon/etc features and kill anything that can wake the laptop. That should keep it from running the fans in your bag. There used to be an option in the windows power control panel to select the action for lid close too, if its still there, then set it to sleep (S3) or hibernate (S4).
It still has some of the best build quality overall, among PC manufacturers.
That is true but Apple's OneDrive equivalent thing iCloud is the same way, they even show fake red notifications on program icons to make you sign into iCloud and use dark patterns to make you use iCloud. They don't push Safari as much but they've been stagnating it on purpose across all their products to protect their App Store revenue, which is quite the turn off.
Apple's hardware can also have problems as evidenced on here and forums but overall might be better than a cheaper laptop, just like PC laptops. Anyway my two biggest reasons for not going with a MacBook were that I think a touchscreen should be a mandatory as an option in 2023(at least for tapping on links etc. if not multitouch) and being able to play specific FPS titles in a pinch(like in a hotel while traveling) which are not available on the Mac. I was able to get an OLED HDR touchscreen running at 120hz which is gorgeous.
Seriously, they just work. An M1 or M2 Macbook Air is the ideal laptop and computer for the vast majority of people. Games? There are game consoles for games, which also Just Fucking Work(tm).
Most emulators work swimmingly.
Uhh, citation needed.
You think the webkit team is just sitting on their hands because of some upper management mandate?
edit: Don't just downvote me. Provide some evidence for this take.
80%+ of App Store revenue comes from games an in app purchases in games according to the Epic trial. Those wouldn’t be web apps anyway.
Also if it were just Safari and iOS that’s keeping web apps from becoming popular, then why are companies creating web apps, iOS apps and Android apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web app?
Finally, outside of games, most revenue that flows through apps are either based on advertising or payments for subscriptions outside of the App Store. Many streaming services for instance have stopped allowing in app purchases ages ago.
But their software are barely average and services (iCloud et al) downright pathetic. Definitely much worse than OneDrive which in itself it’s not great. I mean any data I have in iCloud I assume it’s gone — I don’t even consider it a safe copy of mu data. There’s barely any transparency around it (which is actually Apple’s DNA - lack of transparency in general).
If they don't think either service is great, they can just run a local media server or use dropbox. Apple doesn't force you to use iCloud, and I personally think it's less obtrusively advertised on the OS than OneDrive. Personally.
I say this as someone who has been using a Mac as their preferred system since the late nineties.
For example message sometimes just don’t sync on some devices. Sometimes a 300MB video file is taking just forever to sync with iCloud. Hours! When everything else is working smooth on a 800mbps connection. And you cannot do a thing about it. You write a note on one iPhone and then you don’t see on another for minutes, sometimes hours, or on another Mac. I mean the list is endless. As a matter of fact there’s no versioning either in any of its services that you could verify something.
So it’s not about losing data. It’s about not knowing! Not knowing whether you have lost data, or might lose, or anything about it!
What makes it worse is Apple making every other apps that you could use instead a third class citizen on their OS. So you have alternatives but you don’t.
I do use other file sharing tools that work just fine (1Pass, Google+, etc).
What is it about Apple that inspires such absurd hyperbole from the commentariat in general?
Depends on your location, bubble and what kind work you do. Where I live now in Europe, companies mostly provide PC laptops with with Windows (vast majority) or sometimes Ubuntu on the same machines, because the bean counters here are far too scroogy to justify to management switching the entire fleet to Macs. Also probably because it's what most IT guys here are used to managing so moving everything to Macs would mean costs the company is not willing to bear.
If by tech you only mean agile web and mobile dev shops, then yes, it tends to be a majority Mac scene, but tech is much more generic and encompasses more industries than just web-dev. If you go to traditional tech industries, banks or large enterprises, it will 98% sure be a Windows machine here with almost no choice in the matter.
Only the frontend, graphic design and mobile app guys in my current company get Macs, the backend guys Ubuntu, and all the rest Windows.
The primary reason I switched to selecting a Mac is that it is extremely quiet. The fans rarely turn on in the M1 MBP. There's no coil whine. Back while I was working in the open-plan office, I woudn't notice the noise from the machine next to me over the generally loud office environment with its air handling, people walking by, etc. But while working from home, the near constant fan noise from the Windows machine randomly spiking the CPU to 100% was maddening.
Next time I replace my personal laptop (XPS 13 9370), I'm strongly considering getting a Macbook Air. I really appreciate having a completely silent machine.
Apple is also struggling with supply chain, as M1 is still prominent. Another feature of this issue is that because of their parsimonious storage configuration and linkage of M2 chip and storage, upgrades are nuts - it costs as much as an iPhone to get a storage upgrade that is like $100 with commodity SSD storage.
Not anymore. They actually had to cut back M2 orders due to slow sales. Nvidia and AMD and others have also been cutting back orders for the same reason.
The consumer tech supply chain is no longer blocked like ti was during the pandemic.
I generally agree that Apple's SSD and RAM upgrades are too expensive. I'd like them to be cheaper.
However, I'd like to point out that Apple's SSDs have built-in protection against data-loss from power loss which is usually an enterprise SSD feature. Also, Apple uses LPDDR5 on their Macs which are quite a bit more expensive than DDR4/DDR5. In addition, there's some evidence that Apple's LPDDR5 is actually not off the shelf and is specialized specifically for Apple.[0]
That said, yea I think Apple is a bit stingy with SSD and RAM upgrades.
[0]https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/24gb-macbook-air-m2-ram...
Meanwhile, for actual real-world workloads, not spilling to swap (because you have enough memory) will result in real-world performance that is many times (even an order of magnitude) better. Even with Apples blazing fast SSDs.
Oh, and you can also spec a cheaper SSD because you don’t need one that can take a bajillion writes (because you aren’t treating your SSD as memory). AND the cheaper SSD will last longer too.
In short, Apple could spec cheaper components AND get better real world performance by simply shipping computers that have enough memory.
Edit: also 3% comes from shipping the absolute fasted DDR5 modules vs the second fasted DDR5.
M2 = 100GB/sec M2 pro = 200GB/sec M2 max = 400GB/sec M1 Extreme = 800GB/sec.
Most x86-64 laptops and desktops are in the 60-80GB/sec range. Some desktop or server only chip (threadripper, epyc, Xeons, a few intel workstation chips) have 150 or 300GB/sec.
400GB/sec vs 80GB/sec is quite a bit more than 3%, and is available in the mbp 14" or mbp 16".
Apple could ship cheaper memory modules with the same stupid-wide bus and achieve nearly the same performance for a fraction of the cost.
And that’s what I want. Give me 4x as much DDR4 on the same 1024 bit wide bus, and I’d be happy.
Sure it's easy to ask for 1024 bit wide memory bus, but it's not cheap. Done with the traditional x86-64 method you'll need two 280 watt CPUs (a few $k each), on a $1k motherboard, with 24 dimms, a 1kw power supply, ear plugs, and at least $10k. The minimum physical size is going to be substantial since you need two large CPU sockets (6096 pins each), 24 dimm sockets, and of course a substantial number of fans, dimms, and power supply. Even managing airflow over 800 watts or so of chips isn't going to be easy, cheap, or quiet.
Because of the above size, cost, noise, and heat it's targeted at enterprise and cloud folks with the related cost, service contract, and sales pipelines.
Or you could buy an Apple studio and hide it somewhere, you'll likely not be able to find it by listening for it.
It's a bit arguable. On Macos the well-known operation 'fsync' which exists for the sole purpose of committing files to durable storage doesn't protect files against data loss if there's power loss. You can ask for data to be committed more durably through a Macos-specific API, in which case those Apple SSDs are a lot slower than other good SSDs at doing this.
As most software uses 'fsync' to durably commit files, that stored data is not protected against power loss for some time. VMs either use the equivalent operation to implement filesystem barriers, or the very slow but more durable Macos-specific operation. Either way, these are not great SSDs for protection against data loss on power failure.
As measured by Asahi Linux folks:
"Apple's custom NVMes are amazingly fast – if you don't care about data integrity" (https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 / https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-flash-storage-in-ma... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551)
"Well, this is unfortunate. It turns out Apple's custom NVMe drives are amazingly fast - if you don't care about data integrity. If you do, they drop down to HDD performance. Thread."
"For a while, we've noticed that random write performance with fsync (data integrity) on Asahi Linux (and also on Linux on T2 Macs) was terrible. As in 46 IOPS terrible. That's slower than many modern HDDs. We thought we were missing something, since this didn't happen on macOS." [Except it does happen on Macos when the equivalant API is used.]
You answered your own question there. Apple doesn't used "commodity" SSD storage. Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade, not bottom-of-the-barrel commodity parts.
what a weaird thing to say...
So.. tell us.. where does apple get its SSD's if it is not "commodity"? Do they have their own SSD factory?
Then you write "Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade"... So like "commodity" right? Meaning others can buy "enterprise grade" SSD's and upgrade their non-apple laptops wtih them if they wanted to?
Up until the M1 transition, the macbook 15" (and then 16") were already the defacto machine for any dev in most companies. I had colleagues who had to justify they could use Dell's linux laptops.
As of now it's more of a split, with those who stay on mac, those who move to "gaming" laptops if they rely on x86 or need GPU power, linux laptops which are now fully mature, and those who moved to machines like Lenovo's yoga line or MS Surface. Basically Apple moving away from Intel, freezing the form factor while giving the middle finger to GPU intensive apps opened the door to many other options.
Building on this — A good number of people who planned to buy new Macs (myself included) held off on those purchases until the M1 came out.
Call it the "Osborne Bounce" — A bit of tech is announced too early, and the anticipation reduces normal sales volumes until it's available. At that time, there's a huge spike in sales, followed by numbers being depressed because everyone already has the shiny new thing.
Something like the Osborne Effect, except Apple has the cash and product diversity to not go out of business while everyone holds on to their wallets.
The current downtrend has definitely played a role. Not online have companies laid off tens of thousands of employees they have also cut down hiring. In all likelihood these companies have excess of IT hardware inventory.
There’s also longitivtiy, my Mac from Nov 2018 is still going strong and I don’t think I’ll need to upgrade for at least 2 more years.
And finally let’s not forget the price. As good as M2 is I need to spend a bomb to get an M2 that can handle my workload. So I keep putting off the purchase.
Also, when I go and finally buy one, I think I'll just won't need the maxed out version anymore, and will prioritise portability over power, so I'll pay less. Simply because of reports about how powerful M1/2 is.
It’s probably more economical to buy the air at a lower cost and replace it more frequently but I dislike the hassle of moving files (the cloud has simplified this a lot), but more recently I’m concerned about e-waste.
Part of me kind of wishes I didn't though, that was a lot of money I dropped there, especially with all the layoffs (my company had their first layoff a week after I made the purchase also).