They're more nasty. But I think it shows a wider push back against 8gb ram base models, too.
But still, there's a lot of insulting and vitriol on Macrumors. Not much "8GB is fine an here's a polite, thought out reason why..." and more "8GB is fine and you are an idiot jerk complainer (insert more unrelated personal attacks) for not even seeing that in the first place," and vice versa.
If there was no 8GB option, the price of the base model would be higher -- going by the comments, apparently $200 higher.
That would kind of screw over the people who don't open 20 Lightroom tabs or similar workloads, who might want that $200 for something else.
I guess people are imagining that if the 8GB option didn't exist then 16GB could be had for the same price, but that isn't rational. I think all Apple customers would quite like their prices to be lower, of course, but it's not like they are suddenly about to change from a publicly traded for-profit company to a charity organization.
That being said, this machine seems obviously intended to fill the gap the 13" MBP would inevitably leave. It just... doesn't feel like a compelling base-model. The M1 refresh of the Macbook Pro set a decently high watermark for the "Pro" experience, and this model feels like a compromise in many ways. It's $300 more expensive than the model it replaced, and while the chassis is certainly better, the internals on the base model are undeniably gimped. It's hard for me to understand why someone would get the 14" base model when the other M3 options are practically identical. I struggle to imagine a class of user that needs Pro Motion and active cooling, but not 16gb of memory.
It's subjective, but I much prefer the old pricing model. The 13" Pro felt more like a holdout from a bygone age, not a trend that needed to be revived. Now we're here, and everyone is kinda asking why this machine exists.
Chips get cheaper over time and there is a general expectation the base specs move forward without the price rising. The MacBook Pro has had 8 GB of RAM base since 2014, which is a century in chip time. 16 should have been the base several revisions ago and the long apple leaves it this way the worse it looks, since no one should be buying a “pro” device that needs upgrades to be competent.
So you now have the option of a $400 cheaper 8GB version or a $200 cheaper 16GB version.
Apple clearly generates more revenue than any company I’ve ever worked for, so I should probably shut my mouth, but their entire product naming and positioning of the last several years has seemed inconsistent and childish to me.