Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models
business-standard.com
business-standard.com
Did you mean "Fortunately, Apple are laser-focused on maximizing shareholder value"?
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.
I totally bought a MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon, fully knowing that I'm getting ripped off big time with added RAM and storage. Yet, it's still the least painful platform for me, and the hardware is really nice, even a few years on. In the end, I expect get a meaningful lifespan of 5+ years of daily use out of the machine. I wouldn't know any other laptop which could provide this kind of service life while constantly being a joy to work with.
Apple know that their user base consists of many people like myself, and milk them accordingly.
Every couple of years I take a good look at their machines and I always reach the same conclusion. Even though I could afford any specification of MBP, their upgrade pricing always feels like a rip-off and I don't enjoy feeling ripped off, so I buy something else.
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We were well into years of SSD's in laptops in the 2.5" sata format and Macbooks of the time (ie: 2012 models and even some after) were still chucking 5400 rpm spinning rust in there AND charging SSD prices for it.
It was bananas then, and they are just doing the same with a different component now.
Nearly all PC and laptops have 128 bit memory busses, which is a major bottleneck for iGPUs, as well as weird use cases like LLM.
However the M2 pro doubles the memory memory width. M3 Max doubles it again, twice as wide as an AMD threadripper.
Don't get me started on needing to buy a 1TB+ iPad Pro to get double the RAM, though.
Just like American subway, or airfare, or greyhound buses, or even healthcare: at a high, advertised price, it gives you a standard, but miserable, bare minimum, and unsustainable way of living, and pushing you to pay for a high premium to upgrade to make it bearable, at a price a lot of people can’t afford. It’s why Apple is an American company at heart.
Europe doesn’t do that.
yes, once you open a bunch more applications, you will have the same amount free as before… the scandal of it all!!!
this is like the tech equivalent of “once I spend all my money I barely have anything left”.
16GB of RAM Could Be the New Minimum in Apple's Upcoming M4 Macs
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/26/apple-new-macs-16gb-ram...
For maximum visual fidelity, it'd be ideal to scale to some power of 2. Apple's stock settings offer resolutions that ... don't always follow that rule.
But they absolutely aren’t on Pro models. That’s insane.
The ThinkPad X220 I had in university could be loaded with 16gb ddr3 ram... Who knows what apple will re-introduce in 2034 as an "incredible innovation in computing".
(First time I bought a PC with 16 GB RAM was 2011. It wasn't a ridiculous amount of RAM back then, just usefully more than necessary. 16 GB has probably been a sensible amount for 15 years now.)
(Whether I'd buy a computer today with 16 GB of soldered-in non-upgradeable RAM - that's another question. And my answer would be: I wouldn't. However that is not because it would be useless on day of purchase!)
I boot from the 256GB storage that is soldered on the MacBook Air M1’s logic board when I want to do anything else. I have about 174 GB free currently.
It's not just TSMC's 3nm process. It's also Apple engineering.
This engineering was common in x86 CPUs by 2013 when AMD introduced Heterogeneous System Architecture which utilized Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access. The approach has its upsides and downsides, the latter generally being a unified bus tends to have much lower overall bandwidth (even in the Max) and runtime scalability issues. Upsides are more obvious for the types of systems people want APUs for in the first place though so that's usually fine.
The main bit of engineering Apple should be lauded for in the memory department is the gumption to throw the hundreds of GB/s at the mid and high end models.
https://www.realworldtech.com/fusion-llano/3/
In contrast apple actually has everything tied into a single unified space with a single controller that immediately makes all writes visible regardless of where the happen.
They’ve also got enormously more memory bandwidth to play with. M1 Max is close to PS5 in both shader configuration and memory bandwidth.
"Sooo apparently there's this myth that only Apple has "unified memory"...?
Every single modern integrated graphics system works the same way. They even share the MM code in Linux.
I just had a reply guy try to argue otherwise with me even when I told him I wrote the driver"
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 of usefulness out of, so… yeah it's about time.
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.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, its not popular but an unfortunate reality. These issues are related to 2016-present Apple laptops. My 2012 MBA is running just fine, but I cannot trust these soldered systems.. there's other content around about the 13v being dumped into the SSDs when another component fails. There are engineering issues.
If you want to understand what I'm talking about:
Apple SSDs engineered in the worst way possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbrLiGY4Cg
Exploding USB-C MacBook Ports Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAGnMR1aVuE
Personally I’m still running an M1 MacBook Air which has been bulletproof for almost 4 years now. Before that I ran a 12” MacBook for 5 years. My last problem with a Mac laptop was in the 17” PowerBook days, circa 2010 (I suspect the case flexed and damaged the logic board)
I simply don't trust these latest machines to last without a particular issue happening. There's a fair amount online from the repair shops guys who are repeatedly encountering this issue. It seems like some kind of buck converter fails earlier than expected due to being run closer to its limits, and when it goes it dumps 13v into the SSD chips, destroying them, and bricking the machine, requiring SSD desoldering and component replacement, which isn't cheap or easy to fix. What % risk is unknown, but if the failure appears to be MTTF being reached early, then the longer I hold onto the machine the more likely I will encounter the issue and I don't fancy the risk...
My 2012 11" MBA is still absolutely fine, its the machines after 2016 to now that have the same issue.
Which hardware are you using that has more longevity than a typical Mac laptop?
I've become increasingly annoyed by the software deterioration, with my laptop losing gobs of power while "sleeping". The only thing stopping me from changing back to windows for my next laptop is (my perception of) the terrible hardware choices on that side.
My mental model for typical windows laptops is that they are worse brand-new (e.g. screen, trackpad, battery life) and have wildly worse longevity.
I have a 2012 i7 Thinkpad T530, that is still useful. My whole life desktop machines are usually useful for about a decade. Cheap laptops don't seem to last more than 4-5 years at most, but the top end laptops built really well can last a long time. It's nice to hand useful technology down to family members also.
Low power sleep states seem to have been broken for many years in most laptops. Apple machines do not have this issue it appears.
What do you think happens if your AMD cpu dies? That cpu has a pluton security module inside and if it dies, bye bye bitlocker keys.
you’re getting downvoted because you’re spreading decade-old FUD from the days before the tech community had wrapped their head around TPM. Any secure system is going to be equally dead if your TPM dies and this very much includes every windows laptop etc.
Apple SSDs engineered in the worst way possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbrLiGY4Cg
Exploding USB-C MacBook Ports Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAGnMR1aVuE
again, yes, I know rossman doesn't like apple laptops but this has nothing to do with the T2 chip being some hidden landmine or defect. People just aren't used to the idea of the TPM being a thing that controls their data integrity.
Im in the Central valley and have helped at least 5 friends replace or rebuild theirs. If you visit a transmission shop, this is the transmission that keeps them in business because it's one of the few cars where someone will still spend $3k to fix a 20 year old car.
"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."