Maybe this RAMmageddon will trigger a wave of optimized softwares that don't need GBs of memory for anything and everything.
A) Programmers will get their shit together and start shipping lean software.
OR
B) New laptops will become neutered thin clients, and all the heavy lifting will be done by cloud service providers.
Which one seems more likely?
2. People will buy laptop with low RAM because that's only what they can afford (hopefully upgradable).
3. They'll crib Chrome being slow, and will be suggested to use lightweight apps.
Garbage collectors also use similar strategies. Collecting garbage is expensive, so just don't until you need to. The extra memory usage in this case isn't a downside, it's an upside. Your code runs faster.
That's how Java and dotnet are able to achieve insane performance times in some benchmarks, like within 50% of native. They're not collecting garbage, and their allocators are actually faster than malloc.
If you've ever run a Java program at consistent 90% heap usage, you'll notice it absolutely grinds to a halt. I'm talking orders of magnitude slower. Naturally, this isnt highlighted in benchmarks, but it illustrates the power of allocating more memory.
Apple could lead here. They sell feels not specs so they could down OS and Browser RAM requirements and sell lower RAM entry models.
Of course seems like local AI is more or less a flop in the consumer market at least?
But still IMHO even for general use macos with 8GB is almost unusable unless you use it like an Ipad.