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Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive. And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest model
by fiblye 8y ago
Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive.
And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still 1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's models.
- ceejayoz 8y agoPlenty of folks use an iMac as the primary family machine - email, homework, some Netflix, kids' basic games. 8 GB is entirely sufficient for that. Hell, four probably is. If you're doing Photoshop plus a half dozen VMs, you buy it with more RAM.
- altcognito 8y agoGiven the improvement in technology, you would expect a decreased price in that case.
- ceejayoz 8y agoNot if the cost savings went into other stuff, like the 4k/5k displays.
- altcognito 8y agoOr the CPU. But we're talking an $1800 machine with a 5400rpm disc and 8gb of Ram. That's one hell of a screen and CPU.
- rootusrootus 8y agoIt's probably no longer true, but when the 5K iMac came out it was the cheapest way to get a 5K screen. You got the computer for free, essentially.
- raydev 8y agoI think the high quality 5k screen is still the bulk of the cost. There's nothing else like it on the market except for LG's, and that's ~$1300USD. The high DPI monitor market is practically dead (for now) so there's no pressure forcing prices down.
- thirdsun 8y agoIt's still pretty much true. 5K screens unfortuantely barely exist at this point.
- neuronic 8y agoFor the 5k model, an additional 8GB in DDR4 RAM for a total of 16GB model costs +$200 [1]. This is beyond unreasonable compared to market [2]. [1] https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MRR12LL/A&step=config https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MRR12LL/A&st... [2] https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
- ceejayoz 8y agoSure, but with a user-accessible RAM bay built into the back of the machine, I can't work up the energy to be too mad about that one.
- neuronic 8y agoI most definitely give you that point.
- abrugsch 8y agoIn 2019 how many apple products have user (or technician for that matter) upgrade-able anything? honest question. I'm not a Mac person and all I see is anecdotal reports of "soldered in RAM here" "fully bonded case there" etc.
- nudded 8y agoBoth new Mac mini and 27" iMac have upgradeable RAM.
- prewett 8y agoThe 27" iMac used to have upgradable RAM, but the text for the new version says "configurable to 64 GB", not "upgradable" like it used to. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, I'm considering getting an iMac.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoHas there ever been an investigation in how the average consumer app - email, browsers, word processing, etc - has changed over the years in terms of memory usage? I mean browsers are memory hungry (but that's because they use as much as is available, doesn't mean they reserve it from other applications), but a lot of modern-day apps are Electron ones, which easily cost a few hundred MB. Office has also moved from a set of native apps to heavier webapps. OTOH, Apple is still all about native apps, mostly their own software packages, as well as an app store that up until recently didn't allow anything but native apps (not even sure about that). They also introduced memory compression, and IIRC Safari does some smart stuff with memory as well.
- subpixel 8y agoYou'd think so, right? See my comment elsewhere on this thread - I had to re-sell an iMac b/c 8GB (combined with the latest OS) was a disaster for simple tasks.
- o10449366 8y agoChrome + Slack alone took up ~3 GB of RAM on my 4 GB machine and forced me to upgrade.
- m_eiman 8y agoSo what did you replace Chrome and Slack with…? </snark>
- pier25 8y agoI use Slack in the browser instead. No more Electron crap.
- ariabuckles 8y agoI turned slack into a chrome “shortcut” (which seems to be a PWA minus the service worker), which lets it run in chrome instead of a separate electron instance, but also have a separate app window. Ive also found having slack be ~another chrome tab, instead of a copy of chrome via electron, to be really nice
- patrickg_zill 8y agoOn an older iMac running 10.11, going from 4gb to 6gb was a big improvement.
- jimbokun 8y agoOr if you allow all family members to stay logged on with their apps running like we do, you can upgrade to 16GB or 32GB. :) I bought an iMac a couple years ago because at the time it was the only consumer level Mac being sold new where you could upgrade the RAM yourself.
- jxi 8y agoRAM is easy to upgrade on the iMacs. I just bought the 8gb model then bought sticks off Amazon to get to 24gb.
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoIt’s very likely that the high DRAM prices from 2017 to now have been due to market collusion, similar to what happened in 2010. Like your example shows, they’ve basically set the entire industry back years for a modest profit. It’s heinous.
- rudiv 8y agoThere were multiple lawsuits brought by regulatory and classes last year against the DRAM cartel. I think the current downward spiral in DRAM prices may be related to that, although supposedly that's the result of a production glut (I thought the point of a cartel was you wouldn't have production gluts )
- mixmastamyk 8y agoYes. However we forget that 8GB was an ungodly amount of memory in the late 90's; it required industrial gear like an SGI Origin to get that much. That a browser would fill it is another abomination.
- NicoJuicy 8y agoLate 90's is almost 20 years ago. OP mentions 10 years ago
- mixmastamyk 8y agoYes, and browsers worked fine back then. Their improvement has been quite inefficient memory-wise compared to native apps.
- gowld 8y agoIs $11/GB a high DRAM price? That's the cost of a standalone stick. Apple DRAM costs 2x, and any other PC vendor's DRAM costs 1.5x-2x but that's vendor lock-in, not collusion.
- hinkley 8y agoI used to get more life out of my MBP by spending about $400 on max memory and a faster hard drive. Even with inflation $350 for memory seems a bit high (assuming there comes a day when you can put 32G in one of these things :/ )
- jeffhuys 8y agoIt's the lowest option, you can upgrade to 32GB or 64GB on the 27-inch version. You can upgrade the drive to an 2TB SSD, or a 3TB fusion drive. If you only buy an iMac for the basic things like browsing, emailing and watching youtube, 8GB is more than enough, especially on macOS. I don't get the hate for having a lower-budget option.
- mgkimsal 8y agoi don't think the ram is as much of an issue as the drive speed these days. it's not "lower budget", it's just a "low budget" option, but it damages the brand experience to have such a poor performing option available (speaking of drive speed specifically).
- boterock 8y agoI find interesting that you say "especially on macOS", personally I feel that macOS has the highest memory requirements of the major OSs, but I haven't used macOS in a while, so that may have changed...
- PascLeRasc 8y agoThe day they take out the entry-level option people on here will be complaining about how they just want a decent desktop for their parents to browse on, or for them to upgrade themselves. I have 8gb and keep big music projects in Ableton open, a ton of Chrome tabs and several Electron apps open all the time, and I haven't had any issues yet.
- drewg123 8y agoWhat seems worse to me is that the default drive for the 21.5" is a 1TB 5400 spinning rust drive, not even a fusion drive. This is just shameful. People who don't know any better will get the cheapest drive, and have horrible performance. This is exactly what happened to an older friend of my wife. And since it is an iMac, it is next to impossible to replace the drive later (on some models, you need to unseal the LCD screen to open it).
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoThat's just a weird decision on Apple's part - don't they want the best perceived performance? I mean they could just put some soldered storage in there for the OS at the very least.
- 8draco8 8y agoNot even soldered, they could came up with some fancy marketing name for slowest SSD drive in their line up (lets call it eSSD) and just drop-in 2.5" SATA SSD for $20 (retail cost of 120GB SSD on Amazon) instead of spinning rust. No need of redesigning chassis, no need of changing any factory procedures, machines, robots etc. Just give a box of SSDs instead of HDDs to the person that is responsible for putting them in. Here, job done, and Apple could "brag" about having SSDs in entry level options. Standard SATA SSD would increase massively performance on those machines.
- LASR 8y agoYeah but to people who don't know any better, 1TB > 120GB.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoThe comment below you is dead and downvoted to hell, but it's correct even though I agree with you. I can't convince the IT person at my job that SSDs are faster than HDDs. He had never heard of them until we were looking at new PCs and he refused to approve any orders with SSDs since he thinks they're a scam. I even brought in my laptop with a PCIe SSD and he said he didn't notice a difference in boot time, and if there was one it was probably just a coincidence. He genuinely thinks that a terabyte of slow rust is better than a smaller amount of insanely fast storage. And that's even before he started ranting about how SSDs will all fail in a year anyway. I wish Apple would do what you said but there really are some lost souls out there.
- desireco42 8y agoTrue. The only thing to replace 7yr old iMac is iMac Pro. I splurged, got myself one and expect to get another 7 yrs from it.
- gowld 8y agoThat's strange. If you can keep an iMac Pro for 7 years, then you don't need the power of the iMac Pro, or your needs are extremely high now yet won't grow over time. Why not get a 27" iMac for half price, and another one in 4 years with whatever new thing is invented then?
- desireco42 8y agoHonestly I think you are overthinking this. At the time of purchase iMac had dinky video card and I wanted extra powerful processor and memory. This thing was perfect just pricy.
- imdsm 8y agoI bought an iMac Pro (base model) last year. I see it as investing up front in an already upgraded machine, that I can now use for the next 10 years.
- danieldk 8y agoBut Apple does not support macOS for most Macs that long. E.g. last year's Mojave does not support iMacs from before 2012. You may be lucky and they might support the iMac Pro a bit longer, but it is unlikely that you'll get an up-to-date secure OS for ten years. If they transition to ARM at some point, the lifetimes of Intel Macs may even be shorter.
- rconti 8y agoYeah, my "main" personal machine is a 2011 Air that no longer can run the latest OS. My 2006 Mac Pro got replaced on its 10th birthday with a new iMac as it was an OS or two behind. I'd say 8 years is sorta the outer limit.
- pfranz 8y agoI did a quick check on Macbook Pros: * 10.8 (2012) dropped support for original Core 2 Duo (2006) — 6 years * 10.12 (2016) dropped support for 2009 MacBook Pro — 7 years * 10.14 (2018) dropped support for 2011 MacBook Pro — 7 years The releases in between didn't drop support for any (mbp) hardware. The longest support I found with a spot-check was: * 10.12 (2016) dropped support for 2007 MacBook Pro — 9 years Apple tends to release updates for about 3 years for each OS. 10.11 (2015) got its last patch in 2018. 10.12 (2016) got an update in January and is expected to receive updates through September. I should have looked up desktops, since that's what most of the discussion is in this thread, but I don't have much firsthand experience with them. So assuming you buy the hardware the day its released, you can expect to have the newest software support for 6-9 years and have security updates for 9-12 years.
- lurcio 8y agoI'm happily using Mojave on two MBP's - 2009 (4Gb) and 2010 (8Gb) with SSD's. Freedom to upgrade internals and the smarts and generosity of dosdude1 (google that) turned them into the best tech purchases Ive made (after previous years of throwing money at premium end PC's that didn't last)
- thirdsun 8y ago8 GB of RAM are fine for basic tasks. However offering a spinning drive (and I include the Fusion drives in that category) is not. For any use case. The 5400 RPM HDD in the abse 21.5" iMac will be unbearably slow, pretty much unusable from the first day and people not interested in technology won't have any idea why their new, shiny iMac performs that slow. It's baffling to me that Apple seems to be fine with offering such abysmal performance. Reaching that price point certainly isn't worth compromising the user experience in such a significant way.