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Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
by greenpresident 6y ago
Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
- luis8 6y agoI agree, i was going to order one but 16GB is not enough for me. I guess i'll wait until 32 is available.
- whynotminot 6y agoSSD performance with their integrated IO controller might close the gap here, the same way that pretty fast storage on their iPhones makes the lack of RAM there not so debilitating. But yeah, agreed that not having a 32GB option is somewhat disappointing. (sent from my MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM)
- vmception 6y agommmmm yeah, I will let you all be the guinea pigs here and check back next month. I am very curious about the performance. If the macbook air is editing 6k videos and scrubbing smoothly, I am optimistic.
- whynotminot 6y agoHeh, I have no intention of being in the initial round of beta testing! I explicitly upgraded to an ice lake machine this summer in order to get the best Intel Mac while waiting for the dust to settle. But I do believe the dust will settle, and I'm optimistic about the future of Apple Silicon.
- mehrdada 6y agoWhile a valid workload for a segment, I would be a bit skeptical of generalizing the extraordinary video editing capability to general purpose computing, as those things are facilitated heavily by hardware decoders.
- whynotminot 6y agoAgreed, but they did mention what sounded like impressive code compilation times in the presentation too, which is pretty salient for most of us here. Of course, we'll need to wait for third party verification in the end.
- mehrdada 6y agoTotally--was not diminishing <strike>A14Z</strike>M1 at all--just to moderate expectations from the quite astonishing video editing capability to "measly" ~2x. Even two year old iPad Pro A12X kicks ass on Clang benchmarks (see Geekbench), although I am not sure how sustained the performance is in that thermal envelope.
- vmception 6y agoout of curiosity, were we saying thermal envelope before the Apple presentation today
- mortenjorck 6y agoThis is an interesting line of inquiry. In the gaming console world, a similar principle has been explicitly espoused by Sony in the decision to only go with 16GB of RAM (a smaller factor increase than any previous generation) for the Playstation 5, as the speed of its custom SSD architecture should in theory make that 16GB go a lot further than it would have with a more traditional design.
- wmf 6y agoAnd then PS5 load times are worse than Series X. Whoops.
- whynotminot 6y agoThat's for reasons that I would expect the technical readership of this site to understand. Please take this shallow retort back to Kotaku.
- lfuller 6y agoThat's when playing backwards-compatible games (PS4 games on PS5, and Xbox / 360 / One games on Xbox Series X) as Microsoft spent more time optimizing their console to play old games. PS5 loads next-gen titles significantly faster than the Xbox Series X due to the 2.5x faster SSD.
- ERD0L 6y ago"significantly faster than the Xbox Series X" You have every right to support your Sony stocks, but blatant lies though ?
- JAlexoid 6y agoPS5 shares memory with the GPU, doesn't it? Which is different to just using RAM to load games. I play modern games with RX 5700XT 8GB video card and 8GB RAM machine without issues.... So maybe there's not much need for more memory...
- Analemma_ 6y agoI’ll believe that when I see it. For like ten years now marketing gremlins have been breathlessly saying “these SSDs will be so fast they can replace RAM!” and it’s never even close.
- 00deadbeef 6y agoI don't want my SSD being killed by being used as a swap device, especially as it's not replaceable anymore. My 16GB MBP can write 200-300GB a day if I'm pushing it hard. It doesn't bother me too much because I can just replace it with a bog standard NVMe drive. But if I'm going to buy a new Mac, I want lots of RAM.
- bnt 6y agoAnd it costs an extra €224 to go from 8 to 16gb. This is ridiculously expensive.
- jeffbee 6y agoIt's not quite as insulting as their $800 2TB SSD.
- mlindner 6y agoI mean if it's SLC chip, that can explain the price.
- jeffbee 6y agoAlso if it comes with $600 in cash stuffed inside, that would explain the price. But it's neither of those things.
- wmf 6y agoIt's not, although it is ridiculously fast. But most people don't need ridiculous storage performance; they just need the space.
- smileybarry 6y agoIt's not, Apple most likely use TLC 3D NAND. There's no definitive source but the only remaining SLC drives being made are enterprise (and a few at that), and I think MLC is the same by now. (Even Samsung's Pro series moved to TLC)
- driverdan 6y agoThe fastest drive available today is the WD SN850: https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-us/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850-nvme-ssd#WDS200T1X0E-00AFY0 https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-us/products/internal-driv... The consumer price for 2TB is $450. $800 is absurd.
- olyjohn 6y ago
- aldanor 6y agoHoly cow, that's true. New 2020 Mini with a 16GB RAM, seriously?
- whynotminot 6y agoEspecially head scratching when you consider that a lot of folks still have 2012 Mac minis with 16GB of RAM. I think 16GB is the bare minimum for a professional machine. Apple clears the bar here, but doesn't exceed it. Maybe next year's machines? As a first product, I think it's good enough. And the performance gains elsewhere--if what Apple says is true--are actually pretty radically impressive.
- saagarjha 6y agoIt's possible to do development on 8 GB, you just can't use Electron apps.
- whynotminot 6y agoTo be fair, most of us doing dev on our machines probably have a Slack client or Mattermost app floating in the background. ...And we might even be doing dev in something like VS Code in the first place. We all like to dunk on Electron, but it's kind of become part of the furniture at this point, for better our worse.
- saagarjha 6y agoYou can avoid Electron if you try hard enough. I use Slack through a native client, for example; before that I was using browser tabs.
- whynotminot 6y agoI'm not stupid dude, I know there are ways to avoid it. Sometimes they're not worth it. Electron's existence itself is proof of "sometimes it's not worth it."
- modeless 6y agoWow, that's actually a pretty big limitation. I guess it's tough to do 64 GB with their on-package unified memory. I wonder if they're working on a version with discrete memory and GPU for the high end? They'll need it if they ever want to get Intel out of the Mac Pro.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoI suspect/hope they are for the 16” MacBook Pro, which is still Intel-based.
- vmception 6y agoLet's think about that a little bit. If the RAM is fast and the SSD is fast and the virtualization options are limited, then this is good enough? Or, inspire me. Which processes really require occupying and allocating bigger blocks of RAM? I personally don't want to purchase another machine with 16gb RAM but that's mainly because I want the option of having a powerful Windows guest or two running at the same time. But if you take out that possibility, for now, what if the paradigm has changed just a tad.
- Skunkleton 6y agoI have a project that won’t compile on systems with less than 32 GiB of RAM, and I refuse to refactor the hideously overgrown C++ template magic that landed me here.
- BossingAround 6y agoI suspect "Apple silicon" will not really be very suitable for software engineering.
- akmittal 6y agoFor now, most developers use MacBooks and tools like vscode already have apple silicon build.
- pat2man 6y agoThe 13" MacBook Pro has an option to upgrade to 32.
- mediaman 6y agoI just checked the store configurator and there is no option to upgrade the Pro with M1 to 32, which is consistent with the presentation.
- vmception 6y agoI don't see that. You might have looked at the 16" one, which did not get updated today.
- hrktb 6y agoThe 2 lower machines on the selection page are intel ones, and are the only ones with 32Gb option
- greenpresident 6y agoThe M1 MacBook Pro starts with 8GB and has an option for 16GB. I was talking about the Mac mini which in the Intel version has an option for 64GB (at +$1000 it's not exactly cheap).
- rickyc091 6y agoIntel's MacBook Pro 13" is still available for purchase with 32GB upgrade. The M1 is capped at 16GB. edit: spelling
- capableweb 6y agoReally, 16GB max? I find it very strange how Apple went from targeting professionals, seeing the strategy work from the ground up for many years, but now somehow want to pivot to hobbyists/others instead of professionals. Could someone try to help me figure out the reasoning behind Apple changing the target customer?
- itake 6y agoThis is their 13" model. Their 15" model is targeted for professionals.
- est31 6y agoBoth have a 16 GB limitation.
- TimothyBJacobs 6y agoThey haven't announced a 15/16inch Apple Silicon Mac yet.
- est31 6y agoOh indeed. Disregard my comment then, I've mixed something up.
- symfoniq 6y agoThere isn't a 16" MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon yet.
- jaykru 6y agoThat's not true. The 16-inch model remains Intel and supports up to 64GB of memory.
- greenpresident 6y agoThere is no 15" model anymore and the 16" model has not been announced with an M1 yet.
- Ducki 6y agoAlso no more 10G ethernet.
- aldanor 6y agoAnd no way to buy a previous Mini with 10Gbe/64GB now either?... (from Apple)
- rthille 6y agoGetting one via their refurbished store is an option, if you're lucky and they have what you want: https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/mac-mini https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/mac-mini
- ejdyksen 6y agoAt least in the US Store, the Intel Mac Mini is still for sale: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/3.0ghz-intel-core-i5-6-core-processor-with-intel-uhd-graphics-630-512gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/3.0ghz-intel-cor...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- my123 6y agoThat's it for the M1 crop of machines, higher-powered ones will go higher...
- jonplackett 6y agoAnd it's unified memory too, shared with the graphics.
- ameen 6y agoWhich makes it worse, Intel Macs look appealing than these.
- jonplackett 6y agoDepends what you need it for I guess, and how much differently ARM uses RAM than Intel. Anyone know? Also how much OS X optimisation can help with that. The iPad Pro is a lot faster than most laptops with, what, 6gb memory? And iPhones always seem to have a lot less RAM than Samsung phones but still run faster.
- Tepix 6y agoIt could even be advantageous
- 00deadbeef 6y agoThe Intel GPUs shared RAM too
- carabiner 6y agoiPhone has typically had lower specs while outperforming its competitors in benchmarks. I think the integration goes a long way toward efficiency.
- onepointsixC 6y agoBut Mac OS X isn't iOS. The relative memory usage should be the same between an intel Mac and an ARM Mac. Which means for power users this is extremely disappointing.
- olyjohn 6y ago> But Mac OS X isn't iOS. Not yet. MacOS has been moving towards becoming iOS for a long time now. Now with iPad and iPhone apps running natively on them, they only need to lock a few more things down until it becomes an iPad with a windowed interface.
- egsmi 6y agoThat's not obvious at all. The memory hierarchy is very different in an Apple SOC compared to a typical PC architecture. For example, I don't think there is the equivalent of a system level cache in a PC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro...
- mixmastamyk 6y agoPower-users generally won't be purchasing the lowest/mobilest end for work purposes.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoSome of us are power users don't have a choice in what computer our work provides us with and many companies just buy the absolute base level MBPs, "cos it's Pro right, says it right there on the box so its good enough"
- 91edec 6y agoI bought a Mac mini 2 weeks ago and I was sweating when they announced the new Mac mini, not anymore now that its only max 16GB. Apple has effectively killed expandable storage and memory in all of their line up. No doubt in the future they will offer larger memory options when they release the 16" Macbook pro. Need 32GB a year later down the road for your mini? Just buy a new one!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pinewurst 6y agoThe current Intel Macbook Pros aren’t expandable either, though. 16GB is a disappointment for me too.
- sixstringtheory 6y agoI'm with you on the sweat factor as I just bought a new iMac 5K, but FYI it has a purpose-built expansion slot for RAM that surprised and pleased me. I bought it with the least RAM possible from Apple and maxed it out via an upgrade I bought from Newegg for like 40% of the price.
- amatecha 6y agoYeah this is surprising considering how much they talk about how great the processor is for ML, too...
- bredren 6y agoFor reference, I have a maxed 2018 mini I've upgraded twice -> 32GB then to 64GB. Amazon price for 2x32gb modules is lower than it ever has been as of today ($218.58) [1] and I have had no problem making full use of that memory in MacOS. [2] [1] https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07ZLCC6J8 https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07ZLCC6J8 [2] https://i.imgur.com/BDWrGw3.png https://i.imgur.com/BDWrGw3.png
- bredren 6y agoA bit more: I also run the blackmagic rx580 egpu to the XDR pro display. The system outperforms the current entry Mac Pro in geekbench 5. So I def have eyes on the new mini. My suspicion is the rx580 will still provide 2x or more graphical power than any of these machines.
- Shivetya 6y agowhat is interesting to me is they all use the same chip but don't reveal their operating frequency. I am hoping I am just overlooking this. I expect the Pro to run faster as it has a fan to support it but how much faster than the Air would it be?
- jrsj 6y agoI'm expecting 16" MBP and iMac to support more along with an M1X chip or something along those lines.
- kushan2020 6y agoProbably M1Z, like the iPad Pro.
- akmarinov 6y agoIt'll most likely ship some time in July, so could be an M2
- lowbloodsugar 6y agoRight? "Oh we can't give you a 64GB MBP because Intel can't use low power dram yet". Launches Apple Silicon with 16Gb.
- saagarjha 6y ago> Launches They purposefully launched with consumer-level hardware. There is no way that the "real" pro machines will not let you ratchet all those specs up.
- ogre_codes 6y agoDid you expect they would launch every single configuration on day 1? Apple said the transition is going to take 2 years. This is day 1. You can still buy Intel based Macs with 64GB RAM. When Apple phases those out and you still can't buy 64GB Macs, then you can complain. What are the chances that happens?
- 00deadbeef 6y agoIt just seems silly though. If you want a Mac Mini with 64GB of RAM you're forced to take the slower CPU and GPU. If you want a 13" MBP with 32GB RAM it will cost you $500 more and also get you a slower CPU and GPU.
- ogre_codes 6y agoIt doesn't make sense because we're only seeing a part of the picture right now. Once they release the rest of the product line on their own architecture, it will come together. (Well mostly, Apple has been known to leave big holes in their offerings)
- lowbloodsugar 6y agoI confess, that now I've looked at all the details, I can't argue that they've done the right thing. It seemed to me that it was daft to launch an MBP13 with less RAM than the intel, but in fact the M1 is so far ahead in every other respect that it would be foolish not to give people that option. I might have to get an Air for myself, just to have an ARM based computer again, like it's 1988.
- ogre_codes 6y agoThis is the first CPU/ SoC and the first SKUs. It's likely (almost certain) 32GB options for the 13" MBP will come out when the 16" MacBook is launched. I'm not so sure about the Mac mini, but considering they are just dropping the same chip on all three devices, I suspect the mini will have a higher end option as well.
- gmm1990 6y agoI know use cases are different but I can't imagine 95% of people needing more than 16GB of RAM especially with mac os "unified memory". I have intellij, pycharm, firefox, slack and a mongodb instance running on my windows laptop and its only using 10GB. Who knows how much of that 10GB could be reduced.
- alisonkisk 6y ago"unified" memory is bad not good. It's agree with GPU.
- quotemstr 6y agoAnd macOS doesn't support Linux-style compressed RAM either, at least as far as I know. [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/blockdev/...
- cromka 6y agoOne search away and you can prove yourself wrong. In fact they have had it since 10.9.
- quotemstr 6y agoCool. I stopped using it in 10.6. Glad macOS has caught up.
- musicale 6y agoCaught up with the 1990s when RAM and disk compression were popular on Macs and PCs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics Interestingly enough Stac was apparently co-founded by Nvidia/Stanford's Bill Dally. The story of them being "sherlocked" by MS-DOS 6.0 and successfully suing Microsoft is interesting as well.
- quotemstr 6y agoThat was before the current NS-based OS and so doesn't count
- markdog12 6y agoIt does compress RAM, although I’m not sure if you mean something different here. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/
- mixmastamyk 6y ago16GB is fine for mobile and low end. I'm a developer and struggle to fill that amount of memory, even with VMs running. I guess they made a cost trade-off for these machines, which will not be carried forward to the high-end. Perhaps a new "M2" chipset, with discreet RAM and graphics. Next year? It would be amazing if they could bring ECC for a decent price as well, time will tell.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoI'm a rails dev and I constantly struggle with 16GB. Once you start up rails, background workers, webpack, vs code, MS teams, a database, plus your web browser you very quickly run out of memory.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoWasting that much is a choice. I develop Django and unfortunately have to run a 4GB Windows 10 vm in the background for work, still have plenty of ram and don’t even have swap enabled.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoIts not a choice because not a single item on that list can be closed and let me do my job. So rather than petitioning to replace 10 years of existing software development, I'll ask for a 32gb laptop.
- 00deadbeef 6y agoDoing mobile dev on my 16GB MBP causes it to constantly swap, and on my 32GB desktop I often get very close to using all 32GB. I wouldn't buy a new dev machine with less than 64GB.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoI do Android stuff occasionally and never got close to that. I suspect you’ve made some choices to use that much, and it’s your prerogative. Hardly necessary however.
- francoisLabonte 6y agoMy guess is that they are using up to 2 HBM2 memory stacks (from the picture). Each is limited to 8GB . If they were to go to HBM2e in M2 they could get up to 2x24GB. The biggest advantage of HBM is lower power per bit as the signals are all on the package running at a lower frequency. The memory market is getting fragmented with Nvidia having seemed to moved from HBM2 to GDDR6X (Micron being only supplier). LPDDR super low power (cell phones) and DDR4/5 for rest of market...
- sroussey 6y agoAre they using HBM2 memory? I keep waiting for AMD to do that in a cpu package.
- francoisLabonte 6y agoAfter more consideration it is much more likely to be LPDDR4X just like the recently released A14 chip. It would seem unlikely that they would have developed a brand new memory interface.
- smitty1110 6y agoThe choice to do on-package RAM makes it hard. They limited themselves to just two dies here, so maybe a real "pro-focused" machine can have 32 GB later. I guess those of us that need the extra ram will have to wait for Apple to release the M2 with DDR5 support and then re-evaluate our options. But for now these are a hard no for me.
- ricardobeat 6y agoNot all RAM is used the same, and the SSD is on par with RAM speeds from a decade ago. Probably won't need it. An iPad Pro does magic with only 4GB.
- simonh 6y agoThe mini still does support 64GB of RAM. They’re still selling the intel mini which supports up to 64GB, so that option has not been taken off the table if you need the RAM. This is just an additional option with a different trade off. Faster RAM but less of it.