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The 16GB RAM limit is unfortunate. Five years later and I still can't buy a new 13" laptop from Apple with more RAM than my 2015 MBP. Edit: Apparently you can
by dcchambers 6y ago
The 16GB RAM limit is unfortunate.
Five years later and I still can't buy a new 13" laptop from Apple with more RAM than my 2015 MBP.
Edit: Apparently you can configure a (Early 2020) Intel-based 13" MBP with 32GB of RAM - I was not aware of that. Hope they bring that option to the ARM versions ASAP, especially if the performance gains are as good as Apple claims.
- viscanti 6y agoDo most people with MacBook Airs have workloads that require more than 16GB or ram or do they generally value a lower price point? Cost, performance, light weight - pick two right? Apple seems to have picked a combination of lower cost and light weight. Customers who need more ram probably move up to a MBP.
- wtetzner 6y agoThe 13" MBP has the same limitation.
- viscanti 6y agoFor the lowest end models right? It's the same tradeoff to bring down prices for people buying the lowest end machines. Presumably they understand that people who need the higher end spec'd machines will wait to buy a new laptop until more software has been migrated to run natively. If you need a 13" MBP that supports more than 16gb of ram, they sell it. It seems unlikely they'll stick with a 16gb limit once they start replacing the higher end devices.
- wtetzner 6y ago> For the lowest end models right? For the current M1 models. You can still get 32GB of RAM on the Intel models. So they're "low end" only in the sense that you can't get more than 16GB of RAM on them.
- dbbk 6y agoThe MacBook Pro is also limited to 16GB.
- Aperocky 6y agoI honestly can't think of a situation where you need more than 16GB of ram on an ultrabook. If your job is heavy video editing - I don't think getting a laptop is a good idea. I know I use a lot of RAM for compiling and tests, but we have cloud instances with up to 500GB of RAM for that. Also with the new ARM instructions, I suspect more heavy task like these will be forced to move elsewhere. Businesses might not want to switch for a few years to wait for dev tools/ARM servers to be available.
- deergomoo 6y agoWhich is real weird considering the Intel 13” (which is still on sale) has a 32GB BTO option.
- tlapinsk 6y agofwiw, you can configure a 13" Macbook Pro with an Intel chip up to 32GB. But I agree, I wish they launched the new M1 based 13" Pros with up to 32GB RAM
- dcchambers 6y agoIt definitely would have been a way to differentiate the Pro and the Air rather than giving them identical SOCs.
- jmisavage 6y agoThe low end Air only has 7 GPU cores compared with 8 on the one with more storage. So they must be disabling a bad core and selling it the cheap model. Other than that all these machines use the exact same CPUs. Which means that an iMac or 16" MBP are probably going to use a M1X or something with more cores.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago> So they must be disabling a bad core and selling it the cheap model. I really don't know much (anything) about the hardware manufacturing world. Is this a common practice?
- User23 6y agoYes. Chip fabrication is super sensitive to the condition of the silicon wafer used. Chip companies talk about yields, because some percentage of chips can't, for example, be run at the highest clock rate. Indeed, some can't run reliably at all. If there is a microscopic flaw on the wafer that ends up being where one of the cores is located, disabling that core altogether is an option to keep that silicon marketable.
- zitterbewegung 6y agoCould be disabling but it could also be the fact to increase yields to their most appealing product.
- maxioatic 6y agoThis. I just want 32GB and a 13" screen!
- jacobolus 6y agoThat has been available for a while with the Intel chip version: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space-gray-2.0ghz-intel-core-i5-quad-core-processor-with-intel-iris-plus-graphics-512gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space... If you need 32 GB with the new ARM chips, you’ll probably have to wait a generation or two.
- maxioatic 6y agoI'm aware, thanks
- pierrefermat1 6y agoPlease do explain what your workflow is that requires to you have so much RAM in such a small form factor with a severely limiting CPU and almost non existent GPU?
- maxioatic 6y agoGPU: don't need it except to drive 1 or 2 external monitors if I'm at my desk (thus small screen not an issue either) CPU: 8 cores is fine for me RAM: mainly for a local dev environment running in Docker For reference I currently have a 2019 16" MBP, with 64GB of RAM and an 8 core i9. Right now I'm using ~45GB of it, usually its up around 50 or 55. The CPU is at ~10%. While I'm developing locally, the workloads are highly bursty but sometimes they will chew up almost all of the CPU for about 10 minutes. I used to have a 2016 15" MBP with 16GB (4 core i7) and while I could still run everything, the RAM was always pegged. Before that I had a 2016 13" MBP with 16GB (2 core i7) (I actually swapped with a coworker because I thought his 15" had 32GB). With both of these the RAM was by far the limiting factor, and while the increased CPU cores have been nice, most of the time I haven't noticed. The RAM increase on the other hand is always noticeable. Thus, 16GB is a nonstarter for me. Edit: To add, I prefer the 13" form factor when I'm not at my desk.
- geoffeg 6y agoI'm guessing that since the RAM is now on the SOC instead of on separate chips creating models with more RAM becomes more difficult not only from a space constraint on the die but a cost to manufacture more variants?
- qz2 6y agoI imagine they all are made with 16Gb on and the ones that are broken get sold as 8Gb. What worries me is my desktop has 64Gb of RAM which cost 1/3 of Apple’s usual upgrade mugging. I think I’ll walk away from this. Edit: just seen £200 to upgrade from a 8Gb unit to 16Gb. 8GB of RAM for £200 is “get fucked” territory. I paid £240 for the 64Gb in my desktop.
- jiofih 6y agoThe iPad Pro has a mere 4GB of RAM and is faster at almost every task AND multitasking than any of my other beefy machines. I wouldn’t discount this yet.
- qz2 6y agoI have an iPad Pro. It’s not. And it’s not very flexible.
- sitzkrieg 6y agowhat kind of tasks are those? my eyes rolled into outer space
- jiofih 6y agoVideo, photo & audio editing. Browsing a million tabs. Presentations, documents, videos. Switching between apps is always instant.
- jonplackett 6y agoI think it depends what they've done with Big Sur. Take a look at your activity monitor and see how many background tasks you laptop is running right now (I currently have 481 and I only have 4 apps actually running). Compare that to iPad which can run 2 apps max and apple controls all the background activity.
- intpx 6y agoNot all RAM is created equally. Better memory management means less RAM can be better than more RAM. Pair that with superfast flash storage for SWAP and you might not even be able to tell the difference between 16 and 32. Besides, this release cycle is 100% optimized for an impressive speed boost, tempered by a need for a more impressive battery life. The proof will be in the pudding.Time will tell.
- bpyne 6y agoI have the same reaction. I suspect a lot of RAM is wasted by os's and applications.
- Razengan 6y agoYeah, 16 GB is hardly enough if you want to run more than 2 Electron apps.
- dcchambers 6y agoYes that's true, for the "average consumer" that really only needs that RAM to power the 100+ browser tabs they have open. But if you're doing lots of virtualization or containerized work, super fast SWAP isn't going to cut it.
- ksk 6y agoI no longer code so I'm probably close to the 'average consumer' now. I personally consider 32GB to be the minimum amout of RAM that anyone should consider in 2020,2021 (with obvious caveats on money). My multi-GB workloads are read-heavy and include loading multi-GB games, editing hundreds of RAW images, opening 50+ tabs, etc, all without leaving the cosy confines of my RAM - which I still sometimes do. I have a 100GB system commit limit on my W10 box, and with my current usage pattern, I hit about 50GB @ peak.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> Better memory management means less RAM can be better than more RAM No, it can't. If more RAM means it's slower RAM then maybe it can be better to have less of it in some workloads. But otherwise it's never better to have less RAM than more RAM. Better memory management can make the impact of less RAM be less severe, but it's still unambiguously worse. Especially if you have workloads that actually need the RAM like large ML models or editing 8K videos.
- brigade 6y agoThe Intel 13" MBP with 2 TB3 ports also topped out at 16GB. They're actually still selling the Intel 13" MBP with 4 TB3 ports, which is the model that can be configured to 32GB.
- nottorp 6y agoIt's worse. The 13" intel MBP can go up to 32 Gb, but the intel Mac Mini can go up to 64! 16 is basically useless for dev purposes, unless you're only doing web stuff. And maybe not even then, containers/vms?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- magikMaker 6y agoI was literally about to order a new mac mini, until I noticed it only has 16GB max memory. How can they do this?! The previous model could be upgraded to 64GB, had 4 USB-C connectors (instead of now 2) and the option for faster ethernet. It really sounds like this new mac mini is a downgrade from the previous model. I wonder if the new M1 chip/architecture really makes that much difference to make up for the downgrade of the rest.
- ogre_codes 6y agoThis is almost certain to be temporary. Keep in mind the rollout of the new CPUs is a 2 year process.
- rbanffy 6y agoIf they started now. They've been working on this for some time.
- rsync 6y ago"The 16GB RAM limit is unfortunate." This is a charitable characterization. More correct would be to term this limit "absurd" or "clownish". Even if Apple views the use-cases of these machines as primarily consumption devices and the users of these machines not as creators but as consumers, the bloat of the modern web is expensive and getting more expensive every day. The end user needs this memory even if they really are just using these as facebook machines. EDIT: That's not just the notebooks - the mini appears to have this limitation as well (down from 64GB previously).
- lovelyviking 6y agoWho is downvoting your perfectly reasonable thoughts? How it's done and why?
- RonanTheGrey 6y agoMore and more I perceive Apple to be relieving themselves a #2 on their customers' heads while telling them that they should be thankful and enjoy it.
- Toutouxc 6y ago> The end user needs this memory even if they really are just using these as facebook machines. I webdev (RoR) for a living on a Dell machine with Linux and 8 gigs of RAM. It works beautifully. Sometimes I browse Facebook and it still works beautifully. My GF uses my old 2013 MBP with 4 gigs of RAM for college and it works just fine for her. She, too, sometimes browses Facebook.
- ssivark 6y agoCrazy to imagine this, but restricting developers to 16GB machines might be the most effective way to fight against (cough... electron driven) software bloat :-)
- auggierose 6y agoThink of it that way, you are getting a GPU with 16GB Ram. How much do those cost again?
- foobiekr 6y agoJust because the memory is unified does not mean the GPU can address all of it.
- auggierose 6y agoI think that is pretty much what unified means, unless you know that for some reason it can address only 8GB of it or something like that?
- stdbrouw 6y agoI used a MBP with 4 GB of RAM up until 2018 for rather heavy duty data science workloads. Wasn't ideal, but one thing I learned was that you really can't infer the amount of swapping and performance degradation that occurs just by looking at how much RAM is in use vs. how much you have, because the OS will eat up whatever it gets. The little memory pressure graph you can see in Activity Monitor is quite good, and on my current machine with an "unfortunate" 16 GB of RAM, memory's always full but I have no complaints about speed whatsoever.
- Shivetya 6y agoThis is 16GB which is shared with their GPU so it will be interesting to see what limit Apple puts on the GPU for grabbing memory. There are stories that Apple is working on a gGPU so that would free space up on a future Mx chip for additional processors or memory. However looking at the space occupied by DRAM and GPU it looks like a larger die is required for any on board memory expansion.