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I am sure this is done mostly for business reasons. Apple wants to minimize the SKUs in order to reduce production costs and inventory. On the other hand, they

I am sure this is done mostly for business reasons. Apple wants to minimize the SKUs in order to reduce production costs and inventory. On the other hand, they want to have a good price range to capture price conscious consumers and extract premiums over power users and people that want to have the best stuff. So they have decided that if someone is willing to pay for more ram they should be willing to pay for more storage as well. Also, perhaps apps that use a lot of ram also use a lot of storage (the only ones I can think of are image/video editing software). You should look at the software that you want to run and see if any of it needs a lot of memory/storage. I doubt you will need 16 GB ram for general webbrowsing/messaging.

schappim 6y ago
> I am sure this is done mostly for business reasons. I don't think this is the reason because Apple historically didn't use the amount of RAM in iPads as a differentiator[1]. Also, this is not new (Apple was doing this all the way back in 2018). From memory this was to do w/ the 1TB SSDs needing more addressable RAM for the larger file system. Edit: Added evidence [1] as I'm getting downvoted for the view that "Apple historically didn't use the amount of RAM in iPads as a differentiator". As you'll see from the link, Apple has historically used screen size and storage to segment iPads. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181030153009/https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181030153009/https://www.apple...
- e-clinton 6y ago
  They may be changing tune since they’re continuing the trumpet the iPad as a desktop alternative. Now iPads have the M1 just like the Macs, so it’s an easier transition to talk about RAM
  - schappim 6y ago
    I must be on a different AB test, but Apple really isn't pushing the memory/RAM (even today) in their compare tool [1] or iPad product pages. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it is just a strategy Apple has taken. My guess is that the bulk of the target market doesn't know the difference between RAM and storage, and Apple marketing wants to keep things simple. My company sells Raspberry Pis in Australia, and I can attest that I also encounter folks confused by the difference between RAM and storage. I think it is fair to say you'd expect the Raspberry Pi target market to be more savvy. I can only imagine what Apple deals with! [1] https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/ https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/

schappim 6y ago

> I am sure this is done mostly for business reasons. I don't think this is the reason because Apple historically didn't use the amount of RAM in iPads as a differentiator[1]. Also, this is not new (Apple was doing this all the way back in 2018). From memory this was to do w/ the 1TB SSDs needing more addressable RAM for the larger file system. Edit: Added evidence [1] as I'm getting downvoted for the view that "Apple historically didn't use the amount of RAM in iPads as a differentiator". As you'll see from the link, Apple has historically used screen size and storage to segment iPads. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181030153009/https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181030153009/https://www.apple...

e-clinton 6y ago
They may be changing tune since they’re continuing the trumpet the iPad as a desktop alternative. Now iPads have the M1 just like the Macs, so it’s an easier transition to talk about RAM
- schappim 6y ago
  I must be on a different AB test, but Apple really isn't pushing the memory/RAM (even today) in their compare tool [1] or iPad product pages. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it is just a strategy Apple has taken. My guess is that the bulk of the target market doesn't know the difference between RAM and storage, and Apple marketing wants to keep things simple. My company sells Raspberry Pis in Australia, and I can attest that I also encounter folks confused by the difference between RAM and storage. I think it is fair to say you'd expect the Raspberry Pi target market to be more savvy. I can only imagine what Apple deals with! [1] https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/ https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/