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Enough to use iMessage, Mail, FaceTime etc. What else do you need in a so affordably priced $1600 Mac? Do you want Apple to go bankrupt? Or you’d want people to

Enough to use iMessage, Mail, FaceTime etc. What else do you need in a so affordably priced $1600 Mac? Do you want Apple to go bankrupt? Or you’d want people to not be able to buy an “8GB base MacBook Pro”[1]. Oh, that would be unreasonable. [1] Yes, I swear it was a comment on another post from yesterday. HN is either that disconnected or desensitised when it comes to this company. As for why they do/did it? Because they can. There’s really no other reasoning here. Yes, the first part of my comment is rather snarky/sarcastic and maybe in poor taste but this is just pathetic and tomorrow I’d love to see the comments explaining how it makes sense and that maybe it is actually a price drop. And this post is from 2.5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27096022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27096022 (about 8GB RAM, yes)

foldr 3y ago
Most of the empirical comparisons I've seen of the 8GB vs. 16GB models show that you have to push the 8GB models pretty hard before they're noticeably slower. Most of the complaints seem to come from people who are obsessively checking memory usage and have a rather over-simplistic mental model of how RAM is allocated in a modern operating system. (For example, many apps, such as browsers, will happily use more RAM if you give them more RAM.)
- melling 3y ago
  Strange. I’ve got a 10 year old Intel MBP with 16GB of RAM. Even 10 years ago I didn’t think 8GB was enough. You don’t buy a Pro model and let it swap with only 8GB
  - foldr 3y ago
    Yeah, I think a lot of people are assuming that 8GB will work as poorly on an Mx system as it would on an older Intel Mac. But it's widely reported that this is not the case. (The faster SSDs help, and I suspect that memory compression may work more effectively too.) See various anecdotal reports such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913643, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103103 in this very thread.
    - melling 3y ago
      I buy the extra memory with the hope that it extends the lifetime of my computer. I can still use my MBP 10 years later. I bought a 15” Air two weeks ago with 16GB and I expect I’ll still be able to use it a decade from now. Have barely used the Air because my software is set up on my Intel. Will transition soon and will be able to compare performance.
    - kup0 3y ago
      Why would you want RAM to swap to fast SSDs when you can avoid it with more RAM in the first place, though? Sure it's not a molasses-slow spinning HDD..... but SSDs are still far slower than RAM, and having swap hit the SSDs means unnecessary writes/wear... especially on systems where the SSDs can't even be replaced I think whether or not people always encounter it "feeling slow" is a different concern as to whether or not 8GB of RAM should ever even be offered by Apple on a system that will for sure eventually swap to disk for users. Adding Apple's huge margins on RAM upgrades on top of this just makes it even more disgusting... they should start their models at a higher baseline- it costs them next to nothing (8GB RAM vs 16GB RAM is not a cost-to-Apple issue, it's an extremely cheap component), but then of course they can't squeeze customers for ludicrous amounts of upsell margins (their cost-to-consumer RAM upgrade margins are absolutely appalling) Selling suboptimal hardware configurations might be a good business decision but I wish our standards weren't so low for companies, especially ones selling $1600 machines with 2013-amounts of RAM in them
      - foldr 3y ago
        I don’t really care if it swaps to disk if there’s no noticeable slowdown. I understand that some people just take it as axiomatic that 8GB isn’t enough, but I think it makes more sense to look empirically at whether the majority of users would notice a significant improvement for their workloads. Some users do need 16GB (or more), but I suspect they’re a fairly small minority. So why put it in the base model? That’s money Apple can spend on more important features of the base laptop (e.g high quality display, speakers, trackpad - all the stuff that 90% of plasticy Wintel machines at the same price point fail on). I’m puzzled by the idea that there’s something inherently bad about swapping. It’s a natural consequence of virtual memory and is pretty much required for optimal exploitation of available RAM. Let apps allocate as much RAM as they’d ideally like to have, and then leave it to the OS to keep the most frequently used pages in physical RAM.
- filterfiber 3y ago
  Honestly I think a decent chunk of the complaints are from people who are used to windows which would be using 4-6gb of that ram just on the desktop. That said I still wouldn't recommend 8gb to anyone.
  - sagarm 3y ago
    SSDs and zRAM help too, but seriously 8GB of RAM on a $1600 laptop is ludicrous.
  - foldr 3y ago
    I agree, I'd recommend 16GB if someone asked for my advice (not that they ever do!) My only quibble here is that I think people are a touch too cynical about Apple's motives for putting 8GB in the base models. I suspect the reason is just that their research shows that most people wouldn't notice any difference from the extra 8GB of RAM. That makes it difficult to justify putting it in the base model. We tend to focus a lot on specs on HN, but the money saved from the 8GB potentially frees up additional resources for features that a typical user might well care about much more (e.g. speaker and microphone quality – often neglected by competing manufacturers).
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      I doubt people would have as much of a problem with the base model were it not for the large prices on each tier of RAM. Each 8 Gb is somehow $200. It seems like a scam to list at $1,600, but then, surprise, you need an extra $200 to get to the level of RAM you expect in a professional device. I assume you are right if they only go up to 24 max, but they should explain better why 8 Gb is acceptable.
    - znpy 3y ago
      I had 16gb on my work laptop (dell latitude 7390) four years ago… The thinkpad x220 from 2012 could host 16gb ram already. I really can’t understand why 8gb ram is still so common. A lot of performances issue would just disappear with more ram.
- nunez 3y ago
  I thought the same until I noticed a lot of choppiness one day while my Mac was running a bunch of containers, OBS, Krisp, Zoom and Safari windows and saw on htop that nearly all of my physical memory was reserved and the memory manager was working overtime to prevent swap from being hit. Things have been much better after updating to an M2 with 16GB of RAM.
- znpy 3y ago
  MacOS swaps aggressively to keep up the performances. Which is fine, but this wears out the disks quite a bit. So of you’re pushing past the 8gb memory size… your macbook will die earlier. And since the flash chips are not replaceable… you get the point.
  - foldr 3y ago
    The M1 macs came out three years ago, and the predicted SSD lifetime apocalypse shows no sign of materialising so far. I suspect that it won’t turn out to be a problem, though we’ll have to wait and see.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  Yep, these are the same people who dig around iPhone internals to check the amount of RAM and compare it to a similar Android model. Then they are all O_o when iPhone doesn't have 32GB of RAM. They completely forget that the OS memory management is _totally_ different. iOS doesn't need multiple gigabytes of RAM, because only one piece of software can be active at a time, the rest are suspended and can just get limited activations - and the OS decides when.
thefz 3y ago
> affordably priced > $1600 Dude.
- lbussell 3y ago
  I think he is being sarcastic.
- verdverm 3y ago
  I paid that much for a spec'd out frame.work at the start of the year. Just ordered an M2 with 24G for $2k last night. I'm hoping the mac will be faster and quieter. It doesn't take much for my frame.work fan to start, watching one video can be enough. What really got me was the minor component fittings, they don't really. The plugin modules and camera/mic physical buttons are so difficult to move / swap. Then the right angle power cable frayed... I fully expect the mac to be much higher quality. That is part of the premium. We will see if the 25G of mem is enough. I have some workflows that will definitely reach beyond that limit, curious to see what happens
  - k9unit 3y ago
    My $150 used Thinkpad has a high quality build, 16gb of ram, and can play a YouTube video while talking to people on the webcam. It has an 8th Intel cpu, which is about the same speed as a 10th Gen Intel CPU. The M2 is about double the speed in single core and multi core, but that isn't required for most simple tasks.
    - verdverm 3y ago
      I'm planning to do dev work while in the Immersed app
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

foldr 3y ago

Most of the empirical comparisons I've seen of the 8GB vs. 16GB models show that you have to push the 8GB models pretty hard before they're noticeably slower. Most of the complaints seem to come from people who are obsessively checking memory usage and have a rather over-simplistic mental model of how RAM is allocated in a modern operating system. (For example, many apps, such as browsers, will happily use more RAM if you give them more RAM.)

melling 3y ago
Strange. I’ve got a 10 year old Intel MBP with 16GB of RAM. Even 10 years ago I didn’t think 8GB was enough. You don’t buy a Pro model and let it swap with only 8GB
- foldr 3y ago
  Yeah, I think a lot of people are assuming that 8GB will work as poorly on an Mx system as it would on an older Intel Mac. But it's widely reported that this is not the case. (The faster SSDs help, and I suspect that memory compression may work more effectively too.) See various anecdotal reports such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913643, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103103 in this very thread.
  - melling 3y ago
    I buy the extra memory with the hope that it extends the lifetime of my computer. I can still use my MBP 10 years later. I bought a 15” Air two weeks ago with 16GB and I expect I’ll still be able to use it a decade from now. Have barely used the Air because my software is set up on my Intel. Will transition soon and will be able to compare performance.
  - kup0 3y ago
    Why would you want RAM to swap to fast SSDs when you can avoid it with more RAM in the first place, though? Sure it's not a molasses-slow spinning HDD..... but SSDs are still far slower than RAM, and having swap hit the SSDs means unnecessary writes/wear... especially on systems where the SSDs can't even be replaced I think whether or not people always encounter it "feeling slow" is a different concern as to whether or not 8GB of RAM should ever even be offered by Apple on a system that will for sure eventually swap to disk for users. Adding Apple's huge margins on RAM upgrades on top of this just makes it even more disgusting... they should start their models at a higher baseline- it costs them next to nothing (8GB RAM vs 16GB RAM is not a cost-to-Apple issue, it's an extremely cheap component), but then of course they can't squeeze customers for ludicrous amounts of upsell margins (their cost-to-consumer RAM upgrade margins are absolutely appalling) Selling suboptimal hardware configurations might be a good business decision but I wish our standards weren't so low for companies, especially ones selling $1600 machines with 2013-amounts of RAM in them
    - foldr 3y ago
      I don’t really care if it swaps to disk if there’s no noticeable slowdown. I understand that some people just take it as axiomatic that 8GB isn’t enough, but I think it makes more sense to look empirically at whether the majority of users would notice a significant improvement for their workloads. Some users do need 16GB (or more), but I suspect they’re a fairly small minority. So why put it in the base model? That’s money Apple can spend on more important features of the base laptop (e.g high quality display, speakers, trackpad - all the stuff that 90% of plasticy Wintel machines at the same price point fail on). I’m puzzled by the idea that there’s something inherently bad about swapping. It’s a natural consequence of virtual memory and is pretty much required for optimal exploitation of available RAM. Let apps allocate as much RAM as they’d ideally like to have, and then leave it to the OS to keep the most frequently used pages in physical RAM.
filterfiber 3y ago
Honestly I think a decent chunk of the complaints are from people who are used to windows which would be using 4-6gb of that ram just on the desktop. That said I still wouldn't recommend 8gb to anyone.
- sagarm 3y ago
  SSDs and zRAM help too, but seriously 8GB of RAM on a $1600 laptop is ludicrous.
- foldr 3y ago
  I agree, I'd recommend 16GB if someone asked for my advice (not that they ever do!) My only quibble here is that I think people are a touch too cynical about Apple's motives for putting 8GB in the base models. I suspect the reason is just that their research shows that most people wouldn't notice any difference from the extra 8GB of RAM. That makes it difficult to justify putting it in the base model. We tend to focus a lot on specs on HN, but the money saved from the 8GB potentially frees up additional resources for features that a typical user might well care about much more (e.g. speaker and microphone quality – often neglected by competing manufacturers).
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    I doubt people would have as much of a problem with the base model were it not for the large prices on each tier of RAM. Each 8 Gb is somehow $200. It seems like a scam to list at $1,600, but then, surprise, you need an extra $200 to get to the level of RAM you expect in a professional device. I assume you are right if they only go up to 24 max, but they should explain better why 8 Gb is acceptable.
  - znpy 3y ago
    I had 16gb on my work laptop (dell latitude 7390) four years ago… The thinkpad x220 from 2012 could host 16gb ram already. I really can’t understand why 8gb ram is still so common. A lot of performances issue would just disappear with more ram.
nunez 3y ago
I thought the same until I noticed a lot of choppiness one day while my Mac was running a bunch of containers, OBS, Krisp, Zoom and Safari windows and saw on htop that nearly all of my physical memory was reserved and the memory manager was working overtime to prevent swap from being hit. Things have been much better after updating to an M2 with 16GB of RAM.
znpy 3y ago
MacOS swaps aggressively to keep up the performances. Which is fine, but this wears out the disks quite a bit. So of you’re pushing past the 8gb memory size… your macbook will die earlier. And since the flash chips are not replaceable… you get the point.
- foldr 3y ago
  The M1 macs came out three years ago, and the predicted SSD lifetime apocalypse shows no sign of materialising so far. I suspect that it won’t turn out to be a problem, though we’ll have to wait and see.
theshrike79 3y ago
Yep, these are the same people who dig around iPhone internals to check the amount of RAM and compare it to a similar Android model. Then they are all O_o when iPhone doesn't have 32GB of RAM. They completely forget that the OS memory management is _totally_ different. iOS doesn't need multiple gigabytes of RAM, because only one piece of software can be active at a time, the rest are suspended and can just get limited activations - and the OS decides when.

thefz 3y ago

> affordably priced > $1600 Dude.

lbussell 3y ago
I think he is being sarcastic.
verdverm 3y ago
I paid that much for a spec'd out frame.work at the start of the year. Just ordered an M2 with 24G for $2k last night. I'm hoping the mac will be faster and quieter. It doesn't take much for my frame.work fan to start, watching one video can be enough. What really got me was the minor component fittings, they don't really. The plugin modules and camera/mic physical buttons are so difficult to move / swap. Then the right angle power cable frayed... I fully expect the mac to be much higher quality. That is part of the premium. We will see if the 25G of mem is enough. I have some workflows that will definitely reach beyond that limit, curious to see what happens
- k9unit 3y ago
  My $150 used Thinkpad has a high quality build, 16gb of ram, and can play a YouTube video while talking to people on the webcam. It has an 8th Intel cpu, which is about the same speed as a 10th Gen Intel CPU. The M2 is about double the speed in single core and multi core, but that isn't required for most simple tasks.
  - verdverm 3y ago
    I'm planning to do dev work while in the Immersed app
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]