4 ms·

The bigger cost could be all the customers that would pick the lower tier model if it had sufficient ram, instead of the higher tier.

dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago
Yeah, sometimes I think they designed it this way so that people would not buy the entry level MBP. I remember when I bought one in 2019, after some time it would complain it cannot update Xcode because of lack of space. The point is, Xcode was the only additional app installed on this MBP. So yeah, it might be their strategy to give an illusion of choice with offering unusable cheaper options while for everything decent you need to pay disproportionately more.
- lproven 3y ago
  No, it's because having on-die RAM leads to a lot of defective dies that have to be thrown away. So perhaps some can be salvaged by disabling half of the RAM because a few bytes don't work and thus can be sold as 8GB units.
jhy 3y ago
I run an 8GB M1 as my main desktop for Java development and it's 70% fine. I needed a replacement for my previous PC during covid/cpu shortages and in AU, there were no 16GB versions available. (So the upsell argument is not the only part of the story). For running Chrome, IntelliJ, Spotify, Terminal, fuzz tests etc at once, it's fine. But running YourKit profiling or Steam etc, everything else swaps out and grinds. So: it's amazing to me that you can do so much with just 8GB,and egregious that Apple can't put in a couple of slots for an extension.
- lproven 3y ago
  > egregious that Apple can't put in a couple of slots for an extension. "It's great that my Bugatti Veyron is so fast, and it's egregious that it can't also be used as a boat." The reason M1/M2/M3 is so quick is that it's such a highly-integrated design, with the RAM and the GPU on the same die and thus sharing very high bandwidth connections. This is _why_ it doesn't have DIMM slots. It's quick for the same reasons that the memory isn't expandable.

dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago

Yeah, sometimes I think they designed it this way so that people would not buy the entry level MBP. I remember when I bought one in 2019, after some time it would complain it cannot update Xcode because of lack of space. The point is, Xcode was the only additional app installed on this MBP. So yeah, it might be their strategy to give an illusion of choice with offering unusable cheaper options while for everything decent you need to pay disproportionately more.

lproven 3y ago
No, it's because having on-die RAM leads to a lot of defective dies that have to be thrown away. So perhaps some can be salvaged by disabling half of the RAM because a few bytes don't work and thus can be sold as 8GB units.

jhy 3y ago

I run an 8GB M1 as my main desktop for Java development and it's 70% fine. I needed a replacement for my previous PC during covid/cpu shortages and in AU, there were no 16GB versions available. (So the upsell argument is not the only part of the story). For running Chrome, IntelliJ, Spotify, Terminal, fuzz tests etc at once, it's fine. But running YourKit profiling or Steam etc, everything else swaps out and grinds. So: it's amazing to me that you can do so much with just 8GB,and egregious that Apple can't put in a couple of slots for an extension.

lproven 3y ago
> egregious that Apple can't put in a couple of slots for an extension. "It's great that my Bugatti Veyron is so fast, and it's egregious that it can't also be used as a boat." The reason M1/M2/M3 is so quick is that it's such a highly-integrated design, with the RAM and the GPU on the same die and thus sharing very high bandwidth connections. This is _why_ it doesn't have DIMM slots. It's quick for the same reasons that the memory isn't expandable.