4 ms·

999 for a laptop with 8 gbs of ram in 2024 That's pathetic.

whalesalad 3y ago
In 2018 that would have cost 799. Considering inflation, Apple is doing pretty great right now with keeping their prices from going insane.
- justin66 3y ago
  The existence of an 8GB laptop in Apple's product line was also absurd in 2018.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    fwiw the memory bandwidth is so high on these devices that it doesn't feel as bad as it should be.
    - ephemeral-life 3y ago
      Memory bandwidth doesn't matter for these types of devices, it is memory latency that matters. But best of all is actually having your application in memory and not having to do disk reads.
      - skydhash 3y ago
        Most usual applications (native) runs under 100MB of real memory. If you're insisting on using electron apps from developers that does not care about performance...
        ephemeral-life 3y ago
        Thats great for you I guess. When I work, I want vscode with all the fancy linting and language server bells and whistles. I want to be able to have a ton of chrome tabs for browsing and docs and I want a local version of whatever I am building to run. Im gonna make the bold assumption that this is quite common in the dev community. Given that, 8gb is pushing it, no matter how you spin the "but my memory is fast" or "but native apps"
    - mort96 3y ago
      Huh? High memory bandwidth doesn't help at all if you're running out of memory.
      - whalesalad 3y ago
        It does when you have very fast solid state storage beneath it. Most computers make use of swap. If the performance gap between swap and ram is small, you will feel like you have more ram than you actually do.
        mort96 3y ago
        And what relevance does that have with memory bandwidth? Of course a faster SSD helps if you're swapping, but you said faster memory bandwidth is what's making the tiny amounts of RAM on modern Macs "not as bad" If you had said "the fast SSDs make these tiny amounts of RAM not feel as bad" I would've agreed
  - kube-system 3y ago
    That might be your opinion, but it isn't out of line with their competitors. You don't have to look particularly hard to find other premium thin-and-lights at 8GB and a ~$999 price tag. I think that is ridiculous, because the Air is better than all of them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kube-system 3y ago
It's on par with normal pricing from MS.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  How much do they charge to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB? Or 32?
  - kube-system 3y ago
    On the Surface Pro 9, it is $300 to upgrade from 8 to 16GB. To go to 32GB, they require you to choose a higher tier processor which brings the normal retail price to $2599, but it currently has a $500 discount, so the total is $2099.
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      Wow that's crazy. On my framework I think the same jump cost like $30
      - kube-system 3y ago
        Not surprising. Framework has a wildly different business model than mainstream computer manufacturers. And if we re-address the "999 for a laptop with 8 gbs of ram in 2024" comment above, it is worth noting that the Framework 13 also starts with 8GB of RAM at $1049.
      - paulmd 3y ago
        Framework isn’t using LPDDR5/5X like the surface or the macbook. LPDDR adds to the cost quite a bit, as does the advanced packaging apple uses etc. But it’s the only way to keep pushing bandwidth forward, especially for graphics/iGPU, and keep pushing power down. Socketed memory inherently is much slower and less efficient, same reason consoles don’t come with ram sticks. AMD’s solution is a package with cache instead, to try and reduce the amount of data they have to push around. But that adds a bunch of cost and still isn’t as efficient - but it lets you keep scaling socketed memory a little farther. Can’t help but feel like the days are numbered though, there isn’t an infinite amount of runway left for socketed memory.

In 2018 that would have cost 799. Considering inflation, Apple is doing pretty great right now with keeping their prices from going insane.

justin66 3y ago
The existence of an 8GB laptop in Apple's product line was also absurd in 2018.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  fwiw the memory bandwidth is so high on these devices that it doesn't feel as bad as it should be.
  - ephemeral-life 3y ago
    Memory bandwidth doesn't matter for these types of devices, it is memory latency that matters. But best of all is actually having your application in memory and not having to do disk reads.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      Most usual applications (native) runs under 100MB of real memory. If you're insisting on using electron apps from developers that does not care about performance...
      - ephemeral-life 3y ago
        Thats great for you I guess. When I work, I want vscode with all the fancy linting and language server bells and whistles. I want to be able to have a ton of chrome tabs for browsing and docs and I want a local version of whatever I am building to run. Im gonna make the bold assumption that this is quite common in the dev community. Given that, 8gb is pushing it, no matter how you spin the "but my memory is fast" or "but native apps"
  - mort96 3y ago
    Huh? High memory bandwidth doesn't help at all if you're running out of memory.
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      It does when you have very fast solid state storage beneath it. Most computers make use of swap. If the performance gap between swap and ram is small, you will feel like you have more ram than you actually do.
      - mort96 3y ago
        And what relevance does that have with memory bandwidth? Of course a faster SSD helps if you're swapping, but you said faster memory bandwidth is what's making the tiny amounts of RAM on modern Macs "not as bad" If you had said "the fast SSDs make these tiny amounts of RAM not feel as bad" I would've agreed
- kube-system 3y ago
  That might be your opinion, but it isn't out of line with their competitors. You don't have to look particularly hard to find other premium thin-and-lights at 8GB and a ~$999 price tag. I think that is ridiculous, because the Air is better than all of them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kube-system 3y ago

It's on par with normal pricing from MS.

Rebelgecko 3y ago
How much do they charge to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB? Or 32?
- kube-system 3y ago
  On the Surface Pro 9, it is $300 to upgrade from 8 to 16GB. To go to 32GB, they require you to choose a higher tier processor which brings the normal retail price to $2599, but it currently has a $500 discount, so the total is $2099.
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    Wow that's crazy. On my framework I think the same jump cost like $30
    - kube-system 3y ago
      Not surprising. Framework has a wildly different business model than mainstream computer manufacturers. And if we re-address the "999 for a laptop with 8 gbs of ram in 2024" comment above, it is worth noting that the Framework 13 also starts with 8GB of RAM at $1049.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Framework isn’t using LPDDR5/5X like the surface or the macbook. LPDDR adds to the cost quite a bit, as does the advanced packaging apple uses etc. But it’s the only way to keep pushing bandwidth forward, especially for graphics/iGPU, and keep pushing power down. Socketed memory inherently is much slower and less efficient, same reason consoles don’t come with ram sticks. AMD’s solution is a package with cache instead, to try and reduce the amount of data they have to push around. But that adds a bunch of cost and still isn’t as efficient - but it lets you keep scaling socketed memory a little farther. Can’t help but feel like the days are numbered though, there isn’t an infinite amount of runway left for socketed memory.