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I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.
by jm4 3y ago
I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.
- eurekin 3y agoThat's so extremely backwards in relation to everything else it's mind boggling. 16 gb being considered and priced at premium, where I had a single chrome tab eating 3gb easily few time's recently.
- superb_dev 3y agoWhat website were you on? 3gb for a Chrome tab is just plain unacceptable in most cases
- eurekin 3y agohttps://belladoreai.github.io/llama-tokenizer-js/example-demo/build/ https://belladoreai.github.io/llama-tokenizer-js/example-dem... where I measured tokens in my requests before sending things to openai API to ballpark the cost
- threeseed 3y agoSo stop using Chrome. There are other browsers that are far more memory efficient.
- Dah00n 3y agoBrowserS? I can only think of one (and it isn't Safari).
- eurekin 3y agoThat solves the browser. What about colima vm for docker? Intellij, gradle daemon, android studio, xcode, electron apps, android virtual device, slack, spring boot apps, iMovie, Davinci Resolve, python notebooks? Phones now have more than 8gb of RAM
- threeseed 3y agoIf you're doing software development then you really should buy the Pro. The limiting factor won't be the memory but the thermal throttling.
- eurekin 3y agoOf course I do, I have a 16 and 32 pros as well.
- skydhash 3y agoDo you use everything together? My opinion is that if you'd use any of that seriously you buy the device that let it run correctly. Opening a multi-module project in Android Studio that requires something like 6GB or ram for the index, then running it inside a 3GB emulator on an 8GB laptop is just asking for problem. Be mindful of your RAM usage and select the suitable amount for your use cases.
- xetplan 3y agoIt is really outrageous looking at the price of 2 X 8 gig sticks right now. It is exactly why I haven't bought anything from Apple since the ipod. Everything sounds amazing/wonderful and then one mind boggling deal breaker that doesn't even seem to make economic sense but just feels petty.
- eurekin 3y agoWhat I'm more surprised of is that it's so defended, as if "I'm using it wrong"
- deergomoo 3y agoI believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the baseline Mac laptop RAM config. It’s incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the argument that a lot of Air purchasers wouldn’t need it, but I don’t think that’s the case any more. My wife has an M1 Air with 8GB and between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches.
- jandrese 3y agoMy wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem. She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too, nothing that should really tax the machine.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoWhat? I’ve caught Safari using 22GB of memory another day. Open 1000tabs and it will kill any machine.
- Tagbert 3y agoAny browser can use massive amounts of RAM if you open a lot of tabs. Especially if they are running a lot of JS that doesn't release its memory properly. There are some sites I can go to that just continue to chew away at the RAM as long as the tab is open. In any case, it's pretty easy for the OS to swap out browser data as it is chunkable by tab. Just because it had allocated 22GB doesn't mean that it was all active. Must was certainly swapped to SSD.
- Perepiska 3y agoSince a person cannot look at 1000 tabs at the same time, most of the tabs can be frozen. I'm writing to you from Firefox which has 826 tabs right now.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
- burnte 3y agoThis is why for my Mac needs I have a cheaper Mini. If I'm going to have to be stuck with 8GB or pay insane markups for 16gb, I'll get the 8GB Mini, and only do the purely Mac-centric stuff on it to minimize pain.
- nu11ptr 3y agoThis is my current plan as well. This allows me to do mac builds along with linux/windows builds for a reasonable price.
- Meninoyo 3y agoI'm pretty sure that's their gatekeeping. I looked at the price for m3 and if it would have 16gig it would literally be perfect for just 1k but nope 8 more gigs cost you an arm and a leg
- geodel 3y agoYou really are in market for Apple laptop and 200 dollar more for extra 8GM RAM is arm and a leg for you?
- pquki4 3y agoYou forgot to mention the 256GB SSD. I had a Macbook Pro 2015 with 256GB SSD. (Base model was 128GB). It was a very painful experience even back then. Yet almost ten years later, we are here, still paying $200 to upgrade to 512GB, when almost every Windows laptop comes with 512GB. FYI a 1TB NVMe gen 4 drive costs less than $100.
- cbsmith 3y agoIt's hard to believe, but people can be in the market for a product, but feel that paying 8x markup on the cost of an upgrade is ridiculous.
- Meninoyo 3y agoIt's 20% more.
- yumraj 3y agoNo, what’s worse is Apple, or is it random self-styled influencers, spreading the false narrative that Apple Silicon magically requires less RAM and people actually believing that.
- lynguist 3y agoNo, but Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more bandwidth), faster SSDs, and macOS tends to have a better memory compression algorithm.
- yumraj 3y ago> macOS tends to have a better memory compression algorithm Compared to what? Linux? Windows? Are there any published benchmarks anywhere, otherwise this just proves my point above. > Apple tends to have faster RAM (way more bandwidth), faster SSDs Yes, sure, due to its integrated nature, but that does not reduce the RAM requirement. My 8GB M1 MBA, which is used as a home browsing-only laptop, is almost always in yellow on memory pressure once we have a few tabs open.
- chongli 3y agoI disagree, and I always upgrade the RAM even though I don’t like paying more. Why? Because it puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control. Think of an alternate universe where Apple does the opposite: every new model they push the envelope and double the baseline RAM compared to the previous year. In that world you’d have all the software growing in memory use without bound. Consumers would be forced into a treadmill of computer upgrades like we haven’t seen since the 90’s when CPUs were skyrocketing in performance every year. For anyone who forgets what the 90’s was like, here’s an example with Mac models: 1990 saw the launch of the Mac LC which had a 16 MHz Motorola 68020 1999 brought the Power Mac G4 at up to 500 MHz That’s a 31-fold increase in clock rate (and several times that in overall performance) in the same timespan we’re discussing. Software that was written for the G4 had no chance of running on the LC (ignoring CPU architecture differences). MacBook Airs are the mainline consumer machine these days. Apple does not want users to feel like they need to upgrade them every year (despite what people say).
- jabradoodle 3y agoWhat do you mean by mainline consumer machine? MacBook market share is less than 20%
- Ensorceled 3y agoWhat does market share have to do with which market you are targeting?
- pquki4 3y ago> It puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control If you are talking about "native" apps, maybe. Otherwise, nah. Cross-platform apps based on web like Teams and Spotify won't put too much effort on performance as long as it is not too slow. And if you haven't realized, most of the stuff you interact with is online. People just shove an entire website. As for professional apps -- if you can't run a heavy audio/video editing application smoothly, I'm pretty sure that's your problem. Developers can put more effort into optimizing for 8GB RAM, but at the end of the day these workflows require large amount of memory, and after a certain point it is not worth to optimize for this segment of users
- balaji1 3y agoThe RAM being so low is confusing. Given RAM is one of the cheaper components. I guess they do some smart swap memory using SSD - but my Air laptop struggles to run PowerPoint, few browser tabs and video calling at the same time.
- jsz0 3y agoObviously a planned obsolescence tactic. If the base models were 16GB there's a fine chance Apple wouldn't see another dollar from those customers for another 10+ years at minimum. The average customer doesn't understand their memory requirements and cannot be expected to predict how they may change in the future. It's the only thing they got left they can use to trick customers into buying a machine that will need to be replaced sooner.
- ProfessorLayton 3y agoLook, I'm not happy about the base ram situation either, I really do think they should put in 12/16GB at minimum. But at the same time, I've never seen non-techies complain that they can't open a few tabs, reply to a few emails, watch youtube, listen to music, and study on their base laptops. They're amazing for that. If we need more memory to accomplish the above tasks any time soon, we're in a sad state of software development and bloat.
- olyjohn 3y agoGod forbid a novice user learns things and becomes a power user. Memory is so cheap, there's literally no reason these machines should not have 16gb.
- thomaslord 3y agoWe are in a sad state of bloat. 99% of what people do on their computers now goes through a web browser, and opening lots of tabs chews through RAM like nothing else.
- jsz0 3y agoI use my M1/8GB Air pretty much exclusively for web browsing and run into 'out of application memory' errors on a regular basis. Relaunching Safari generally solves the problem. It's just such a bad look for Apple to be selling premium priced products that can't do the most basic task people want them for without throwing errors.
- ProfessorLayton 3y ago
- cstrat 3y agoAgree it is crazy, I am writing this from my M1 Air with 8GB of RAM and I am yet to ever have a real issue with a RAM limitation... the OS does an amazing job juggling RAM.
- greggsy 3y agoThis comes up often, but it's honestly totally fine for a non-technical user who only occasionally uses anything other than Safari and Photos. The vast majority of their market would not fit into the developer, content creator, or just plain power-user category. There's people who just log on to do internet banking and email when they're not on Reddit or Facebook. For some anecdata, 16/512+ would be a waste on my parents, in-laws and my whole extended family for that matter. They would benefit from it, but they're not screaming at spinning wheels, and are probably a bit more patient and accustomed to 'slowness', which is pretty subjective.
- grow2grow 3y agoSeems like a borderline conspiracy to fry the internal SSD over time, adding a wear-point to the product family, and making sure consumers keep consuming. I'm talking about system paging: virtual memory on the disk. Even worse, if one plots the (price, unified memory amount, chip type), and looks at it from right-to-left, then the dollars per system capability is disgusting when you order a lesser system. You get the most value for your money when you buy the maximum unified memory configuration (on those three points). Better yet, with a maxed out unified memory configuration, one can further save on SSD writes by using (and loading/storing) RAM disks for their projects! Most people buying a MacBook for work are likely getting a higher unified memory, so their workstations live longer. Meanwhile consumers will have to keep consuming as they fry their internal SSD's on their airs... I was also wondering if a 1TB apple fabric device is simply an 8TB fabric device with 8x the write life...
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoThe way Apple has always had e-waste laptops at the bottom of the line is pretty disgusting with their environmental posturing. MacOS barely works on 128GB space and 8GB ram yet for many years that was the baseline, it was particularly bad because the ram gets full just browsing then your baseline OS and a few files is enough that the swap disk would get full soon after. Have a crate with about 40+ of those machines at work, essentially useless from the era where the person in charge of buying laptops just bought the bottom end for every employee and considered it a job done.