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I 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. Thi

I 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 ago
What do you mean by mainline consumer machine? MacBook market share is less than 20%
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  What 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
- chongli 3y ago
  I'm talking specifically about native, non-professional apps targeted at regular consumers (such as grandma, aunt Suzie, little Billy working on his science project). These are the kinds of apps that are published on the Mac App Store. Apple specifically includes Performance as a section under its App Store review guidelines. I bet if you submit an app that gobbles up more than 8GB of RAM and starts swapping like crazy on a baseline Mac, you'll get rejected by the review team.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> I 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. Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people without a large budget and stop patronizing the applications without acceptable footprints in that circumstance? > In that world you’d have all the software growing in memory use without bound. We already live in that world. In the 90s you could run Netscape Navigator on a machine with 8 megabytes of memory. I've seen individual browser tabs use more gigabytes than that. And not all of this is Electron bloat. The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB. In general the quality is going to be proportional to the model size. So for the thing to get better, people need machines with more memory. And 8GB is already too small.
- chongli 3y ago
  Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people without a large budget and stop patronizing the applications without acceptable footprints in that circumstance? I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I would definitely have a baseline machine for testing. The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB That's not a baseline consumer application. See my other reply (re: grandma and little Billy). If you're developing a native Mac app for grandma and little Billy, Apple probably doesn't want you shipping a 13GB model with it. This is an example of the point I'm trying to make: find a way to compress the model so the end user doesn't have to deal with that kind of bloat (or host it in the cloud).
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I would definitely have a baseline machine for testing. You expect every developer to buy a second Mac? They're all doing what you're doing and paying more for the machine with more memory because other applications need it, and then their application runs fine on that machine so they don't even notice the problem for the people with 8GB. > That's not a baseline consumer application. It will be before any of these new machines go out of support.
Repulsion9513 3y ago
Seriously? A 9 year gap and you go from that to not wanting users to feel like they need to upgrade every year? Mighty slippery straws you're grasping there.
cbsmith 3y ago
> Why? Because it puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control. I've yet to notice the impact on getting web sites to stop using incredibly bloated JavaScript that leak memory, video conferencing & streaming apps from using codecs that redline the CPU, or game developers from writing games that make the GPU cry uncle, or... > 1990 saw the launch of the Mac LC which had a 16 MHz Motorola 68020. You got lucky, because we got the Mac II Si back then, but they were both kneecapped on the factory floor by the 16-bit memory bus that crippled the 68020's 32-bit memory bus. 2 year old PCs ran circles around it. Planned obsolescence was was one of Apple's crowning achievements back then. > 1999 brought the Power Mac G4 at up to 500 MHz The Macbook Air from ten years ago would be Retina I had: a 2-core i7 that could go up to 3.5 GHz. Ask me how well that runs software written for the new M3's. ;-) > 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). You might have missed this bit from Apple's blurb on the new MacBook Airs: "13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air". The fastest Intel-based Macbook Air was produced [checks notes], 4 years ago. It's hard not to read that like they aren't trying to convey a need to upgrade. If you're wondering why people are saying what they're saying, it's because Apple is saying what they're saying.

jabradoodle 3y ago

What do you mean by mainline consumer machine? MacBook market share is less than 20%

Ensorceled 3y ago
What 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

chongli 3y ago
I'm talking specifically about native, non-professional apps targeted at regular consumers (such as grandma, aunt Suzie, little Billy working on his science project). These are the kinds of apps that are published on the Mac App Store. Apple specifically includes Performance as a section under its App Store review guidelines. I bet if you submit an app that gobbles up more than 8GB of RAM and starts swapping like crazy on a baseline Mac, you'll get rejected by the review team.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> I 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. Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people without a large budget and stop patronizing the applications without acceptable footprints in that circumstance? > In that world you’d have all the software growing in memory use without bound. We already live in that world. In the 90s you could run Netscape Navigator on a machine with 8 megabytes of memory. I've seen individual browser tabs use more gigabytes than that. And not all of this is Electron bloat. The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB. In general the quality is going to be proportional to the model size. So for the thing to get better, people need machines with more memory. And 8GB is already too small.

chongli 3y ago
Shouldn't you be doing the opposite then? Keeping the baseline amount so you can know what it's like for people without a large budget and stop patronizing the applications without acceptable footprints in that circumstance? I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I would definitely have a baseline machine for testing. The Stable Diffusion XL model is ~13GB That's not a baseline consumer application. See my other reply (re: grandma and little Billy). If you're developing a native Mac app for grandma and little Billy, Apple probably doesn't want you shipping a 13GB model with it. This is an example of the point I'm trying to make: find a way to compress the model so the end user doesn't have to deal with that kind of bloat (or host it in the cloud).
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > I'm not a developer of native Mac apps. If I were, I would definitely have a baseline machine for testing. You expect every developer to buy a second Mac? They're all doing what you're doing and paying more for the machine with more memory because other applications need it, and then their application runs fine on that machine so they don't even notice the problem for the people with 8GB. > That's not a baseline consumer application. It will be before any of these new machines go out of support.

Repulsion9513 3y ago

Seriously? A 9 year gap and you go from that to not wanting users to feel like they need to upgrade every year? Mighty slippery straws you're grasping there.

cbsmith 3y ago

> Why? Because it puts pressure on developers to keep the bloat under control. I've yet to notice the impact on getting web sites to stop using incredibly bloated JavaScript that leak memory, video conferencing & streaming apps from using codecs that redline the CPU, or game developers from writing games that make the GPU cry uncle, or... > 1990 saw the launch of the Mac LC which had a 16 MHz Motorola 68020. You got lucky, because we got the Mac II Si back then, but they were both kneecapped on the factory floor by the 16-bit memory bus that crippled the 68020's 32-bit memory bus. 2 year old PCs ran circles around it. Planned obsolescence was was one of Apple's crowning achievements back then. > 1999 brought the Power Mac G4 at up to 500 MHz The Macbook Air from ten years ago would be Retina I had: a 2-core i7 that could go up to 3.5 GHz. Ask me how well that runs software written for the new M3's. ;-) > 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). You might have missed this bit from Apple's blurb on the new MacBook Airs: "13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air". The fastest Intel-based Macbook Air was produced [checks notes], 4 years ago. It's hard not to read that like they aren't trying to convey a need to upgrade. If you're wondering why people are saying what they're saying, it's because Apple is saying what they're saying.