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Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models
- talldayo 2y agoWow, if their marketing is anything to go by that's like 32gb on a Windows machine!
- ComputerGuru 2y agoAll modern operating systems compress inactive pages.
- ghostpepper 2y agoIt's not just compression - also the unified memory architecture.
- zarzavat 2y agoAt the risk that I’ve missed a joke, the unified memory architecture reduces the amount of RAM you have available since “RAM” for any computer with discrete graphics doesn’t include VRAM.
- zamadatix 2y agoI think they are saying it from the perspective rather than two separate banks which are rarely both full it's one bank which is only ever full when 100% of the hardware is full. That said I think many miss that's how integrated graphics memory management had been working on x86 systems for many many years already. I.e. the "dedicated RAM" slider in the boot firmware is a legacy holdover that should be set to a minimum token value, not something which determines the limit the iGPU has access to. macOS also works this way, there is a token amount of the unified memory reserved for the iGPU still, you just can't adjust that amount higher since there is no legacy holdover for it to make sense to do so.
- bitwize 2y agoThey are saying it from the perspective of the RAM being on the same die as the CPU. This is one of the innovations of the Apple Silicon architecture as it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces memory access latency. It's not just TSMC's 3nm process. It's also Apple engineering.
- wmf 2y agoNo, it doesn't reduce latency.
- wtallis 2y agoAlso, the RAM isn't on the same die as the CPU cores. TSMC doesn't even make DRAM.
- zamadatix 2y agoIt's not on die, it's separate dies on chip. This engineering was common in x86 CPUs by 2013 when AMD introduced Heterogeneous System Architecture which utilized Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access. The approach has its upsides and downsides, the latter generally being a unified bus tends to have much lower overall bandwidth (even in the Max) and runtime scalability issues. Upsides are more obvious for the types of systems people want APUs for in the first place though so that's usually fine. The main bit of engineering Apple should be lauded for in the memory department is the gumption to throw the hundreds of GB/s at the mid and high end models.
- paulmd 2y agoHSA was not “unified” in the modern sense. It still required designating memory as gpu or cpu side and these implied different cache coherency rules that meant memory couldn’t actually be shared, by default. To actually share memory you had to use a special “garlic bus” that guaranteed visibility and ordering and massively slowed down performance. Similarly, it was also impossible for the gpu to see cpu memory unless it was pinned and tagged for a special “onion bus”, but at least this was relatively fast iirc. https://www.realworldtech.com/fusion-llano/3/ https://www.realworldtech.com/fusion-llano/3/ In contrast apple actually has everything tied into a single unified space with a single controller that immediately makes all writes visible regardless of where the happen. They’ve also got enormously more memory bandwidth to play with. M1 Max is close to PS5 in both shader configuration and memory bandwidth.
- TiredOfLife 2y agohttps://x.com/LinaAsahi/status/1820947147312820497 https://x.com/LinaAsahi/status/1820947147312820497 "Sooo apparently there's this myth that only Apple has "unified memory"...? Every single modern integrated graphics system works the same way. They even share the MM code in Linux. I just had a reply guy try to argue otherwise with me even when I told him I wrote the driver"
- HumblyTossed 2y agoWhat is the effect on battery life vs keeping an actual 32GB or RAM powered?
- zamadatix 2y agoGenerally it's more about the number of chips you need. If you can get to x GB of RAM with the same number of memory chips, just higher capacities, then the power difference is truly quite miniscule. If you have to double up chips to reach the capacity then you start drawing more power (though still on the order of a couple Watts max difference at those sizes). Even then it's not always a constant couple Watts, RAM+memory controllers uses less power when you're not actively writing data.
- Eric_WVGG 2y agoMy understanding is that the performance is based around Apple silicon being optimized for the NeXT/ObjC model of retain/release, which they got down from 30 nanoseconds on Intel to 6.5ns on M1 (14ns on emulated Intel). https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-black-magic/#is-8-gb-ram-on-x86-intelamd-the-same-as-8-gb-on-apple-silicon-m1 https://singhkays.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-black-magic/#is-... IMO 8gb is still barely acceptable for most consumers in 2024, but not for any laptop that you'd expect to get more than say two years of usefulness out of, so… yeah it's about time.
- wmf 2y agoThat increases performance but it doesn't save any RAM.
- Eric_WVGG 2y agoI’m not exactly an expert on this, but I do know from experience that Objective-C programming (and anything coming out of an ARC compiler, like Swift) is a constant game of grabbing memory, using it, and releasing it. My impression is that if you can release memory faster, that means greater availability in the pool. Guesses aside, I spent a lot of time in Xcode on an 8gb M1 while waiting for the M1 Pro to come out three years ago. It was great, much better performing than the 16gb Intel it was replacing. I still don’t think 8gb is really a big deal for most people, getting more is just important for speculative future needs.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoThe behavior you describe would be a function of the memory allocator in use (system allocator, custom allocator) and independent of the hardware. It's at a much, much higher level than the hardware or even the page compression.
- somehnguy 2y agoThey're referring to these, when Apple said 8GB = 16GB elsewhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40024631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40024631 https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/08/m3-macbook-pro-ram/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/08/m3-macbook-pro-ram/
- IshKebab 2y agoI don't think Linux does by default. You need to enable it, via some moderately complex commands line commands.
- amlib 2y agoFedora, Ubuntu and few other distros does this by default since years ago.
- danielfoster 2y agoI’d love to see an Air with an M4 chip and 64GB RAM.
- gigatexal 2y agoI’d trade my m3 max for this.
- switch007 2y agoThe non-integer scaling on the Airs puts me off. I want perfect text rendering at a great resolution as that's well over 50% of the reason to get a MacBook. So it's the Pro for me
- wmf 2y agoCan't you set the resolution to whatever you want?
- wilsonnb3 2y agoYes but the effective resolution of the 13 inch air when it is at 2x scaling is pretty cramped, which is why the default is to use blurrier fractional scaling.
- RulerOf 2y agoThe panel resolution is fixed, so it'll have the same number of pixels on it regardless of what you "set the resolution to." For maximum visual fidelity, it'd be ideal to scale to some power of 2. Apple's stock settings offer resolutions that ... don't always follow that rule.
- wpm 2y agoApple just needs to add sub pixel anti aliasing back. It’s utterly disgusting to use macOS on some third party displays.
- nwienert 2y agoif they can get the better screen from the pro into an air it'd be ideal
- hfgjbcgjbvg 2y agoBout time.
- Kalanos 2y agohttps://youtu.be/BNWpZ-Y_KvU?si=0ANC62CFyCt8vLFW&t=99 https://youtu.be/BNWpZ-Y_KvU?si=0ANC62CFyCt8vLFW&t=99
- doodpants 2y agoInteresting choice; I would have expected Ode to Joy, or Hallelujah Chorus.
- replete 2y agoI hope one day they can fix the engineering problems so I can buy a machine and keep it for more than two years without fear of some cheap components exploding. A purchased computer should work for a decade at least. If this sounds over the top, look at what the repair shop guys are saying... Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, its not popular but an unfortunate reality. These issues are related to 2016-present Apple laptops. My 2012 MBA is running just fine, but I cannot trust these soldered systems.. there's other content around about the 13v being dumped into the SSDs when another component fails. There are engineering issues. If you want to understand what I'm talking about: Apple SSDs engineered in the worst way possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbrLiGY4Cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbrLiGY4Cg Exploding USB-C MacBook Ports Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAGnMR1aVuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAGnMR1aVuE
- Kalanos 2y agoMy 2014 pro is still going strong
- replete 2y agoI knew I'd get downvoted, but there are known SSD / T2 chip issues with 2016+ macs. Still present in Mx mac laptops. 2012 Macbook Air was my favourite laptop ever. See Louis Rossman etc... if you get lucky you get lucky, but I don't like the odds, so Apple hardware for me is a subscription model...
- turnsout 2y agoI have not heard anything about SSD issues from my friends in the IT department who service hundreds of laptops… Personally I’m still running an M1 MacBook Air which has been bulletproof for almost 4 years now. Before that I ran a 12” MacBook for 5 years. My last problem with a Mac laptop was in the 17” PowerBook days, circa 2010 (I suspect the case flexed and damaged the logic board)
- replete 2y ago
- inquirerGeneral 2y ago[dead]
- switch007 2y agoI wonder whether we'll pay for it with bumped prices too. Time will tell. And also how much of the extra RAM will be taken up by MacOS AI bloat?
- akmarinov 2y agoZero in the EU
- burnte 2y agoAre Apple not allowed to offer AI features in the EU?
- wmf 2y agoThere's a concern that they would have to make AI pluggable so you could use different providers. So far they haven't done that, so for now they simply aren't offering AI at all (on the iPhone; I don't think DMA applies to Macs).
- solarkraft 2y agoThey are, they just choose not to.
- akmarinov 2y agoThere are regulations as to data privacy when using AI and Apple avoiding the EU seems to indicate that they're actively ploughing through the user's privacy
- mjsweet 2y agoCould this be related to their plans for local inference? Maybe the need to load larger models into memory has driven their decision?
- bearjaws 2y agoHas to be, even a small model is 4gb of RAM. Open up any O365 based product in Chrome and kiss another 2gb goodbye if you only have 8gb you're left with very little after the OS...
- surfingdino 2y agoSo no actual increase in available RAM and no improvement in performance then. That'll be an extra £999, sir.
- wmf 2y agoFor anyone who skipped subtraction in school, 16 GB minus 4 GB for AI still leaves you with 12 GB usable. And AI won't be running all the time.
- surfingdino 2y agoBarbie told me math is hard...
- paulmd 2y ago> So no actual increase in available RAM and no improvement in performance then. yes, once you open a bunch more applications, you will have the same amount free as before… the scandal of it all!!! this is like the tech equivalent of “once I spend all my money I barely have anything left”.
- throwthrowuknow 2y agoStill pretty puny for RAM these days
- Night_Thastus 2y agoDepends a lot on what you do. For casual browsing, even 8GB can be fine. For gaming, 16GB is often more than enough, though rarely 32 has minor benefits. For productivity, 32 is fine. Only really heavy stuff needs more.
- mcphage 2y agoIs it? I don't know what the most popular Windows laptops are, but tooling around Lenovo's site, the starting configs for laptops seem to be either 8, 16, or 32 GB. Some soldered, some not.
- tom_ 2y agoI was thinking the opposite: it's actually surprising how long 16 GB has remained a useful amount of RAM? At home I use a 10 year old 16 GB laptop and the amount of RAM never seems to be the problem. Any sloth is always due to one or both of the outdated GPU and outdated CPU. (First time I bought a PC with 16 GB RAM was 2011. It wasn't a ridiculous amount of RAM back then, just usefully more than necessary. 16 GB has probably been a sensible amount for 15 years now.) (Whether I'd buy a computer today with 16 GB of soldered-in non-upgradeable RAM - that's another question. And my answer would be: I wouldn't. However that is not because it would be useless on day of purchase!)
- Euphorbium 2y agoShould upgrade ssd to at least 1TB
- yonatan8070 2y agoI doubt that's needed. 1TB is great and all, but unless you're downloading games or handling a lot of media, you're unlikely to use it all. I don't think most people need that much, and will get by just fine with 512GB or even less (my current work laptop for software dev has a 256GB SSD, and while I could use more if I wanted to, I don't need to think about disk usage, even with a small Windows 11 VM on the same disk)
- danielktdoranie 2y agoMy MacBook Air M1 has 16GB RAM and the base 256GB RAM. I decided I wanted to try some native Apple Silicon games like “Resident Evil: The Village” and “Death Stranding”. So I took a 1 TB WD_BLACK external SSD, installed macOS Sonoma and made sure to boot from that hard drive when I wanted to play games. It works perfectly. Sadly there is no way to add RAM externally ha ha. I boot from the 256GB storage that is soldered on the MacBook Air M1’s logic board when I want to do anything else. I have about 174 GB free currently.
- getcrunk 2y agoIs all device functionality otherwise supported booting off an external drive?
- superkuh 2y agoFinally. With 16B the amount of tech support I do for Apple M* products will likely drastically reduce. But unless they also upgrade the storage there'll still be people filling up the internal and then being unable to create the timemachine backups for their octopus of external storage devices.
- mathverse 2y agoWith the amount of electron apps we use we definitely need more ram in laptops.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: 16GB of RAM Could Be the New Minimum in Apple's Upcoming M4 Macs https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/26/apple-new-macs-16gb-ram-standard/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/26/apple-new-macs-16gb-ram... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41357796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41357796
- wmf 2y agoCoincidentally Intel is bumping up base RAM to 16 GB also.
- TiredOfLife 2y agoOnly for Copilot+ branded ones.
- toddmorey 2y agoI hate to say it but their minimum configs feel like a pricing scam. Like the price of a hotel room before taxes & fees. Even store employees will tell you that you really have to go one level up.
- bhj 2y agoAnd each level up in RAM typically includes a bump to CPU and/or GPU core counts as well, so it is even more difficult to discern the true pricing. Annoying, but also understandable that they don't want to produce every possible combination of specs. Don't get me started on needing to buy a 1TB+ iPad Pro to get double the RAM, though.
- chazeon 2y agoExactly, and I feel this is true American marketing, and what makes Apple a real California company. Just like American subway, or airfare, or greyhound buses, or even healthcare: at a high, advertised price, it gives you a standard, but miserable, bare minimum, and unsustainable way of living, and pushing you to pay for a high premium to upgrade to make it bearable, at a price a lot of people can’t afford. It’s why Apple is an American company at heart. Europe doesn’t do that.
- danielktdoranie 2y agoAs an Apple fan, what Apple charges for RAM is insulting. Pre 2012 it was standard practice to buy your MacBook Pro with the minimum RAM, and you could upgrade the RAM yourself buying from Crucial and the like for WAY CHEAPER than what Apple sold the RAM for. To stop that Apple started soldering the RAM to the logic board. I’d have no problem buying RAM from Apple if they charged a fair market price. Sadly Apple seem hell bent on ripping us off.
- Cockbrand 2y ago> Sadly Apple seem hell bent on ripping us off. Did you mean "Fortunately, Apple are laser-focused on maximizing shareholder value"?
- VancouverMan 2y agoWhile some customers will end up paying a lot for more RAM, I have to wonder if Apple really has a good idea about how many potential sales they're losing at the same time, too. They've lost several Mac purchases I would have otherwise made over the last decade, thanks solely to the unjustifiable cost of getting a reasonable amount of RAM for my needs. Yet, as far as I know, Apple has no way of tracking those lost sales. They've never asked me, and I've never told them. I know I'm not alone. I have a number of colleagues, friends, and family who've been ready to buy different types of Apple computers, but then opted not to once they see how much even a relatively small RAM upgrade will cost. Again, I doubt that Apple is aware of those lost sales.
- Cockbrand 2y agoI assume that they do take this into account and come to the conclusion that the real existing profits from the outrageous prices on RAM and SSD storage outweigh the potential profits from people who don't buy their hardware b/c the refuse to pay the hefty markup. I totally bought a MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon, fully knowing that I'm getting ripped off big time with added RAM and storage. Yet, it's still the least painful platform for me, and the hardware is really nice, even a few years on. In the end, I expect get a meaningful lifespan of 5+ years of daily use out of the machine. I wouldn't know any other laptop which could provide this kind of service life while constantly being a joy to work with. Apple know that their user base consists of many people like myself, and milk them accordingly.
- myrandomcomment 2y agoThis is likely a function of yields of the process. The better the yields, less the need to bin chips by what works. Likely the M4 yields are quite good at this point. Just a WAG.
- wmf 2y agoAn 8 GB Mac is not a 16 GB with defective RAM; it literally only has 8 GB. The RAM is separate dies and Apple presumably buys known good DRAM so the yield isn't their problem.
- myrandomcomment 2y agoBoth the memory controllers and RAM on the Mx are on die components. The number of controllers (binned) count here. I should have been more specific in what I was saying. "The 14-core M3 Max only enables 24 out of the 32 controllers, therefore it has 300 GB/sec vs. the 400 GB/sec for all models of the M1 and M2 Max, while the 16-core M3 Max has the same 400 GB/sec as the prior M1 and M2 Max models."
- wtallis 2y agoThe DRAM is not on die.
- myrandomcomment 2y agoOkay, in looking at tear downs I agree. The point about the on die memory controller is still valid. Cheers!
- talldayo 2y agoFWIW, almost every x86 computer made in the past 10 years has an on-die memory controller. The only exception is a handful of decade-old machines with "Northbridge" chips inside.
- znpy 2y agoWelcome to 2014! The ThinkPad X220 I had in university could be loaded with 16gb ddr3 ram... Who knows what apple will re-introduce in 2034 as an "incredible innovation in computing".
- _boffin_ 2y agoAny news / releases / speculation on the bandwidth of M4 and the integrated memory?
- wmf 2y agoThe standard this year seems to be LPDDR5-8500 which gives around 130 GB/s.
- takiyo 2y agoWelcome to 2008 apple!
- solarkraft 2y ago8/256 really are okay for light use and even quite a lot of dev work. But they absolutely aren’t on Pro models. That’s insane.
- kuhl 2y agoI think the one thing people are missing about Apple is that they silently aren't a PC parts maker anymore. They make the high performance competitor to something like the Raspberry Pi, not a traditional PC. This bump is largely going to be keeping their system specs good enough for AI specs while also supporting someone's normal workload. It's a great upgrade if you're never going to use AI. Apple has made something special with tight specs that the average user doesn't fully understand yet.