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These days 8 GB is absurdly low for a ~$1300 PC. Hopefully they might have finally realized that selling crippled products (just to force its users to pay the p

These days 8 GB is absurdly low for a ~$1300 PC. Hopefully they might have finally realized that selling crippled products (just to force its users to pay the predatory price for memory upgrades) is hurting UX and their reputation. I mean they claim: > Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.1 But is that really true if your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time? Naturally users who bought the base model because they didn't really understood the implications would just conclude that macOS is slow and unstable compared to Windows?

Hamuko 2y ago
The 13-inch iPad Pro is a ~$1300 PC that Apple will gladly sell with 8 GB of RAM.
- angoragoats 2y ago
  No, it's not. It's a $1300 high end tablet, which (among other things) will not run arbitrary programs of the user's choosing, and which has aggressive memory management and background process restrictions. All of these factors contribute to 8 GiB being a reasonable amount of memory for such a device.
- alpaca128 2y ago
  As far as I know even the newest iPad Pro is limited to 5GB per app, so if you use it for things like drawing in Procreate the 16GB upgrade does literally nothing.
  - Hamuko 2y ago
    Procreate's own layer limit calculator makes a distinction between the 8 GB and 16 GB chips. https://help.procreate.com/articles/YB7CjQ-maximum-layer-limit https://help.procreate.com/articles/YB7CjQ-maximum-layer-lim...
    - alpaca128 2y ago
      Thanks, last time I checked that supposedly wasn't the case. Though an increase of layers between ~10-25% seems a bit underwhelming for the RAM upgrade.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    You can definitely request more than that with the right entitlements.
foldr 2y ago
> your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time? The 8GB models could easily handle this kind of load.
- internetter 2y ago
  can confirm
- alpaca128 2y ago
  But they could barely do it without swapping in my experience. The OS alone takes 2GB or more (200MB just for spotlight iirc), a bit is used for graphics, and once you add a bunch of browser tabs and windows you're easily in a situation where RAM usage is permanently above 80%. You don't feel it as quickly on the M1 but by the time you notice lags it's already swapping 15GB, sometimes for no apparent reason. I still don't quite get it, on the 16GB Macbook I feel like I can do much more without exceeding 8GB usage.
  - foldr 2y ago
    Swapping is fine as long as performance remains acceptable. Obviously at some point it won't – the 8GB models do have limits. But these limits are often wildly exaggerated in this sort of discussion.

Hamuko 2y ago

The 13-inch iPad Pro is a ~$1300 PC that Apple will gladly sell with 8 GB of RAM.

angoragoats 2y ago
No, it's not. It's a $1300 high end tablet, which (among other things) will not run arbitrary programs of the user's choosing, and which has aggressive memory management and background process restrictions. All of these factors contribute to 8 GiB being a reasonable amount of memory for such a device.
alpaca128 2y ago
As far as I know even the newest iPad Pro is limited to 5GB per app, so if you use it for things like drawing in Procreate the 16GB upgrade does literally nothing.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  Procreate's own layer limit calculator makes a distinction between the 8 GB and 16 GB chips. https://help.procreate.com/articles/YB7CjQ-maximum-layer-limit https://help.procreate.com/articles/YB7CjQ-maximum-layer-lim...
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    Thanks, last time I checked that supposedly wasn't the case. Though an increase of layers between ~10-25% seems a bit underwhelming for the RAM upgrade.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  You can definitely request more than that with the right entitlements.

foldr 2y ago

> your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time? The 8GB models could easily handle this kind of load.

internetter 2y ago
can confirm
alpaca128 2y ago
But they could barely do it without swapping in my experience. The OS alone takes 2GB or more (200MB just for spotlight iirc), a bit is used for graphics, and once you add a bunch of browser tabs and windows you're easily in a situation where RAM usage is permanently above 80%. You don't feel it as quickly on the M1 but by the time you notice lags it's already swapping 15GB, sometimes for no apparent reason. I still don't quite get it, on the 16GB Macbook I feel like I can do much more without exceeding 8GB usage.
- foldr 2y ago
  Swapping is fine as long as performance remains acceptable. Obviously at some point it won't – the 8GB models do have limits. But these limits are often wildly exaggerated in this sort of discussion.