4 ms·

On the one hand, sure, Apple loves to get that extra margin for more RAM and SSD, no doubt. On the other hand, the MacBook Air ships with 8GiB RAM standard, an

On the one hand, sure, Apple loves to get that extra margin for more RAM and SSD, no doubt. On the other hand, the MacBook Air ships with 8GiB RAM standard, and it's robustly popular. One could suppose that all those customers are suffering from the lack of RAM, or one could suppose that for many use cases, it's an adequate amount. The latter is more likely. macOS manages memory well, and a fast SSD means that swapping is fast enough that it often results in no visible delays to the user.

Wytwwww 2y ago
I'm not sure how can we tell. The Mac revenue has peaked back in 2022 and has been declining since. But assure, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad (i.e. at most a single app and/or browser and 8GB might be enough for that).
- samatman 2y ago
  How we can tell what? That they sell a lot of stock MacBook Airs? They do. I don't find the topic interesting enough to find a link, but I'm pretty confident on this one. > a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad A lot of people have pretty undemanding requirements in a laptop, yes. 8GiB is more than enough for some web browsing and light document editing, a bit of photo retouching, that kind of thing. There are many Chromebooks on the market right now with 4 GiB and they sell in numbers. The HN tilt trends toward systematically overestimating system requirements because development is fairly demanding of them.
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    > but I'm pretty confident on this one. I just doubt there is actual meaningful data available (at least that's publicly accessible). We'd need to measure the proportion of base config MBA users who regularly get OOM warnings? > many Chromebooks Yes. People just have different use cases. I mean almost nobody who does anything that might require > 16-32 GB of memory would likely buy this iMac (even if Apple sold such configs). It's an entirely different product than the 27 inch "Pro" iMacs with Xeons from back in the day. Hardly anybody "needs" a desktop PC these days (outside of gaming and some niche applications). So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops.
    - samatman 2y ago
      > regularly get OOM warnings Ah, yes that was why I asked what I did. I'm quite confident they sell a lot of stock MBAs, is what I said, as a guess at what we were trying to 'tell'. As for "low on application memory" warnings, macOS doesn't really do that unless the user is also out of swap. Offer may not be valid for XCode. My wild-ass guess is that users who need lots of RAM tend to know that when they buy computers, and that percentage wise, there are more over-provisioned Mac users than under-provisioned. But who knows. > So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops. Right. Apple market-segments their products pretty carefully, and the post-Pro iMac line is for receptionists, desktop publishing, light-duty visual/creative, the occasional desk-oriented email job, and so on. 16 GiB is a generous baseline for those tasks, and 8 GiB was probably adequate for most customers.

Wytwwww 2y ago

I'm not sure how can we tell. The Mac revenue has peaked back in 2022 and has been declining since. But assure, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad (i.e. at most a single app and/or browser and 8GB might be enough for that).

samatman 2y ago
How we can tell what? That they sell a lot of stock MacBook Airs? They do. I don't find the topic interesting enough to find a link, but I'm pretty confident on this one. > a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad A lot of people have pretty undemanding requirements in a laptop, yes. 8GiB is more than enough for some web browsing and light document editing, a bit of photo retouching, that kind of thing. There are many Chromebooks on the market right now with 4 GiB and they sell in numbers. The HN tilt trends toward systematically overestimating system requirements because development is fairly demanding of them.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > but I'm pretty confident on this one. I just doubt there is actual meaningful data available (at least that's publicly accessible). We'd need to measure the proportion of base config MBA users who regularly get OOM warnings? > many Chromebooks Yes. People just have different use cases. I mean almost nobody who does anything that might require > 16-32 GB of memory would likely buy this iMac (even if Apple sold such configs). It's an entirely different product than the 27 inch "Pro" iMacs with Xeons from back in the day. Hardly anybody "needs" a desktop PC these days (outside of gaming and some niche applications). So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops.
  - samatman 2y ago
    > regularly get OOM warnings Ah, yes that was why I asked what I did. I'm quite confident they sell a lot of stock MBAs, is what I said, as a guess at what we were trying to 'tell'. As for "low on application memory" warnings, macOS doesn't really do that unless the user is also out of swap. Offer may not be valid for XCode. My wild-ass guess is that users who need lots of RAM tend to know that when they buy computers, and that percentage wise, there are more over-provisioned Mac users than under-provisioned. But who knows. > So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops. Right. Apple market-segments their products pretty carefully, and the post-Pro iMac line is for receptionists, desktop publishing, light-duty visual/creative, the occasional desk-oriented email job, and so on. 16 GiB is a generous baseline for those tasks, and 8 GiB was probably adequate for most customers.