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That's dumb. You can hardly even buy a machine with 4GB of memory on sale, at any price. If you are making products that depend on people spending money on the

by dangus 7mo ago

That's dumb. You can hardly even buy a machine with 4GB of memory on sale, at any price. If you are making products that depend on people spending money on them, you generally don't have to care about broke people with 15 year old computers.

BugsJustFindMe 7mo ago
Not caring makes the world worse for everyone. All of us. Including you.
- dangus 7mo ago
  My main point isn’t about caring or not, the point is that 4GB RAM in a laptop/desktop is incredibly rare for how outdated it is. The PS4 came out in 2013 and has 8GB of RAM. In case you need help counting, that’s 13 years ago. And that’s an optimized game console with no general purpose operating system and limited multitasking capability. 10 years ago, Samsung phones were shipping with 6GB of RAM. Not many phones even physically last that long. My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
  - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
    The price of memory is insane, so if anyone wants to increase performance/dollar, they're likely going to have to do it in software. I would suspect 4Gb computers are going to come back if the hungry AI beast doesn't cool it soon.
    - dangus 7mo ago
      The RAM market will stabilize. These crazy spikes never last.
sonofhans 7mo ago
I must say, the irony of this comment in a thread about Apple moving down-market without losing quality is … well, it burns. Along with the arrogance: “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said. I was stuck once in a cabin in the woods with an old Android phone. I’m glad it still worked, and that people curating software experiences for it had more empathy — and more business sense — than this comment displays.
- andai 7mo ago
  What did Steve Jobs say?
- dangus 7mo ago
  Didn’t Steve Jobs basically say Apple didn’t know how to make a good computer for $500 and used that as a justification to not sell any products to the lowest priced area of the market? Found it, it was from an earnings call: https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/22/steve_jobs_on_apples_cash_netbooks_apple_tv_and_cheap_pcs https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/22/steve_jobs_on_app... There’s no irony here. The plain fact exists that 8GB of RAM has been considered not an especially exotic amount lot even on cheap on laptops and desktops for about a decade if not longer. $450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5000-2015 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5... The PS4 launched in 2013 and had 8GB of RAM with an operating system that barely multi-tasks.
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    Steve Jobs died in 2011. Did you check the specs of cheap laptops when SJ said that?
    - dangus 7mo ago
      Why does that matter? The point was that Apple has completely been uninterested in the bottom of the laptop market from 1976 to 2026, and there is therefore no irony in my statement that many businesses including Apple will purposefully ignore customers who do not have enough money to buy their stuff. From the first comment I responded to: > “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said. This commenter is wrong. This idea that the bottom of the market is below Apple is almost exactly what the quote from the earnings call said. Jobs effectively said “we only make mid to high end computers, someone else can take the serve the budget customers.” This is why I pointed out that most people employed making commercial software don’t have to concern themselves with the needs and desires of users on desperately outdated hardware, since those users can’t afford your product anyway. Of course, at the time Jobs was alive that number for RAM was below 8GB, but that specific number is not specifically relevant other than the fact that I brought it up as a general example of the standard of the day from around 10 years ago. I brought up a bunch of computing examples from the mid-2010s after Jobs’ death because they are about the oldest reasonable hardware you’d find around today, proof that even buyers of low-end hardware 10+ years ago were regularly getting more than 4GB of RAM. Apple’s base model MacBook Air in 2017 had 8GB of RAM. The 2015 model started with 4GB configurable to 8GB. The 12” MacBook from 2016 had 8GB RAM. So you literally have to go back a decade to find anything sold by Apple where getting less than 8GB was an option on the lowest possible configuration, never mind PC manufacturers who generally gave better specs per dollar and included socketed memory. But hey, Apple shills will shout from the rooftops that a 2026 laptop with 8GB of RAM is a good deal just because it’s $500 if you lie about your status as a student and pinky promise with Apple that you’ll never use the computer for commercial usage.
_dain_ 7mo ago
ebay
whyenot 7mo ago
How much memory does your parents and grandparents computers have? There are a lot of people out there with older computers, probably even some that you know :)
- dangus 7mo ago
  My parents have 8GB and 16GB, respectively. The computer with 8GB is 6 years old and it was the base model at the time. $450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5000-2015 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5... My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.

by dangus 7mo ago

BugsJustFindMe 7mo ago

Not caring makes the world worse for everyone. All of us. Including you.

dangus 7mo ago
My main point isn’t about caring or not, the point is that 4GB RAM in a laptop/desktop is incredibly rare for how outdated it is. The PS4 came out in 2013 and has 8GB of RAM. In case you need help counting, that’s 13 years ago. And that’s an optimized game console with no general purpose operating system and limited multitasking capability. 10 years ago, Samsung phones were shipping with 6GB of RAM. Not many phones even physically last that long. My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
- bigfishrunning 7mo ago
  The price of memory is insane, so if anyone wants to increase performance/dollar, they're likely going to have to do it in software. I would suspect 4Gb computers are going to come back if the hungry AI beast doesn't cool it soon.
  - dangus 7mo ago
    The RAM market will stabilize. These crazy spikes never last.

sonofhans 7mo ago

I must say, the irony of this comment in a thread about Apple moving down-market without losing quality is … well, it burns. Along with the arrogance: “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said. I was stuck once in a cabin in the woods with an old Android phone. I’m glad it still worked, and that people curating software experiences for it had more empathy — and more business sense — than this comment displays.

andai 7mo ago
What did Steve Jobs say?
dangus 7mo ago
Didn’t Steve Jobs basically say Apple didn’t know how to make a good computer for $500 and used that as a justification to not sell any products to the lowest priced area of the market? Found it, it was from an earnings call: https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/22/steve_jobs_on_apples_cash_netbooks_apple_tv_and_cheap_pcs https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/22/steve_jobs_on_app... There’s no irony here. The plain fact exists that 8GB of RAM has been considered not an especially exotic amount lot even on cheap on laptops and desktops for about a decade if not longer. $450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5000-2015 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5... The PS4 launched in 2013 and had 8GB of RAM with an operating system that barely multi-tasks.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Steve Jobs died in 2011. Did you check the specs of cheap laptops when SJ said that?
  - dangus 7mo ago
    Why does that matter? The point was that Apple has completely been uninterested in the bottom of the laptop market from 1976 to 2026, and there is therefore no irony in my statement that many businesses including Apple will purposefully ignore customers who do not have enough money to buy their stuff. From the first comment I responded to: > “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said. This commenter is wrong. This idea that the bottom of the market is below Apple is almost exactly what the quote from the earnings call said. Jobs effectively said “we only make mid to high end computers, someone else can take the serve the budget customers.” This is why I pointed out that most people employed making commercial software don’t have to concern themselves with the needs and desires of users on desperately outdated hardware, since those users can’t afford your product anyway. Of course, at the time Jobs was alive that number for RAM was below 8GB, but that specific number is not specifically relevant other than the fact that I brought it up as a general example of the standard of the day from around 10 years ago. I brought up a bunch of computing examples from the mid-2010s after Jobs’ death because they are about the oldest reasonable hardware you’d find around today, proof that even buyers of low-end hardware 10+ years ago were regularly getting more than 4GB of RAM. Apple’s base model MacBook Air in 2017 had 8GB of RAM. The 2015 model started with 4GB configurable to 8GB. The 12” MacBook from 2016 had 8GB RAM. So you literally have to go back a decade to find anything sold by Apple where getting less than 8GB was an option on the lowest possible configuration, never mind PC manufacturers who generally gave better specs per dollar and included socketed memory. But hey, Apple shills will shout from the rooftops that a 2026 laptop with 8GB of RAM is a good deal just because it’s $500 if you lie about your status as a student and pinky promise with Apple that you’ll never use the computer for commercial usage.

_dain_ 7mo ago

ebay

whyenot 7mo ago

How much memory does your parents and grandparents computers have? There are a lot of people out there with older computers, probably even some that you know :)

dangus 7mo ago
My parents have 8GB and 16GB, respectively. The computer with 8GB is 6 years old and it was the base model at the time. $450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5000-2015 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5... My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.