5 ms·

The 8GB RAM is kind of a deal breaker to me. If I could up that to 16, I'd most likely buy this. What was the reason for limiting it?

jdietrich 12y ago
Differentiation. The MacBook is designed to be the thinnest and lightest possible laptop that provides adequate performance for the majority of users. Users who need more ports or more performance are expected to opt for the 13" MacBook Pro Retina, which provides a far better price-performance ratio. Not unreasonably, Apple assume that most people who need large amount of RAM will also need a fast processor; Adding the option for 16GB on the MacBook would increase the size of the logic board for the benefit of a very small niche of users. Jony Ive has always been ruthless about avoiding feature creep, going back to the original G3 iMac and the highly contentious decision to drop legacy ports and the floppy drive.
Eric_WVGG 12y ago
Battery life is certainly part of it; RAM that isn’t being used still draws power. But isn’t the whole idea behind an ultra-portable that you make sacrifices for greater portability? The Pro isn’t getting dropped from the lineup… Augh why are we still having discussions about the specs on low-end/ultraportable laptops? Why do people think that every single laptop model should be tailored for their personal needs?
- barrkel 12y ago
  The single biggest thing that lengthens the useful lifetime of a PC is memory - as much as you can fit. There's compromises, and then there's hobbling.
  - simonh 12y ago
    It depends what your priorities are. If lightness and thinnes and battery life are top priorities, and making the RAM upgradeable or increasing the space on the board to provide that as an option compromises those, then a machine that makes that compromise is hobbled. The whole point of having more than one laptop design in your lineup is that they make different design tradeoffs.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  However, enough RAM prevents additional disk operations, which draw substantially more power, be it an SSD or spinning disk. Also, RAM typically draws very little power compared to other components (screen, etc, etc). The reason why we are still having discussions about the specs on low-end / ultraportable laptops is that they are so often almost useful, but take things one step too far.
bryanlarsen 12y ago
The entire motherboard is about the size of a single DIMM.
barrkel 12y ago
I had a similar problem with the MBA I bought (2012?), in order to get the maximum amount of RAM (4GB), I had to max out the expensive SDD too. To get 50 USD worth of RAM, I had to spend closer to 300+USD extra. And the biggest problem I have with it today is still lack of memory - it's fast enough for what I use it for, as a travel laptop (I run Windows 7 on it, mind).
kaolinite 12y ago
Apparently it's a limitation of the chipset. It can only support 8GB when soldered onto the board (16GB when unsoldered). Can't find the reference for it on Intel's website but it was discussed at length on the Accidental Tech Podcast (atp.fm) by John Siracusa.
- wyager 12y ago
  It's worth noting that, for some reason, Intel's specifications are almost always wrong when it comes to how much RAM you can use with a given processor. I've had a number of computers (one Apple, one non-Apple) where all the docs claimed that the max RAM was $X GB, when in reality it would work fine with $2X GB. I suspect Intel's listed max RAM specifications are based on some other engineering considerations than what is actually possible.
woof 12y ago
Lack of space. I own a 3 year old MacBook Air 11" with 4GB RAM and that works surprisingly well. It even runs Photoshop fairly good. I'd say 8GB is ok unless you do extensive image or video editing -and then the MacBook (or the Air) is not the right machine any way.
- EthanHeilman 12y ago
  Developers often use much more than 8GBs of RAM, especially if they are running VMs, databases, compiling code, running tests, IDEs and emulating smart phones. More and more I'm seeing a distinction in requirements between "user machines" and "engineer machines".
  - woof 12y ago
    My 4GB MacBook Air 11" is slow with Parallels, postgres, apache, emacs and the usual programs (mail, chat, multiple browsers etc.) -but usuable. Even my 3-4 years old MacBook Pro with 8GB was a little slow, but processor speed was the culprit. My year old MacBook Pro (2,4 i7) with 16GB is fast, but I have more memory then I actually need... I've even used it with three simultaneous Parallels instances (FreeBSD Server, FreeBSD CI and Windows 7 client) and it runs fine. 8GB memory is not a dealbreaker for me, I'd buy the new MacBook any day :)
  - eropple 12y ago
    I dunno--even as a developer (JVM, some Ruby) I honestly don't use that much RAM anymore now that I don't work for a company that thinks it is a grand idea to load eight gigs of crap into memory just to start the application server. I think we're moving towards much more composable systems that have much less need for fat memory specs. Even when working on my game in Windows I only have 4GB allocated to the VM (VS2015, C#).
  - cmsj 12y ago
    If you're doing all of those things at once, you want a MacBook Pro
jchendy 12y ago
Possibly just to make you buy a Pro?

jdietrich 12y ago

Differentiation. The MacBook is designed to be the thinnest and lightest possible laptop that provides adequate performance for the majority of users. Users who need more ports or more performance are expected to opt for the 13" MacBook Pro Retina, which provides a far better price-performance ratio. Not unreasonably, Apple assume that most people who need large amount of RAM will also need a fast processor; Adding the option for 16GB on the MacBook would increase the size of the logic board for the benefit of a very small niche of users. Jony Ive has always been ruthless about avoiding feature creep, going back to the original G3 iMac and the highly contentious decision to drop legacy ports and the floppy drive.

Eric_WVGG 12y ago

Battery life is certainly part of it; RAM that isn’t being used still draws power. But isn’t the whole idea behind an ultra-portable that you make sacrifices for greater portability? The Pro isn’t getting dropped from the lineup… Augh why are we still having discussions about the specs on low-end/ultraportable laptops? Why do people think that every single laptop model should be tailored for their personal needs?

barrkel 12y ago
The single biggest thing that lengthens the useful lifetime of a PC is memory - as much as you can fit. There's compromises, and then there's hobbling.
- simonh 12y ago
  It depends what your priorities are. If lightness and thinnes and battery life are top priorities, and making the RAM upgradeable or increasing the space on the board to provide that as an option compromises those, then a machine that makes that compromise is hobbled. The whole point of having more than one laptop design in your lineup is that they make different design tradeoffs.
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
However, enough RAM prevents additional disk operations, which draw substantially more power, be it an SSD or spinning disk. Also, RAM typically draws very little power compared to other components (screen, etc, etc). The reason why we are still having discussions about the specs on low-end / ultraportable laptops is that they are so often almost useful, but take things one step too far.

bryanlarsen 12y ago

The entire motherboard is about the size of a single DIMM.

barrkel 12y ago

I had a similar problem with the MBA I bought (2012?), in order to get the maximum amount of RAM (4GB), I had to max out the expensive SDD too. To get 50 USD worth of RAM, I had to spend closer to 300+USD extra. And the biggest problem I have with it today is still lack of memory - it's fast enough for what I use it for, as a travel laptop (I run Windows 7 on it, mind).

kaolinite 12y ago

Apparently it's a limitation of the chipset. It can only support 8GB when soldered onto the board (16GB when unsoldered). Can't find the reference for it on Intel's website but it was discussed at length on the Accidental Tech Podcast (atp.fm) by John Siracusa.

wyager 12y ago
It's worth noting that, for some reason, Intel's specifications are almost always wrong when it comes to how much RAM you can use with a given processor. I've had a number of computers (one Apple, one non-Apple) where all the docs claimed that the max RAM was $X GB, when in reality it would work fine with $2X GB. I suspect Intel's listed max RAM specifications are based on some other engineering considerations than what is actually possible.

woof 12y ago

Lack of space. I own a 3 year old MacBook Air 11" with 4GB RAM and that works surprisingly well. It even runs Photoshop fairly good. I'd say 8GB is ok unless you do extensive image or video editing -and then the MacBook (or the Air) is not the right machine any way.

EthanHeilman 12y ago
Developers often use much more than 8GBs of RAM, especially if they are running VMs, databases, compiling code, running tests, IDEs and emulating smart phones. More and more I'm seeing a distinction in requirements between "user machines" and "engineer machines".
- woof 12y ago
  My 4GB MacBook Air 11" is slow with Parallels, postgres, apache, emacs and the usual programs (mail, chat, multiple browsers etc.) -but usuable. Even my 3-4 years old MacBook Pro with 8GB was a little slow, but processor speed was the culprit. My year old MacBook Pro (2,4 i7) with 16GB is fast, but I have more memory then I actually need... I've even used it with three simultaneous Parallels instances (FreeBSD Server, FreeBSD CI and Windows 7 client) and it runs fine. 8GB memory is not a dealbreaker for me, I'd buy the new MacBook any day :)
- eropple 12y ago
  I dunno--even as a developer (JVM, some Ruby) I honestly don't use that much RAM anymore now that I don't work for a company that thinks it is a grand idea to load eight gigs of crap into memory just to start the application server. I think we're moving towards much more composable systems that have much less need for fat memory specs. Even when working on my game in Windows I only have 4GB allocated to the VM (VS2015, C#).
- cmsj 12y ago
  If you're doing all of those things at once, you want a MacBook Pro

jchendy 12y ago

Possibly just to make you buy a Pro?