Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM

filister@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 489 points –
Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM
9to5mac.com
296

You are viewing a single comment

I was using my 2016 (or so) MacBook Air the other day and getting low memory errors. I thought, wow, this thing only has 8 gb, maybe it's time to upgrade, just to see this 😐

My 2009 Mac mini had 8gb of RAM. And it wasn't even very expensive to do so when I did it in ~2013. Couple hundred bucks max.

Couple hundred bucks for 8 gigs of ram?

11 years ago. May very well have been less. Apples still probably charging more than that to go from 8 to 16 and I had to buy all 8 and replace both DIMMS.

Yeah I didn't even pay a hundred bucks for the 32GB of RAM in my current desktop, and it's DDR5.

Part of the difference is that the Apple silicon Macs aggressively use SSD swap to make up for limited memory. But that's at expense of the SSD lifespan, which of course isn't replaceable.

I'd never recommend a Mac, but the prices they charge to get a little more RAM or SSD over base are crazy. The only configurations offering any "value" are the base models with 8gb RAM.