Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it
macworld.com
Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it::Apple still sells expensive "Pro" computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it::Apple still sells expensive "Pro" computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
Alternate title: Apple charges fortune for underspecced machines, morons still buy them
Please tell me, as someone who has not given Apple money in over a decade, how I am paying for this.
Apple fans will say with a straight face they can't use anything other than a Mac.
Apple fan here, and I love what they’ve done with hardware the last few years. That said…. I have to agree. Base RAM config is silly low, and higher RAM and SSD configs are stupid expensive. It’s a money maker for sure, I wish it wasn’t so obviously a cash grab. I’d be ok with a bit more padding in the base hardware price if the ram wasn’t so expensive to upgrade.
In the old days this was a moot point because you buy base config and immediately swap for after market big sticks- I did that for decades, but these days with soldered RAM and storage…. Eh, it’s a bit of a kick in the balls.
I am stoked for my new M3 next week though, good thing work pays for it!
Imagine if you had to buy it yourself. Really. Screw apple. I'm done with their blatant manipulation and control.
asking for contempt? ;-)
The closing sentence of the article....
"as Apple customers, we shouldn’t stand for it"
Apple customers....
"Here's my $200"
You missed a 0
"we're all paying for it"
Journalism these days is fucking awful
It's from a news organisation called "MacWorld". What were you expecting exactly?
Maybe not this specific thing, but Apple is super influential on the industry as a whole and when other companies see people tolerate Apple's bullshit, they follow suit.
Yep. I am reminded of 3.5mm audio jack being removed from phones because Tim Cook was 'brave'.
Well I do think the high cost of expansion RAM in Apple products is tied to school shootings, gerrymandering, and the prison industrial complex.
That is in the context of “Apple customers”.
Just a thought.
If I'm being generous, it's macworld.com speaking to an audience of Apple users.
But no, I am not paying for it. I'm over here drooling at M1 chips, but then stopping when I see the baggage that comes with it.
Ms are only worth drooling over as far as power consumption. Relatively cheap 7840u outperforms M2 in every benchmark. I9s are just in a completely different league.
I'll wait for Snapdragon X Elite from a more reasonable company or a RISC-V chip in a Linux laptop if stars really align.
How? How am I paying for Apple's shortcomings?
Well, every competitor to Apple used to have expandable storage on their flagship phones. Removable batteries too that were a breeze to replace if they went bad. They all copied apple, and terrible storage and glued in batteries that are hard to replace is standard now. U have to pay 100 x what a micro SD for the same amount of storage would be, and replacing a battery, while possible to do on your own now requires special knowledge and tools. If you're building your own PC, it probably doesn't affect your PC, but laptops have also followed suit. Glued in batteries/ hard drives are the norm, and it's way harder to modify a shelf model laptop than it was 10 years ago. Apple is the King of enshittification. I'm so tired of companies copying them and all their greedy, customer fucking moves.
i'm still mad about the headphone jack.
Often the cheaper models from a company will have a headphone jack. Sadly the moment you go for a higher model they expect you to use wireless headphones ( cause you got money anyway right...right).
that also means that they can add the headphone jack to the more expensive ones, but they won't because you pay more money for the device... how does that make sense?
Because capitalism
Yes, with the exception of Sony. All their phones have headphone jacks.
They did remove them but the outcry from customers we so bad they put them back on immediately.
I have the Xperia 10iii and love it. I use the headphone jack all the time. And the SD card of course. I couldn't imagine using a phone with headphone jack and SD card slot.
I almost included that in the rant lol, but it was long enough
Modularity/expand-ability comes at a cost. Both monetary cost and performance cost. We used to have gpus with expandable memory but we dont anymore.
Thats because by having the memory integrated into the board, we can put it much closer to the chip, greatly increasing the bandwidth and lowering the latency. This is exactly what Apple has done with its memory and why it isnt expandable anymore. Apple's memory is 5x+ faster than ddr5 in terms of bandwidth. Also you fully take advantage of the entirety of the available memory bus, instead of having empty lanes chilling for potential upgrades.
By having an integrated battery, you can have the battery have all kinds of wacky shapes that fill your design better.
Having a microsd slot takes a lot of space and can result into a significant degraded user experience if the user uses a slow microsd. And even a fast microsd is slower than integrated storage.
All these things are possible but they come with some sacrifices. Part of the change is because of enshittification but some changes is because they make sense.
"We" is referring to Apple customers.
Yea this is a Macworld article.
Memory is memory. Apple's attempt at branding these machines as "different" as if they were more efficient at using that memory, is absolutely fucking stupid. These Pro machines are used for large file operations like videos, and their response is simply "guess you need to pay more".
I feel like they're trying to get back to the PPC days where generally available parts are not cheap. I hope plenty of cheap alternatives show up on Newegg or wherever. Fuck this bullshit.
Definitely not true hardware-wise. L2 cache is different from DDR3 RAM is different from DDR4 RAM... in price and performance
Software-wise, yes, the operating system abstracts away the differences and memory is memory
Apple's memory upgrade costs are probably 90% usual Apple bullshit pricing, 10% grounded in reality. I'm thinking that the 10% may be something like the motherboards are designed without memory upgrades in mind, so if you want more RAM, they have to use a special mobo which they prefab less of
Apple's "memory upgrade" is making the claim that you can do with half for the same amount of work on x86. It is 100% untrue.
You tried to delve into speed. But speed won't outpace a 1TB video file you're trying to edit. If you're working with smaller chunks of smaller files that have fast operations ONLY, then make claim as such. This is a ploy for upgrade cash, plain and simple. Nothing about these chips moves the needle on memory usage BY HALF. What a dumbass thing to assert as a company.
Apple's claim isnt 100% untrue tbh. It depends on the operations actually. Arm processors have at least 12 registers to contain data or references to memory. A program does need more ram space on a x86 processor, as it only has like 4 registers afaik ( correct me if im wrong! ) so it needs to push data more often to the stack.
This means that the m* processors has to generally save less info in memory. However, data is still data and you still need memory to contain the data youre processing so you still need the ram. So like, when doing video work that apple claim is utter bullshit. Raw calculations however might not be so much bullshit
For many memory intensive operation, this is incorrect since by that logic, Apple's chip should use far more memory due to having quarter as many registers for those purpose. (32x64 vs. 32x256)
Most processors have cache memories for reasons you stated.
Correct, cache exists for that reason. But youre still loosing time and space by saving it to memory ( cache is just faster acccess for the cpu. Its still in ram or in the pipeline to be pushed to ram on next flush ).
Also true, per thread you would need more memory to save the cpu's state when switching threads. Now i kinda want to do some calculations and tests to see at what point it gets better.
I always figured that per thread more memory is needed, but that the thread itself needed less memory ( or time to access it ) because it can contain more temp values in the cpu's registers.
Again though, there claim is bullshit or not totally depends on the kind of work youre doing and for video work i consider it bullshit as well :')
A semi isn't a Ford F150. That's the end of that argument.
Memory speed doesn't really matter if your apps start thrashing
Edit: thrashing is very likely to occur on something marketed as "pro". I have a work PC with 8gb of RAM, and my job requires me to edit video. I need to be careful on how big my video files are, because it WILL start thrashing. This is the reality. Professional apps require a lot of memory pages, and they are never open on their own.
Edit 2: I guess the thoughts from a computer scientist are less important than corporate marketing.
Apple uses a unified memory where the memory chips are embedded on the SoC in the first place. The memory modules are on the same silicon wafer the chip is cut from, not separately on the Mobo, and shared directly with the chip in a single pool of memory that the CPU and GPU can access, rather than dedicated memory for each.
Changing the memory means cutting a different piece of silicon for it.
The SoC and memory are separate dies with different manufacturing processes. In the case of M2 it was TSMC for the SoC and SK Hynix for the memory.
When it comes time to package them together, the SoC and memory are soldered to a interposer layer. So the only difference is which size memory chips they solder together for the different memory configurations available.
That's like building a fast car that can only go straight. It's impressive but short-sighted and therefore stupid.
There are specific performance benefits to soldering your memory to the board or making them part of the main die itself. It’s why GPUs have been doing it for a long time, and why laptops with soldered ram can often achieve higher clocks and lower latency than their socketed counterparts. It’s a tradeoff, but a calculated one. I’m sure Apple also adds the extra revenue from absurd upgrade costs into their calculations.
Somebody has never been to a top fuel drag race. Impressive does not even begin to describe what those “fast cars that can only go straight” are capable of.
Ha ha. Most people don't use their laptops exclusively for one single thing. I sometimes need a laptop that can go fast but more often it needs to be able to many different things. And some years later, let me swap in some more RAM and an SSD to give it another few good years.
This is 100% false. All Apple Silicon Macs use standard LPDDR4X or LPDDR5 memory chips, the same as are used in other computers, which are soldered on a PCB next to the SoC. They are not on the same die. The high memory bandwidth on M1/M2/M3 comes from having a lot of memory controllers built into the SoC -- it's akin to a PC with an 8+ channel memory setup. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing technically preventing Apple from making an Apple Silicon mac with socketed memory again, other than those sweet sweet profits for shareholders.
I mean why let them bullshit even 10% ?
"There might be some hard to find small benefit here, maybe."
That just sounds like you want it to be true, but deep down you know it isn't.
Shit like this is apple play book from the nineties, especially "we need less ram" and "our clock cycles are better".
It wasn't.
I absolutely love Apple Silicon—the performance to power ratio is wonderful, and the high-speed memory makes things like LLMs work great—but the RAM upcharge is insane, and shipping anything "Pro" with 8GB of RAM should be criminal in 2023.
I really hope that Qualcomm can make some noise with their new laptop/desktop processors. Anything to light a fire under Apple's ass and make them stop skimping on RAM.
I cannot +1 this hard enough. There was once upon a time, back in the Darwin days, when I had my eyes on a Macbook as my next computer. Apple Silicon almost got me there again. I'm itching for a Snapdragon X Elite Oryon OMGLOLBBQ SBC, but I'm not holding my breath. I bet laptop makers snap up all the chips for 2024, and then I get one in 2025.
Which LLM are you running on your macbook?
Not an LLM, but stable diffusion runs on them.... Very slowly due to extreme swap usage.
Microsoft's exclusivity deal with Qualcomm expires soon, so there should be more options coming around. After all this time, RISC will finally change everything (without getting into the technical details of how it did already).
Damn, even my phone got 8GB memory
My phone (pixel 6 pro) has 12gb and it's a 2021 model. It's outrageous a pro laptop only has 8.
My phone is a Galaxy A52 from 2021. Not even a flagship. It costed me around $500 new.
My phone (Moto G Stylus 5G 2022) costed $300 and has 8GB RAM and 256GB storage
It seemed obvious to me that they do this so that they can say the MBP costs “as low as X”, but in fact everyone needs to pay at least $200 more
We are? Pretty sure I ain't.
Yeah, I'm not complaining either
RAM is boring... THE FINISH IS TITANIUM!!!
THAT'S LITERALLY OUR ENTIRE MARKETING CAMPAIGN!
Yes. Unfortunately people who buy Apple don't care. This is what happens when you prioritise brand and design over functionality. You end up paying more for the brand (worse shit, but hey you can feel good about buying such a great product!).
As an Apple user: I do care. However, the alternative is using Windows, which makes me wanna punch my monitor at least once a month. And I’m not even using it as a primary OS.
I don’t prioritize design and don’t care about brand at all but I care about a frust free experience and I just don’t have that with windows.
Running a hackintosh was less frustrating than using windows on the very same hardware…
If Linux supported the software and the features I need/want, I would very much just use that
There are things in Mac that also make me want to punch my monitor. No tree view in Finder, so I have to open two windows to copy stuff? No titles in the launcher so I have to scroll over all the windows to find the one I need? It's a nightmare for working with documents. I much prefer windows for that.
What does Windows do to make you want to punch your monitor?
For example (and that is only one out of many over the years), on my one PC search just refused to work. Windows search isn’t great but not having it is even worse than that and no matter what I did, neither the search in the Start menu nor in the Explorer worked. Couldn’t type in anything. If I opened the on screen keyboard, it did work but not with my physical one. I even reinstalled Windows from scratch and it worked for a few weeks and then stopped again. No one why. Only got fixed once I went back to Win 10.
Another Example is Microsofts over-insistence to force Edge, bing, OneDrive, Office365, etc. on you. It feels like, once a month, when I log in, I get a splash screen to please subscribe to one of those services and also use Bing and also, they put the Edge icon back onto my Desktop.
It’s things like those that just annoy the shit out of me. I want to use my PC, not to constantly fix it. And it’s a myriad of other thing like that. Some small, some bigger.
It’s not that macOS is better in every way, there are a few things Windows undoubtedly does better (like having a keyboard shortcut to open the file explorer) but for my day to day use, macOS has kept out of my way and just done what it’s supposed to. And sadly macOS is a package deal with Macs, which are great, hardware wise but also very expensive. But considering the software advantage, the Apple tax is worth it, at least to some extent
I personally never had much problems with Windows 11, but I fully understand the edge frustration. I used MacOS for many years, but not without tweaking and porting the hell out of it. The problem with Apple for me is their lack of reparability and the absurd prices of their hardware. I now mostly use Linux, although it's far from perfect and nowhere near as good as some claim, so I'm still forced to stick with Windows.
Use "everything" by VoidTools to search the file system. It's the perfect search tool, very powerful and lightning fast.
Noted. Does it also start programs?
You can click on the files it shows, and if it's a .exe file you can start the program
So it’s not useful for that. But having a decent search is defs a pro.
It's even worse when you consider there's no dedicated video memory, so this is shared between graphics and the rest of the system.
*fan bois are paying for it
I can't believe that Apple would do this. It's so not like them to cripple great machines with one horrendous bottleneck. Like could you imagine if they released an iMac in 2020 that they sold until the release of the M1 iMac that had a 1TB hard drive in it as a boot device? That'd be insane.
Hah, I just wrote a comment about how they used to ship computers back in the 90's that had resistors in them to make them slower, so they could sell cheaper "budget" versions of their faster computer models.
This is a prime example of how capitalism "innovates".
He's paying for it. Many of us don't buy Apple products.
Managed my whole life just fine without ever owning a single apple product.
back in the day my ipods each died within two weeks (original and replacement), I have not given a cent to this company since then
I recently had to replace my Mac and was not at all happy with the ridiculous 8GB default. Ended up getting my first Windows machine in 10+ years. Same for my sis, she really wanted a Mac but work was only going to shell out $1500. You can get a helluva Windows machine for $1500 (64GB of RAM and 2TB HD). Sure it may not be “Retina” or have an insane color profile, but like great TVs, most people can’t tell unless they’re right next to a superior one.
Having had multiples of windows and linux laptops in the past, I’ve gotta say that one can’t put a price on convenience and UX. I never liked using a laptop, carrying one around, especially working with one, until I ate my pride and tried a MacBook.
This is entirely subjective though. Previously I always compared the specs like that too, but I’ve come to realize there’s plenty more to these products beyond what can be listed in the spec sheet and easily compared like that.
But this is neither here or there, just that your message rang an old bell, and I thought I’d just chime in. I hope you have a great time with the new computers, we humans have different tastes and needs 😌
Can you elaborate further on the benefits? I have a Mac mini M1, a MacBook Pro M2, a more powerful Lenovo laptop, a more powerful Dell XPS, and a more powerful windows desktop (on paper).
I don't use them a lot, but thus far, I struggle to find any benefit to MacOS. I use them because I have to and, generally, no longer than that. I mean, I might as well use Linux at that point and make my life easier and productivity faster. Mac keyboard shortcuts are an absolute nightmare to me (but maybe I'm just not used to them?)
I must be missing something, because some people swear by them.
Agree with you fully on the shortcut front, and it's very confusing that ctrl is separate from the command key. The whole keyboard layout is also a nightmare, but this is probably because I'm in Sweden, where the Swedish mac keyboard layout is radically different from the normal Swedish keyboard layout that all other computers use. When I help out someone with programming on a mac, I always end up telling them "please press pipe" or tilde, braces, backslash, or even at-sign, as these are not printed on the keys. They are accessible through the option key, but you'll have to test all combinations to find which one is where and memorize this.
Battery life is crazy good. Nothing windows based can even get close right now.
The trackpad is a step above anything else on the market.
I rarely use keyboard shortcuts. There’s never been a need for them imo. I don’t like using shortcuts on my windows machines either, preferring the mouse. The few shortcuts I do use are from the trackpad, which are a few fairly intuitive gestures.
The fact that mainstream software runs on them is a massive draw as well. Final Cut, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc all won’t run on any Linux distro.
If you don’t use any laptop often, it’s probably not going to be worth it. But if you need a high performance laptop they’re pretty much the best option outside of price
Not everyone prioritizes productivity and fastness. It’s entirely subjective, and you probably just aren’t one of those that see and feel the benefits of it, and that’s entirely valid too 😌
Personally I am a software engineer with a creative streak, enhanced by adhd, so I guess the combination of those and all of the rest of me just results in me performing better, more focused and more at home with a mac. I doubt there’s a way to quantify that in any objective sense, not for me anyway. Maybe a psychologist could explain.
What I can say, is a lot of my work I do moving around, so having a device I actually can bother to carry with me without disdain is a big plus, so the weight and form factor helps a lot there I think. And the battery, for sure. And the speed at which I can quit and resume work. All of these also mesh well with my adhd, which tends me towards moving a lot and taking a lot of pauses in between work sessions.
And I tend to drop my devices a lot, and so far the Apple products have been the only ones to sustain that 😅
"yeah, could you please get me that unusable os, with the impossible shortcuts, I like to do things differently." What are you talking about. Even if I'm casually using my pc, why wouldn't I use shortcuts to make better use of it? Especially after paying a huuuuge premium for the device?
The conclusion that I get from you is: I know it's not as usable, but I like it so much, I'll say productivity is not the main goal. I really don't get it. Especially as you are a programmer.
Also, I don't know how one could get a "at home" vibe with unusable shortcuts and an ecosystem that fucks its users on the regular ...
Might come off as harsh or mean, but that's not my intention, I really just don't get it ^^
Well, the shortcuts are customizable, and as a prior emacs enthusiast, I’ve never encountered unusable or impossible shortcuts.
But then again, this is subjective, so we can’t really argue about that my dude.
To me, all of it is convenient. Shortcuts included. The conclusion you drew is just a projection from your point of view, and as such, it’s understandable, but none of that is anything akin to what I am saying…
Yeah, I guess you're right.
Apple pc are just way more efficient and have way longer battery live because they use arm. Of course, you don’t need a mac to use arm, but macOS is supported by many apps while linux and windows for arm are not that far in software support. Additionally, the hardware of apple PCs is always good and having same quality shell/hardware on non apple devices is nearly as expensive as an Apple pc. I prefer linux and FOSS but many people think they need proprietary software and FOSS is just not convenient enough (where they are wrong, most FOSS is very convenient)
I could get a beefy windows machine for the price of my M2 air. I'm a software dev and I've recently switched from Windows 10 box and Linux laptop.
If you look at the other top stories on Technology, you see:
For last month, MS was pastering me to create a web account to login to my old win10 machine.
And essentially, MS got me soo tired with all this bullshit, that I've switched to Apple. And the only thing that I have to be aware of, is that it often makes sense to wait before upgrading system version.
I dont't understand how anyone is skimping on memory.... All the memory fabs (micron, samsung, etc)took huge hits this year because of low prices and low sales
Shouldn't companies be filling their devices to the brim with RAM? Is this just greed? What happened to the saying "cheap as chips"?
A lot of people are buying these machines with 8GB or shelling out for the upgrade. Win/win for Apple unfortunately.
I mean when 70% of the public doesn’t use a computer for anything more demanding than streaming Netflix, office work, and paying bills 8gb is plenty. Sure the base model MacBook Air is still $1000 but for that you get a better screen, an exponentially better operating system than windows, an all aluminum case, and a machine that will still be in good shape 10 years from now. Hell my home computer is a 2014 MacBook Pro and performance wise that thing will still go toe to toe with windows machines built much more recently lol.
Can you get a similarly performing windows machine for less? Sure, if and only if by similar performance you mean you are only looking at processing power. Cuz it’ll be a cheap plastic piece of shit with a clunky os full of bloatware that you have to fiddlefuck around with to get it back to how you want it every time they push out a software update. And you’ll be lucky if it’s still running 5 years from now. Buy a MacBook, take it out of the box, and you’re done. That’s worth a lot to a lot of people.
My mom has a 2013 macbook pro which is still chugging along, except apple stopped updating the root certs, so some https sites are breaking
Yes, it's apple, of course it's greed.
Narrator: it was
Damn. I wish there was some other alternative
I doubt the average Apple customer even looks at specs. They just see the Apple badge and are sold.
I buy and use Macbook Pros for work (web dev), and I do look at specs. And yeah, 8GB is ridiculous and the upgrade prices are absurd. Amazingly good machine, though.
I’m in a similar position but reversed. I’ve worked in various levels of support, almost always on Microsoft systems.
My home setup for automation, streaming media and containered apps is Linux. For personal everyday use I use a MacBook Air.
I’m in the Apple ecosystem because it just works, I don’t have to tinker like I do with Linux, or fix some random new bug or issue like on Windows.
I will say, in 5ish years when my Air starts to lag I’ll probably replace MacOS with Linux and rock that until I absolutely have to replace the hardware. Then hopefully the Framework type setups have grown and I’ll be able to go with something like that.
Or next year when you have literally any sort of hardware issue that Apple refuses to fix, or allow anyone else to fix, and tells you "tough shit, buy a new one".
It’s always a possibility of a hardware issue but I take that risk with any piece of equipment. My experience with my Apple products has been great! Obviously everybody’s experiences are different.
My first Apple computer, a 2011 MacBook Pro, is still running and used regularly by my niece and nephews. The few times I’ve needed Genius Bar help on hardware it’s been fixed or replaced free of charge.
Totally get that some people haven’t been as lucky and don’t like Apple or their products.
No you don't. You take that risk exclusively with Apple products.
This isn't about anyone's personal experience.
That product is from a bygone era where you could upgrade and repair your Apple devices very easily, like any other computer.
Again, this is not about anyone's personal experiences, and it's not about what people "like". This is about throwing buckets of cash at a company that repeatedly pisses in your face and tells you it's raining. Apple has no respect for their customers, but their customers will continuously lick their boots regardless. It's fucking sad and infuriating and people like you are responsible for the erosion of society as a whole.
Ok 👍
I’ve been having a bitch of a time with getting Plex and home assistant running properly on this old windows machine I picked up for $35 last week. Maybe I should create a Linux partition and give it a go.
the machine is 13 years old (Inspiron 3647) and only ha 6gb of ram and I keep running into memory capacity issues (I’ve also got a weird issue where, whenever I turn on my VPN I lose my internet connection). I’ve already spent another $30 putting an SSD in there and I’m not keen on spending another $20 on ram. I’m betting Ubuntu would run better than Win 10. What do you think?
My experience is that it does run better however, depending on your media file types and player, plus if you’re sharing externally, memory is important.
Most of my content is in a format all of our playback devices can use so no transcoding typically but I share externally with extended family. I upgraded from an old OptiPlex running Windows with 16gb of RAM to an Asus Mini computer to reduce power consumption and have a better processor to support more streams.
No matter which OS you use, I’d recommend running in containers.
I’ll see how stable everything is with this machine on Ubuntu and if I run into memory problems will upgrade the ram. Just hate to spend nearly double on upgrades than I paid for the machine.
You may not be the average Apple customer.
I would hope if your paying over $1,000 on something you do at least some cursory light research on what your buying. That goes for a Cellphone, a bed, drugs, or a macbook.
Worse even. They only look to screen size and how many lenses the phone has. That is enough for them to order the phone without even knowing what is better inside. They don't care as their point is:" if apple made it then it must be faster and I don't care or know how much faster".
I am from a family where everyone uses apple and they are all tech illiterate. I'm the only one with an android as I want my device to be customisable to me.
laughing from my 64gig 1000 eur tuxedo :p
Nah bro, we are all NOT. I would only touch a Apple product if it had tits.
Unfortunately, Apple's worst habits trickle down to other manufacturers who see what they manage to get away with and start taking notes.
This is what I worry about. I'd say that people should vote with their wallets, but that doesn't do anything because every manufacturer follows along on stupid trends like this. Hopefully it dies at Apple this time and doesn't spread.
My next laptop is going to be a user upgradable one, maybe a framework. Apple can s my d.
What apple choices have gone on to affect the PC market?
My comment wasn't about PCs specifically, but consumer devices as a whole. Soldered RAM is an easy one, but soldered SSD, USB-C-only laptops, lack of 3.5mm, internal batteries, use of glue in manufacturing, etc. In many of these cases you can probably find another manufacturer who did it first on a specific model, but what Dell or HTC or whoever did simply doesn't influence the market the way Apple's decisions do.
I'll never understand brand loyalty, for the price of a Mac you can get a machine that's 10x more powerful with the same software being available in Windows.
Except a lot of the software isn't available. There are pros and cons to both. I've done windows, Linux and now I have a MacBook. It's better than Linux and Windows in a lot of ways but also worse in a lot of ways.
You can't get a machine this powerful. Intel/amds laptop chips are blown out of the water by apple silicon. If you try to match all the specs you'll struggle to get many offerings below the price apple charge.
You can match the performance just fine, it's the performance per watt that's the issue... and AMD's CPU division is not making it easy on Apple (ref AMD promises its new laptop chips will crush the Apple M2 - and it’s got receipts)
If you get the CPU performance you can't get the battery life performance. Apples the only manufacturer that manages this. Their price reflects the reduced amount of compromises they make. If you really need good performance across the board in a laptop, the value is their. If you need a browser and office suite on a budget, the value isnt their.
Unfortunately, they still can't figure out thermals. So your CPU by default bottlenecks itself to protect the silicon.
I've always been interested in if there were a way to bake more RAM onto these boards. Presumably the pads are there and they're just not populated, so could you make a stencil for the solder balls with a cnc and buy another RAM chip and stick it in to one of those directed heat platforms. Would macos accept that, or would it throw a hissy fit because of miss matched licenses.
Knowing how hard Apple locks down their hardware, I'm sure each RAM module has some sort of signature that disallows this sort of thing.
I remember back in the 90's when some Macintosh computers came with resistors making them slower, so that Apple could sell "budget" models of their faster line of computers.
We were savvy and would remove them, but I bet 99% of buyers had no clue and just went along with it.
How did that work? Some kind of jumper that set the clock rate?
I have honestly no clue, it was a long time ago, but I could imagine many ways a simple resistor could impact overall performance to a very specific degree.
The person that can somehow manage to successfully fool Scrooge TimCook to download more RAM deserves my absolute respect.
Exactly! I bought the last Mac Mini with upgradeable ram and got it from 8gb to 64gb for less than going to 16gb factory installed would cost me. After this one is done, I'm not sure I can justify buying another one.
No, YOU are all paying for it 😏
There's something called "PC"s out there. They can even play games .
Apple fans that would buy this vs Taylor swift fans. Who would win?
Those charts pissed me off. And I'm someone people mistakenly would call a fanboi because I generally love the platforms. Fuck off, Apple.
Yeah MacOS has the best virtual memory system of any major OS (if you’re running Linux try https://github.com/Tookmund/Swapspace, it’s excellent!) so most people don’t care, because they never really run out of memory. But 8GB is inexcusable for a “Pro” product, and their upcharges for RAM are laughably priced.
Edit: I said that MacOS has the best virtual memory system of modern OS’s. I stand by that. I also criticized Apple for their asinine pricing, which I stand by.
I got downvoted for those statements
Let’s compare virtual memory systems
Windows uses a pagefile, similar to how MacOS handles virtual memory. However, when an application needs more memory on the fly, the Windows subsystem throws an out of memory error. You can for loop a try/catch until the pagefile size changes, but if someone has hardcoded the pagefile size in their prefs, or windows hasn’t finished generating a larger pagefile, it will continue to throw a memory error. All windows memory requests are the same, but windows only virtualizes the requests off hardware once the memory pressure is too high.
Linux uses swap. You either have swap partitions or swap files. Both are manually specified in size. If you exceed the size of the swap partition or swap file, out of memory error. That can be avoided by using the software I referenced above, which will generate a new swap file on the fly as your memory pressure builds. Again, Linux allows all memory requests to be on hardware until the RAM is full, and then begins storing memory to swap.
All of MacOS memory is virtualized. Applications requesting real hardware memory are always getting virtual memory pages. As memory pressure increases, so does the size of hyberfil.sys, the Mac pagefile, but applications can request more memory, and get it allocated, with no out of memory errors, it’s seamless. When you know your hardware is running on a fast SSD, you can do that because for most users it’s not noticeable in their day to day activities. But pro users need hardware memory for things like video editing. So MacOS let’s you request wired memory but is limited based on the total memory usage, after you request wired memory, your requests are granted but potentially granted and then returned on request as being passed through to virtual memory, if necessary when the memory pressure is too high.