8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests::Apple’s new MacBook Pro models are powered by cutting-edge M3 Apple silicon, but the base configuration 14-inch model starting at $1,599…
For $1,599 you’d at least expect 16GB+ RAM given how cheap RAM is…
Apple loves under ramming (to give a word a new meaning) and forcing everyone to pay for upgrades. The problem is there are always people that buy the base.
deleted
Apple’s RAM isn’t as cheap as you might think, because it’s all built directly onto the CPU die. That’s part of what makes its computers so fast.
It’s iRAM!
Maybe we should all start calling it the “MacBook Semi-Pro”.
8gb ram has been common for over a decade now. It’s what I would expect in a sub-$400 laptop.
Or a raspberry pi.
$75, 8gb, and this isn’t even the latest model. https://www.microcenter.com/product/622539/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-8gb-ddr4
The LPDDR4X RAM in the Raspberry Pi isn’t QUITE the same as the on-die stuff in the M3 processor.
The MacBook amateur. They should be called out on a viral scale.
Ah it’s cool, you can just open the little door in the back and upgrade the RAM anytime you want.
Right??
Sir, this is apple.
Gotta buy their apple 5 point screwdriver
Open back
Remove adhesive & battery
Dismount motherboard and keyboard
Find out it’s soldered ram
Kill self
With a hot air rework station anything is upgradable, laptops, phones, babies… ok not babies, but like lots of other stuff.
Maybe, in the future, lamps will be permanently wired into house walls. Who even needs outlets? Just buy a new house if you don’t like the lamp anymore.
Isn’t that what ceiling recessed lights are?
Yeah, I get OP’s joke, but “permanent” doesn’t really apply to anything about houses. “Wired into wall” just means you need a screwdriver and a circuit breaker flip to change it, or maybe cutting into wall panels.
I mean it doesn’t matter if the house around the wiring falls apart first. Most modern construction is like one step above paper mache.
“Pro”
Ahem. Yeah right
The cpu is the M3, the same one they’ll put in the air. NOT a “pro” cpu, just a “pro” chassis.
With all the ports a pro needs, right. Right? 😅
I tell you what, i do love my lenovo x1 carbon. I used to have a real macbook pro from back in the day. Loved it. Upgradable, ports everywhere. Fast. Beautiful.
I had to move to Linux and a machine like the lenovo as i was not going to put up with 1 port and a fuck you very much.
However, they also have soldered in parts now, so next machine will be something else.
My 350€ three-year old phone has an SoC with 12GB of RAM.
With that kind of memory swapping, the soldered ssd gonna be toasts within 1 or 2 yrs. Its already a known problem in previous macbooks, where people runs memory intensive programs and find thier mac book dead after even 6 months to 1 yr
Does it swap to the SSD or does it use a compressed area of RAM?
From what i read the previous cases it uses the ssd. Thus the ssd write cycle maxed out after 6 months leaving the mac dead. And then Apple sent a replacement, the guy use it as he usually did, and in 6months dead again.
deleted by creator
And then wonder why Mac sales tanked 27% in their last financial report. Selling 8Gb laptops is an offence.
And seriously for their price, I would much prefer a laptop like Framework that I know I can easily swap components and make it workable even after a while.
My current phone, and my last phone both had more ram. For significantly less money.
100 percent in agreement that apples ram pricing is lunacy
But my brother. Wtf do you need that much ram in a phone for lol. Mine has 6gb (12 pro lmao) and that causes me zero issues. Granted, I don’t game on my phone. But is phone gaming really eating that much ram these days?
I also have 12 GB. There are usage patterns where additional RAM wull be useful or even necessary on a phone. When you have more RAM, the phone can sleep tasks and leave background apps alone without having to discard their contents from RAM. This means fewer cold startups. Also, more contents can be cached, which means faster app startups. Both of these techniques also reduce CPU usage and improve battery life. You can also achieve more tabs in your browsers and more and bigger apps running at the same time. More RAM also means fewer situations where swapping is done or needed, so additional CPU and disk cycles are saved and battery usage is reduced. Some apps will actually require more RAM or spin more when memory is scarce. Examples can be advanced content creation apps in audio, video, or picture/photography. Also, some games, especially in high settings.
Are these additional GBs necessary? No. And most people would not notice them, as even 6 GB is overkill for quite a number of peoples’ usage patterns. Your phone does maybe 95% of what it does just about as well, even when you have a low-midrange CPU and GPU that is from a few years ago, and just 4 or 6gb of RAM.
This holds true for iOS and Android. They’ve both done a fair bit of housekeeping and software improvements to reel in excessive resource usage gen over gen. I think Android was doing some catch-up here for a while, but I don’t know how they go toe to toe on this anymore, and it’s difficult to empirically compare the two in this area.
deleted by creator
Money is the bottleneck.
I have a 2015 Macbook for work reasons and I have no problem with it other than the battery being mostly kaput and that’s replaceable if I feel like paying someone to do it. When Apple stops supporting it, I’ll install Linux on it. When I finally have to buy another machine, I’ll probably just get a $300 Chromebook because I have another computer to run the work software and this Mac is now just a glorified web browser. But I’m sure as fuck not buying a Macbook.
I don’t have an Mac. How much RAM does it use just to turn it on? Windows 10 needs an astounding 4 GB just to see the desktop.
Windows RAM allocation depends on your ram size. If you have more ram, it will allocate more. Unused RAM is wasted RAM
Anecdotal evidence, but I’ve seen many old windows laptops with 8GB RAM use around 3-4GB on the desktop with no programs or background apps running.
Yes, 50% allocation is pretty normal and healthy.
At least 4GB, my previous employer was a young guy that was an Apple simp. He bought a bunch of Mac minis as desktop computers and they only had 4GB of RAM. They were the most garbage piece of shit computer I have ever had the displeasure of being forced to use. It really wasn’t even usable, it would lock up just trying to open any web browser or even the file explorer (or whatever Apple calls it). It really amazes me how Apple continues to shit in their customers mouths, tell them it’s chocolate ice cream and they believe them
Windows doesn’t use it all to load the desktop. It caches the rest so the files and software you use often loads faster. There’s also the reserved RAM for the hardware…
Every os uses certain % of ram to preload services and applications. So that when you launch them they open faster. And when they aren’t needed and you want to do ram intensive task, those unnecessary processes are killed.
I got gifted an old MacBook (I never thought of buying one myself) and started using it mainly because I liked the UI, but I’m generally speaking a windows user at work and Linux sysadmin at home.
When I checked up the MacBook systems, I see it has 4 GB of RAM and I thought “that’s pathetic!”
But surprisingly enough, the Mac OS handled everything I throw at him with decent performance and I’ve never felt the OS was overwhelmed.
I don’t know if this is a testament of how well integrated and optimised Mac OS is (after all, it’s still BSD) or how bad Windows is.
But still, for the price they’re charging for these machines, adding at least a couple of gigs of RAM would be expected!
I think Unix got a smidge better and windows got insanely bad.
