Apple's Regular Mac Base RAM Boosts Ended When Tim Cook Took Over

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/26/apple-mac-base-ram-boosts-ended-tim-cook/

by retskrad • 2 years ago

66 98 2 years ago

macrumors.com

aurareturn5• 2 years ago

Many Lenovos and Dells also started with 8GB in 20223.

Yes, Cook is not a product innovator. But I think market forces had more to do with it:

1. Cloud computing moved heavy workloads to data centers so RAM usage is lower locally

2. RAM $/GB has slowed down considerably starting at around the time Cook took over. [0]

3. Businesses/people focused more on mobile software and hardware performance over the last 15 years. More people are doing business on their phones.

[0]https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/memorytrend...

buildbuildbuild• 2 years ago

Local RAM may see a comeback with local/private LLMs.

aurareturn5• 2 years ago

Agreed. If RAM demand picks back up due to local LLMs/GenAI, Apple can increase the base to 16GB and still have plenty of people who will upgrade to 32GB+.

The situation right now is that Apple wants the 8 to 16GB upgrade money. But if they increase the base to 16GB, there aren't enough 16GB to 32GB upgrades to cover the deficit. This is due to the reasons I posted previously.

I'm currently on a 16GB MBP M1. For my next upgrade, I'm considering an M4/M5 Max with 128GB+ to run local models. Without local GenAI, I have little interest in more than 32GB of RAM. 16GB is actually enough for me.

kjkjadksj• 2 years ago

Consumers are not offshoring their chrome tabs to the cloud

vuln• 2 years ago

If Chrome knows that users leave open an insane amount of tabs which kills performance why wouldn’t they have a built in mechanism to suspend the content on the tabs until it’s necessary? Why does there need to be 3rd party ad on to do the same. Why doesn’t the Chrome team write unbloated code? The binaries just keep getting bigger and bigger. While consumer hardware typically stays about the same with less incremental upgrades.

aurareturn5• 2 years ago

I had 50+ tabs opened on my M1 8/256GB as a dev while running an IDE and a few local servers.

It was fine.

I hardly think that the general mass has problems with Chrome on a 8/256 Apple Silicon Mac.

Almondsetat3• 2 years ago

What do you know about consumers and their computer usage?

singhrac• 2 years ago

I think it’s less about $/GB (though that always matters) and more about power usage. As much as people love having 16GB of RAM, the extra memory will get used (fill RAM then swap right?) and active LPDDR5 memory uses quite a bit of power I think.

nullindividual3• 2 years ago

Low Power DDR5 [0][1] uses 20% less power than LPDDR4X.

[0] https://semiconductor.samsung.com/dram/lpddr/lpddr5/

[1] https://www.jedec.org/news/pressreleases/jedec-updates-stand...

nottorp5• 2 years ago

My 18 Gb mbpro is currently at 80% battery and estimates 12 hours left. Isn't that enough? ;)

bushbaba• 2 years ago

SSD speeds have also increased. Prior swap space was incredibly slow, where as today it’s slower than ram but not always human noticeable for many tasks.

newsclues2• 2 years ago

But ssds are not repairable so it’s going to decrease life of your primary storage.

I’d be fine with my MacBooks 8gb of ram if there was a m.2 slot for storage

Almondsetat3• 2 years ago

Swapping constantly kills SSDs though, this is not a good argument. The reality is that power users who should buy an upgraded model like to complain about the base one and the ones petty enough to deliberately go with the 8GB report quick SSD wear because they are overloading it with processes

StillBored• 2 years ago

SSD speed as measured by bandwidth.

The latency numbers have barely moved in a decade. And swap in operations are 100% a latency test, best reflected by qd=1 random 4k read (well 16k on a mac, but the point remains since the IOP numbers will be roughtly the same with a 4x larger bandwidth at 16k). It's rare to see an SSD that can even do 100MB/sec qd1 random read, and the numbers largely seem to be going backward as the number of bits being packed into each cell increases (ex MLC->QLC) on many products.

Bandwidth has always been easy, I had spinning RAID arrays that were faster than your average SSD 15 years ago if the only measure is bandwidth. This is why the xpoint disks were a big deal. 2-3x faster QD1 iops numbers.

BugsJustFindMe4• 2 years ago

Alternate title "Base RAM Doesn't Go Up When It Meets Base Operation RAM Requirements".

Kipters2• 2 years ago

The problem is it doesn't

BugsJustFindMe4• 2 years ago

It absolutely does. My whole family have 8GB MacBook Airs, including my aged parents. None of them have problems or even notice.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

8GB ram is fine for browsing, messages, excel (the way 95% of people use it), word, photos app, video calls, and watching media.

That’s the use case for a large majority of the population.

I even do all of that with a 2015 MacBook Air, and it doesn’t even have M1.

garciasn2• 2 years ago

I have been on MacOS(X) for work since 2014. I have had everything from 4GB to 24GB on my Macs (current M2 MacBook Pro is 16). I am a dev; but, I admittedly do most workloads 'in the cloud'.

I have never had a problem with the amount of RAM I've had. I don't know why this is such a big deal for MOST folks. Then again, I grew up in a different era where there just wasn't an expectation to have a shitton of RAM available and maybe I'm ok being conservative.

nottorp5• 2 years ago

I admittedly do most workloads 'in the cloud'

You never open documentation? Even if you only run local apps, a few tens of browser tabs in addition to an IDE or three will eat those 16 Gb ram instantly.

garciasn2• 2 years ago

I never have more than 10 tabs open at a time. I use VSCodium or vim on the CLI.

No problems.

bearjaws• 2 years ago

16gb running larger repos is basically a non starter. Especially in O365 environment, you're losing 5gb between word Excel and outlook.

For the last two years I've been upgrading all the devs to 32gb of RAM and all of them appreciate it immediately.

havaloc2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't buy a machine with 8gb these days, but millions of people will be just fine with 8gb. Yes, Apple charges too much for memory upgrades, blah blah, but those base model machines, starting at $699 are extremely compelling. That's the tradeoff! You pay $200 extra for 16gb so that others get a compelling machine that lasts a very long time.

Even comparing the mid tier, I roll out Latitudes at around $1100 a piece to my end users and they have dim screens and last about 3-4 years, or I can roll out a MacBook Air for slightly more and they last 5-7 years without complaint.

downrightmike• 2 years ago

Usually my windows work machines last about a year before they basically burn out from all the security stuff running on them. They always run hot even over the weekend.

goosedragons2• 2 years ago

Can you get a 16GB new Mac for $900? AFAIK the $699 M1 MBAs are base models only and sold at Walmart exclusively with no customisable options. If you want a 16GB Air the cheapest is $1200 for an upgraded M2.

I guess you can get a 16GB M2 Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD for $800 but is that really that compelling when a Ryzen 7840HS Mini PC can easily be found with 32GB RAM and a 500GB SSD for sub $600?

rootusrootus2• 2 years ago

Walmart exclusively

Definitely not exclusive to Walmart. Costco also has $649 MBAs, and there may be other sources as well.

angoragoats3• 2 years ago

You pay $200 extra for 16gb so that others get a compelling machine that lasts a very long time

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but it reads like you're saying that Apple's doing everyone a favor by selling their 8GB machines for so cheap, and those cheap machines are in turn subsidized by the folks paying 8-10x (!) typical retail price for an upgrade to 16GB.

That argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me -- presumably the default configurations with 8GB are the ones that sell the most units, so why would they take a loss on those? Also, Apple's RAM pricing hasn't changed in years, but DRAM cost has come down considerably, so I'd be really surprised if they're not making a tidy profit margin, even on the 8GB units.

BugsJustFindMe4• 2 years ago

People at the low end are more price sensitive than people at the high end. It makes a ton of sense to me, tbh. The people buying the low end models might not buy at the low end if it gets too high, but people buying pricey high end models aren't going away. Anyway, it's speculation. I trust Apple to have figured out how to make the most money from their market. But maybe they're wrong! Honestly hard to know.

etrautmann• 2 years ago

I have a 32 GB machine from work that is routinely nonfunctional due to running out of RAM. I have maybe 40 chrome tabs and vscode open. With almost nothing fancy 32 GB seems insufficient IMO

nickthegreek2• 2 years ago

None mac right? I have a M1 8gb mac for work and I was worried as it replaced my intel mac 16gb. I was wrong. I can do short video rendering on it with less issues and faster than my previous machine.

snakeyjake2• 2 years ago

Over the last three years I have purchased base model 8GB M1 MacBook Airs for each of my three daughters and three of my many nieces as they all decided to go to college nearly simultaneously.

It highly likely that MacOS has required the use of virtual memory 0 times since they were all powered on.

Unlike the rest of us psychopaths, they don't keep an Avogadro constant's worth of tabs open at all times.

nullindividual3• 2 years ago

Applications only deal with virtual memory as that is all the OS exposes to them. You would need to watch counters/metrics to determine if any hard paging was occurring.

snakeyjake2• 2 years ago

I know that you know what I meant.

nicce2• 2 years ago

Let's say you have Spotify, Slack, Discord, VSCode for starters up and running. Or even Teams on top of that. 10 year old machine couldn't probably handle that.

grishka2• 2 years ago

Is there a good reason to have all these things as separate apps instead of tabs in the browser you have open at all times anyway, and VSCode instead of any non-web-based text editor?

r00fus• 2 years ago

Same here - I've bought 5 of these exact devices for family & extended family. All are super happy with their laptop. In fact, my main hobby laptop is an M1 Air (my beast Intel MBP 16" isn't snappy enough - relegated to games).

rootusrootus2• 2 years ago

I've got an M1 MBA, M2 MAX MBP, and a 16 inch Intel MBP. I loathe having to use the Intel machine because it's a dog. Runs hot, drains the battery fast, sluggish, not snappy. Even the base M1 is way more pleasant to use. I look forward to the Intel machine reaching EOL.

eviks• 2 years ago

0 is highly unlikely, what's more likely is you just wouldn't know

Besides tabs there are Electron apps that non psychos enjoy from time to time

Also memory leaks since it's common to not reboot these laptops for a long time

kbolino3• 2 years ago

Modern operating systems tend to swap out pages pretty aggressively even when memory pressure is light. Keeping hot files in RAM cache can result in a much snappier experience than e.g. dumping the disk cache in favor of a bunch of seldom-used pages from some background service. More RAM will reduce memory pressure ceteris paribus, but may not reduce page swapping as much as one might expect with intuition from older systems.

AnotherGoodName4• 2 years ago

The other flip side is we also keep things mapped into memory more often. So that tab you haven't opened in a while will have the media in it memory mapped. It won't actually be loaded in RAM. The mapping just allows it to be more easily loaded if you ever opened that tab again.

This leads to users with 'just enough knowledge to be dangerous' looking at total memory allocated and making outlandish claims. "My browser shows 4GB allocated when I open a single tab, you obviously need 128gb minimum for multiple tabs these days" they will say as they post from a mobile device with 256mb of RAM running the exact same browser and which would show the exact same allocation patterns if htop was as easy to access on a phone.

So we have this problem where various apps show outlandish ram usage to end users who just don't understand memory allocation. The apps will be snappy and responsive because memory mapping is a really efficient way to not load things like unused browser tabs into memory but they'll ignore the actual high performance and make ridiculous claims that you can't use chrome/safari/edge with 8GB of ram.

It's a bit of a losing battle. I've even seen tech sites post articles '8gb isn't enough!!' complete with a screenshot of 'memory allocated' rather than an actual deep dive into page misses and performance issues.

If those users actually ran the same memory usage tools on their phone they might be in for a shock. Chrome has the same allocation patterns on phones too and the phones don't have 8gb of ram. Because they simply never had a view that showed '4gb allocated' for a single tab on their phone they think mobile chrome is super special and doesn't need that while their perfectly performance 8gb laptop does.

It's super frustrating.

resters3• 2 years ago

Apple's refusal to make RAM upgradeable is something that many have tolerated because of the other strengths of the hardware platform.

But it is not without cost to Apple's brand reputation. It is painful to upgrade to a new machine when a few hundred dollar RAM upgrade would have given the old machine 1-2 years of additional useful life.

Some customers don't realize this, but for those who do it makes Apple seem greedy and not concerned with value or the investment of the customer's dollars in its ecosystem.

Apple sells under-powered machines to naive customers who then need to upgrade sooner. It's really sad that one of the great tech companies employs used car salesman style deception into its pricing structure and aims it at the least informed of its customer base (grandmas and people who can barely afford it anyway).

This is why people hate capitalism, but it's actually greed and shortsightedness that they should hate. Competition should make tactics like this unsustainable, but Apple has a lof of entrenched advantage and employs many questionable forms of anticompetitive behavior to create lock-in. Overall it's bad citicenship due to tremendous greed.

brandon2726• 2 years ago

The lower amount of RAM enables more people to get into Macbooks at a lower cost instead of choosing less expensive alternatives that will only last a few years.

resters3• 2 years ago

Non-upgradeable RAM and SSD. Why? To save $1 in manufacture or 1mm in case height?

raverbashing• 2 years ago

"at a lower cost" except the actual cost difference between 8GB and 16GB is less than 50 dollars (and that's being very generous)

Edit: checking Mouser, 16GB (the actual DRAM chip) costs between $15 and $25

layer83• 2 years ago

Lack of upgradability also damages Apple’s credibility with regard to their environmental aspirations.

spott• 2 years ago

Apple's refusal to make RAM upgradeable

I'm not sure they can make RAM upgradeable at this point and still keep their unified memory. If you look[0], they have the memory under the heat spreader, butted right up next to the SOC, and my impression is that this is what allows them to get that nice memory bandwidth.

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/46884/m1-macbook-teardowns-somet...

resters3• 2 years ago

Perhaps true of recent models. However RAM-starved machine upgraded with slightly slower (but still fast) additional RAM would still be much better value in performance per additional dollar than a whole new machine.

layer83• 2 years ago

LCAMM2 should be fast enough: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ddr5/micron-unvei...

And they could combine onboard unified RAM with a slightly slower non-unified expandable RAM slot. There is some precedent for such configurations in computer history.

init2null• 2 years ago

It would be worth to add a slow RAM slot or two to use it purely as an SSD cache or a substitute for swap. There's no need to eliminate the unified memory in the process of adding upgrade options.

rasz2• 2 years ago

They do it this way because it cuts manufacturing cost. Its cheaper to use POP ram when ram upgradeability is not in your design constraints.

Apple even has a patent (garbage one, describes something obvious) for second non POP slightly slower ram channel.

https://www.techpowerup.com/277760/apple-patents-multi-level...

"With two types of DRAM forming the memory system, one of which may be optimized for bandwidth and the other of which may be optimized for capacity, the goals of bandwidth increase and capacity increase may both be realized, in some embodiments,"

They are sitting on a solution while extracting value while market bears it.

deputy• 2 years ago

[deleted]

segasaturn• 2 years ago

To be expected when the MBAs take over... I will admit that Cook has done a much better job of shepherding Apple than say, Sundar Pichai (barf) but Apple has exerted many of the same patterns of failure - lack of vision, vendor lock-in and squeezing customers for every last penny they're worth for short-term gains in stock price. It's all the same business school behavior that we need to expect from that type of person.

innagadadavida2• 2 years ago

I wouldn’t buy a machine with 8gb and the MBAs are just extracting value from their customers.

However as an engineer interested in efficient software, I support what Apple is doing here. If there is a significant number more of machines with just 8gb, it forces the software developers to think and consider these folks to keep their software less bloated. I’m not talking about professional apps like photoshop, but regular things like email clients and browsers. I feel browsers and bloated websites can optimize their memory consumption here.

layer83• 2 years ago

Safari doesn’t seem to be particularly optimized in that way, judging by its reloading behavior. If Apple itself doesn’t do it, who will?

plorkyeran2• 2 years ago

I would expect shared code between macOS and iOS to be a much better driver of that. 8GB is still a lot more than most iPhones have, and a large part of the OS is shared between platforms.

Simulacra• 2 years ago

Apple needs a Steve Jobs, someone with more of a marketing or engineering background, to dictatorially push forward new ideas, and crush bad ones. Steve would have never approved the Apple Helmet.

nuz• 2 years ago

Kind of scary if computer manufacturers start engaging in the same practices as google has started doing and SaaS companies regularly do i.e. increase prices while keeping the product largely the same (because the moat is so massive and stocks need to increase in value). Would be really really difficult to try to disrupt the Apple/PC duopoly if they also remove the "don't be evil" mantra like google somewhat has lately.

throwaway48476• 2 years ago

"8GB ought to be enough for anybody"

justin66• 2 years ago

Having the ability to buy a lowish spec Apple isn't so terrible. Understanding what a terrible rip-off Apple's optional upgrades are feels pretty awful.

jacurtis• 2 years ago

I'm going to offer an alternative perspective.

My mom needed a new computer a few years ago. I just went and bought her a base M2 Macbook Air. It had the 8Gb of RAM and 256Gb SSD that everyone complains about, and guess what happened. She loved it. It has been the best computer she ever owned.

She doesn't run out of storage because she doesn't really download that much stuff. Everything she does is basically in the browser. The apple photos app is the only real storage risk for her and it manages your library really well, offloading most photos to the cloud and downloading the ones you are working with seamlessly in the background when you work on them, and offloading them when you have ignored them for a while. She streams movies from Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, etc. She doesn't download them. She uses "Canva" for various art projects and a few other little apps like that. She uses Messages heavily. But that's it. She doesn't run into any limitations with the 8Gb Ram and 256Gb storage limitations.

Furthermore, I bought it for $899 with a small discount I was able to get, but even the MSRP is only $999.

And if you asked her about it today, she would candidly tell you that she loves her computer. Her favorite features are:

1) It is "pretty" (i got her Starlight, which is a gold color)

2) The battery lasts a long time. With her light, only-web use and she rarely uses it for longer than an hour at a time. So the battery lasts her around 2 weeks on a single charge.

3) The screen is really nice

4) It's really lightweight

5) it doesn't make any noise.

If you broke into her house and slipped a 16Gb or 32Gb MacBook under her pillow without her noticing, she would never notice any speed difference. She is not hitting any sort of limits.

I use my mom as an example, because MOST people (or at least a significant percentage 33%+ I would presume) buying MacBooks are people like my Mom. They need a laptop to make a Google doc or run Office. They need to check their email. They might want to make a digital postcard or something and share a photo of their grandkids. That's what most people do.

Meanwhile I buy a MacBook pro with 64Gb of Ram for myself because I need it. Most people that talk about Apple are more like myself. I can't imagine 8Gb of RAM, so we complain about it. But the truth is, we are not most people. Most people are like my mom. They want a high quality computer that looks nice, doesn't make noise, has a long battery, and a nice screen. They use the browser for everything and 8Gb is fine. 256Gb is a bit sketch in my opinion, I'd like to see 512Gb be the default, but looking at my mom's computer she is only using 94Gb right now. So maybe 256Gb is really fine afterall.

ProfessorLayton• 2 years ago

Agreed. I bought a base 13" M2 in a pinch because my then-current machine stopped receiving security updates, and needed to do a bunch of financial stuff. As soon as the 15" M3 arrived I bought a loaded one and gave the base M2 to mom.

She loves it and comments on how much better it is than the 12" intel Macbook it replaced, even though they have the same amount of RAM.

librasteve• 2 years ago

a “white hat” way to read this is that Apple has committed to two silicon integration steps: (i) integration of multi die on a silicon substrate and (ii) integration of RAM and CPU on a single chip. these steps are each (say) an order over magnitude access speed improvement, so making the step sooner with less RAM means faster systems at lower cost. it also makes for a perverse incentive where a quicker step to integrated silicon makes the entry level systems faster than the power systems for many typical workloads.

Apple's Regular Mac Base RAM Boosts Ended When Tim Cook Took Over

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