Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini
- Thread starter AlmightyKang
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
So machine with plain M3 machines that have a maximum of 24GB and machines with M3Pro chips with maximum of 36GB are too small for a 7 year lifespan? The only Mac worth buying for the long term Is an M3max?
No, not what I meant to imply. I said:
"It is wrong-headed thinking to plan a new box solely based on last month's OS/apps/operation. Planning is about life cycle."
Nothing about that means that the lesser 24 GB and 36 GB levels are not appropriate for many use cases. The other variables among boxes like memory bandwidth (150-400), GPU cores (18-40), video (1 versus 2 engines), ProRes (1 versus 2 engines) all help determine the life cycle appropriateness of differing use cases. Each user must decide.
Given how RAM demands always increase over time, my expectation is that most readers here will optimize computing long term with choices higher than base levels. Others are free to disagree and claim that 40-years of past experience will not repeat. We will see. But given that Apple already makes 128 GB available, I will be hella surprised if 24 GB selected today remains perceived as best-choice after 5 years for most.
Then where is this feedback? Where are all these people who have been buying 8GB machines and finding that they’re not suitable?
Apple’s retail channel leads with 8GB. Where are all the disgruntled users?
I don’t go back to Usenet, but I do remember AOL chat rooms in the late 90’s with this kind of stuff (along with the retrospectively creepy a/s/l greeting)
Becuase that would absolutely piss people off. Just like when BMW or whoever tries to sell customers a subscription to the seat warmer that's already installed in the damn car. It just feels like a **** you directly to the customer's face. Apple is smart enough to know that their relationship to their customers is far more valuable in money terms than whatever efficiency they'd gain pulling a tone deaf move like this.
Last edited:
People using their Macs for Word docs, Zoom calls and the internet (i.e. the vast majority of use) are doing absolutely fine on M-series Macs with 8GB of RAM. My wife runs her business on just such a machine and has zero complaints.
Then there's a big chunk of users who know up front they need more RAM, pay the (gasp) $200 for it and move on with their lives. I'm one of those people, doing graphic design for a living. Believe me, the money I spent on that upgrade was paid for with a small bit of the first job I did for money with this Mac.
And then... there's a vocal contingent of forum-dwellers who have generally made a cottage industry out of complaining about all things Apple. Kind of a dull hobby, if you ask me, but to each his own I guess.
It would be better for the environment than Macs ending up in landfills.
And Apple supposedly cares more about the environment than their own customers.
Have always been intrigued by the idea of maximizing the capabilities of a low-level Mac machine. Equip it with the maximum amount of SSD storage and RAM possible. As someone who frequently deals with large amounts of data, might these upgrades significantly improve the machine's performance and ease of use?
Curious to see how such enhancements would affect the long-term operation.
Curious to see how such enhancements would affect the long-term operation.
Some do, but your argument seems not to:
Of course that wasn't my actual point. My point was that nobody can actually predict what will be needed in the future, and everyone will be particularly bad at predicting what other people will need in the future. One person saying they know 8GB will be fine and another person saying they know it won't is just guessing.
If I buy a box with a certain configuration today, I should be able to do with it in 5 years exactly what I can do with it today. If I have no intention of using it for anything else, there's no reason to spend more for it than that. If I want to plan to use features that don't yet exist, or to work with data and files that have not yet been created, I can try to run a curve through past trends to predict some needs, but that's going to be an unreliable predictor at best and also completely ignores other disruptive changes that may be more impactful. I can guess that I might need more RAM to run some future ML model, for example, but then when the time comes to do so I may find that I need more RAM and an updated version of the Neural Engine. That is to say that more RAM may be necessary, but not sufficient, to get the "optimal" computing you're seeking and thus my expenditure on memory could simply have been wasted relative to saving that outlay today and investing it toward a future purchase.
This is especially true in the Apple ecosystem where Apple ties features to product generations. They rarely differentiate on spec requirements within a generation.
For some people, including myself, there's a bit of "imagine all I could do with some extra resources" angle to a purchase because we get excited by raw horsepower in the same way people get excited looking at the specs on a supercar. For other people, and I'd venture most people, they had a machine that worked ok and now for whatever reason they need another one to work about as well.
Exactly. If you're using your Mac for business and you're not making sure your customers are paying for your hardware and software, you're doing it wrong.
I wish Id written it! Sorry, I could have been clearer for you - upsell isn’t upgrade. Upsell is offering the next thing up , not speccing a BTO 👍
No it is upselling since by the time you price out a BTO upgrade, the cost and rationale for buying the next model up, becomes very appealing. Upgrade a M3 MBP, then just getting an M3Pro MBP seems reasonable. Upgrade an M2 mini, then an M2Pro seems like a better option. Upgrade a M2Pro mini then a base M2 Studio looks like a better deal…
What made me get more disciplined about my photo management was that I started running social media accounts for some of the people I did photography for. Once I started needing my full back catalog of photos on an on demand basis, it became clear how much excessive nostalgia was costing me. It took forever to find the right image and sometimes I'd accidentally pick one of the outtakes.
I learned to kill my darlings in phases. I purge the obvious discards immediately. The distant seconds are reviewed and removed in a week or two. The handful of remaining alternates get the same treatment a month later. By then I'm less sentimental and hard judgement calls are easier to make.
It's still a constant struggle though. I still find myself reverting to old bad habits whenever I have the option to be lazy about making decisions. That's why I stick to having slightly less storage than is comfortable.
If 8GB was inadequate Apple would have moved on it years ago, with this debate going on for well over a decade. Apple balances performance versus hardware spec for the base models and offers higher specifications for those who have need.
In the field in high mobility engineering roles the base 13" MBP has always performed very well and I only opt for the base models. Same will apply for the next 14" as these Mac's are very far from being slow. Those that have more demanding workflows, want to simply treat themselves or just for the bragging rights Apple has options. Over purchasing is just that, nor will the machine be markedly faster for the given use case unless the user has bought the wrong device in the first place.
Could Apple offer more RAM & storage with the base models? Obviously yes, equally Apple could also raise the base price or reduce the quality of another aspect of the Mac to compensate as they too are not immune to inflation...
Inversely this PC notebook has 32GB & dual SSD's as there's a requirement not that I thought it would be struggling after a few years of use...
Q-6
In the field in high mobility engineering roles the base 13" MBP has always performed very well and I only opt for the base models. Same will apply for the next 14" as these Mac's are very far from being slow. Those that have more demanding workflows, want to simply treat themselves or just for the bragging rights Apple has options. Over purchasing is just that, nor will the machine be markedly faster for the given use case unless the user has bought the wrong device in the first place.
Could Apple offer more RAM & storage with the base models? Obviously yes, equally Apple could also raise the base price or reduce the quality of another aspect of the Mac to compensate as they too are not immune to inflation...
Inversely this PC notebook has 32GB & dual SSD's as there's a requirement not that I thought it would be struggling after a few years of use...
Q-6
Apple prevents it by the way CTO choices are laid out. Max chip required to get max RAM for instance.
RAM and SSD prices have been going up due to inflation? 😆
“Sub-optimal” to you may not be “sub-optimal” to another user who gets by on 2, 4 or 8GB of DRAM, depending on the device they are using. There are plenty of users on these forums who use devices with a “sub-optimal” amount of DRAM, whatever that means. If 96GB of DRAM is what you actually need to get by, sure, it’s there. But other users, myself included, get by fine with 8 or 16GB of DRAM. I do have 64GB of DRAM on my 2019 iMac, which is fine. DRAM was dirt cheap then, so I splurged. That being said, my 8GB M1 13” MBP is my main machine and it does just fine with everything I throw at it.
You’re overlaying your use case on other users and all these threads break down to YMMV and it all depends on what a user’s needs are. I rolled with an iPhone XR for 5 years and it was finally this year that I decided having a 100 tabs open in Safari along with all my other apps was probably a bit much to ask from 3GB of DRAM. So I upgraded. It happens, but it’s the user themselves that decides what they need.
Your condescension towards people in this thread who don’t agree with your “lifecycle of the machine” diatribe is definitely not subtle. I grant it, you’re walking a fine line towards basically calling us all idiots, but each individual has a different interpretation of a lifecycle. Mine’s about three years, some here are 5-7, others are 10+ years. Who is right? For me, it’s me, no matter how much hash you’re slinging. For the 10+ year users, it’s 10+ years and they’re aghast at my 3 years approach. Most normal users don’t think in that context, it doesn’t mean they’re unintelligent, but maybe it’s just not as important to them as it is to you. Different strokes for different folks.
A couple of those points are wrong IMO:
1) Your comment that "nobody can actually predict what will be needed in the future" is of course generically true. However after watching Mac RAM demands increase inexorably for 40 years I am pretty darn confident that the next 5 years will be more of the same. Apple offering 128 GB where they offered 16 GB a few years ago solidifies my confidence, as does reading up on Unified Memory Architecture.
2) Your comment that "If I buy a box with a certain configuration today, I should be able to do with it in 5 years exactly what I can do with it today." is simply wrong, because Mac OS and apps change over 5 years. Unless of course one could avoid all upgrades to OS and apps, but that is essentially impossible for security reasons even if one was willing to forego features improvements. A few folks achieve it but not very many, few enough to ignore for discussion purposes.
E.g. my workflow and apps did not change, but my 2016 MBP rammed-out nevertheless. Newer OS and app versions simply took advantage of more RAM; just like the last 40 years of Macs have done.
I agree with your general premise that we do not know exactly what will happen as regards optimizing computing. E.g. look how M3 throws us a curve ball adding 3D competence specific to M3 such that for some things an M3 Pro may be better than the otherwise much stronger M2 Max.
Last edited:
Precisely. I have 16GB too. It does make sense in some situations. Just not for everyone; and not even the majority.
So the intent of Apple putting hundreds of thousands of 8/256 Airs in retail stores around the world is not to sell the 8/256 Air, but to sell the 8/256 Pro?
We disagree. When I say sub-optimal it is not about my use case, I am referring to how well the computer computes. Although it is defined consequent to OS and app choices, it is not simply some user preference. Some user may tolerate sub-optimal operation due to less than ideal RAM, I did for years. But the fact that I tolerated it did not then make it optimal.