I bet you're happy with your choice! I was strongly considering a 15in Air but at the time it was still on the M3 and the addition of nano-texture on the MBP pushed me to the 14in: M4 Pro 48GB, 2TB, NanoTexture
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16 GB of RAM for a Pro device is not okay
- Thread starter MrWayne
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Unfortunately "Apple's pricing structure" is not what we should use to determine how much RAM we should build into our computers. We should use our future workflows to determine how much RAM we should build into our computers.
You don't know anything about how RAM is managed. Smarten up before posting click bait BS
I disagree with you. Shouting or not shouting won't change that. It's not an emotional reaction. The only thing that has substantially increased Ram usage on a Mac recently is Apple Intelligence, which, to be honest, I don't sue because I've no interest in making avatars, AI generated picture or emojis, and 'm capable of sorting ut my email inbox by myself. In fact, in the last two macOS version releases, and if you discount AppleIntelligence ( which I do, because I've turned it off), RAM usage by the OS has actually decreased. Only nominally, but it has decreased, and not increased.
The case of maximum Ram you're presenting is only maximum Ram, not the actual Ram shipped in those machines. Very few buyers are maxing out the RAM options. The reality is well over 90% of professionals, e.g. professional educators, professional management consultants, professional writers, professional corporate trainers, professional beauty therapists have no need for that increased maximum limit, and for them, ether has been little to no increase in their RAM needs.
You're also blurring the lines by saying MacBook Pro and listing years, when the fundamental architecture between Intel and Apple Silicon is different, and you also are just saying MBP without distinguishing between base M chip, M chip pro and M chip Max.
And of course you can disagree with me too. But shouting FALSE is not a persuasive argument. It might make yourself feel better, but it's not going to swing the debate. It might be how contemporary politicians behave, but it's not working out well for them, and thankfully we're not politicians.
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Base model at 16GB is less of a problem than the upgrade pricing to get to higher RAM amounts
16 GB of Ram is really not bad and you can do most pro things just fine with it for years to come.
This is correct.
If 32GB is the minimum for you then that is your price.
There are plenty of professionals who need the larger screen, battery life and graphics of the pro but who don’t do things that require 32GB of RAM. For others, 64GB is barely enough.
That’s the thing. A true “pro” doesn’t worry about future proofing as they want the machine that will make them the most money now.
Everyone else is just whining about upfront cost because they would rather pay piecemeal for upgrades over time.
But do you save anything? I don’t really think I ever saved anything. Just it was just nice to know I could do it and then did it.
Ultimately, had I just paid for the upgraded machine at the time it might have been a wash or only slightly more expensive, but the time saved on ordering and installing was a factor too.
The only upgrades that really “changed the game” were swapping in 7200 rpm drives, and later, swapping in SSDs. Now, with SSDs standard, being able to swap a slightly faster SSD wouldn’t be noticeable anyway.
I paid over $100 for 16k. In 1981 money. The card was the size of wizard organizer.
A poor comparison on my part I suppose. But I can get a Samsung 990 Pro, which is very much equivalent to Apple's storage speed specs, in a 2TB capacity for less than what Apple charges to go up 1/4th the capacity to 512gb, the reasoning is still sound.
But if you're just looking to justify continuing to get ripped off, you do you.
That’s not entirely true.
If you mass produce a certain configuration there are huge economies of scale involved. And they are going to be produced ahead of launch some even will require an OS update on setup just to function at all.
That configuration goes out in large quantities to distribution centers.
The BTO are made in fewer quantities. I doubt most are made to order at purchase, as that wouldn’t work, but your order may trigger the algo to produce another group of machines for the USA to last through the next set of orders. If the ship date is weeks out, it’s because demand outstripped expectations and they actually have to make it for you as part of a new batch in the queue.
So the $50 part is only part of the story.
Same is going to be true on the base configs of iPhones and iPads. I got a really good discount on a new 15PM from Spectrum half way through the 16 model year. It was a base storage config. The build date was actually only few months after release date and shipped with the previous gen iOS. Apple produced a massive amount of these base iPhones in a short amount of time and some suppliers bought enough for the entire year and then some.
It's easy to forget how good a value MacBook Pros can be. Wow that's an expensive laptop. At least it has 5Gm I guess?
Nothing you said modified my point. You're buying a Mac + RAM and you're paying more for the RAM than the RAM costs Apple. Apple is not passing that through to the RAM vendors. If you buy the cheaper config, you're paying less for the Mac part of the Mac.
It’s marketing to attract those convincing themselves hardware makes them a pro. Real pros just do it and their gear is usually old beat up stuff.
I really don’t understand why $1599 is base price of MacBook Pros! They should at least start from $1999 to be considered a Pro Device.
Same idea, phrased differently.
If you are in a large organization, you may face a lot of bureaucracy if you need something much more expensive than the typical product. The last time I needed a new laptop, it took the administrators a month to determine that my request was justified. A standard model would have been available on the same day, and custom configurations up to a price limit as quickly as Apple could deliver them.
Can also get this HP which has 32GB RAM. Apparently the cheapest HP with that much memory at a glance.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/h...-pc-wolf-pro-security-edition-p-bp0w2ua-aba-1
HP ProBook 4 G1q 14 Notebook AI PC, $899.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/h...-pc-wolf-pro-security-edition-p-bp0w2ua-aba-1
HP ProBook 4 G1q 14 Notebook AI PC, $899.
Given that different organizations are... different, I was presented with a list of several MBP options (and others were offered for people who do a different kind of job) and picked what I wanted, down to the screen size, processor and amount of RAM. So it depends of course, and I realize I work somewhere special, but it was fast for me, zero bureaucracy.
Because macOS deals with RAM differently than Windows. Even for many "Pro" workloads, 16 GB of RAM really is fine on macOS.
And as others have pointed out, some other brands "very Pro" systems also start at 16 GB, running far-more-memory-hungry Windows. Even Dell's nearly $4000 "Precision Tower Workstation" starts at 16 GB. Their "absolute unit" Precision 7960 Tower Workstation comes with 32 GB base, but it also costs $4800 to start. (With 12 core Xeon and Nvidia RTX A400 w/ 4 GB VRAM.)
Meanwhile the Mac Studio Ultra comes with 96 GB of RAM with a 28-core CPU, and a GPU that multiple online benchmarks say absolutely creams the A400.
So, I suppose if I get 16GB RAM and if the Apple SSD wears out prematurely, I can just drop in a new Apple SSD? Wait...
I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB of RAM and a 2 TB internal M.2 NvME (PCIe Gen 3). Sure it “only” has 4 cores at 2.4 GHz.. but I paid about €400 for this whole setup. Works like a dream with Ubuntu 25.04 (for example). Ubuntu uses 1.3 GB of RAM when idle after boot into desktop - in a Linux environment 16 GB doesn’t feel small or restrictive. That €400 price really puts these baseline specs into perspective 🙂💸
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