16GB of RAM Could Be the New Minimum in Apple's Upcoming M4 Macs

[Manzanito]

I am of course exaggerating to make a point. My point is, it doesn’t make sense to over-spec the low end, just because some people won’t know which specs they need. Low end is low end, if you don’t like it, get a bigger one. If you have no clue how much RAM you need, you are likely exactly the type of user for whom 8GB is plenty.

Just look at the amount of posts here from people still using 8+ year old Intel Macs with 8GB of RAM. Clearly that works for them, even though it is MUCH slower than my 3 (almost 4) year old M1 Air. Stop saying 8GB computers are useless. There’s no reason to think that my M1 Air will be any slower in three years, than a 6 year old Intel MBA with ANY amount of RAM is today.

Again, where did I say 8 gigs computers are useless?

Sure, 8 years ago it was perfectly fine to set 8 gigs as the base spec. Nowadays, at the price of the base macbook pro, it may not be such a good idea. I’m sure they work perfectly fine for the most basic tasks out of the box, but it may not be so for that long. It costs apple not that much to up the base spec, and if they are planning to do so maybe they agree with the many people who are asking for it.

Rest assured if they finally set 16 gigs as the base spec it won’t be because a bunch of us complain about it on macrumors, but because they deem it necessary.

Conversely, they did not maintain 8 gigs because they thought it was the best possible user experience or because some folks at macrumors defended it with passion either.

 

[wonderings]

If Apple does go to a base of 16 gigs I really hope they don't stretch themselves too thin financially by giving away all that RAM away for free.

 

[ric22]

Here's a random observation I've noticed - in terms of pricing and specs Apple has long aligned with Microsoft and their Surface line. The Surface was one of the last premium laptops on the Windows side to start at 8GB of RAM (and have similarly onerous upgrade charges). When Microsoft unveiled their new CoPilot+ PC lineup earlier this year the base amount of RAM became 16GB to support the new AI features.

I'm sure better supporting Apple Intelligence is a strong motivator to upgrade the base, but being the last premium PC manufacturer still having 8GB at the low end is also a distinction Apple likely doesn't want.

I think when Microsoft entered the hardware game they copied the Apple profit model. Apple were ahead of the curve when it came to soldering both RAM and storage and massively overcharging for upgrades, while still bragging they were an eco friendly company despite making products that couldn't be repaired and were likely to need replacing with better specced models sooner...

 

[Chuckeee]

Base SKUs are also sold by third party retailers who are allowed to discount whereas apple can’t, and if you want a higher spec you have to go to optional extras which only apple generally sell army their retail price. You find this sometimes when the bigger retailers get stocks of pre upgraded SKUs.

One minor correction. You stated Apple “can’t”, actually Apple “won’t”. Manufacturers often offered discounts on their own websites and third-party retailers, still carry their products and discount them as they see fit. Apple’s Choice not to do that Is a policy decision they made for themselves.

 

[theluggage]

Even on the base M3 MBP, those professionals don’t need more than 8GB because they’re basically running Word, Excel, and Powerpoint or Sales Force

Nor do they need hardware accelerated ray tracing, 8 CPU cores or 10 GPU cores, could probably do without a "Liquid Retina XDR display" while they're staring at columns of figures. They probably won't use the Thunderbolt 4 ports for anything that couldn't be done over USB 3.0 or HDMI. They won't notice the difference from having super RAM bandwidth or an ultra-fast SSD. Quite possibly, they only use the battery for an hour a day on the train home.

The base MacBook Pro has had 8GB since it went 'retina' in 2012 that was a 2-core Intel machine with grotty Intel integrated graphics, but perfectly capable of running Word, Excel etc. - since then, every statistic has been improved drastically (crude indication: Geekbench 5 multi-core has gone from 1255 to 10761) except RAM! (even standard storage - another thing that people justifiably complain about - has at least doubled in that time).

So what possible confusion of ideas makes the standard for RAM "my anecdotal evidence says it is OK for some users" when the standard for everything else is "best in class!!! better than last year!!!"? All of those other improvements hugely increase the capacity of the processor to process data which would suggest more RAM would be appropriate.

Meanwhile, a lot of those "office productivity" users aren't just running the same old software they did in 2012 - more and more stuff is running as horribly inefficient Javascript in the browser, many cross platform apps use something like Electron (basically a javascript web app running in its own copy of Chromium). Plus, love it or loathe it, some people do seem to want AI, and not just "Apple Intelligence" but third-party products as well. I believe the minimum RAM for AI features in Visual Studio Code is 16GB.

...and it's not like Apples sales pitch for the MacBook Pro leads with "office productivity" - it is mentioned on the Apple website, once you scroll past "Software Development", "Photo editing", "STEM" and "Graphical Design" there's a solitary picture of a spreadsheet...

Apple don't do a $500 "office productivity" system - maybe they should, maybe not - they pitch their Mac products firmly at content creators and, for that, 16GB is a sensible medium. If people want to drive a Porsche 911 to the shops at 30mph that's fine - it doesn't mean Porsche should fit a 900cc engine.

You’ll say why don’t those people buy MacBook Airs instead? Sometimes they do because that’s all they need, but those who do a lot of presentations in conference rooms, you can bet their companies are buying that base MBP with an HDMI port and SD card slot, something you can’t get with a MBA.

Yet, before Apple brought back the SD and HDMI ports, the "My Apple Right or Wrong" brigade was playing exactly the same "I don't need that feature therefore nobody else does" tune as the 8GB RAM defenders...

 

[ric22]

Adding the upgrade cost of the ram to the base price won't fly. Apple already missed a huge opportunity since M1 to gain market share to secure long term service revenues with opting instead for short-term hardware sale profits (and bigger bonuses for Tim) instead.

Agreed. It was a really good opportunity to expand their market share. Between falling component prices and the money saved designing their own chips based on mobile chip designs rather than paying Intel, they could have afforded to lower prices to gain market share. Instead they increased MBP prices. 🤦‍♂️

 

[macbookj0e]

No not even slightly. I work for a large company that buys a hell of a lot of high end PC laptops and they are universally garbage across the board. The failure rate is off the scale and the things are heavy, unreliable, run burning hot and have poor battery life.

We actually lose staff because they don't want to use Windows on laptops as well. Fine on a desktop but not a laptop. (I have a 14500 desktop as well)

Until recently I had a cupboard full of workstation class Dells which have all blown up (precision 5550, 7670 and a recently failed 7680)

That’s interesting to hear about the Dell’s as in my experience they’ve been among the best of my work laptops.

HP have been actually horrendous. One machine needed a new network card 3 times and screen failure twice. This was years ago and after managing to speak to an executive at HP who didn’t seem bothered, I decided to never buy an HP product ever again which 10 years later I’ve stuck to religiously.

 

[Chuckeee]

HP have been actually horrendous. One machine needed a new network card 3 times and screen failure twice. This was years ago and after managing to speak to an executive at HP who didn’t seem bothered, I decided to never buy an HP product ever again which 10 years later I’ve stuck to religiously.

I have had repeated similar experiences with HP. If it’s any consolation, at least you’re not alone

 

[Cervisia]

56Gb of unified memory > 32 + 24Gb of dedicated memory.

You should compare the same amount of memory.

This is oversimplified and I'd say mostly wrong. A 10-core M3 Max has a memory bandwidth of 300GB/s, which is superior to system memory on any PC, but that 4090 has over 1000GB/s. Depends on the applications which one comes out ahead. Anything that utilizes the GPU heavily, and the PC will mop the floor with the Mac.

 

[shplock]

Not really. Take a look at the ASUS Zenbook S16 with the latest the AMD HX370. And they don't run hot too.

View attachment 2409451

A few points...

The battery life on the Asus Zenbook is ok bu there battery life on the MacBook Air and Pro models are FAR better by at least 4 hours. Temperatures on the Zenbook are on the hot side though not as hot as the Su, still TOO hot. Window 11 is err how do I say this nicely without upsetting anyone? Windows 11 is pure and utter 💩.
I could go on all day about how awful it iOS but I suggest starting with a video on YouTube about how Microsoft are locking your PC down and do not want you to own it, with Windows 11.
Having said that the Asus and others are ok devices but in my experience they are not special an dI lost track of the amount of PC/Laptops that were utter and total garbage and piles of steaming 💩 that ended up getting given away for spares as they were they useless.
Each to their own though.

 

[shplock]

This is oversimplified and I'd say mostly wrong. A 10-core M3 Max has a memory bandwidth of 300GB/s, which is superior to system memory on any PC, but that 4090 has over 1000GB/s. Depends on the applications which one comes out ahead. Anything that utilizes the GPU heavily, and the PC will mop the floor with the Mac.

True but only to a degree. There are far more instances were the Mac rips the PC to shreds like my Cats catching hold of a Mouse.
Having said that it is a case of each to their own depending on individual use case and it is like trying to compare a Ford Focus (PC) to a Tesla Model 3(Mac) both are cars and both get you from A to B and are different cars for different uses/needs.

 

[theluggage]

I think there'll be a bunch of upgrades on most hardware specs leading to a significant price increase, more than $200.

...possibly, but that would be mostly about Apple wanting to raise prices rather than increase specs.

Slight aside, but relevant: I mentioned in an earlier post that LPDDR RAM, until very recently, had to be soldered in and couldn't be upgraded, but that Samsung had recently announced plug-in LPDDR modules. I've just found that you can now buy (or, at least) order these:

| CT32G75C2LP5XG | Crucial.com

Buy CT32G75C2LP5XG.

www.crucial.com

(Or go to Crucial.com and search for LPCAMM2)

Obviously, these wont let you upgrade your Mac - and I wouldn't hold out much hope of Apple adopting it - but the point was, until now, there wasn't an easily accessible retail-price-per-GB comparison with Apple's RAM upgrade prices for LPDDR5x. Now there is: $175 for 32 GB - retail (i.e. Crucial make an honest profit, on one-off orders, for a brand new bleeding-edge product) for what looks like 4 LPDDR5x chips on a carrier board.

That's $44-per-8GB c.f. Apple's current rate of $200-per-8GB.

Or, to put it another way, even if Apple were buying their LPDDR5x chips retail in tiny quantities, they'd be making a 4-5x mark-up on their RAM upgrades. Of course, they're probably one of the biggest consumers of LPDDR in the world and will be buying vast quantities at heavily discounted prices. Maybe not those exact same chips, but no special Apple sauce (even custom packaging, in those quantities) can plausibly account for that magnitude of difference.

The problem for customers could probably best be solved by Apple reducing their "upgrade" prices to something more proportionate to the materials cost, and keeping the 8GB models for anybody who wanted them - but the "upgrade prices" have little to do with hardware prices and everything to do with how Apple wants to strategically arrange its price points.

The logistics of having to make and distribute 2-3 variants of the SoC, predicting how many of each would sell, how many to send to distributors, will be costing Apple money, and if they (say) only charged £50 per 8GB then, not only would more people upgrade, making the 8GB models could well start losing them money.

So, more likely, they'll just bump the specs across the board by 8GB and keep the upgrade rates.

 

[ilikewhey]

2023 $1599 base 8GB MacBook Pro - "OMG Apple, just get rid of it you greedy bastards! Make 16GB minimum"
...
2024 $1799 base 16GB MacBook Pro - "Finally! We pressured Apple to upgrade 16GB for free!"

Apple complainer logic.

ha, you think 8gb ram worth 20 bucks is the reason apple might jack up the price?

 

[ilikewhey]

There are far more instances were the Mac rips the PC to shreds

like what.

 

[Velli]

Again, where did I say 8 gigs computers are useless?

This discussion has been skewed, and is pointless.

 

[Yvan256]

"16GB is the new 8GB".

First, there is the fact that the less RAM there is in a system that cannot be upgraded, the quicker it becomes e-waste which is contradictory to the green image that Apple are trying to promote for themselves. Adding solar panels on your headquarters is meaningless if your company is not trying to avoid creating e-waste by design.

I upgraded my mid-2010 Mac mini to 16GB more than a decade ago. The fact that we're hearing rumours of Apple making 16GB the minimum for 2024-2025 is ridiculous, especially given the facts that RAM prices are extremely low and Macs cannot be upgraded.

All the upcoming A.I. features on macOS are going to eat up a significant size of that extra RAM, meaning that the remaining RAM will likely be in the 8GB to 12GB range so in the end it won't even be a RAM upgrade at all - unless we can completely disable the A.I. features and gain that RAM back.

Apple used to be proud that Macs were better than PCs, now they've sunken to the level of trying to claim that 8GB of RAM on a Mac is magically the same as 16GB of RAM on Windows for reasons. The fact is, 16GB should have been the minimum years ago and if by adding A.I. to macOS it requires gigabytes of RAM then the new minimum should be even higher than 16GB.

Regarding the size of the SSD, at least we can connect external drives so while it may be annoying especially for laptops, there's an upgrade path available after buying the computer. Leave the OS and applications on the internal drive and store all your documents on the external drive.

There's probably more people who decided to buy a Windows PC because of the difference in RAM and SSD between Macs and PCs than the profits made by the fewer Mac buyers who paid for their insane RAM and SSD upgrade prices. Make the minimums decent, and sell upgrades for decent prices and a lot more people would choose to buy a Mac instead of a Windows system. Those people would then buy more Apple gear and subscribe to more Apple services, leading to much higher profits in the long run.

Look at the Apple profits pie chart for 2023-Q2. Profits from services are nearly three times higher than Macs, and the profit margin on services are also much higher than on hardware, so Apple are basically actively trying to lower the number of people subscribing to their services, which makes no sense. They're also potentially losing iPhone, iPad, wearables and home hardware sales because people buy a PC instead of a Mac.

And now, let's all hear about the people who think that Apple are doing fine because they're making huge profits but at the same time are ignoring the fact that Apple could be doing even better if they weren't trying to nickel-and-dime their users.

I remember when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac mini. He was proud of the price point, as if telling us "Look, you can afford a Mac now, you don't have to buy a PC anymore." Those days are long gone and it's sad that a lot of people agree with Apple's higher prices, especially with the state of the economy right now.

 

[Ethosik]

like what.

Well for me, my M3 Max at 96GB of RAM is better at my 3D modeling work than my 13900k/4090 setup. It’s even better than my M2 Ultra which I find very frustrating.

I could get similar performance if I get the NVIDIA Ada card with more VRAM but that card alone is nearly $7,000 before tax.

 

[EmperorVexx]

"16GB is the new 8GB".

First, there is the fact that the less RAM there is in a system that cannot be upgraded, the quicker it becomes e-waste which is contradictory to the green image that Apple are trying to promote for themselves. Adding solar panels on your headquarters is meaningless if your company is not trying to avoid creating e-waste by design.

I upgraded my mid-2010 Mac mini to 16GB more than a decade ago. The fact that we're hearing rumours of Apple making 16GB the minimum for 2024-2025 is ridiculous, especially given the facts that RAM prices are extremely low and Macs cannot be upgraded.

All the upcoming A.I. features on macOS are going to eat up a significant size of that extra RAM, meaning that the remaining RAM will likely be in the 8GB to 12GB range so in the end it won't even be a RAM upgrade at all - unless we can completely disable the A.I. features and gain that RAM back.

Apple used to be proud that Macs were better than PCs, now they've sunken to the level of trying to claim that 8GB of RAM on a Mac is magically the same as 16GB of RAM on Windows for reasons. The fact is, 16GB should have been the minimum years ago and if by adding A.I. to macOS it requires gigabytes of RAM then the new minimum should be even higher than 16GB.

Regarding the size of the SSD, at least we can connect external drives so while it may be annoying especially for laptops, there's an upgrade path available after buying the computer. Leave the OS and applications on the internal drive and store all your documents on the external drive.

There's probably more people who decided to buy a Windows PC because of the difference in RAM and SSD between Macs and PCs than the profits made by the fewer Mac buyers who paid for their insane RAM and SSD upgrade prices. Make the minimums decent, and sell upgrades for decent prices and a lot more people would choose to buy a Mac instead of a Windows system. Those people would then buy more Apple gear and subscribe to more Apple services, leading to much higher profits in the long run.

Look at the Apple profits pie chart for 2023-Q2. Profits from services are nearly three times higher than Macs, and the profit margin on services are also much higher than on hardware, so Apple are basically actively trying to lower the number of people subscribing to their services, which makes no sense. They're also potentially losing iPhone, iPad, wearables and home hardware sales because people buy a PC instead of a Mac.

And now, let's all hear about the people who think that Apple are doing fine because they're making huge profits but at the same time are ignoring the fact that Apple could be doing even better if they weren't trying to nickel-and-dime their users.

I remember when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac mini. He was proud of the price point, as if telling us "Look, you can afford a Mac now, you don't have to buy a PC anymore." Those days are long gone and it's sad that a lot of people agree with Apple's higher prices, especially with the state of the economy right now.

Maybe we should create an AI chip that deals with all of that so we don't waste RAM on it.

Feel free to give me a 1% royalty on this billion-dollar idea, Apple.

 

[Radeon85]

Interesting post I came across if this is accurate, the fact that Apple has not increased the minimum RAM since 2016 is insane, 8yrs on the same pathetic 8GB is disgusting!

Timeline of minimum RAM in Apple's consumer laptops since New World ROM (iBook 1999-2006, MacBook 2006-2011, MacBook Air 2011-present), along with number of days it lasted:

32 MB: July 21, 1999 (210 days)
64 MB: February 16, 2000 (608 days)
128 MB: October 16, 2001 (736 days)
256 MB: October 22, 2003 (643 days)
512 MB: July 26, 2005 (658 days)
1 GB: May 15, 2007 (617 days)
2 GB: January 21, 2009 (1,237 days)
4 GB: June 11, 2012 (1,408 days)
8 GB: April 19, 2016 (3,051 days and counting)

 

[ric22]

Interesting post I came across if this is accurate, the fact that Apple has not increased the minimum RAM since 2016 is insane, 8yrs on the same pathetic 8GB is disgusting!

Timeline of minimum RAM in Apple's consumer laptops since New World ROM (iBook 1999-2006, MacBook 2006-2011, MacBook Air 2011-present), along with number of days it lasted:

32 MB: July 21, 1999 (210 days)
64 MB: February 16, 2000 (608 days)
128 MB: October 16, 2001 (736 days)
256 MB: October 22, 2003 (643 days)
512 MB: July 26, 2005 (658 days)
1 GB: May 15, 2007 (617 days)
2 GB: January 21, 2009 (1,237 days)
4 GB: June 11, 2012 (1,408 days)
8 GB: April 19, 2016 (3,051 days and counting)

In the past it didn't matter a great deal to the manufacturer how much RAM they provided- market prices falling dictated an ever increasing amount. Since soldering became a thing it matters to Apple, because they can charge obscene sums for it, with customers trapped unless they wish to switch to Windows.

 

[theluggage]

That’s interesting to hear about the Dell’s as in my experience they’ve been among the best of my work laptops.

Whichever side of the argument you are on, "evidence" is not the plural of "anecdote".

When 80% of personal computers are PCs, 80% of the personal computer failures are likely to be PCs. Most of the colleagues who I supported used Macs, so most faults I saw in other people's computers were Macs... and its funny how some people have more faults than others. Could be chance, could be that people don't always admit to (e.g.) leaving the machine running on a soft duvet with all the ventilation slots blocked, dropping it, giving it a drink...

For what it's worth (my gran used 40 bits of anecdotal evidence a day and she lived to be 98!) I've used both PCs and Macs over the years and as far as "bricked by faulty design/manufacturing" goes, over the last 10 years I've personally had one bricked MS Surface Book ("sleep of death") versus one 2011 MacBook Pro with the dreaded GPU fault. Oh, and one Apple Pencil (lets save 0.5g and 50 cents by not including an off switch so the battery goes dead flat and dies if its unused for a few months).

Then, of course, a cheap PC is a cheap PC - and Dell, HP et. al. produce both cheap PCs and allegedly-premium PCs. The valid comparison would be Mac vs. Dell XPS, HP EliteBook, Lenovo ThinkPad, Razer etc. which are in vaguely the same price bracket (comparing either reliability or RAM/SSD specs on Macs with $500 PCs is a red herring).

 

[topcat001]

Unix rooted here as well (SunOS/Solaris). Technically macOS is actually the only Unix left out of your list [1].

The cruel irony is that my company mandates Windows on most hardware yet all we do is run Linux on it in WSL2... urgh!

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3700.htm

It's the same at my company. It was a huge struggle to get permission run at least native Ubuntu (I was running FreeBSD earlier, happily), but now management has softened to the idea. Some of us (hard) core devs only run Win in VMs for testing and not lose half the machine to nonsense.

 

[Velli]

Interesting post I came across if this is accurate, the fact that Apple has not increased the minimum RAM since 2016 is insane, 8yrs on the same pathetic 8GB is disgusting!

Timeline of minimum RAM in Apple's consumer laptops since New World ROM (iBook 1999-2006, MacBook 2006-2011, MacBook Air 2011-present), along with number of days it lasted:

32 MB: July 21, 1999 (210 days)
64 MB: February 16, 2000 (608 days)
128 MB: October 16, 2001 (736 days)
256 MB: October 22, 2003 (643 days)
512 MB: July 26, 2005 (658 days)
1 GB: May 15, 2007 (617 days)
2 GB: January 21, 2009 (1,237 days)
4 GB: June 11, 2012 (1,408 days)
8 GB: April 19, 2016 (3,051 days and counting)

I know there is a price point difference, but that has to do with many other things than RAM - but… Do you want to know what the current minimum RAM in Windows (not Chromebook etc) computers from HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and probably many others are, today?

If you guessed 8GB, you’re wrong. It’s 4.

And yes, it’s probably upgradable, but just to put things in perspective.

 

[cjsuk]

That’s interesting to hear about the Dell’s as in my experience they’ve been among the best of my work laptops.

HP have been actually horrendous. One machine needed a new network card 3 times and screen failure twice. This was years ago and after managing to speak to an executive at HP who didn’t seem bothered, I decided to never buy an HP product ever again which 10 years later I’ve stuck to religiously.

This is terribly sad really because I used to buy a lot of HP equipment in the 1990s, but it was all test and measurement equipment. And there was literally nothing better out there in all respects. Oh and their calculators were the best (and still are but they are made by a company in Europe somewhere now).

But yeah now it stands for Hinge Problems, Hopeless Pile etc etc.

 

[tobybrut]

Maybe we should create an AI chip that deals with all of that so we don't waste RAM on it.

Feel free to give me a 1% royalty on this billion-dollar idea, Apple.

Some people think Apple is doing exactly that in the iPad Pros with M4. The base iPad Pro has user access to 8GB of RAM, but teardowns show there is 12GB of RAM on the package. What is Apple doing with that additional 4GB? Why would they waste resources by closing off those 4GB to the user? An assumption is that Apple is using it as a RAM disk for its on-board AI model that takes up… 4GB. We have no direct evidence they are actually doing that since we can’t look at their source code, but is an interesting idea to ponder.

The 12GB of RAM on package also fueled the rumors that Apple would raise the base M4 Mac models to 12GB since Apple doesn’t like to have too many SoC skus and tends to reuse them on multiple devices. But these new rumors put it at 16GB, which means Apple isn’t using those 12GB M4 skus on their Macs. So why did Apple create a 12GB version of the SoC package in the first place if they weren’t going to use it on anything but the iPads? Apple isn’t known for putting more RAM than is necessary, so what are they doing with that 4GB?