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

cjsuk said:
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)
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I agree. Windows (11 makes it worse) is horrible for performance and kills the hardware really fast, and makes the machine look much slower than it actually is. I do have a Precision from work and run Linux on it (I grew up on UNIX so Windows is the "alien" system for me) and performance is fantastic and fans don't turn on unless I'm building our software.

On my mac laptop, macos behaves a lot like Linux (even though it consumes much more memory), and the hardware is also great so the experience is very good. I'm a hardcore Linux/BSD user so my perspective might be a bit skewed. My mac is the only proprietary OS setup I have.
 
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EmperorVexx said:
Wonder why people with 16GB RAM 8 years ago are upgrading now... wonder why...
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The Linux box I built in 2019 has 16 GB and had not been upgraded. No reason to. Maybe if I was doing 4k videos I would have to. Granted Linux is more memory efficient than MacOS.

The engineering workstation in the R&D department at former work has (or had) 12 GB RAM. It had no problem with computational fluid dynamics models in Barracuda.
 
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ric22 said:
You should make it clearer when you're being sarcastic...
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I'm literally right though. 12 GB is great for 90%. 8 GB is enough for 90%, despite the swapping. Swapping is overexagerated, how many people with 8GB have dead SSD's? I'm honestly sick of people claiming that swapping is gonna kill your laptop. Reddit loves to say this, yet not a single post of someone that actually had a case where there SSD just died because of it.
 
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neuropsychguy said:
Not all professionals have the same requirements. My spouse runs a small business and 8 GB is plenty. I have many colleagues in academia who are professionals (scientists, professors, and researchers) who also have no issues with 8 GB of RAM.

I’m not saying Apple should stick with 8 GB or that Apple should have included it as the default for all this time, I’m simply pointing out that not all professionals have the same RAM requirements.
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Yep. To add to that I cannot use anything less than 128GB of RAM. So that same logic nothing should be pro unless it has at least 128GB!

Meanwhile I can get by with 512GB of storage just fine.
 
S.B.G said:
I really don't have a problem with 8GB of RAM as an entry-level offering. I have an M3 MBA with 8GB and for my everyday use it is perfectly acceptable.

However, where I do have an issue with Apple is the cost of RAM they charge when you want to upgrade. Anyone who has ever built a PC knows that you can get the same RAM as a component for significantly less money. Plus with no ability to swap out the RAM as an end-user is also a terrible thing.

I upgraded my TrueNAS Scale server this past Spring and put 64GB of RAM inside for $130. I checked Amazon where I bought it just now and that same RAM is on sale for $103.

RAM is the one certain area where the Apple Tax hits the hardest.
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On the flip side, people like me that want a high amount of VRAM in their systems actually find Mac cheaper than a $6,800 NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada card.
 
EmperorVexx said:
I'm literally right though. 12 GB is great for 90%. 8 GB is enough for 90%, despite the swapping. Swapping is overexagerated, how many people with 8GB have dead SSD's? I'm honestly sick of people claiming that swapping is gonna kill your laptop. Reddit loves to say this, yet not a single post of someone that actually had a case where there SSD just died because of it.
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You weren't being sarcastic in the last post? Oh dear.
 
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sc00ba said:
Quick everyone throw a party!🙄

Anybody who knows even one iota about having a ”good“ machine that can handle any task you can throw at it knows 32gb of ram is benchmark these days. The example being the people I know with windows gaming PC’s have had 32gb of RAM “standard” for a while now.

One day when you grow up Timmy Cook, you’ll realise it would’ve been better to offer your customers more base RAM at a affordable price, instead of “nickel and diming” them as the Americans say and creating anger & hated of you amongst your customers/users.
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I don't disagree. However, I would just add the caveat that Apple memory is distinct from Windows hardware in that it is a shared pool of unified memory provided for both application and system resources as well as graphical rendering. Whereas on non-Macs the latter is reserved entirely for separate graphics rendering handled by VRAM. 32gb of RAM is plenty for my gaming PC because the 3090 GPU in it has its own dedicated 24gb VRAM. That makes a huge difference when neither of those pools of memory has to be shared by completely unrelated tasks in the computational stack.
 
EmperorVexx said:
I guess you are one of those 32 GB RAM users that thinks everyone is a 3D Blender user.
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Much more RAM on my work computer than that, but only 8GB on my personal MacBook. The point is that future proofing devices is necessary, especially in this price category. AI and LLMs specifically will dictate a lot of RAM will be necessary in coming years. The RAM costs Apple 1-2% of the sale price, max, so it's a tiny price to pay for longevity and a greater capacity to run challenging processes.
 
ric22 said:
Much more RAM on my work computer than that, but only 8GB on my personal MacBook. The point is that future proofing devices is necessary, especially in this price category. AI and LLMs specifically will dictate a lot of RAM will be necessary in coming years. The RAM costs Apple 1-2% of the sale price, max, so it's a tiny price to pay for longevity and a greater capacity to run challenging processes.
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Future proofing is a bad idea for the most part. By the time you would have needed a RAM increase the newer processor and other tech will greatly benefit too.

I am immediately updating a couple of my “future proofed” Mac Studios because performance wise my M3 Max MacBook Pro is doing a better job with less RAM in some workflows. I regret getting a couple of my studios at 192GB of RAM for future proofing. I need the M3 Ultra or M4 Ultra more.
 
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EmperorVexx said:
8 GB is enough for 90%
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Except it now "is not", according to Apple, to get their AI features working great
That is something that will likely appeal to that "90%" of their users (or more .. or at minimum way more than half)

It's far past time for a lot more RAM as the base, as you never want to get to this point they just did where a cool new thing is coming out via an OS update and a HUGE chunk of the install base is SOL unless they buy new hardware

This was a big error on Apple's part not seeing the increased RAM needs coming from something like AI
 
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creamz said:
They might just add additional $100 for the new 16GB RAM and now with ProMotion! and everybody here will be screaming what a great deal. Then under memory upgrade, the options will now be 24GB +$200; 32GB +$400.

Fast forward 2 years after that will be the cycle repeating itself with the you need 24GB… :rolleyes:
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I’m not sure there will be a 24GB option, and not too sure how people are going to feel about that if it happens if the only memory upgrade option costs $400. For that matter, maybe it won’t cost $400 to go from 16 to 32.
 
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My expectation regarding RAM is that M4's will come with more on the base level

..and that the base M4's will be more expensive and the MSRP entry points will be maintained by M2's w/ 8GB RAM

Everything is always a slight price tweak/hike with Tim's Apple

Apple straight up "giving you more for your dollar" is incredibly rare, if it ever happens at all

Usually it's a circumstantial accident, like the M1's and that one-off incredible value on performance per dollar
 
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PsykX said:
We'll see. They lowered the Mac Mini prices twice when the inflation was going crazy and basically every company upped their prices.
Also they're jumping from M2 to M4.
I would accept a raise for this one. But they won't raise it $200, I'd be really surprised.
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I would hope not. Like I said ,ceteris paribus, if they made a million and 50% of the buyers upgraded, they could raise the price 100 and get the same revenue for the same sales volume. Of course they will do whatever they think makes the most sense from a financial perspective.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Except it now "is not", according to Apple, to get their AI features working great
That is something that will likely appeal to that "90%" of their users (or more .. or at minimum way more than half)

It's far past time for a lot more RAM as the base, as you never want to get to this point they just did where a cool new thing is coming out via an OS update and a HUGE chunk of the install base is SOL unless they buy new hardware

This was a big error on Apple's part not seeing the increased RAM needs coming from something like AI
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Unless “AI” is going to run 100% of the time, 8GB will be enough. It is for the iPhones and iPads.
 
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EmperorVexx said:
I'd rather spent 1.5k on a base macbook pro right now than to spend like 2.2k on a 16GB model only to have to upgrade a few years later cause OpenAI suddenly created world's first AGI that requires 32GB RAM.
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This worry that Apple might charge you $700 for $13 worth of RAM is unfounded. If they put prices up that much they would lose too many customers to make it a profitable move, so they won't. They'd love to charge you even more, if they could, but simply can't.
 
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What if Apple sold Consumer products, then Business products, at least for the Mac?
To my thinking, the mini is the only product at a competitive price with the other guys.
 
Somewhat related I think:

even Chromebook Plus devices should have 12gb ram minimum.

8gb ram should be minimum ram on chromeOS.

Google should require 8gb ram as a minimum for Chromebooks going forward and end the 4gb ram devices.
 
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Chuckeee said:
Why are people assuming that if the minimum RAM is being upgraded to 16GB, that implies Apple will also upgrade their minimum SSD away from 256GB?
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Are they? We know it should happen, as the wholesale cost difference for Apple between 256 and 512GB is all of about 50 cents, but their favourite money spinning policy of all revolves around selling tiny sums of storage and either gaining pure profit from buyers that upgrade, or causing many machines to fill up when they need not, driving earlier replacements.

Personally I'd be happy if they supplied devices with NO storage, just an empty storage slot. I'd even pay $200 to upgrade to this! Win win.
 
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