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2024 MacBook Air still 8GB Unified Memory

jchap said:
I was just thinking about this matter this morning. You're right—many people may not know the difference any more between RAM and SSD/HDD storage. Manufacturer notations such as "16GB/256GB" in reference to "RAM/storage" don't help matters, and I also think that there may be a general illiteracy regarding computers that adds to the confusion. I hadn't thought about the difference either for a while, until of course I stupidly remembered that RAM is volatile and SSD/HDD storage is not.

Storage has become quite fast nowadays, almost to the point where it can supplement RAM (and does, in the case of swap memory), right. A lot of users who own machines with small amounts of RAM may not even know that their internal SSD storage is sometimes giving the memory a "boost".
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RAM and SSD are not built the same despite both to unassuming customers are just chips with different markings on them. Yes, I understand most customers don’t know or care about the differences, but unless we found out new materials or substantially change how it works, RAM is going to be substantially faster than SSD no matter what. For example, RAM accessing 2048 4KB blocks would likely be just as fast as accessing an 8192KB block, whereas SSD would be much slower. Also SSD programming cycle exist, although well-written algorithm would make that a non-issue during its designed lifespan.
 
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backstreetboy said:
Who cares? Cloud storage is a thing nowadays. I have 10TB +.
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You can't run Xcode, let's use the word sustainably, if you have a 256 GB drive.
Trust me, I've had an M1 iMac and I've tried every possible hack and it just wasn't possible. I've wasted so much time with this. With 512 GB, there would be no problem.

And it's a bummer because even the M1 iMac is a very capable machine and could theoretically run Xcode without a problem.
 
PsykX said:
You can't run Xcode, let's use the word sustainably, if you have a 256 GB drive.
Trust me, I've had an M1 iMac and I've tried every possible hack and it just wasn't possible. With 512 GB, there would be no problem.
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But then the counter argument would be “I don’t run xcode So I don’t care“.
With that being said, I would not use 256GB or even 512GB SSD even if it is given away for free. 256GB works best if someone barely touches cloud files and if they do, file size would be up to 10GB total.
 
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I am a long time Apple/Mac fan but even I am starting to feel fed up with their ridiculous upgrade pricing. Every year these components become cheaper at their cost level so every year they become more appalling to the consumer and harder to swallow. Apple tax is one thing, being totally greedy is another...

If the pricing was fairer I would buy/upgrade more often and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Does their inflated upgrade pricing cover the lost sales from new purchases/upgrades they miss out on I wonder?

Yes I know this is nothing new but I finally feel I need to say something in the smallest hope someone at Apple reads this as yet another unhappy customer feeling fleeced to the nth degree.
 
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raythompsontn said:
Stuttering how? 95% of the work done with MSWord is the user at the keyboard. I have a 200 page document with indexes, table of contents, alternating footers, images, multiple styles and I have never experienced "stuttering" with that document on Windows or Mac.

Yet people don't complain about the obscene prices for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Priorities. That $200 upgrade to memory, amortized over 5 years, is $0.10 a day. Yet these same people find no issue spending $8.00 for a cup of coffee, each day, when said coffee could be made at home for $0.05.

I have run Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz Photo AI, half a dozen web pages, FTP client, OneNote, and Mail open at the same time. Never an issue with 8GB of ram.

I suspect that most of the 8GB versus 16GB arguments are people that want something for nothing. A sense of entitlement.

Yes, Apple's prices for upgrades are high. So are upgrades to a new vehicle. So are upgrades to a house. So are upgrades to a recreational vehicle. For real insanity on pricing look at the prices of recreational tow boats. Simple upgrades are very costly. Want an extra battery, tack on about $1000.00 for a battery that only costs $100.00. Pulley for a marine alternator is $200.00 while the same pulley for a car is $15.00. The only difference is a stamp that says marine use.

Simple solution, if you don't want 8GB, then don't buy it. As long as Apple can sell 8GB machines, and charge $200.00 for an upgrade, Apple will do so. Much to the joy of their stockholders.
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Yeah, I have also made some important projects on Word without stuttering. But lately the cursor was stuttering, there were some delays when pressing the keys until the letters appeared on screen etc
 
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raythompsontn said:
Stuttering how? 95% of the work done with MSWord is the user at the keyboard. I have a 200 page document with indexes, table of contents, alternating footers, images, multiple styles and I have never experienced "stuttering" with that document on Windows or Mac.

Yet people don't complain about the obscene prices for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Priorities. That $200 upgrade to memory, amortized over 5 years, is $0.10 a day. Yet these same people find no issue spending $8.00 for a cup of coffee, each day, when said coffee could be made at home for $0.05.

I have run Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz Photo AI, half a dozen web pages, FTP client, OneNote, and Mail open at the same time. Never an issue with 8GB of ram.

I suspect that most of the 8GB versus 16GB arguments are people that want something for nothing. A sense of entitlement.

Yes, Apple's prices for upgrades are high. So are upgrades to a new vehicle. So are upgrades to a house. So are upgrades to a recreational vehicle. For real insanity on pricing look at the prices of recreational tow boats. Simple upgrades are very costly. Want an extra battery, tack on about $1000.00 for a battery that only costs $100.00. Pulley for a marine alternator is $200.00 while the same pulley for a car is $15.00. The only difference is a stamp that says marine use.

Simple solution, if you don't want 8GB, then don't buy it. As long as Apple can sell 8GB machines, and charge $200.00 for an upgrade, Apple will do so. Much to the joy of their stockholders.
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Stereotyping much? I mean that is a lot of mental gymnastics to justify ethically questionable behavior from one of the largest corporations on the planet…

Anyway, if you don’t have a moral issue paying Apple $200 for RAM all the power to.

That said, if I pay to enter a museum or amusement park or airport and they are charging $350 for a bottle of water, instead of the typical $5 one might expect, I think it is reasonable to be outraged (according to Bloomberg that is Apple’s markup on RAM). I think it is reasonable to make a fuss, contact local representatives etc. Governments do bring charges for profiteering rather regularly (although with no real consistency).

I specifically choose the museum/amusement park/airport analogy, because not only is it apt, but lawmakers have levied fines, passed legislation, etc in those examples.

We will see what happens. Maybe the EU will get on this one.
 
Default RAM for MacBooks seem to be doubling with double the amount of years. From another post I made:

RAM Defaults in Macs?

What was the default RAM in Macs, how long did it stay, and when did it change? For simplicity, I’ll start from the Steve Jobs era, and I will only focus on consumer portables.


32MB. This was used in the iBook and iBook Special Edition in July, 1999 until it was discontinued in September, 2000. It lasted 14 months.


64MB. This was used in the Firewire iBooks from September 2000 until the Dual USB iBooks in October 2001. It lasted 13 months.


128MB. This was used in the late 2001 iBooks released in October 2001 through the iBook G4, discontinued in April, 2004. It lasted 32 months


256MB. This was used in the Early 2004 iBook G4 released in April, 2004 through the late 2004 iBook G4 released in October 2004, sold until July, 2005. It lasted 15 months.


512MB. This was used from the Mid 2005 iBook G4 released in July, 2005, until the Mid 2007 MacBook, which was sold until November, 2007. It lasted 28 months.

1GB. This was used in the Late 2007 MacBook released on November, 2007 until the MacBook Late 2008, discontinued in January, 2009. It lasted 25 months.


2GB. This was used in the Late 2008 AL MacBook released on October, 2008, until the MacBook Air 11”, Mid 2011, which was discontinued n June, 2012. This lasted 44 months.


4GB. This was used in the MacBook Air 13”, Mid 2011 released in July, 2011 until the MacBook Air, 13” Early 2015, which was discontinued in June, 2017. This lasted for 71 months.


8GB. This was used as standard on MacBook Air, 2017, released on June, 2017 until now, in November, 2023. 77 months and counting.

Clearly, the amount of time machines stayed at 1GB was half what the time for 2GB, which was almost half of what 4GB. I expect 16GB to become standard in another 40 months or thereabouts, if trends continue.

All data from MacTracker.
 
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Seven pages of shock, indignation, and pearl clutching over something that was entirely predictable prior to this release. The entry M3 iMac and M3 MBP start at 8GB. There is nothing surprising about the base configuration of the M3 MBA.

The MBA is a portable everyday computer for college, office work, and home use. The target market are people that primarily use: mail, messages, MS Office, iWork, Photos, Safari, FaceTime/Zoom, and maybe an occasional iMovie. You can do some video and photo editing on the MBA, but regardless of the amount of RAM, it is not the right tool for those that do 4k video encoding for a living. It's a fanless computer for goodness sake. The MBP is a much better choice for that kind of work.

I have yet to hear one report of real world performance issue from people using a base configuration MBA for the kind of everyday computing that is the target market for this computer. So, for those that want to be indignant, keep staring at active monitor and posting about memory pressure whilst opening 30 tabs in Chrome and encoding video. Keep posting thread after thread about how Apple is ripping us off with an 8GB configuration. We get it. It would be nice if RAM and storage upgrades were cheaper. BTW - Check out the MS Surface upgrade pricing...not much different. Meanwhile, the rest of us, those actually using these base MBAs, will just continue to enjoy our computers and get stuff done with them.
 
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Howard2k said:
Rubbish, everyone needs more than 8/256. Everyone.
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No…. You just rent an online “drive” for your photos and keep thumbnails only on your Mac. And pray the iCloud service will not f*** up your photos.
[/S]

On a more serious note. It’s really a brilliant move to help out AAPL owners. Ensure that the photos people take with their iPhones becomes really big and make the convenient storage options really expensive. Base storage should definitely be more than 256 these days.
 
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JustAnExpat said:
Default RAM for MacBooks seem to be doubling with double the amount of years. From another post I made:

RAM Defaults in Macs?

What was the default RAM in Macs, how long did it stay, and when did it change? For simplicity, I’ll start from the Steve Jobs era, and I will only focus on consumer portables.


32MB. This was used in the iBook and iBook Special Edition in July, 1999 until it was discontinued in September, 2000. It lasted 14 months.


64MB. This was used in the Firewire iBooks from September 2000 until the Dual USB iBooks in October 2001. It lasted 13 months.


128MB. This was used in the late 2001 iBooks released in October 2001 through the iBook G4, discontinued in April, 2004. It lasted 32 months


256MB. This was used in the Early 2004 iBook G4 released in April, 2004 through the late 2004 iBook G4 released in October 2004, sold until July, 2005. It lasted 15 months.


512MB. This was used from the Mid 2005 iBook G4 released in July, 2005, until the Mid 2007 MacBook, which was sold until November, 2007. It lasted 28 months.

1GB. This was used in the Late 2007 MacBook released on November, 2007 until the MacBook Late 2008, discontinued in January, 2009. It lasted 25 months.


2GB. This was used in the Late 2008 AL MacBook released on October, 2008, until the MacBook Air 11”, Mid 2011, which was discontinued n June, 2012. This lasted 44 months.


4GB. This was used in the MacBook Air 13”, Mid 2011 released in July, 2011 until the MacBook Air, 13” Early 2015, which was discontinued in June, 2017. This lasted for 71 months.


8GB. This was used as standard on MacBook Air, 2017, released on June, 2017 until now, in November, 2023. 77 months and counting.

Clearly, the amount of time machines stayed at 1GB was half what the time for 2GB, which was almost half of what 4GB. I expect 16GB to become standard in another 40 months or thereabouts, if trends continue.

All data from MacTracker.
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Interesting that the >25 month intervals starts when they decided to solder in ram
 
Many people I know would never buy even the 899 MacBook with education discount when they can buy a cheap 200 laptop at Walmart with 4gb ram and 128gb drive then complain that computer is slow and crappy for being brand new and have to buy a new one every year. My sister is like this I bought her the base m1 air 4 years ago and it’s running just fine and now she understands. My brothers wealthy inlaws buy a desktop computer every 10+ years and I convinced them to buy an iMac and it’s still running great for what he uses it for. The base model air and iMac are for those people it’s the cheapest Apple will go at least it’s not 4gb and 128gb anymore.

I remember when my friend’s dad got a 10MB hard drive with his IBM PC XT ($7500) and everyone told him you’ll never fill that.. 40 years ago. You know I bet that thing still works, I have a cp/m computer that still works.
 
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SpanishAppleNerd said:
But lately the cursor was stuttering, there were some delays when pressing the keys until the letters appeared on screen
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Interesting. Do you think that was due to memory or CPU? I would be more inclined to CPU. Even then I cannot imagine what MSWord would be doing to swamp a CPU. Perhaps some other task. I know I cannot use other applications without delays when I am importing, or exporting, photos with Lightroom as Lightroom will peg the CPU at 98%.
 
jchap said:
Storage has become quite fast nowadays, almost to the point where it can supplement RAM (and does, in the case of swap memory), right. A lot of users who own machines with small amounts of RAM may not even know that their internal SSD storage is sometimes giving the memory a "boost".
Click to expand...
Well, sort of. In terms of bandwidth, storage speeds are great these days. (Modern SSDs have about as much bandwidth as the average Core 2 Duo era laptop had in terms of entire RAM bandwidth. That's quite impressive for a storage device!)

Latency, however, is an entirely different story. The average RAM access (not considering CPU caches) is about 300-350 CPU cycles or so on Apple Silicon. That sounds kinda slow, but CPU caches make up for this, so rarely is the CPU actually needing to wait the full 350 CPU cycles for it.

SSDs, on the other hand, are typically closer to 300,000 CPU cycles. When a memory page is needed and it isn't in RAM, the operating system has to go find that page on the SSD, wait hundreds of thousands of CPU cycles (eons long in CPU time), then put the page in memory and resume execution. As you can imagine, that's quite a long stall in CPU time, and if this has to be done frequently, it will result in slowdowns.

The reason we don't really feel these slowdowns much in regular usage is because as you know, the operating system is really good about finding the pages that are least likely to be used in the near future and swapping those out first. Typically a few gigs of swap usage is no big deal. It doesn't really start to become a huge problem until memory pressure starts to enter the red. However, once the system starts thrashing, even the fastest SSDs won't be fast enough to prevent the system from grading to a near-halt.

Typically this issue is overblown for everyday use cases. Most everyday users aren't really going to encounter much thrashing on casual workloads, even if they multitask a lot.
 
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I have intel and Apple Silicon Macs and those with 8 GB RAM have had no issues at all regarding memory pressure for typical (for the vast majority) consumer use.

If you are operating a heavy workflow, you know you are.. and buy appropriate hardware. Everyone who has a heavy workload know who they are. You buy and use the right tool fr the job.

It's like a tradesman complaining about Fiat selling the Fiat 500... when Fiat commercial sell the Fiat Ducati. It's like that tradesman complaining that the Fiat 500 is just too small, can't manage their workload or capacity. Well you bought the wrong vehicle. It's exactly the same situation with Mac... there is a Mac for each workload and options for each. Take it or leave it...
 
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ignatius345 said:
Maybe you'll do better over here
www.dell.com

Computers, Monitors & Technology Solutions | Dell USA

Dell provides technology solutions, services & support. Buy Laptops, Touch Screen PCs, Desktops, Servers, Storage, Monitors, Gaming & Accessories
www.dell.com
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Interesting... at MSRP, the 13 inch XPS is only $100 less than the equivalent 13 MBA for the same memory specs. with less ports even.

Edit: Oh upping it to a 2560x1600 display to match the Air it's $200 more. (granted it is a touch display)
www.dell.com

XPS 9340 Laptop | Dell USA

Shop the Dell XPS 13 thin lightweight laptop with Windows 11, and Intel Core Ultra processors. View on Dell.com
www.dell.com
 
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You have no understanding of what the average person does on a computer nor have you bought and owned a 8GB Apple Silicon Mac and tried to fit in into your setup.

Apple Silicon Macs with 8GBs of RAM work like a charm for the vast majority of what the vast majority do on their computers from day to day.

I'm also pretty sure Apple Silicon Mac buyers would be returning their purchases in droves and suing Apple left and right if all this negative hyperbole about lack of RAM and bad SSDs was true.

As a consumer, yes, I also want more for less and think it's petty that the entire PC industry hasn't been doing 16GB in baseline configurations for years.

But if Mac buyers, at large, buy and keep their Apple Silicon Macs, and buy more in the future for any or no reason, then surely Apple doesn't have to change the amount of RAM in the configurations that most buy?

8GBs of RAM in an Apple Silicon Mac is fine.
 
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Yebubbleman said:
I am encountering the spinning beach ball of death more often than I should be on an Apple Silicon Mac, yes.



It is sometimes. Though, the fact that it's speedy to the point of me not noticing it doesn't negate the fact that it's happening at all to begin with. If one has enough RAM, you ought to not need swap unless you're doing something that pushes the machine to its limits. That's what swap is for. I shouldn't be needing to swap on ten browser tabs, Mail, and Messages. The notion that this is acceptable behavior because I'm not "feeling" the slowdown is absurd.



Who does???



Again, I'm talking ten browser tabs (a small amount for even casual users), Mail, and Messages. This isn't one of those "you're holding it wrong" scenarios. I'm using the machine for basic purposes, like all of you "8GB of Memory is enough for most user" folks keep saying this machine is for, and I am seldom with green memory pressure.

If that's not "casual computing" use cases, then I challenge someone to give me a more up to date definition. Anyone paying over $1000 for a Mac should forget 8GB and start at 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
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I'm guessing those are Chrome tabs...
 
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