Consumer Machine: 16GB RAM base.
Pro Machine: 32GB RAM base.
Clear, simple, useable differentiation.
Pro Machine: 32GB RAM base.
Clear, simple, useable differentiation.
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.
8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
With the 8GB RAM debacle of 2023: Apple is slapping a stick-on Lexus logo on a Toyota.
Thanks for that link.
I'd say there are two differences:
1) Many PC laptops, especially the larger ones, still offer slotted memory, so you can buy inexpensive aftermarket memory for them. That's not available from any Apple product.
2) The RAM upgrade charges don't even out. Comparing the RAM upcharges for Apple devices vs the Dell XPS15 (which is their flagship consumer laptop), Apple's RAM upcharges average about twice as much as Dell's:
Dell, 16 -> 32 GB: +$150 = $9.36/GB
Apple 18 -> 36 GB: +$400 = $22.22/GB
Dell, 32-> 64 GB: +$300 = $9.36/GB
Apple, 32 -> 64 GB: +$400 = $12.50/GB
I agree, but I think the reason people want more RAM and disk space in the base model is because the base models are often available at a discount. Thus if they need to upgrade to get the RAM and SSD size they need, they have to go with a BTO, hence losing the discount. Of course, what those folks forget is that, while changing the base spec to to 16/512 would benefit them, it leaves out those who need still more RAM and SSD space. And it also disadvantages those who can live with less (e.g., students). So the real isssue isn't the starting base spec, it's how much Apple charges for upgrades (which they do because that's their profit strategy, and it works for them).
Sounds like nonsense to me. If for no other reason than the Mac has to steal RAM to drive the graphics constantly (meaning your 8GB isn't even really 8GB like it would be on a PC with a graphics card that has its own memory).
The RAM upgrade prices you’re citing for Apple are wrong because they’re not for the M3 MacBook Pro being discussed. The RAM upgrade price for the M3 MacBook Pro is $200, which isn’t much different from what Dell charges. 🤷🏼♂️
5-7 yrs of OS upgrades including new technologies not included when the product shipped.
1 yr warranty.
Free return period no questions asked.
All of these cost money.
It also reminds me of the anger at Apple when they would populate the RAM slots with smaller RAM saving a few bucks rather than using higher capacity chips and leaving a free slot. Which meant customers had to “throw away” RAM to upgrade.
Instead of having 1x16MB soDIMM and one free slot, you would have 2 8s, and had to throw away 8 to add a 16, reaching 24, instead of just adding 16 to get 32.
Then there were the complaints about needing to install matched pairs in some machines to get max memory bandwidth.
It’s always something. But yes, the lack of the ability to add RAM is the key complaint. People can find a way to offload seldom used files to an external SSD in the future if they truly run out, but you can’t in any way add more memory…
No. On the M series, 16GB is truly sufficient for MANY pro uses.
Even look at the OP article. 16GB gives a massive increase in performance, and going to 32GB won’t. 32GB is a specific case for high memory applications. But I do everything I need with a 16GB while leaving countless tabs and large PDFs open, swapping back and forth to ArchiCAD without waiting for anything.
Me personally, no, I wouldn't, but I'd make the 16G that $1400. They'd probably sell more that way, and I think market share actually makes a difference. Apple's margins are so much more than anything I've seen it kind of boggles my mind.
I think $1600 is perfectly justified, especially considering the quality, display, sound system, and battery runtime. But that’s me personally. I don’t think Apple’s actual profit margins are known, so how we can come to a properly informed opinion on how high they are or aren’t is beyond me.
Nope, not wrong. Apple charges the same upgrade prices for the same RAM steps across its product line. The problem is that the M3 line has different steps from the Dell (and from anything in the M2 line). Thus while the M3's 18->36 is close to the Dell's 16 -> 32 GB, there's nothing comparable in the M3 for 32->64 GB, so I had to use the upcharge for that step in the M2 (which is the same in the M2 Studio as it was in the the M2 MBP).
More broadly, your $200 figure for Apple's RAM upcharge is incorrect for my comparison. $200 is to go from 8 GB->16 GB. But the figure I quoted for the XPS15 is from 16 GB->32 GB. So it makes no sense to compare Apple's upcharge to go from 8 GB->16 GB (an 8 GB diff.) to Dell's upcharge for 16 GB->32 GB (a 16 GB diff). You need to compare apples to apples (no pun intended).
If you want to consider 8 GB->16 GB, then I'd need to find a Dell model with a base 8 GB RAM, which would be the XPS 13. [I actually tried doing it for the XPS13 to start with, but initially couldn't get Dell's configurator working for that model, which is why I looked at the XPS15 instead.] There the results are the same: Apple's RAM upgrade price is double Dell's, essentially the same average result I found for the higher RAM levels.
So how do you get that double isn't much different from what Dell charges? 🤷🏼♂️
I'll add I looked into this a couple of times previously over the past couple of years, and came up with the same doubling result each time. So this isn't a fluke--it's been consistent.
XPS 13: $100 to go from 8 GB to 16 GB
Apple M3: $200 to go from 8 GB to 16 GB.
Yes, Apple's memory is faster, but 6400 MT/s LPDDR isn't double the price of 5200 MT/s LPDDR.
Last edited:
Tim Apple is a logistics guy so he wouldn't listen to some techie anorak.
The M3 doesn’t come in an 18GB configuration, so again, wrong numbers for this conversation since we’re talking about the M3. The M3 Max comes in an 18GB configuration I believe, but the conversation is about the M3 MacBook Pro, not the M3 Max, and the discussion is about whether Apple should offer an 8GB RAM base configuration or not. The price difference between the 8GB RAM base configuration M3 MacBook Pro and the 16GB RAM configuration is $200, which isn’t much different from Dell’s $150, and I just saw a Dell upcharge of $250 for a RAM upgrade step. So $200 isn’t that unreasonable in my opinion.
More like offering a consumers the opportunity of owning an actual Lexus, with all the same body stying and interior niceties, but without the turbocharger that most consumers will never notice in daily driving. While still being *more reliable and *faster than the competition.
Toyota sticks Lexus badges on a Toyota.
*That last part might not be as true for Lexus's as a Macbook
Last edited:
I included numbers for 8 GB->16 GB in my last post (and those are not "wrong numbers for this conversation"), going so far as to provide screenshots demonstrating Dell's upcharge to go from 8 GB to 16 GB is $100. Yet nowhere in your response do you acknowledge this. Ignoring this information won't make it go away.
What's your source for the $150 and $250?
In my experience, anytime Dell charges more than $100 for that upgrade, it's because upgrading the RAM requires you to upgrade other things (which Apple also does in some cases), so the cost isn't for the RAM upgrade by itself. And you need to look at just the RAM upgrade alone (since that's all you're getting for the $200 you pay Apple to go from 8 GB to 16 GB) to do a fair comparison.
Plus Dell is on the high side. Here's Lenovo (the world's largest manufacturer of laptops). They offer slotted RAM in their laptops, so they're user-gradeable, and they charge $30 (!) to upgrade from 8 GB to 16 GB:
And here's HP. They don't specify the type of memory here, but charge $60 for the upgrade. So Apple is charging multiples more than most other manufacturers for memory upgrades. Those are just the facts.
Last edited:
Do you really think if you opened Blender on a 16 GB PC and an 8 GB Mac and loaded the same large scene and then rendered it (assuming the Mac even could) that the performance of the interface, manipulating objects and rendering wouldn't show the PC being better in the areas that relate to available/usable RAM? Because it seems obvious to me it would.
I believe it is more of a comparison of performance with equivalent tasks. Mac OS does use less memory than Windows does, freeing up more for apps to access. Then you look at the very fast cache and memory access and ssd access which allows very fast memory swapping (some testers have claimed that performance hits for this appears negligible - PCs cant claim that). Plus all the other things built into the Apple silicon that also 8mprove memory usage and efficiency.
Your forecast that "There is no reason to think that memory needs will rise forever from this point." is simply wrong. It is not simply media types that drove increasing RAM for the last 40 years, it is OS/apps architecture. Devs can do more with more, and Apple's offering of 128 GB UMA (read up) RAM in laptops is an obvious portent of where RAM usage will be going. The M2's 96 GB is 6x what one could put in a 2017 MBP. That was a huge increase, and in the M3 generation Apple raised it again, to 128 GB.
Last edited:
Or stop whining and just buy more RAM when you buy a new Mac.
Or users who need more RAM could just order it when purchasing. But then what would y'all rant about?
Oh it is true in like a small handful of not memory heavy test that might be processor heavy.
Problem in the real world is we tend to have more memory heavy things and processor over kill. Even in processor heavy stuff it tends to be super memory heavy.
What sad is memory is like the worse area to be the bottle neck as Ram is dirt cheap compared to processor.
Apple's is not simple "soldered RAM." Read up on Unified Memory Architecture.
How about Apple not have rip off level pricing in ram and allow users to just upgrade it with their own.
Defaults matter and Apple min spec is embarrassing bad mix that with the bull **** lie that 8 gigs on an M3 is the same as 16gig of pc. Ram is dirt cheap. Call it what it is Apple is being cheap and greedy. It should be 16 gigs min for the same price. All the ram needs to come down a tier at min.
IMO RAM does not need to come down a tier at min. But I agree that it would be helpful if the upgrade price came from $400/32 GB to half that. However I cannot get my panties too twisted since in the past we paid $400 for 4 MB of third-party RAM...
Do your entire argument that the greed is massively ok is using ram pricing from over 30 years. Come on that is pathetic based argument and has no relevance in reality.
Apple is being cheap and greedy here plan and simple.