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8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple

I think he's been drinking too much of his own Kool-Aid. I'm sure the new dynamic caching will be really nice, but I manage hundreds of Macs, and 8GB is not enough for most people who work with a few apps and websites throughout the day. I personally went from 96GB of RAM on an Intel Mac Pro, to 64GB on a Mac Studio, and I can feel the hit pretty often. If anything, the compression and dynamic caching balance out the fact that you're sharing memory with the GPU.
 
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People complaining that Apple isn’t giving them enough RAM for their computers is a story as old as Apple itself probably. The only difference is until recently, the end user could usually do something about it in the future if they chose to do so.

I don’t think having a marketing guy talk about technical aspects of the system helps at all either. While there definitely is truth to what he is saying, the optics of it are bad, especially if your tablet and phone come with 8GB of ram as well.

The difference nowadays seems to be that’s eventually Apple listens to the customer, so I’d say at least with any machine that says “Pro” on it, they will bump it up past 8GB in a future refresh..like 12?
 
newdeal said:
8gb is fine on my air. But my air isn't marketed as a pro machine, and doesn't have such an extremely high price as the pro. 8gb on the pro is ridiculous. Also he forgot to mention the memory is shared so the graphics memory is sharing that small amount of ram as well
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Your Air doesn't have the Pro hardware features of the 14" MacBook
The M3 doesn't have the Pro in it's name, how can anyone mistaken it for a pro chip?
 
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4odomi said:
Your Air doesn't have the Pro hardware features of the 14" MacBook
There M3 doesn't have the Pro in it's name, how can anyone mistaken it for a pro chip?
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I am not sure how you keep missing this.

You keep bringing up the M3 is not a pro chip but this topic is about the laptop itself. A PRO laptop with 8GB of RAM.
 
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MacRumors said:
What do you think about the 8GB of unified memory supplied in the base configuration of M3 MacBook Pro? Does it suit your requirements, or make the "Pro" machine grossly underpowered for your use case? Let us know in the comments.
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It totally sucks and I don't even buy 8G machines for the lightest computer user at work. I've been at 16G for years. And for myself, 32G is the bare minimum for me. And no, 8G on a Mac is not much better than 8G on a PC by much. It's true it's slightly better IME on the Mac, but not enough to brag about.
 
panjandrum said:
We definitely see performance difference between 8GB and 16GB AS machines. As long as the workload is light (students), this difference is insignificant to the point of being moot. But we see responsiveness issues on heavily-used staff machines that have only 8gb (most have 16, luckily). I would say that 8GB in these machines does perform much better than expected, but that additional RAM is still necessary for anything but the lightest workloads. The base 8GB will likely make those machines functionally obsolete significantly sooner, as the OS bloats, than they would be had the base RAM been more. (Try an intel MBA with the base 4GB of ram vs. one with 8GB of ram, for example. The latter is still a very usable computer, the former is unbearably slow. I expect the 8GB AS machines to be hit in a similar way at some point. I hope I'm wrong about that.) Anything than *needs* real ram (such as Parallels) will benefit hugely as well of course. As another point of reference; working on extremely large still images begins to chug badly, even on AS machines with 16GB, as compared to my 2009 Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 with RX580 and 96GB of ram. Just another example of how important RAM can be, because in light workloads there is no doubt the AS machines feel more responsive and ultimately perform better than my Mac Pro. But under heavy workloads the Mac Pro behaves vastly better, simply due to the amount of RAM it has. RAM: there is no substitute.
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I did tested it in MBA M2. It didn’t work, 1 VM require at least 4-6GB. The system is sluggish heavily with that. I don’t think M3 will change that much. Again, it’s not about typical usage (which should be sufficient for Air or Mini), but heavy load usage for the “Pro” machine.
 
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Isamilis said:
I can absolutely understand 8gb for Mac Mini or MBA. But for “Pro”, it’s a joke in 2023.
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My wife would disagree with you. She was an engineering executive who spent most of her time in meetings and the rest of her time writing documents. That is one example of a pro who doesn’t need more than 8GB, but certainly needs that HDMI port for meetings without having to carry dongles. Her 256GB drive is half empty. People here seem to think all pros need 300,000GB of RAM and 2 million TB of storage just to write their Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Those people are every bit as pro as the ones who render 8K Red raw footage. That’s why there are many levels of pro machines, each one of them progressively more powerful and with more RAM and storage. My wife would be an excellent candidate for the base M3 MBP while I would be a good candidate for the M3 Max with 48GB of RAM and 2TB of storage as a retired software engineer. Nothing about the base model would cut it with me, not the SoC, RAM, nor storage. There are many different kinds of pros, and fortunately, there are many levels of machines to choose from, and many different configurations within those levels. Just choose the right one.
 
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Can I tax and insure my car for the same cost as a bike. Two wheels are analogous to four, right?

(Cue everyone over using the word 'analogous' now)
 
Mockletoy said:
If you're gonna be running VMs and containers why would you even consider buying a machine with so little RAM? Isn't that like buying a subcompact car and then being put out when you can't use it to move a sofa or tow a boat or whatever?

Or maybe in this case it's more like getting annoyed at the car company for not making a pickup truck that can tow boats and haul sofas that's also as cheap as a subcompact car?

People who buy a machine with 8Gb of RAM can do lots of basic stuff on it just fine. As an example: my workflow is text-based. Lots of tedious editing, scrolling, jumping around in documents. I'm prone to motion sickness, so having a crisp display with a higher refresh rate is super useful to me. That's actually understating it: it can be the difference between whether I'm able to work at all or not.

I use a 4K/144hz external display with a low response time when I know I'm gonna be staring at the screen for hours, but if I ever do need to work for an extended period on the laptop display I know I will eventually get queasy. I get way less queasy way less quickly on my 14" M1 Pro than on my 2018 15" Pro. It's night and day.

Suggesting that every "pro" workflow is RAM-heavy is just silly. Mine is a "pro" workflow in the sense that I use it to do my work as a professional. But I really don't need a ton of RAM to open a few Word docs and a handful of reference web pages.

I do greatly benefit from the ProMotion screens, though. I said for the longest time (before the 120hz M1 Pros came out but after the 15" Air was rumored) that my perfect machine would be a big-screened Air with a ProMotion display. Sadly, Apple has decided that I can only get the speedy display by purchasing a machine that is comically overpowered for my needs. Seen in that light, the 14" M3 base model is almost exactly what I was looking for since I don't need tons of compute, RAM, or even storage, but I do need the best screen I can get.

All that said, given the super low cost of RAM and SSDs right now, 8Gb on a $1600 machine still seems offensively stingy and I can't really think of any reason it makes sense outside of protecting Apple's high holy profit margin. If they had just gone with 16/512 as the base I'd honestly have no complaints. As it is, we don't come to Apple devices expecting them to be bargains and the cost to jump from 8 to 16 amortized over the life of the machine really isn't enough to quibble over in the grand scheme of things.
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I expect “Pro” is on performance, can do heavy workload as advertised by Apple. RAM is one of major factors.
 
Aren’t creative professionals buying M3 Pro or M3Max, which start at 18GB? There are plenty of users for whom 8GB is enough. If that’s not you, this isn’t the machine for you.
 
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JimmyG said:
YouTuber Luke Miani offers up some real-world testing of the 8GB M3 MBP vs M3 Pro and M2 for Blender, Tomb Raider and FCP (starting around the 7:00 mark) along with several benchmark tests...

Base model 14" M3 MacBook Pro: NOT what I expected AT ALL - YouTube

...Disclaimer: link provided for educational purposes only, I have zero affiliation.
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(Somewhat) pointless specs debate on Macrumors vs. real-world use. Real-world use wins.
 
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racer1441 said:
I see no issue with this. The biggest mistake Apple makes is sticking with the ‘Pro’ name. Because it give certain pro’s the idea the machines are only for them. Unless you are rendering 4k video and creating dozens of photos a day, you are not allowed to buy a pro. Go to the Air line!

A pro could be anyone. Maybe they want or need the extra ports, or like the design better, or what ever.

Want 16gb or ram, buy it. Want 8gb of ram, buy it.

Every time these discussions come up I get so amazed by the elitist attitudes that come out of some people.
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Everyone with common sense (except the so called Pro users) knows the "pro" in this machine refers to the Pro hardware features, which are many, screen, ports & speakers, not the chip, which has no Pro in it's name, you'd have thought there's a real clue in that 😂
 
jimmysalg said:
I agree.....it's very low. additionally, starting at 512B HD is also ridiculous.
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Frankly that's less of an issue unless you do video work imho. First .... if you mostly work on remote projects 512 is fine. Personally I'd even be fine with 256, but my requirements really are very modest as it's basically a few webbrowsers, vscode and maybe the occasional docker container. Second: if you run hard out of space you can always outsource static stuff to an external drive or a NAS. You can't just "outsource" memory even if swapping does suggest that.
 
XboxEvolved said:
People complaining that Apple isn’t giving them enough RAM for their computers is a story as old as Apple itself probably. The only difference is until recently, the end user could usually do something about it in the future if they chose to do so.

I don’t think having a marketing guy talk about technical aspects of the system helps at all either. While there definitely is truth to what he is saying, the optics of it are bad, especially if your tablet and phone come with 8GB of ram as well.

The difference nowadays seems to be that’s eventually Apple listens to the customer, so I’d say at least with any machine that says “Pro” on it, they will bump it up past 8GB in a future refresh..like 12?
Click to expand...
I hope we are all remember, today is closed to end of year 2023 and base config of Non-Pro (eg, MBA / Mac Mini) have same RAM with base model of (wanna be) “Pro”.
 
Isamilis said:
I expect “Pro” is on performance, can do heavy workload as advertised by Apple. RAM is one of major factors.
Click to expand...
There are many professionals, myself included, who would find the performance on offer not just satisfactory but even a bit overkill.

I literally don't understand this. Apple offers you a selection of choices. You choose the one that best aligns with your needs.

Flip it around: I do not remotely need a top-end system with a zillion cores, 128GB of RAM, and gobs of storage. That would be so comically overpowered for my needs that I'd feel pretty silly buying it.

Just as silly as I'd feel if I bought the entry-level model even though I did need a zillion cores, 128GB of RAM, and gobs or storage, right?

There are some pros for whom the base model is sufficient. There are some who need one of the other options on offer. All of those needs are equally valid and just as "pro" as any of the others as long as the work being done is paying the bills.
 
So with that logic, the new maxed-out M3 MacBook Pro really has 256GB of RAM when compared to 128GB of RAM on a PC?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.
 
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