Apple needs to make 16 GB of Ram standard or they may never have a laptop monopoly.

[ericwn]

How many average users even own macs? I stared with Macs 20 years ago cus i needed one for design school and i do photography. I continue to use it for That. I imagine if i didnt have any kind of creative use for it I’d probably just own an iPad or even just a phone. A lot of people out there there these days just do everything on their phone or some cheap laptop like a Chromebook

Yup and while that may be the case Apple solely focusses on mainstream computer users these days as the days where just a few DTP folks used macs are long gone. The vast majority of people are very likely that exact average user already mentioned and they buy entry level MacBook and MacBook Pro machines. And of course they get by just fine unless they discover a more demanding use case.

 

[Corefile]

Apple is paying less than $5 (and more likely in the $3 range) for 8 GB of RAM. Yet they charge what, $200 for that RAM upgrade.

Apple finally closed the loophole in the name of technological advancement to end the third party RAM buying practices. Better that all that money goes to Apple than others undercutting their inflated prices.

 

[Corefile]

Its weird. The iPhones are approaching 8 GB of RAM….and that is for hardware that runs iOS and only allows one open app at a time…

iPhone don't use swap though.

 

[hans1972]

I am literally using 5.61 GB of Ram right now, with only 2 browser tabs opened.
View attachment 2190142

A good operating system will use all the RAM you have. Seems like macOS is doing a great job on your machine.

Using all the RAM when you have only two tabs open is quite hard. You should celebrate Apple engineers and feel good about owning such an amazing machine.

 

[hans1972]

It's sad to see how many people here are ok with getting so little in return for their money. "Just pay for the upgrade" as though spending an extra $400 on $5 worth of parts is seen as reasonable. Boy oh boy what it must be like to live life as comfortably as the rest of you.

It's just that some of us don't consider Macs to be made of parts you buy separately.

If I need a MacBook Air with 16Gb of RAM and 512Gb of SSD, I look at the price for that configuration and decides if it provides enough value. If it doesn't, I don't buy it.

By doing it this way, you don't have to care bout upgrade prices, what is the default configuration, etc.

Makes life much simpler.

 

[hans1972]

So why not start at 4GB? The issue is that for a solid machine, in today’s world, 8GB, IMO, is not enough.

It certainly is.

In my extended family there are 15 Macs. Only four of them av 16Gb of RAM. The rest has 8.
Those with 8Gb have no performance problems at all.

I can do my professional job as an IT consultant easily with 8Gb of RAM. And I do.

 

[hans1972]

The frustration is that the base configs are what end up all across the retailer landscape, and only those third parties ever do any discounting and/or sales.

If Apple ever adjusted prices on older models/components, things would look and feel differently.

So it's about price then.

 

[hans1972]

Obviously they can set prices however they want but I'm really tired of seeing "If they bump the RAM they'll have to raise the price!" nonsense all over this thread. No they don't. Falling RAM prices explains this.

Apple probably looks at the average selling price (ASP) for their lineup since it has such a direct influence on their profit.
If they increase the default RAM to 16Gb, the ASP would go down by at least $100 since way fewer people would pay the $200 to upgrade the RAM.

To get the ASP up again they would have to increase the price of the base model, thus hurting those who only needs 8Gb of RAM.

Apple will only increase the default configuration when it's necessary to sell the computer.

 

[unrigestered]

even though i'm one of those who thinks that Apple is WAY! overpricing their upgrades, especially if you need a lot more than just 16, or 32GB RAM / 1TB SSD, i also think that 8GB is still good for most "normal" tasks.
if you need more, either upgrade, or purchase a 14 or 16" MBP which come stock with at least 16, if not 32GB even in their base models.

also, as i've just found out recently how awesome Linux actually is, the only saving grace for me is the superior Apple Silicon vs x86 architecture as long as it comes for laptop usage.
and of course if you are relying on certain software that's not available on Linux and can't live with alternatives.
oh and you also have to do more homework, since strangely PC manufacturers seem to purposely make it really hard to find a model that's ticking all the boxes when it comes to the hardware configuration without some weird or unwanted decisions.

 

[Analog Kid]

The good old, "Well I don't run out, so you're wrong" attitude.

Even with the 512GB model storage is tight. With Full iTunes Library, Photographs, i've used 200 of the 512. Given Mac OS and software, thats another 35 - 50 gone, so i'm down to 50% of the storage space the machine came with. Thankfully I rarely have to use this for any work.

If I'm reading this right you're countering the "It's good enough for me, so it's good enough for some people" argument, which is always true, with a "It's not enough for me, so it's not enough for other people" argument which is only true in the narrowest case when you are literally the person on the planet with the lowest demand for storage.

So poor RAM management is acceptable because these machine have an SSD to burn through?

Apple's RAM management is pretty remarkable, actually. And that's exactly what virtual memory is meant for-- to improve performance by sparing processes from having to serialize and deserialize, or purge and rebuild data. It's not burning through an SSD, it's using all resources to the benefit of the user.

This attitude is one othe reasons Apple get away with having such **** poor RAM/SSD specifications in their products.

Are you saying "happy customers are ruining it for everyone"?

That seems to be what drives a lot of the discontent in these threads-- people seem to think that if they can just spread enough FUD, Apple will suddenly decide that their actual metrics don't matter and we can get more stuff for free.

I don't see the point in that approach. I'd rather be happy with what I have, and if I'm not then buy something I'm happier with.

 

[monstermash]

Personally, I'd rather see Apple increase the free iCloud space to more that 5GB

I'd like to see them offer paid service of more than 2TB.

 

[Mainsail]

am running an M2 air with 8gb ram, and no issues whatsoever. even with lots of safari tabs, 7 other apps always open, occasionally things like affinity photo... all is well.

i have a reasonable music library & photo library, do a lot of documents, email, etc. and on my 256G drive, i currently have 169.98 gigs available (i do archive a lot of older work on an external drive).

not everyone needs 16gb ram, or 512g of storage (am not saying i wouldn't appreciate that as a minimum). but it's not life-or-death, and if it is... buy what you need.

Yep. This is my situation as well. I subscribe to the iCloud 2T plan for family share, and I have optimized my local drive for photos etc.. I have plenty of available space on my 256GB SSD, and my base 8GB M2 MBA runs smooth as silk. No. problems whatsoever.

 

[Gudi]

I am so bored by all those charging-for-RAM-is-evil threats, that I will hijack this one and talk about the real issues. The Midnight color − it is ugly! Even without scratches, smudges and fingerprints, it just doesn't look good. Apple may never have a laptop monopoly with these colors.

 

[fisherking]

I am so bored by all those charging-for-RAM-is-evil threats, that I will hijack this one and talk about the real issues. The Midnight color − it is ugly! Even without scratches, smudges and fingerprints, it just doesn't look good. Apple may never have a laptop monopoly with these colors.

what's the point of this post? it isn't relevant to the discussion, and one color that you personally don't like isn't going to bankrupt apple.

there are posts to discuss this (or start your own). never get why people feel the need to 'hijack' a thread.... 🙄

 

[WilliApple]

I am so bored by all those charging-for-RAM-is-evil threats, that I will hijack this one and talk about the real issues. The Midnight color − it is ugly! Even without scratches, smudges and fingerprints, it just doesn't look good. Apple may never have a laptop monopoly with these colors.

I like the midnight color tho...

If they don't have purple for the dream base model 15 Inch Air, then I will get Midnight instead.

 

[monstermash]

what's the point of this post? it isn't relevant to the discussion, and one color that you personally don't like isn't going to bankrupt apple.

there are posts to discuss this (or start your own). never get why people feel the need to 'hijack' a thread.... 🙄

Some people appear to have no sense of humour.

 

[fisherking]

Some people appear to have no sense of humour.

or an emoji would help 🙄. there are so many absurb, whiny posts on the macrumors forum, it's hard sometimes to tell the serious ones from the funny ones (even with my own posts 🤣)

 

[Gudi]

what's the point of this post? it isn't relevant to the discussion, and one color that you personally don't like isn't going to bankrupt apple.

I'm not the only person who doesn't like Midnight. As a customer group us color snobs are as powerful or more than those base-memory hawks. If we join forces with the notch haters, we can bring Apple down. 🦾 − emoji

 

[fisherking]

I'm not the only person who doesn't like Midnight. As a customer group us color snobs are as powerful or more than those base-memory hawks. If we join forces with the notch haters, we can bring Apple down. 🦾

apple can easily remove the notch, simply by removing the camera 👍

 

[monstermash]

or an emoji would help 🙄. there are so many absurb, whiny posts on the macrumors forum, it's hard sometimes to tell the serious ones from the funny ones (even with my own posts 🤣)

I dunno. When someone paints a wall white - I don't think it is necessary to put up a sign that says "white".

Except maybe for blind people - and then it would have to be in braille. But if you only put up THAT sign, then it would be discriminatory for the sighted people - so then you have two signs. Of course, not everyone knows English - so you'll need to put up some more signs that describe the colour in multiple languages. But there are thousands of languages. So you have to limit to only so many. But who decides? Well, you're going to need a committee. How many people are on that committee? And how do you decide who gets on that committee? Well, you're going to need to do a survey of the people to decide that. How are you going to fund that survey? You could get a GoFundMe site. How much do you think you'll need? You want to get enough money - but don't go so big that you don't reach your goal and end up with NO funding. So, it's a tough issue. Maybe something smallish, like $10K would be OK. So, then once you get your funding, you have to choose a survey firm. How ya gonna do that? Are there reviews of that sort of thing? Maybe you do an RFP and choose from the top 5 candidates. What criteria are you going to use? What are you going to do if you select a bid, make an award, and then someone challenges it? You don't have funding to fight that in court. So, now you need another GoFundMe. And on and on it goes. In the meantime, someone organizes a protest against you for painting it WHITE instead of any one of many other colours. Do you have a plan for handling THAT hot mess?

Sometimes - it's just more reasonable to let things stand on their own and allow people to make up their own minds what they'e looking at.

 

[fisherking]

I dunno. When someone paints a wall white - I don't think it is necessary to put up a sign that says "white".

Except maybe for blind people - and then it would have to be in braille. But if you only put up THAT sign, then it would be discriminatory for the sighted people - so then you have two signs. Of course, not everyone knows English - so you'll need to put up some more signs that describe the colour in multiple languages. But there are thousands of languages. So you have to limit to only so many. But who decides? Well, you're going to need a committee. How many people are on that committee? And how do you decide who gets on that committee? Well, you're going to need to do a survey of the people to decide that. How are you going to fund that survey? You could get a GoFundMe site. How much do you think you'll need? You want to get enough money - but don't go so big that you don't reach your goal and end up with NO funding. So, it's a tough issue. Maybe something smallish, like $10K would be OK. So, then once you get your funding, you have to choose a survey firm. How ya gonna do that? Are there reviews of that sort of thing? Maybe you do an RFP and choose from the top 5 candidates. What criteria are you going to use? What are you going to do if you select a bid, make an award, and then someone challenges it? You don't have funding to fight that in court. So, now you need another GoFundMe. And on and on it goes. In the meantime, someone organizes a protest against you for painting it WHITE instead of any one of many other colours. Do you have a plan for handling THAT hot mess?

Sometimes - it's just more reasonable to let things stand on their own and allow people to make up their own minds what they'e looking at.

not sure what you mean. in a text post, there's no context, nuance. if i say 'i hate the midnight color more than anything in the world'... where's the joke? if i add this 🙄 (for example)... there's a joke.

but how does one read intonation on a web forum post? after all, what if @Gudi is, in fact, serious?

 

[monstermash]

not sure what you mean. in a text post, there's no context, nuance. if i say 'i hate the midnight color more than anything in the world'... where's the joke? if i add this 🙄 (for example)... there's a joke.

but how does one read intonation on a web forum post? after all, what if @Gudi is, in fact, serious?

He may have been serious. But it is still clear that the point of his post was to be funny.

What makes it funny? He effectively declares that the topic as a "problem" is stupid, and that he is going to discuss a REAL "problem" - which is colour. That's funny. But, not all people "get" all jokes. It's OK. Not everyone wants an EV either. Nor does everyone want an iPad to work like a Mac. Nor do they care about Apple Savings accounts. Nor do they think consumer credit is a good thing. The world is full of different people. That's why it is not scheduled for destruction until the gods are finished laughing at us.

 

[Analog Kid]

apple can easily remove the notch, simply by removing the camera 👍

I'm sure without the camera, the machine would need less RAM... Win/Win

 

[Gudi]

After all, what if @Gudi is, in fact, serious?

I am in fact serious. I think the M1/8/256 base is now so good, that design and color should be and are the deciding factors for a purchase decision. In the past the design helped to put up with the limitations of hardware and the premium price. But now design has a more important role than specs. What happened with iPhones and iPads, namely that even previous generations are more than powerful enough, is now happening to Macs. The problem is not that the M2 is only a minor upgrade over the M1. The problem is that the M1 was already too good. You can not feel the speed difference anymore, if the slower computer already reacts instantaneous. So the 8GB RAM is really a non-issue for the vast majority of users. And the rest can just pay up for more. But the fingerprints on that damn Midnight color, they are real. 😆

 

[fisherking]

He may have been serious. But it is still clear that the point of his post was to be funny.

What makes it funny? He effectively declares that the topic as a "problem" is stupid, and that he is going to discuss a REAL "problem" - which is colour. That's funny. But, not all people "get" all jokes. It's OK. Not everyone wants an EV either. Nor does everyone want an iPad to work like a Mac. Nor do they care about Apple Savings accounts. Nor do they think consumer credit is a good thing. The world is full of different people. That's why isn't not scheduled for destruction until the gods are finished laughing at us.

uh, you might want to read the followup, a few posts down. see? no emoji because it was, in fact, serious. so your interpretation was just that... an interpretation.