Yes they are, if m4 with 16 gigs is the standard, Apple went out of their way to make an 8 gig version, effectively crippling the iPad. For more money I guess. Weird take to defend this honestly
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Apple Testing Four New M4 Macs Ahead of Fall Launch
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A product exists right now, today, with the M4 with 8 GiB RAM. Therefore, 16 clearly is not “standard”. It may be the minimum on the Mac, but that doesn’t make it the minimum for M4, nor your weird often-repeated “went out of their way”. They put two 4 GiB chips on it. So what?
Maybe the M4 was born 8-16 and then upped to 16- 32 (wild guess on the 32) instead of the other way around hence they didn’t cripple anything.
But hey, you seem pretty confident Apple went the route of crippling it on purpose…
I could see the issue if the iPad needed 16 to function properly, but in reality 8 is more than an ought and 16 is overkill one iPad, 8 is a little pit too tight for the Mac as Mac OS uses more resources.
I really don’t see why it matters. macOS can run fine on 8 gigs yet everybody has been complaining for years. Weird that you’re defending Apple on this in the first place to be honest, more is ALWAYS better, and why wouldn’t you want this by default? Especially on an iPad PRO.
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It's not about "defending Apple", it's that iPads have had less RAM than Macs for most of their life. This is nothing new. It has nothing to do with "they went out of their way". They decided the lower-end iPads Pro get x amount, and the higher-end ones get y amount. The RAM is just a bunch of chips they solder onto the package.
On Mac i agree, on iPad i really don’t see the need for 16 yet, and may be for the next 3-4 years.
Why pay more for something not needed? And if you need it, you have options. More is better, but why would i have to pay for unneeded extra just so someone can brag about specs.
i don‘t need a supercharged car to go around the city, why would i have to pay for a supercharger?
People that need the supercharger can buy the version with it, and let everyone else use the regular “engine”.
Not defending Apple, they don’t need me to, they have a better understanding of their customers need than me and you together, i side with what makes sense to me, and the 8 -16 versions makes sense.
If i needed 16 i would have shelled the money for it, i work everyday with my iPad, is my only device, and never i felt the need for more ram, if you do,, get the version you need.
”You could future proof yourself with 16”. May be, but i could have worked with an Air, i future proofed with the Pro if that is really a thing, in 3-4 years I will upgrade anyway and by then we might have 16 standard on iPad, so why spend now more for something i don’t really need?
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Did you even read my comment?
The MacBook Air DOES NOT COME WITH ENOUGH RAM, EVEN WHEN MAXED OUT. So yes, I do need Pro. I also need/want the biggest screen size in a laptop, again the 16" Pro. Plus, I already have 2TB in my MBP, and it's almost full, so I'll be looking at 4TB next time, and again, only the Pro has 4TB. Plus, I need/want the extra ports in the Pro. Are you getting the picture yet?
So if they made a 16" MBA with capacity for a lot more ram and SSD, with the extra ports that come in the MBP, and without the need for massive GPU power and fan, then perfect, I would buy that MBA.
I can see them furthering the gap between the Pro and Max regarding the GPU, but I can’t really see them making a fanless Pro. The market segment of “I want a lot of CPU power, but I also want it throttled after 15 minutes” just isn’t that big.
Nah, there's a huge segment of software engineers that need CPU and RAM, but don't need GPU, and thus don't need all the cooling required by a high power GPU.
Something like 40% of software engineering contractors, who supply their own laptops, use Macs. This is NOT a small segment on users.
Give me the GPU power of the base M1 chip, but the CPU power, and RAM/SSD options of the M3 Max, the 16" screen, and all the MBP ports, and put it in a fanless body similar in thickness as the MBA, and you have just created the perfect software engineer's laptop.
The Pro exists for them.
The Air exists for those.
Then wait for M4 on the air. Did you bother reading this article?
Apple’s not getting rid of the fan on the MacBook Pro. Sorry
Seems like the M1/M2 Pro, with half the GPU of the M1/M2 Max but otherwise the same, was aimed at the workload you’re describing.
It’s possible Apple will return to that model for the M4 Pro/Max, and the M3 generation will be a one-off, because no M3 Ultra. But it seems more likely that the M3 Pro is now what Apple thinks you should be using, and the M4 Pro will follow it. Still, you may get most of what you want in the M5 Air 15" — by June of next year. If they double the maximum memory to 48GB, would that be enough?
Beyond the Air’s limited specs, I’m pretty sure Apple’s hardware engineers, arguably the best in the world, think you need a fan, and I’m very sure they don’t think being a software engineer qualifies you to make that determination.
“almost” is doing a lot of work there!
I think both the differences in costs and yields for N3E versus first-generation N3 are relative. It is, after all, still the leading-edge node.
As for yields, I think that’s also very much relative. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong. Yield issues are a constant, because they are largely caused by defects in the silicon wafers. I gather there are also problems as the fab develops a new process, but those are bugs that get fixed as the process is refined. Regardless, until the wafers are grown by immaculate robots and transported magically from clean rooms in outer space, there are always going to be flaws in the silicon that cause parts of the chips to fail.
TSMC (or rather, the partners they outsource this to) tests and sorts the chips, and Apple gets the chips all sorted and ready to go into products. I have no idea how many perfect, flawless chips there are. A high percentage, I think. But I think we can surmise that, nevertheless, a certain percentage of them, no matter the process node, will be flawed variously, and Apple wants to use as many of those as it can, and not just throw money into the recycle bin. So the design has extra cores and extra ports, which you can pay for, but when you do you’re also subsidizing products with lesser specs, which may or may not use a flawless chip that is disabled. Maybe the key thing to keep in mind is that Apple has strong profit incentives to sell those flawless chips as such, and not disable them. So you have to imagine they’re doing everything they can to avoid disabling perfectly good cores and other elements of the SoC.
I imagine the defect rates in the silicon are predictable, there are good runs and bad runs but overall it’s consistent, so they know what to expect, and the product line is built to accommodate that.
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Yeah, Apple was passively serious about gaming on iPhone as well. If it didn’t naturally happen, I don’t think they wound have out any effort into it either.
This is a general comment, not about the topic of Apple gaming.
Not quite sure what that means but it sounds GREAT. I will definitely find places to use that expression
"The Pro exists for them." - but has overkill, expensive GPU power, and a thicker body and fan for the cooling required for that GPU power, none of which software engineers need
"The Air exists for those." - but has limited RAM/SDD/ports, and max screen of 15" vs 16".
It's all good. I bought the 16" M1Pro MBP 32GB/2TB, and love it. Merely stating out loud my non-existent dream machine.