Entire Mac Lineup Now Starts With at Least 16GB RAM, Ending 8GB Era
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It was $1050 USD. For $1300 I would have just gotten the MBA M2 8 GB for $700 USD now though rather than pay more.
WarmWinterHat
macrumors 601
I have a Windows desktop at home with 16gb ram and I've never used more than 75% of it's ram. That said, I'm not a gamer (none installed) nor do I do video/photo for more than a hobby. My work laptop is a 12th i7 with 8gb ram and it runs just fine with multi-gigabyte excel files across a couple monitors.
16gb is fine for almost everyone, on whatever OS.
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Razorpit
Suspended
Fixed it for you...
I promised myself I would wait for the M4 chip to arrive for the Mac, so it’s time to purchase a "base" Mac mini with the standard 16GB RAM. Now that the 8GB nonsense has been put to rest, this is sufficient for my work. Apple just sent an email offering one for around $606US plus VAT, which is $7 more than in the US in our currency. However, I would have to wait until next year for tax purposes. I’ve waited this long, so I might as well wait a few more months. Now that the M chip has firmly established itself, along with the 16GB, and Apple boasts that the M4 chip is better and faster than the M1 and M2 chips, I do feel quite sorry for those who bought M1 chip Macs when they first launched. They were more of an experiment than the M1 chip itself.
Razorpit
Suspended
Well, considering my first Vic 20 had a 60 minute cassette, consider yourself lucky.
WarmWinterHat
macrumors 601
That's what my first computer, a TRS-80 CoCo, had. First computer with a hard drive was a 486 with a 420mb.
theluggage
macrumors G3
...which is why I take examples of comparable, competing products - premium "ultrabook"-style laptops in a similar starting price bracket to Macs - from companies who's primary business is selling hardware. There's no reason to assume that they have a fundamentally different business model.
If you want an idea of the retail cost of LPDDR5x RAM - Crucial now sell LPDDR5x LPCAMM modules at $174 for 32GB and $329 for 64GB. So, about $155 for the difference between 32GB and 64GB (so, about $40 per 8GB) - in a shiny new form-factor which probably adds to the cost c.f. the loose LPDDR chips used in most laptops. That's retail - the nice folk at crucial get to eat hot meals and sleep indoors. In terms of actual material costs, both Lenovo and Apple will be buying bare chips in huge quantities and massive discounts.
Lenovo sell those modules at twice Crucial's prices for the one ThinkBook that uses them - so it's not like Lenovo are non-gouge-y and I'm sure they're not taking a loss from those $200-for-16GB upgrades.
Complete straw man - who would compare a VR headset (AFAIK the only hardware product from a services & ads company who bought it when they wanted to create a VR social media empire) with a PC laptop from a PC manufacturer? If anything, Apple's business model should be more like Meta's since - unlike Lenovo - they do have a significant consumer services business.
Not really - I might want a premium laptop with 64GB RAM and 4TB SSD for $1000, but looking at the rest of the market shows that that is an unreasonable expectation (I probably could get that in a no-name flying brick) - but that 32GB/1TB in anything costing the thick end of $2000 is attainable - if not as a stock spec, with a BTO upgrade half the price of Apple's.
What is clear is that Apple's BTO upgrade prices have nothing to do with the cost of materials - the $200 per 8GB rate has been the same since at least 2017 when I bought my iMac, several times the retail cost of the bog-standard DDR modules it used (the difference then was that you could so a third party upgrade for a fraction of the price). They're using these prices purely to create price points. For the M4 Mac Mini, for example, the stock models are:
$599 : 16GB RAM/256GB SSD
$799 : 16GB RAM/512GB SSD
$999 : 24GB RAM/512GB SSD
All identical systems, apart from the RAM/SSD differences. Let's say Apple changed that to:
$599 : 16GB RAM/256GB SSD
$799 : 24GB RAM/512GB SSD
$999 : 32GB RAM/1TB SSD
...I don't know about you, but that would make me much more likely to go straight for the $799 or $999 model than go for the $599 and maybe just upgrade the SSD - they wouldn't even need BTO options on RAM and SSD. It wouldn't take a huge proportion of customers thinking the same way to overtake the relatively small increase in material costs.
Have Apple done the math & market research to prove me wrong? Maybe - but I wouldn't count on it. Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is a common syndrome amongst bean counters - Apple have become very good at shaving the last possible cent off the bill of materials, not so good at presenting a good value proposition to customers. I'm not going to say that "Apple is doomed!" but they're increasingly reliant on customers being committed to the Apple ecosystem.
Where did you get that number? 73.6% of statistics are made up.
darkmatter343
macrumors 6502
So now the era begins of — “Is 16GB enough for light browsing, office, or should I future proof with 32GB???”
Abazigal
Contributor
It’s been a good 4 years, and my current M1 MBA is still going strong. I don’t regret my purchase one bit, and I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.
Careful! There’s the crowd on here that are going to thumbs down you and argue because your post carries too much truth! 😂
When you didn’t realise that Apple would default to 16GB in four years...the first out of the stable usually is an experiment. Apple won’t produce the M1 again, nor will they release Macs with 8GB RAM. Well, I’m glad I waited. The Intel MacBook Pro worked just as well until the M4 Macs came out, perhaps for a few more years.
Jovijoker
macrumors member
10 Years!
Saturn007
macrumors 68000
“They” tried to tell us that — and “they” were right for many, if not most, users! ✅ And, it's still true.
Hint: most Mac users have more modest needs than the typical MR professional user and poster.
Because that’s a common use pattern! 🙈
16GB for light word processing, browsing, and email is clearly not enough! 32GB is definitely needed — at a minimum… /s
It was never BS and many, if not most, users did just fine with 8GB — and still do!
What we're really glad to see come to an end are the sweeping, hyperbolic assertions that “8GB is NOT enough”! 🔥 👎🏽
Maybe with 16GB standard now, people will stop making patronizing cracks about users who do fine just with 8GB! 😁
Well the big question now is, how much are the 8GB M3 Airs now worth for the people who now have an obsolete product?
UltimaKilo
macrumors 65816
In all honestly, most people will be fine for a very long time with 16 GB, but the 24 GB option is the best bet with what we are expecting over the next 2-3 years from AI.
AlixSPQR
macrumors 65816
You should contact CEO Cook and enlighten him about that. Maybe he'll revert the base models’ upgrade.
ignatius345
macrumors G3
Don't weep for me. I'm using several M1 Macs that are still absolute beasts at multitasking. When I do upgrade, it'll be a nice jump forward, but my hardware is absolutely not holding me back today. I've already gotten 4 years of great use out of them, and they've paid for themselves many times over in producing billable work.
jakey rolling
macrumors 6502a
16GB is Apple catching up to five years ago. It is nowhere near "looking ahead".